I visited Mumbai ( then called Bombay) for a wedding when I was 18. It was monsoon season and in the mornings about 20 of us would gather around a blazing pump kerosine stove waiting for hot tea to be served in cup and saucer. When the mother of the house poured tea directly from the big saucepan into individual cups, it invariably overflowed.
I watched, wonder-eyed, for the first time that everyone drank from the saucer the tea that had overflowed from the cup.
Recently I read a poem on social media comparing the overflowed tea to overflowing grace. It set my fire of gratitude too ablaze and here I let my heart speak….
1998 September was when You sent an indication that You will enter my humble life.
Then I suddenly lost my younger brother in November 1998 and became distraught like a rudderless ship.
Two months of wallowing in grief and ‘You happened’ through Eye-gazing process of the Basic Course.
I saw my brother in every pair of eyes I gazed into and also realized he was in a much happier space.
I was thrown into an ocean of love that is nothing but ‘ I am’!
Ever since, I am drinking from my saucer b’coz my cup overflowed!
All eleven kinds of love that You have explained to us so simply and lovingly in Narada Bhakti Sutras is experienced by me, moving from the scenery to the Seer, ‘ I am Love’!
The sum total of all wordly love, the Divine Love could manifest in my life only because You chose me to walk the path. My throat chokes ‘ Why me?! ‘, then ‘ Why not me? ! ‘.
Ever since, I am drinking from my saucer b’coz my cup overflowed!
I have always been aware of a pair of unseen hands holding and protecting me, a divine power that would not let me down.
You taught me to invest my 100 percent and surrender with ‘ Let Thy Will be done’. Such freedom and fearlessness in the realization that divine is my only security.
Ever since, I am drinking from my saucer b’coz my cup overflowed!
This Gurupurnima, I recognize for the umpteenth time, the grace that has showered my life with bliss.
I recognize all the divine souls from the Art of Living family as well as ‘ Yet to enter the Art of Living family’ who have contributed for my growth and have loved and continue to love me unconditionally in their own unique way.
They all make me drink from my saucer b’coz my cup has overflowed.
Words fail to verbalize the mysterious ways in which You grant the trivial wishes my small mind indulges in at times into something so magnanimous that I feel blinded to take it all in. Awestruck, I continue to drink from my saucer b’coz my cup keeps overflowing!
Jai Gurudev!
Leela Ramesh
Bangalore
Actually the my cup is also overflowing. No words even to express gratitude every minute / second with every breath. In my next birth also I want u giruji with me
I love how you have used the tea saucer with gratitude. Beautifully and authentically expressed! Keep writing.