Girish's Blog

  Photo Credit: Quotefancy || Rajneesh Quote The Heart is Always Right We have read so many quotes on how the heart is always right. It is alright to follow the heart, but it’s not safe to do so when one is feeling extremely happy or sad as those emotions can cloud one’s judgement and thus influence your decision. The best way forward is to rationalise your decision by removing the extreme emotions and then taking your decision. When one listens to one’s heart then one is actually listening to the soul which is giving you the advice. Believe me that advice may not always appear sound in the short term, but its long-term benefits are lasting and always in your favour. Listening to heart is sometimes difficult as the heart also deals with pain and the stress caused by pain. But pain is also a great teacher if we want to learn from it. Most of us tend to mask our pain and pretend it does not exist. Unfortunately, we cannot mask the pain in our heart. The greater the pain, greater ...

  Photo Credit: Crosswalk.com Praying with Total Faith It is said that real help comes only from God and for that one needs to pray sincerely. Prayer has a certain power which comes from one’s faith and one’s belief in its effectiveness. Just mouthing certain words mentally without any faith or belief, that does not help at all, in fact it may work the other way. Praying with total faith and belief means God listens to your prayers. Your prayer may or may not be answered – you will be happy if your prayer is answered, but if it is not answered does not mean God has not listened to your prayer, it only means that the time for the solution you are asking for has not yet come. It means it is not in your interest today, as God always has your best interest at heart. Always remember that. Another thing I have observed is that when prays for oneself the prayer is not answered promptly, but when one prays selflessly for others the result is always positive and it happens within a re...

  Photo Credit: IslamFact Wake up in Joy No one can be joyous all the time, and sometimes we struggle with feeling gloomier than we would like to! Even though its challenging to be positive, especially during this corona pandemic, you can definitely maintain your inner joyous state while going to sleep and wake up the next morning with that same joyous feeling. Remember that according to physics the energy in the universe is constant, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Every individual too is a mini universe – Aham Brahmasami , meaning I am divine, signifying one’s union with the higher self. At the core of the Sanatan Dharama is the tenet that the whole universe exists within each one of us. It is through our spiritual practice that we reach the state of Aham Brahmasami, after knowing which nothing remains to be known. The quantum of positive or negative energy that we give away is equal to what we receive over a lifetime. When you help someone and that person does...

  Photo Credit: ABC Radio National Help Them If You Can In life, we come across situations where people behave very nastily with us, to the extent that invariably our reaction too becomes nasty. But nastiness is not our core nature, but the energy emanating from the other person causes a reaction deep within us and we find that we respond in kind even though there was no initial intention. This happens when negative energy keeps bombarding us and by remaining in range we succumb to that negative power and react. The best thing to do in such cases is to recognise what is happening immediately, apologise and excuse yourself and walk away. Sometimes, walking away will not be an option, but reacting is our choice – so, don’t say a word and keep mouthing a silent prayer for the other person/s without listening to a word that they are saying. You can do this through the power of your prayer – your mind is very powerful; just focus on the prayer and believe me you will not hear a word...

  Photo Credit: Daybydaylifelessons The Darkness will Disappear Darkness is nothing but the absence of light, so the easiest thing is to bring light into the darkness and the darkness disappears. This is true of the real world, but what happens to the inner world – how will your inner darkness disappear? Our inner darkness is filled with desires, fear, anger, hate, jealousy, greed and so on. When you live in inner darkness, illusions keep forming which create your perception of life. Suppose you see a ghost standing in the dark, you are afraid and light a candle or switch on the light, and you see that there is nobody. Just the shadow of a tree that gave you the impression that someone was standing there. The ghost has disappeared because in the first place it was never there. Awareness helps, brings transformation, because the illusions that you are suffering from are not realities, they exist in your mind. If you become aware of a rock, the rock will not disappear but if yo...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest || Vicki Rivard How to Touch the Heart As children our parents would tell us to pray from the bottom of our hearts if we had any special wishes, specially during exam times! Prayer and heart are inextricably connected – you cannot pray with your head, as the head/brain as cold and calculating. The words may be formed in the head, but the prayer has to go from the heart! In meditation, as the senses are absorbed in the heart, one reaches the center of the lotus. When you are a heart-oriented person and you touch someone, the touch immediately reaches your heart, and you can feel the quality. If you take the hand of a head-oriented person, the hand will be cold, the quality will be very cold. There will be a feeling of a certain deadness in the touch. But if you touch the hand of a heart-oriented person you will feel a certain warmth, and the touch will really melt you. You will feel a certain energy flow from his hand to yours, a kind of communicating w...

  Photo Credit: QuoteFancy||Surya Das  Learning to Love I am sure you must be wondering at the title! Love to us comes naturally right since birth when we first experience our mother’s unconditional love, followed by the love of the father, siblings and others. This does establish the fact that we know how to be loved, but does it tell us how to love? Some of us have such bad experiences in our life that we completely forget how to love as our hearts are filled with negative emotions such as hate, anger, remorse, jealousy and so on. The entire space in our heart is occupied by negative emotions and it becomes very difficult to get out of this web of negative emotions. To break out of the web we need to first get over whatever trauma has driven us to our current state. We can do this by unconditionally forgiving the protagonists in our life drama and then forgetting that the incident ever happened. We can do that but we must always remember the lesson we learnt in that diff...

