Girish's Blog

  Photo Credit: ScrollDroll Even-mindedness When we believe that someone else has been 'non-virtuous', rather than being so quick to judge, which will lead to great inner disturbance, Patanjali suggests a different tact. Stop and be present. See what is, without judging.  Sit in Upeksha - the place of even-mindedness. Even-mindedness is defined as ‘not easily ruffled, disturbed, prejudiced; calm; equable.’ Equanimity is a state of even-mindedness during times of duress: ‘calm emotions when dealing with problems or pressure.’ If we jump to conclusions and judgments, we are bound to become agitated, angry, and react. We may lash out with hurtful words and accusations, and even become aggressive in our actions. This only further escalates the situation. And it can lead to prejudice against particular people, organisations, or cultures that we perceive in this manner. It doesn’t matter if we are ‘right’ about our perceptions. When we hold on to being right, we close down ...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Ways To Get Rid Of Ego With the passage of time, we manage to rid ourselves of almost all our faults while treading the spiritual path, but getting rid of the ever-changing ego is the most difficult task. It is the biggest stumbling block in our spiritual journey. This is because, in spiritual terms it is the ego which always keeps us from merging with God, experiencing the Divine within us. Swamiji says, “The ego keeps changing, and we keep thinking that we have become egoless without realising that the ego has taken on another form.” The ego restricts us to the myopic vision of life – a life that is predominated by the five senses, mind and intellect. When we observe our practical life, we will notice that we have thoughts such as - my name, my body, my son, my mother, my wife, my looks, my car, my education, my achievements etc. It appears that these ‘my thoughts’ are the be-all and end-all of our existence. One does not even begin to think beyond t...

Photo Credit: Quote Fancy | Mata Amrutanandmayi   Spiritual Love The harsh reality of life today is that most people are self-centred and selfish. People who genuinely put the needs of others above theirs without some underlying motive, are very rare. So, if we were to take the two ends of the continuum of love and thinking about others – one end would be the selfishness, self-centredness and the other unconditional love for others. Spiritual love or Godly love or Priti is the epitome of unconditional love for others. Satgurus display this kind of love for others and for creation in general. It is this very unique quality which makes the enlightened Master so endearing to all of humankind and all subtle entities in the spiritual dimension. If any seeker wishes to walk on the path of liberation, then wherever such person is on this continuum, he/she has to make concerted efforts to develop a feeling of unconditional love for others. This is simply because just as oil and water ...

  Photo Credit: Reaching Women Does Sacrifice Help? Many seekers do not know how to progress in their spiritual practice, specially if they have not yet found their living, enlightened spiritual Guru. The main contributing factor is their resistance to move away from their own comfort zone and their set routine. They do not want to go outside it. Hence, taking the next step towards spirituality becomes difficult. Also, people have various attachments – they could be both physical and emotional. They actually believe that the things that they are attached to will bring them happiness. But nothing can be further from the truth. We are all aware that we live in world of flux, constant change, and the very things that we are attached to can make us sad when they change. Giving up one’s attachments and moving outside one’s comfort zone is easier said than done. The spiritual practice of sacrifice involves making concerted efforts to make sacrifices of one’s mind, body and wealth t...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Purpose of Life We have heard several discourses from various realised Masters, that the purpose of life is self-realisation and liberation or moksha . This as we know now, is the fundamental purpose of our life. To fulfill the purpose of taking birth we have to first completely settle our give-and-take account – basically we have to endure and enjoy our karma; apart from this we have to ensure that we do not add to our karmic account. There is a purpose to our human lives. We are here to know ourselves, to know God, to love God, and to have love for all. We were sent here to realise our true nature as a soul and to find our way back to God, the Source from whence we emanated. Living at the level of our physical senses, we consider ourselves to be the physical body and mind. When we see ourselves in this manner, we say that we are a mind and body that ‘have a soul’. Going towards the ultimate in Spirituality gives us the gift of experiencing Bliss,...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Awakening Bhav (Spiritual Emotion) Just imagine doing any kind of activity without having any passion for it! The whole activity would appear dry and lack enthusiasm. When it comes to spirituality, the same principle follows. Most often, when seekers embark on their spiritual journey, they all go through the motions of spiritual practice, but they may not get the feeling of the divine. Quite a few people take to this path because they are facing problems in life rather than it being an inner calling. For such people the mind keeps telling them that what they are doing is right and when such people hear spiritual experiences of others, their mind convinces them that they too are getting similar experiences. One needs to be very careful about falling into this kind of mental trap. It is very difficult to extricate oneself when this happens. This happens because they are not aware of bhav or spiritual emotion and how to go about awakening this bhav ! How...

