How to Connect with one’s Soul?

 

Photo Credit: The Resilience Institute

How to Connect with one’s Soul?

Many of us are seekers, looking for the ‘truth’ – but where are we searching? The very word seeker is misguiding us – because how do we end up looking for something which lies within us? We are ‘looking’ everywhere but within us, and that is why the Hindi word khoji, meaning seeker, came into use in spiritual parlance. What are we seeking? We are seeking unity with our soul, we are looking for ways to get out of this duality, but we are searching everywhere other than the place where we will find the ‘truth’.

We have knowledge of almost everything in this world but our own self. Google uncle helps us find whatever information we want but is of no use in finding one’s own self! We need to find a way to connect with our own soul. But in order to do so we will have to stop trying to know others. We will have to turn our ‘vision’ inwards, our energy ‘inwards’, only then will it be possible to realise yourself! Being constantly aware of what is happening and keeping one’s focus directed inwards all the time, we will ultimately learn to keep our attention focused within.

To keep our focus centred within us we need to be mindful and practice four things. (1) See no Evil – whatever we see with our naked eyes has a good or bad impact on our conscious attention. A visual scene is more impactful than a verbal description. Forget seeing bad people or bad events, do not even see bad movies or pictures. Any negative or bad thing which you see has a bad or negative impact on your chitta. The chitta gets polluted by the negative or bad movie, event, picture that you see as our eyes play a major role in weakening our conscious attention. The trick is to instantly turn your eyes away the moment you sight any picture or incident which is likely to pollute your chitta – this comes with practicing awareness.

(2) Hear no Evil – We hear many bad things through our ears and it is our nature that once we get a whiff of negative gossip, we ask for more information to satiate our curiosity! This negative gossip takes our attention to the bad qualities of the person under discussion on the one hand and on the other our conscious attention moves outwards, instead of remaining focused within! So, whenever you hear bad stuff, you cannot shut people’s mouth, but you can definitely move away from those people thus keeping yourself far away not to hear anything.

(3) Speak no Evil – You yourself should desist from speaking ill of others, because by doing so you are putting your conscious attention on negative aspects of the circumstance or people as the case may be. Focusing attention on negativity automatically ends up polluting your chitta or conscious attention.

(4) Think no Evil – The three mythical monkeys have been taken care of – See, hear, speak no evil – but there is one more – think no evil! Do not even think of negative events or people, because that makes you literally relive those moments in your mind – this is as good as directing your energy outwards into that circumstance. Do not think that anything bad will happen, because with increasing piety, the universe listens to you and your negative thoughts manifest! Best is not to think, if that is difficult, just have positive thoughts!

When you start doing the above on an ongoing basis you will learn to stay in your soul’s proximity. You will begin to feel your soul’s presence and with time it will start talking to you – when that happens you will know that you have become your own Guru.