  Photo Credit: Thepranams How to Recognise a Satguru There is a difference between a Guru and a Satguru – the difference being that of a teacher and of a Supreme Master respectively. A guru could be anyone – your parents at first, then your teachers, your friends, in fact anyone who teaches you something or the other could be said to be your guru, and you too could be a guru to others. A Satguru is a Master who comes enters a person’s life only when the spiritual seekers urge arises in the individual. For some the urge may be suppressed, but the time may be ripe, even then the Satguru knows that this soul’s time has come and he enters his/her life. Once this happens, life changes, it gets transformed – you become kind of born again. Your parents give birth to your physical body and the Satguru gives birth to your soul – he awakens your soul and gives you the spiritual experience of the awakening of your soul. In the past, when the Guru-disciple tradition was alive, at that tim...

  Photo Credit: Hare Krishna Quotes || ISKCON Desire Tree Offering Ourselves Selflessly Not everyone can go out and serve others. Swamiji too tells us that if you do have the financial means to connect with any large work for the benefit of mankind then one should try to donate one’s time and work for the cause, do physical labour, and if you cannot do any of this, then offer a selfless prayer for all those who are working for the project, to make it successful. Selfless prayer is as good as actual participation, because prayer has a lot of power of positivity in it. Your positive thoughts go a long way. In fact, thoughts are said to be more powerful than actions. There are several sages and saints sitting in the Himalayas, sending out positive thought vibrations through their prayers all across the globe. There is no doubt that thoughts are more powerful – of late several groups of monks in Asia have formed prayer groups to pray for the welfare of mankind – aren’t we seeing an...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest | Gian Kumar The Highest Realisation Have you observed nature in complete awareness? Do you breathe consciously? Lots of things are happening to us and with us and we don’t even realise that these things are happening! In nature, trees grow, flowers bloom, butterflies do their job and so do the bees – it is so natural, it is just happening. It is like life has its own symphony and the musician keeps playing the music and changing the tunes, so that no day appears the same! We are so stuck up in our own life that we do not see the beauty of nature and its cadence as it plays out day after day. We are stuck in our ‘problems’ and we cannot see beyond them. Our mind is focused on things of material, financial and emotional interest to us, very few of us find the time to enjoy the sunrise and sunset and the beauty in nature between the two. Everything in nature is happening according to God’s will. Everything. God is the force behind everything. We are ju...

  Photo Credit: Unbroken Self Biggest Barrier to Realise Truth Swami Sivanandji used to say, “When shall I see thee? When the ‘I’ ceases to be!” He would sing this question as he asked God, “When shall I see you, I know that will happen when ‘I’ ceases to be.” So, when does one reach this state of ‘I’ ceasing to be? If we talk about samadhi, the transcendental state of enlightenment, then we are talking about being in a state of being ‘dead’, yet ‘alive and aware’. Here, who is dead? The mind is dead, and the rest of the being is living in a state of complete conscious awareness, in a heightened state of awareness. This state comes about when the ‘I’ dies, and you truly begin to live. If the egoistic ‘I’ goes away from you, you become free from the ego, you become pure and clean. In this state you are fit to experience the highest knowledge or the highest truth which one can say is like going to ‘heaven’. That is the state of samadhi – and if you go to see, this is the essence ...

  Photo Credit: AwakenTheGreatnessWithin God is in Everything There are believers and there are non-believers and those who really don’t bother themselves whether God exists or not. The beauty of both the believers and non-believers is that their belief is not from personal experience but from what has been told to them and what they have accepted. In almost all religious faiths God has been defined as a medium of God – but still a human being – all the Abrahmic faiths accept Jesus, Allah, Judah as their God and each faith says that theirs is the only true God, thus putting down the faith of practitioners of different religions. This is really not helpful as you cannot control what others think or believe, thus how do we really ‘believe’ in God without having the ‘experience’ of ‘God’? In India when we talk of God, we say that God is in everything – God is in nature, God is inside you, God is in the air, God is everywhere. In fact, the Sanatan philosophy says that you can belie...

  Photo Credit: Facebook The Best Compliment! We receive lots of compliments throughout our life – you look good, so beautiful, what a wonderful dress, you are so kind and so on and so forth. With time you become spiritual and start following a Master – then what is the best compliment you can ever give your Master? What do you think the Master expects of you, if he expects anything at all? The connection between a spiritual guru and their disciples is emotional, personal and spiritual. It is based on trust, faith, innocence and the promise of liberation. The spiritual path is just that…..a path, a journey. Without waiting for a thank you or a compliment, seva comes from a desire to serve. In truth, no one needs a guru; however, the blessings a guru offers make it extremely desirable to have one. Imagine the spiritual journey being similar to having a large student loan that will take the rest of your life to pay off in sizable monthly insta...