  Photo Credit: AZ Posts | Adyashanti Challenges Faced by a Seeker There are many obstacles and challenges that one faces once one embarks on the path of spirituality. The journey to inner peace is strewn with thorns and sharp stones – one just needs to traverse them carefully, with complete awareness, without getting hurt – and then the journey continues in a smoother fashion. The common spiritual seeker has to be diligent in this day and age, because there are all kinds of distractions out there that can halt our progress if we let them. Now’s a better time than ever to increase our dedication and find out how far we can go, but we have to watch out for the things that can stand in our way. Fatigue, laziness and complacency can halt our progress by encouraging us to stop, relax and think more about the ego-driven self than our path or the people we want to help. If we give in to fatigue, it can take away our inspiration and encourage us to do little more than sit on the cou...

  Photo Credit: amritaworld.org Inculcation of Values Swamiji keeps telling us that after he subtly plants the seed of spirituality within us, automatically we begin to inculcate Swamiji’s values. The extent to which we inculcate his values depends entirely on us. The greater our submission and surrender the greater is our ability to imbibe these values. As we grow up, we are born with certain values which we carry forward from our previous birth, we inculcate some new values through our parents and teachers, sometimes friends too, which add lustre to our existence. The contrary also holds true, if we fall into bad company, we start inculcating bad values and that proves to be a setback in our lives. In such instances, we move away from the core objective of taking this birth, which is to endure our karmas and embark on to the path of liberation. When we work on our values, become disciples of an enlightened Master, we essentially start removing the negative qualities within ...

  Photo credit: Pinterest Mistakes – Life Lessons? It is said that failures are the stepping stones to success – when we say this, what we really mean is that it is okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are nothing but life lessons that we need to learn from, in fact one learns even faster! A great scientist, Buckminister Fuller had once said at a conference, “Forget about all the ‘Do this. Don’t do that’ business. Commit as many mistakes as possible, as soon as possible. You will become great.” If one sits and analyses that statement, one finds that it is true! Every failure is a stepping stone. We just have to ensure that it is not the same stepping stone, don’t repeat mistakes, learn form them and move on. Every step should be on a new stone. The problem with many people is that they make the same mistake over and over again, they do not learn. The impact of such mistakes keeps worsening, till the lesson is finally learnt. By that time such people pay a heavy price – and in the ...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Essence of Spirituality/Yoga The general understanding of yoga is the westernised concept which means nothing but physical exercise to keep the body fit. In the west pure yoga has been corrupted to such an extent that different people have started their own variation – musical, dance, hot, hatha yoga and so on. Actual meaning of yoga is the union of mind and body. According to the Yoga Sutras, “Yoga is settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness.” Yoga actually began as a philosophy rather than a physical discipline. Yoga is mentioned in the sacred ancient Indian text, the Rig Veda, which defines yoga as a union, or ‘yoking’ of the material and spiritual worlds, and it doesn’t describe any physical postures other than the traditional cross-legged meditation pose. Actually, yoga as a physical exercise can by fully justified, but it is far more than that. It ...

  Photo Credit: Youtube God is Spirit We often wonder about God – what is God? Where can God be found? And so on…..it is said that God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent – all this is fine, but God cannot be seen. One can feel God’s presence in nature, one can also experience God’s presence in nature. God can be ‘He’, ‘She’ and ‘It’ and much more than that. We usually say ‘He’ as ‘He’ is considered to be the so-called neutral pronoun. God need not be just a father, God can be a mother, brother, sister too, even a friend, a tree – God is everything. God is Spirit, and Spirit is above all these distinctions. Spiritual practice is nothing but realising God as spirit! Unfortunately, we see that even in the spiritual sphere we make distinctions between male and female, we have problems with male and female! When we argue and fight about men and women, this shows that we are not truly following the spiritual path – we are still on the physical plane – arguments about men a...

