Evolution of consciouness

The stages of evolution of consciousness are from Disturbance to Peace to Happiness to Love and finally Freedom. Most humanity is distracted and disturbed with too much Rajas. As you settle into spiritual practices and adopt healthier and conducive lifestyles, Rajas is tamed and you experience more peace. As you progress further, happiness adds on to the peace. When you are able to let go of the desire for happiness, Divine Love - the ability to experience and express unconditional love - dawns and when you are not seeking divine love either, freedom ensues. Love brings attachment and obligations, and can restrict you. When you are able to be detach yourself from obligation - Liberation ensues. Dispassion or Vairagya is the highest attribute as there is no freedom without Dispassion. Remembrance of the impermanence of everything , awareness of your own death  and company of the enlightened all help in attaining Dispassion

The spiritual journey

THERE Is a story in Ramayana
Rama realises that Ravana’s  immortality  is in his navel and shoots his navel. As Ravana collapses breathing his last, Rama asks Lakshmana to go and seek knowledge from Ravana - who is a great scholar. it is important to know that Ravana was born to a Rishi father (Vishrava) and a Rakhsasi mother and his grandfather was one of the Saptarishis called Pulastya. So when Lakshmana approaches Ravana from his head end and requests knowledge - Ravana turns his face away. So Lakshmana goes to his foot end, kneels down and requests Ravana for knowledge. Ravana smiles and says these last words - It is the nature of the ignorant mind to be attracted towards things that cause harm and to avoid things that are good. Remember that what tempts and distracts us will in all probability be the cause of our downfall. What we shy away from, what we procrastinate about, is probably what will help us evolve

Guru Mandala is representation of the journey form the periphery to the centre. Centre is the self where the Guru is established, periphery is the world where all the distractions are. The spiritual journey is the travel from the periphery to the centre, overcoming all distractions. Everytime you get distracted you move away from the goal. Sensory pleasures, laziness, low levels of energy and ignorance are all distractions. To reach the centre one has to overcome all these. There is no better way than to surrender to the Master and just be focussed on the path.

Seeing Life as Energy

Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra says Jyothishmati Bhava - Become a glow of energy. 

There is life and there are life situations. I am rich, i am poor, i am sad, i am happy, i am clever, i am in trouble, I am happily married ….. all these are life situations. Life is just I am… What binds us to the world is what follows the I am. Just I am liberates. It is impossible to tackle all the life situations, but it is easy to handle Life. Understanding life as a play of energy helps us enormously.

On the Scale of Aliveness, when the life energy or Prana is at its peak, you experience bliss. As the energy level starts dropping you move down to enthusiasm, then boredom, then apathy, then anger and frustration and finally depression. When we are born, we are at the top of this scale and as we grow older, we move further down. Yes of course our life situations and the way we handle those situations play a big role in our energy levels moving up or down. There is a clever way of managing our life - that is by attending to the life energy rather than the life situations so that irrespective of what the situation we are in, we are able to be centred and undisturbed. How to do this? First understand that there 4 main sources of energy - Food, Rest (sleep and meditation), Breath, and Knowledge ( Happy mind). When you attend to these 4 sources effectively, you are able to replenish your Prana in no time and feel fresh and elevated. We are unhappy because we constantly lose our energy by worrying, by talking and through overindulgence in sensory pleasures. Spending our vital life energy without knowing how to replenish will lead to us to be in the lower levels on the scale of aliveness. Just wake up and see, everything is changing. And one day soon, you are going to die and disappear.  

Stop worrying. Come out of the rigid perceptions and see life as a play of energy.

comforts and conflicts

The world is full of conflicts from which there is no escape. You sort one thing, another pops up. You sort the second and a third one is waiting! This is endless. These conflicts are there to test your skills, strength & faith. Life is like being in a frying pan, thats why it is called Tapas. Tapas literally means to be fried. the skill is not to jump from the frying pan into the fire. Spirituality is that skill . When the conflicts overwhelm you, retreat into the comfort of the self. Meditate, Recuperate and come out with renewed vigour & skills to tackle the challenges. With practice you will master this skill of when to confront & when to retreat. Once this is achieved, you will realise life is a play. You always have the option to react or respond, to confront or retreat. You will also look around and see all those who are in misery are those who have taken life too seriously.

Have Fun & Celebrate life with its opposites. 

Have a great weekend.

Overcoming Inertia

By law of physics, force is needed to overcome inertia of an object at rest to set it into motion. The initial force that is needed to overcome the inertia is quite significant as you change the state of the object from rest to motion. Once the inertia is overcome, only a small amount of force is needed to maintain motion and once a critical speed is attained, no external force is needed, the momentum carries it forward. It's the same with anything including practices. You might have noticed that the most difficult thing to do when the alarm rings in the morning is to just get up from the bed. Once that is done, all other actions follow almost automatically. Same with exercise. Same with spiritual practices. The only real effort that is needed is to overcome the initial inertia (Tamas) - to transform potential energy into kinetic energy.

If you are able to motivate yourself to overcome the inertia of the mind for the first two weeks, it will help you to attain the 40 day goal and once you hit 40 days, it will continue on its own. What i have noticed is that, it is helpful when you have a buddy or a group that are motivated to carry on with the practices and especially if you take responsibility to moderate the group. My Sadhana was most regular when I was moderating our group Sadhana.

Art of Living have an app called Sattva which is a tracker for spiritual practices. It is free to download and keeps a record of your practice. Also there is an abundance of resources for Pranayama, meditation and chants to help you have a variety in the practice.

So download the app and let's Just keep our practices going. 

For our own happiness!!

Organisation

in one way or another we all are part of an organsiation. our body on its own is an organisation, so is a family, a community, a spiritual or a corporate organisation or a nation. Some organisations are successful while others are not. When I looked into what makes organisations succeed, this is what I came up. Some of it might be inspired by books i have read previously or heard from successful people.

Vision - Every successful organisation should have a vision. The vision should have a strong spiritual component. When the vision is focussed on richness and not riches, success is automatic. The primary objective should not be about making money but helping out people. For eg when McDonalds was formed - the vision was to provide tasty food at a affordable price. Whatsapp was formed to help people all over the world to communicate without paying anything extra. The ethos of Art of Living is to help people to be happy, healthy, peaceful & useful. And in every action of ours (teachers, administrators and volunteers) representing the organisation we should be acting through this vision. Everything else is secondary. It is not only important to believe in the vision, but also to allow others to share the vision, experience the risks and rewards, and create a sense of ownership. You will then realise that true happiness is not through self gratification but by devotion to a worthy purpose. If we ourselves do not experience the peace or happiness, we won't be able to transmit it. If we feel that we are not there yet, it is best to withdraw & engage more in Sewa (service).

Team work - what one struggles three can easily do. In an exam helping the person next to you is cheating. Just imagine if people were allowed to help each other in an exam, everyone would be a topper. In an organisation it is called collaboration. When done effectively, team work greatly enhances the learning process & creates more leaders than competitors. Also having different points of view will enhance the ability to learn without making mistakes. in competition you rejoice at others mistakes, in collaboration you identify and rectify mistakes before they cause damage.

Leadership - walking the talk. Though an organisation can have many leaders, every project should have one leader and the team should surrender to the leader. The leader should be able to manage & run the show even if the team disintegrates as he (she) strongly believes in what he started. The leader allows people to grow by providing opportunities or putting them in situation which though not always comfortable is conducive to growth. Another role of the leader is to identify the weaknesses in the team before they damage the organisation. At each level of growth, the leader should plan the system to support the next level. As systems get better, you have to put in less effort to grow. when the system is weak, whatever success is attained soon dissipates.