The Shadow - A Poem

 

Shadows are a part of our existence. They nurture us, teach us and stay with us till we last, like past ....

The Shadow

We march into the future,

Venturing through the present,

Leaving behind everything on the way –

Moment after moment, day after day.

All the time during this journey,

We are ensued by the Shadow of Past.

Step by step, as we move ahead,

It remains with us, till we last.

- Vanita Thakkar (10.07.1988)

This is another old poem of mine. I wrote it as a higher secondary student, contemplating on the flow of time. Future moves from present to past. What we are and what we do in the present becomes past and leads us to future.

I had written two poems on similar lines of thoughts much later, on HubPages, inspired by Brenda Arledge's word prompt - Tomorrow. The link to those poems is ....

https://vanitathakkar.blogspot.com/2026/02/blog-post.html

Life is but a walking shadow.”

— William Shakespeare

Reflections ....

Shadows are a part of our existence. They nurture us, teach us and stay with us till we last, like past ....

Shadows are offspring of light. They provide shelter. However, one never gets shelter from one's own shadow.

Shadows are a reality, yet they are unreal. Past is a bygone reality, that doesn’t exist. Still, the impressions of past greatly influence life. The ability to manage / handle those impressions and control their influence, plays a great role in steering the course of life. It affects one’s health, happiness, success and overall well-being and hence plays a crucial role in determining the quality of life.

“The mind is the shadow of the light it seeks.”

— Jim Dodge

“Don’t be afraid of the shadows, it only means there’s a light nearby.”

— Amy Lee

Freedom From Past For Enlightenment .... So says the Guru to His Disciple

I have come across a spiritual narration, which is relevant to this trail of thoughts.

It is in a video by Sri M. (Sri Madhukarnath), an Indian Yogi, who was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian-award of India, in 2020.

Sri M. is seen narrating an incident in which his Guruji - Sri Maheshwarnath Babaji of the Navnath tradition imparts knowledge to an old and highly advanced yogi, eager to attain the ultimate state of existence, the Truth. The disciple is an old renunciant, a saint, living in a cave in the Himalayas, who had profound knowledge of all yogic and mystic spiritual texts and practices, having studied and practiced them for decades. He was eager to know where he was still falling short.

The Guruji, Sri Maheshwarnath Babaji, quotes a shloka from the Isha Upanishad which says that one who dwells in avidya, which means spiritual ignorance that prevents the individual from connecting to the Source of being and the true Self, lives in darkness; and one who dwells in vidya or valid knowledge, which cannot be contradicted, and true knowledge, which is the intuitively-gained knowledge of the self knowledge, lives in greater darkness. This is due to the fact that the stock of all the "knowledge" that occupies the memory of the seeker obstructs the path to realization of his real self. The self-image or ego of being the "knower" is the hindrance. Once that obstacle is gone, meaning, the shackles of past - good or bad - are gone, only the "now" remains. That state of being wholly in the present, leads to realization of the true self.

The link to that video by Sri M. is here. The incident is narrated in the first twenty minutes of this video.

For common human beings like us, leading a social life, among all sorts of different types of people, in the middle of challenges of modern life, the store house of past memories, along with the loads of aspirations and dreams and apprehensions of the future have to be handled. Hope, faith, courage, discretion, patience and Divine Grace are not merely words. They are indeed the Saviors.

 

From HubPages .... Published on 23rd May, 2023