Enduring Tough Times

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Enduring Tough Times

In many of my posts I have mentioned that life is like surfing the waves – maintaining balance while going up and down and while riding the wave – the ferocity and speed of the wave make it all the more thrilling. The key is not to fall down. In life tough moments will come, tough situations will come – without them life will be so dull!

Just imagine going through the same routine day after day, month after month, year after year – the mundaneness will probably bore you to death. In times of turmoil there are so many opportunities to live life to the full – we could bring our love and compassion to the fore helping people in need – not just by giving money, but by volunteering our services on ground zero. Nowadays NGOs have made it a money-making racket to milk innocent people of money in the garb of some crisis or the other which is happening all the time somewhere in the world!

One should develop resilience to go through tough times – some people are resilient by birth and some are fearful and afraid. Developing resilience is both tough and easy – if you are of a spiritual bent of mind, practicing Ashtang yog helps you train your body and mind to remain calm. It is the mind which triggers the panic response on recognising any ‘adverse’ situation.

When our response is panic driven, we invariably tend to make mistakes and get more and more entangled in the situation. Our first response should always be to pause and take a deep breath, calm our nerves and look for rational solutions. A calm mind always helps us out of tough situations.

When we are quiet within, our external demeanour reflects the same calm and whatever situation arises, we just face it and move on, as if nothing has happened. It is difficult, but with regular spiritual practice one reaches this stage where one sees everything as a drama and we just play our role in it.  

Swamiji bestows self-realisation and our own dedicated spiritual practice reduces our body consciousness and increases our soul consciousness. With increase in soul consciousness, with the realisation that we are nothing but a soul, just pure spirit inside a physical body our mind becomes calm and silent. We no longer get flustered by whatever life throws at us.

We just look at the circumstances, observe them as witnesses, play our role as actors and move on in life, all the while maintaining our balance and inner peace. Our joy and peaceful demeanour reflects our inner state – we are now expert surfers, just riding the waves!