Brotherhood and Sisterhood

I recently read two books on relationship which were unrelated to each other.  One was Brotherhood: Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream by Deepak Chopra and Sanjiv Chopra.  They are brothers, doctors, immigrants from India and sharply contrasted by complimentary beliefs. This book is their memoir. The other book was by Helen Bryan, a novel spanning centuries of women and faith. 

While my reading them one after the other was unplanned by me, they fit together to stir up my brain about who we are and why we are here. That is, in fact, one of the themes of my own book Identity and the Quartered Circle. Helping people find out how they are and to follow their life purpose is my mission.

The secret key is, no matter what we choose or how we exercise our free will, we end up where our soul meant us to be. When the Chopra brothers started out, they meant to study medicine through internship and residency in the US and then go home to India. Instead, one small choice led to another, one open door way to a hall of more doors until they became American in every sense of the world. Deepak is the spiritual mentor and healer who left his western medical practice to offer herbal and food healing wisdom through Ayurveda and exploration of consciousness. Sanjiv is the liver specialist who rose to the top of the medical teaching establishment at Harvard Medical school, fully embracing the Western understanding of intervention with pharmaceuticals and surgery, then later accepting the role of diet and life style as another level of treatment, prevention and healing.  Turns out my 4 cups of coffee a day is idea to maintain my liver. Toward the end of their medical careers now, both of them can review their accomplishments and see the patterns that placed them in the right place at the right time. They nod their heads. Yes that makes sense. I didn't know it at the time.

Similarly, in The Sisterhood Bryan weaves a story about the Convent of the Swallows in Spain and another one in the New World. She follows the nuns and laywomen who seek refuge in the convent through the Inquisition, through settlement in faraway lands, and then connects their lineage to surprising events in the 21st century. None of the women could see what was happening, but there is the mysterious Founder, a woman in spirit who guides them, protects them and brings the circle around to enclose them all in her love. I am avoiding a spoiler alert, so forgive me for being vague. However, like the Chopras, readers at least can nod at the conclusion of The Sisterhood and say, Yes, that makes sense. I didn't see it at the time.

Our lives are like that.  We pick up a random book here, attend a class there and the next thing we know another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place.  We see we were meant to be here now. Who meant us to do this? Why our own souls, and the interwoven souls of all the people we know, of all the world. How does that work? I perceive the soul and spirit as intimately connected and working together to connect "the rest of our being on a mission of exploration. As time and space are illusions, so are good and evil. The soul and spirit are eternal. They know everything any part of us has ever known and can help the physical brain access that information. It is the soul and spirit which connects the dots and brings us that ‘Aha!’ moment of epiphany." [Identity and the Quartered Circle p. 150]

For me, brotherhood and sisterhood are community concepts. I have no biological siblings. I am slow to embrace friends and call them sister or brother. Some of that may come from my history as a civil rights activist. When activists call you sister, get your back to the wall. However, in a sense of community, in the awareness of our interconnected beings, we are indeed all siblings. We are all mothers, fathers and gods.  We are Goddess. The Founder of the Convent of the Swallows would have ducked that title, but she was Goddess. The faithful Catholic nuns would have been shocked. Maybe you are too. My dharma is to remind us all we are a part of the Universe having a human experience.  We are divine and we are human. We are not humanly all knowing and always right. We are not divinely excused from doing the best we can do today. We are a dynamic balance of knowing and remembering, or questioning and answering, of being and doing. We protect the vulnerable from ourselves who have not awakened to this truth. We defend. We confront. We champion. We submit and we love. Sometimes we are crusty old grumps. Sometimes we are tender bodhisattvas. In any event our destiny is our creation, and we scarcely know it. I am grateful for these books, mine included, because they all remind me of how that works and what it means.