You Weren’t Meant to Break — You Were Meant to Break Open

Namaste, awakened soul🙏

We all have moments in life where everything seems to break apart - a dream shatters, a relationship is lost, a profession dissolves, or someone we loved shatters our heart. And during those moments, it's so easy to think: "I am broken. I will never be whole again."

But listen to me something today, not as a teacher, but as a fellow sojourner of life - you were never destined to remain broken. You were destined to break open. Break open into a deeper, stronger, more authentic version of yourself.

Have you ever seen how seeds burst before they become trees? How the ground bursts open prior to rivers discovering their course? Even in our own scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita reminds us:

"न हि कल्याणकृत्कश्चिद्दुर्गतिं तात गच्छति"

(One who does good, who remains faithful to his path, never really dies.)

When life bursts us open, it is not to kill us - it is to let something beautiful out of us.

Sometimes, the cracks are where the light and life both enter.

The Beauty of Breaking Open

Let me share the story of Aman, a friend who once confessed to me, “I feel like a glass fallen from the table - shattered into pieces, and no one can fix me.”

He lost his job during the pandemic, the same month that his long-time partner broke up with him. All that he had built seemed to crumble before his eyes. For months, he isolated himself, suffocating in shame and silence. He shunned friends because he could not stand their pity, and he shunned family because he could not respond to their questions.

One night, sitting on his balcony with a glass of chai, he saw a crack in the aged flowerpot his mother had stored years ago. From that same crack, a small green plant had managed to push its way out. That took him aback. He noted in his diary: "Perhaps I am such a pot - cracked, yes, but yet perhaps life will still find a way to bloom through me."

That was the start.

Aman gradually got back on his feet. He took tiny freelance jobs, found old hobbies such as drawing and reading, and rebuilt his confidence page by page, chai by chai, sunrise by sunrise. Now, he has a constantly busy, small but successful design studio. He regularly asserts, "If I hadn't broken, I would never have discovered what was hidden inside me all along."

This is what shattering open does. It reveals the gold that is inside of us.

The Japanese refer to it as Kintsugi - the art of repairing broken pottery using gold. Rather than concealing the cracks, they emphasize them, and the object becomes more beautiful than it originally was. If we handled our scars like that - as evidence of survival, as beauty, as art -

Life's greatest teachers have all spoken the same truth:

Rumi has once said: "The wound is the place where the light enters you."

Swami Vivekananda has said: "Stand up, be bold, and take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders… Do not say, I am broken."

Haruki Murakami eloquently summed it up: "And once the storm is passed, you won't remember how you survived it… But one thing is for sure. When you emerge from the storm, you won't be the same individual who entered." 

Then why do we dread getting broken? Because the world teaches us that brokenness is vulnerability. But in reality, it is the doorway through which our true strength emerges.

A Needful Whisper to Your Heart

If you are reading these words today with tears in your eyes, feeling like you cannot go on, let me whisper this to you: You are not broken. You are breaking open.

Those lonely nights you are getting through right now? They are hardening your compassion.

Those failures you are lugging around on your back? They are honing your insight.

The heartbreak that broke you in two? It is opening your ability to love more profoundly than ever before.

So don't curse your cracks. Bless them. They are the spaces where your soul is unfolding.

A Dil-Touching Shayari for You:

"Tooote hue dil ka bhi ek rang hota hai,

Jahan dard bhi apna ek sang hota hai.

Na samjho ise kamzori, ae dost,

Yahi to nayi zindagi ka ang hota hai."

With strength & light,

Swami Inspires ✨