The Needle That Never Pierced

Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?

“The mind is restless, turbulent, stubborn, and strong.”
Bhagavad Gita 6.34

It happens on the side of the mind.
One morning, while I was writing a post about singing Thevaram, my thoughts wandered into a strange inner scene. In that scene, Xandra appeared beside me. She held my right arm and pressed a large needle toward it. I felt the touch for a moment but the needle never pierced me. It struck the pillow and bounced away.
Nothing was injured. Nothing was real.
Yet the feeling lingered.

In this parable, the needle represents intrusion unwanted attention, unhealthy curiosity, and the discomfort of being watched. Xandra symbolizes people who do not know how to respect distance.

The mind gives them shapes because it needs a language to explain unease.
Another figure appeared briefly in the story: a warlord named Raul. He was dissatisfied, restless, carrying the smell of an office that never felt clean. In the parable, he represents authority mixed with resentment, people who believe something is owed to them and become angry when it is not given. His presence was noisy but meaningless.
None of them had real power.

They were only echoes in the mind.
I returned to my writing.
Singing Thevaram has never been easy for me. Tamil is my mother tongue, yet years of speaking English have twisted my tongue away from classical sounds. I sing carefully, adjusting my voice to match rhythm and family harmony.

When the same tune repeats in my mind the next morning, I once believed it meant I lacked devotion.
In this parable, the repeated song is not failure.
It is persistence.
Then the story shifts to another chapter.

During my father’s funeral days, his relatives appeared relieved rather than sorrowful. Many were glad he was gone, and they quietly decided to remove this side of the family from their lives. My father, when alive, had often disgraced his wife and children before them. The wound was old.

When the funeral prayers took place, none of those relatives attended. They did not come for the thirty-first day prayers either. They were happy not to come.

In the parable, their absence is not cruelty, it is truth.
I felt relief.
No forced rituals.
No false concern.
No pretending.
Now, if I see these relatives on the road or anywhere else, I pass them as strangers. There is no attachment and no connection. In the story, they are like insects that fall silent when the room empties, present once, meaningless now.

This is not a story of love received.
It is a story of love not given—and the freedom that followed.
And the Gita closes the parable gently, without drama:
“One who is unattached to relatives,
free from dependence,
and steady within oneself—
that person is at peace.”
Bhagavad Gita 12.19

“Let a person rely on the Self alone,
and not on others.”
Bhagavad Gita 6.5

I no longer count on anyone for anything.
I sing with effort.
I live with distance.
And in this strange, quiet way,
the needle never pierces
and I remain whole.