  Photo Credit: Quotefancy Real Spiritual Experience There are a variety of spiritual experiences which people encounter after walking on this path. With the practice of meditation under the guidance of a realised Master, one begins to get various spiritual experiences. I have personally had so many – some of them are feeling cool vibrations, sensing the presence of spirits, being caressed lovingly by cold energy, getting divine fragrances, hearing the cosmic sound, sensing and seeing my soul within my body. All these and many more – all through the blessings and grace of our Satguru – His Holiness Shivkrupanand Swamiji. Things just start happening in auto mode – you think of a person, and that person calls, or someone thinks about you, and you call that person. These are routine occurrences. One unique observation is that if I pray for the rain to give a break as I have to go out, it actually stops raining till I reach my destination and then the skies open up. This has happen...

  Photo Credit: N-lightenment The Greatest Freedom Buddha was the greatest anarchist – he did not believe in any external rule. To help one become free from the outer, he taught the way to achieve inner freedom, develop an inner discipline. There are millions of ways one can find to awaken the inner guide, every path leads to the same destination. One has choices for pursuing the path for seeking inner joy. The best part of the Buddha is that when one has learned the inner discipline, he appears to destroy that too – because either one is ruled from the outside or from the inside. Either way, one becomes a slave; freedom is only when there is no rule. The inner discipline is just to step out of the outer domination of the society we live in, of the state, civilization, culture, language, etc. Once we free ourselves from the outer domination, we embark on freeing ourselves from the inner discipline. This is extremely difficult, as our subconscious has been trained over several...

  Photo Credit: 123RF Absolute Faith Absolute faith means   there is no concept of self at all . If I say, “I believe absolutely”, it means there should be no opposition to that within myself. When we say we are united with God, there should be no ego. “Absolute faith” is the belief in something regardless of lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary. We look to God or to the Supreme Power usually when we are in trouble or face some kind of personal crisis, till such time God is considered to be a given and we don’t bother remembering God, and gratitude is out of the question! We rush to God because we expect quick-fix solutions – we want to do a trade with God, we tell God that if you do this thing for me, I will do so and so for you! There is no faith in this – this is purely transactional! Faith cannot be transactional, nor does God act in this manner. For the God within us to become active we need to have the qualities that bring forth the divinity which exi...

  Photo Credit: Spirit Button The Good and the Bad Swamiji, in many of his discourses has told us that at birth we have 50% good and 50% bad within us – it is our upbringing and then as we grow up, the company we keep which decides which direction we take, good or bad. There is an old native American story which perfectly explains the concept of good and bad within us. An old native American was talking to his grandson about good and bad. He told his grandson he had two wolves fighting inside of him – a good wolf and a bad wolf. His grandson asked, “Which wolf is winning?” The old man answered, “The one I feed”. Which wolf do you feed? It is all a choice for each one of us and we need our spiritual view to balance the good and bad within us. Spiritually this can be seen from the positive and negative energy perspective – as it is everything in this universe is energy, hence let us look at this from the energy point of view. Energy is always present, it is always around, alway...

  Photo Credit: Quotesgram Don’t Run Away We always come across challenges in life, some of us face them bravely and move on, others feel afraid and try to run away from the challenges. In my personal experience, I have run away from a challenge only once, and I had to face a similar challenge with 100x the force twenty years later! This time I faced the raging storm and moved on – I had the subtle support of Paramatma – His Holiness Shivkrupanand Swami. Whenever we were called for the enquiry sessions, they would always begin on a Thursday – ( Guruvar – meaning the Gurus’ Day) – this always gave me the comfort that things would work out positively – go without fear and face the authorities! This gives us a lesson – one cannot run away from oneself – do not avoid problems which come in life, face them and move on, simply because one cannot escape one’s karma, and it comes to bite you later with an enhanced ‘x’ factor! There is an oft-told fable – let me repeat it here. A lad...

  Photo Credit: Quote Master | It Is Okay To Stumble There is a thought in people’s mind that once they start out on the spiritual path, they have to tread the straight and narrow. If they don’t, then things could work out badly for them. This is the resistance that the mind throws up to protect its own turf on control over the physical body. Where body consciousness predominates the mind and the ego are in charge, they are in no way going to let go of their control so easily. The good news is that it is absolutely alright to be flawed. As the saying goes, nobody is perfect, everyone has his/her own idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. That is what makes each individual on this planet so unique. Flaws and limitations are woven through our lives. We are all stumblers, and the beauty and meaning of life are in the stumbling – in recognising the stumbling and trying to maintain balance while we become more graceful as the years go by.   The stumbler literally stumbles through...