Diwali is my favourite time of the year. I don’t so much know why, because it is the festival I do the least in. Maybe something to do with the lights.

In India, Diwali can seem like the festival of pollution and explosions, more than light, but to me, it really is the festival of silence. Despite all the noise. The outer chaos only makes the silence louder, if only one chooses to tune in to it.

Light is very significant. My favourite lines about it, I read in an Osho book.

As a healer, for years I was stuck with a belief that once I am completely healed, I will be happy. But even months and months of therapy later, I still felt messed up. It felt like digging an infinite well.

And then, one day, it dawned on me. Light up. That is all it takes to dispel the darkness. The healing will happen automatically, for guess what – it is what eventually fuels the fire. You will burn. Joyously.

Just like the oil in a lamp, or the wax in a candle, every bit of your ego – your sense of separation from the source – will burn away, lighting up the world, until absolutely nothing remains, and ‘you’ have gone back to the source, burned away.

Stop trying to be a better person this Diwali. Stop trying to burn away all your inner trash, stop trying to heal a little more so that you can one day be happy. You can’t remove the darkness. You can only bring in the light. Burn away, my dear ones. Burn away.