Honoring the Mother and the Grace of Women

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Mother’s Day – May 9, 1971

Originally published in Beads of Truth, Summer Solstice Issue 1971

by Siri Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji

A thought was ringing in my ears. After all, we do celebrate Mother’s Day. Therefore, I am not doing anything new in this country. I am just telling the woman that “You are the Grace of God.” All I’m trying to do is remind the mother of her responsibilities and tell the men they are born of the woman. If there will be no respect for women, there shall be no peace on this earth. I believe it. I will stand by it and this is what I’m going to preach.

I honestly believe man is a cheat. I’m very sincere about it. I have seen his life style. How can a man born out of a woman become so shameless that he allows, in such a civilized country, woman to give service in a restaurant, totally naked? How can that happen? Well, it exists, and I know it exists.

The signs are advertising it just two blocks from where I live. So long as that exploitation continues in this country, there is no fun having a church on every corner of every street. There is no fun having a yogi in this country. There is no fun talking of Christ. There is no fun talking about Buddha, and there is no fun celebrating Wesak. This big hypocrisy in which you and I are all participating in is very evident.

But there is a method to face this untruth, and I am adapting this method: to raise the consciousness of people. To make them aware and make them realize the Truth in mankind. That is the job of the preacher. He must preach the Truth and leave it to the people to come to certain ways of life which they feel are right. I honestly feel that the time has come when woman herself shall become so graceful and so aware that she has to understand her goal and her fulfillment as a mother. There is no fun celebrating Mother’s Day when at night anyone can go to all these places.

The mother who gave us life, who gave us birth, who gave us existence, who took care of us in those days when we were totally hopeless and helpless, that mother for a few dollars, for our sensory satisfaction of seeing a woman naked, we hire her topless and bottomless every night. That is our reality. Let us not forget it.

There is hardly any big town where we do not play this game with our mother, and that is a factual fact. We are very bold in doing it. We have totally forgotten that the topless and bottomless woman is a sister, a daughter, or a mother of somebody. She is a woman and we are born of woman. This whole scene to me is very clear. I can see this conception also very clearly, and I am assuring myself that these children of the Age of Aquarius will grow in their consciousness, will grow in the right perspective and faith. They will come to the Light and thus they will save themselves from this disgrace.

So on this Mother’s day, I sincerely feel, I honestly appreciate in myself this revolt. I am grateful to God for giving me this thought. A year ago, in 1970, we started a movement, GGMWA (Grace of God Movement of Woman of America). We gave an exercise. I am very, very much in debt on this Mother’s Day to those ladies, those graceful ladies, who have practiced that exercise, who have found the Grace of God in them, and the Light in themselves, who are totally relaxed, who have assured me through thousands of letters that they are grateful to me and through me they are grateful to God. It gives me a very great satisfaction that I could be such a pure channel that I could do something for the woman of America.

I am assuring you I will virtually live for this. I am a worshiper of the woman, Bhagwati. Lord Shiva is known to be the God of this earth, and I can kid with him anytime I like, I don’t care for him. But for the Bhagwati I do care very much because I worship her in my heart. She is with me and the Divine Mother protects me all the time. I know my faults and my follies and I know my strong protection. That protection is stronger than anything I have realized in my whole life.

Therefore I feel like just lodging a great protest with the world today. Don’t talk about peace, don’t talk about spirituality, don’t give us a message of Guru Naanak, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Rama or Krishna. We have heard that and heard that. Give us something so that we may stop exploiting our own mother. Give us something so that we may tune into the cosmos to be worthy of our mother. Give us something that we can relate to this creative power of the God which is the mother. Give us something so we can honestly draw in our heart the image of Grace of the Mother. And O Lord of Lords of the time, if you have created this world, create those environments where everybody’s mother, sister and every woman on this planet can live with grace and there shall be no circumstances in which she has to sell her beauty, sell her body, sell her being, sell her consciousness, to exist on this planet.

O Lord of Lords of the time, if you have created this world, create those environments where everybody’s mother, sister and every woman on this planet can live with grace.

I do not know whether my tiny and feeble voice (well, it is very strong, I know about it) can be heard, and where, but I am pretty sure I will shout from those mountains, I will never rest on that planet on which woman is still being exploited. That is my ultimate goal and my ultimate urge. But I am not fool enough to try it single handed. I know my thousands, and hundred thousands and millions of children shall be ready. The day they shall be ready, we will wipe out this insult to our own generations off this planet. God has given me a sufficiently big heart. I can practice patience better than I can practice Yoga. Therefore, I will wait for that time when the soul in you will become so pure, so awake, so aware that you will be willing to sacrifice your being to protect the very gentle, sweet being who brought you to what you are today.

With these words and with this prayer of mine, on this most beautiful day which I relate to, it is a day to be reminded of my own source of energy, I bow to every mother and I also ask to the would-be mother, to be graceful. And I ask every man who would seek peace to realize peace doesn’t come by protests and rallies. We know it and we are aware of it. Peace comes by peaceful actions and so long as those born of the mother will not learn to respect the woman, there shall not be any peace on this planet. The day on this planet the woman will not be exploited, there shall be peace on this earth.

Copyright The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan

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