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Recently, while in the mountains, a member of the ape family was spotted running over a rooftop. Nothing unusual about that of course, but what necessitated a second look was the fact that it ran only on its hind legs. Now monkeys are known to do that—that is, use only their hind legs from time to time and for short spurts—but it is quite another thing to have watched this fellow not just make a short sprint over one roof but literally walk, scamper and gambol over at least a dozen, without using his arms even once. Save for a few extra whiskers, he could have in other words, been any of us.

Scientists will scoff and say that different primates behave in this like manner—maybe not this particular one, but perhaps the gorilla or the orangutan or some species in deepest Africa whose name we never learnt in school—and so there is nothing extraordinary. And they are probably right. And by no means do we claim to have stumbled upon an evolutionary discovery. But then what is the point behind the tale?

It is simply this, that all around us—each moment, each breath, each heartbeat—there are occurrences, which nine out of ten times we are prone to miss out on or disregard altogether. But keeping our myopic loss aside, the fact is that many of these are what signal  ‘progress’ in some guise or the other. In the spiritual world, progress is generally the key word. Without it we feel lost – our sentences feel incomplete. And as is often the case, its excessive usage has glorified its stature into becoming something exotic that cannot be afforded by the masses, i.e. by the bulk of spiritual aspirants. We may speak of it, but for most part, keep it aside as a pedantic term that only connotes a change in some other plane of existence or some superior level of consciousness. For thoughts like that we have a word – lazy!

Progress is very much here and now and in our face. It is what is happening all around us—irrespective of our faiths, beliefs, religions and spiritual aspirations—from the most nano incidents to the most gigantic shifts. Progress is a non-stop process in the same manner in which the sun sets and rises on a daily basis. Maybe it was a case of monkeying around but it could also be that progress is what that monkey achieved in those few minutes – that could certainly be one way of looking at the peculiar behaviour. And if it is a slightly askewed and unconventional way of viewing the world around us, so be it, because at the end of the day, unless and until we are able to actually see that progress—feel it, touch it, smell it, taste it, enjoy it—until we make all progress our own, we will not take it as a serious fact of life that needs to be clung to and used like a rope ladder to reach the secret house tucked into our favourite tree.

Until the next time…

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