  Photo Credit: DepositPhotos Bathing the Soul As a matter of hygiene most of us bathe every day, some twice, thrice a day to get the dust, grime, sweat off our body. After bathing we feel nice and fresh, we are energised and feel good about ourself. Similarly, we need to give our soul a bath too, so that we can cleanse whatever much has accumulated on it throughout the day! When it comes to purifying ourselves many of us believe that bathing every day, chanting mantras will purify us but in an actual sense, they are trying to purify something that is deteriorating continuously and anything that deteriorates continuously has to end one day, but the soul is something that is constant, infinite. It is the life force that enters the body and gradually over several births and continuous progress it realises itself with higher awareness. The more the awareness, the greater the realisation that one is a soul rather than the physical body, the greater this awareness, the greater the d...

  Photo Credit: Patheos Real Spiritual Experience During our spiritual journey all of us at some point or the other have felt the cold vibrations in our body, sensed our chakras, got wonderful fragrances – all this has happened during our journey. These are just indicators of our progress from ‘thing’ to ‘no-thing’. And as I have mentioned in my earlier posts, this journey is never ending but totally joyous and uplifting. We all feel happy, feel good when something ‘good’ happens – our tennis star wins, our soccer team wins, our Olympic participants return with medals, we read feel good stories, we experience and observe humans behaving humanely and lending support in trying times, the list could be endless. What I am trying to say is we all feel good when something perceived by society to be good, happens. We all feel like human beings as opposed the negative vibes created while watching/reading the hate and negative news which we get on TV or in the newspapers. One thing I ...

  Photo Credit: Favim.Com Nothing is Impossible In the current trying times I know several people who have come very close to their breaking point. Lots of people have lost their livelihood, near and dear ones have passed away due to the pandemic leaving quite a few people financially and emotionally shattered. But through all this there is always a ray of hope which keeps people going, that is because God actually knows your breaking point and he never intends for you to break! You may think, “I’ve reached my limit. I cannot go on any further like this!” Just remember that if you could not overcome your current situation God would not be putting you in it. God knows you much better than you know yourself. The problem arises when you have doubts, when you begin to doubt yourself, when this happens then even God cannot help you. This is simply because doubt and faith don’t go together. If you have complete faith then nothing is impossible, nothing at all. Like the saying goes, “...

  Photo Credit: Awake and Align Ultimate Help We all have deep reserves of strength of which we know nothing at all. I am sure we all have faced situations where in the most alarming of situations we manage to find the strength and the wisdom to escape from it. Invariably when asked how did you escape from that situation, the answer is I don’t know from where I got the strength or knowledge, it just came when I needed it the most. Why does this happen? Where does this strength come from? This strength and wisdom or knowledge comes from deep within you, it is your soul with the wisdom of thousands of births which comes to your rescue, even when you are unaware that it exists. When you set out on a pilgrimage with the bare minimum of necessities to keep you going, you find that your basic necessities are always provided for – some stranger or the other comes forward to help and support – this is the way divinity works, this is God’s way of working. The day we decide to let go a...

  The 45-Days Anushthan Begins Since 2007 Swamiji has been going into a 45-days Deep Meditation Practicum every year wherein he stays in isolation with only Pujya Guruma going into the cottage from 10am to 1pm for cleaning and cooking. During this high energy period Swamiji writes one complete volume of his Autobiography – Samarpan Yog of the Himalayas, he vibrates and instils life-force energy into an auspicious idol – this year’s is for Maharashtra (Such idols criss-cross the world – Canada, South Africa, UK, Germany, India, Singapore, Australia). Swamiji also writes messages for the sadhaks which are released every Thursday, and later compiled into a book. This period is marked by extremely high energy levels, and those who have stayed at the Ashram for the full 45 days will vouch for their complete spiritual transformation as they ascend to heights which they would never have imagined before. Swamiji mostly remains in a very high meditative state and connects with each and ...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Know Your Purpose in Life The earlier we come to know the true purpose in life the better it is for all of us. Very few people realise that their true purpose in life is liberation and work towards it. Such people become Masters, attain self-realisation and begin guiding others to realise their purpose in life. When we go through school and college, we are all asked what is our purpose in life, what are our plans, etc – and we all give the usual platitudes – make money, make a name, become famous, do the best one can etc. Discovering one’s “purpose” in life essentially boils down to finding those one or two things that are bigger than yourself, and bigger than those around you, values that will determine your priorities and guide your actions. It’s not about some great achievement, but merely finding a way to spend your limited amount of time well. I was asked this question very often by my family, my brothers and friends and I would always respond, ...

  Photo Credit: Ideapod Maintaining Balance in Adverse Times The coming six months are going to be very tough – political situation-wise, natural disaster-wise and while also considering the ongoing pandemic. We may see limited cold wars or short battles between nations as countries try to flex their muscle to get out of sticky political messes in their own countries. What better way to divert attention than to start a war? I am sure these days too shall pass as have the other days – all we have to do is remain balanced and centred in our own being so as not to get disturbed by the circumstances around us. Swamiji keeps telling us to make our world peaceful – by that he means the 20-40 feet area around us, that is our own individual aura – he tells us to make that so strong that no negative energy can enter this aura. Meditation and chanting of the Guru mantra help in creating this aura. I have written about internalising the Guru-mantra in such a way that you do not have to ...