Kishore (June 2004)

During May 2004, my family had a chance close encounter with Actor/Megastar Chiranjeevi. I wanted to narrate this experience and also share my learning from my missed opportunity. 

It was at around 8.15 AM that I start to take my daughter to school. On this day, I went down as usual. I saw there were some other people in the parking lot getting into a car, but didn't pay close attention. I was absorbed in my own thoughts and continued walking to my car. At this time my wife was waving from our balcony and making signs about something. I didn't really catch what she was saying but sensed it was something important. I walked over to my car. By that time I had some intuition to what she might be saying. I called her up from my cell phone and she confirmed that the person who was in the car which I passed by is none other than Megastar Chiranjeevi. Even after hearing that confirmation, I was still focused on my responsibility of taking my daughter to school on time. I didn't say any thing but went off to school. 

I came back after 20 minutes and my wife narrated what happened next. She was able to greet Chiranjeevi from the balcony. He acknowledged her greeting. When she requested a photograph, he signaled that there is little time and he has to go.   He waved good bye as he was leaving. It was nice experience to have seen him at such a close distance without anyone else to compete with. People would do anything to have such a close encounter with him. And we missed the opportunity to meet him and take an autograph. My wife regrets missing this chance. Since he came to visit some of his friends, we were hopeful that he may come again. For next few days we were on the constant watch to see if he drops by again. 

I regretted not coming back and making best of the opportunity to meet him. Any one else in my position would have jumped at the opportunity to meet him and taken advantage of once in a life time opportunity. Even now I have regrets about the same.

Spiritual Lessons from this experience

This regret has become a blessing in disguise for me. This brief experience triggered my thoughts in a spiritual direction and made a big difference to me. 

Feeling Presence of God: Will this experience repeat if it was God instead of the famous actor? The fact that I ignored his presence made me feel that I am not on the look out for presence of God. I realized that I might be turning a blind eye to seeing God everywhere. Will I pay attention if God is standing next to me? May be not. I have been so pre-occupied with life that I have not been paying attention to presence of God around me. 

Duty/Devotion:  The fact that even after coming to know that Chiranjeevi is hardly 20 feet away from me, that I felt attached to my duty made me think. Am I getting so much overwhelmed by my duties that I have stopped paying attention to devotional activities? I realized that during past few weeks, my work and personal commitments have become standard excuses to avoid spending more time on devotion. I have reduced number of hours spent in prayers and started justifying that I need to attend to my duties.  I realized that God is more important than any duty. Once you devote yourself to God, he will eliminate our burdens and duties. 

Run for him: When I heard name of Chiranjeevi, I should have made a run for it. I didn't do it. Will I do the same when God appears before me? Since our goal in life is to realize God, I should run towards HIM at every opportunity and more so when he makes his presence felt. 

Yearning for him: After missing opportunity to meet the actor, we were hopeful that we may get a chance to meet him again. Day and night we kept a vigil on the road, waiting for the opportunity to come again. I realized that I am unable to feel presence of God because I do not have such yearning for HIM. I realized my belief in that God can appear before me and yearn for such experience needs to be increased in intensity. 

An experience to cherish: Meeting the famous actor will be an experience to cherish for rest of life. How would we feel if I can experience such an encounter with God? It is worth thousand lives. I should make meeting God as a goal of life and work towards it very sincerely. 

With this kind of thinking I have started altering my habits and thought processes and started aligning more towards my spiritual goals. This brief 5 minute experience helped my realign my spiritual life. I wanted to share this experience. 

Summary

For a spiritual aspirant, every moment of life will turn out to be spiritual. There should be no regrets. If something good happens, it is blessing of God. If something unpleasant happens, it is with a purpose. Learn from the experience and thank God for such an experience. This attitude will help a lot in spiritual progress.  

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