Girish's Blog

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Turning Inwards One has to go inward. We have roamed all over in our worldly life long enough – it is time to turn inward! We should start having the taste of the inner now. And once we have tasted the inner then there is nothing in the outer world that will fascinate us anymore. Once we have seen the inner beauty, the outer world simply pales away, it is reduced to nothing; it is only a reflection. If we have seen the real moon, who bothers about the moon’s reflection in a mirror? The outer world is just a reflection of the inner. The mind may create trouble. The mind will say – “What is happening? What are you doing? This way you will be isolated, you will become alone, you will be cut off from people.” The mind will find so many excuses to go out again – don’t listen. We are not being cut off from people; we are only getting connected with our own inner being. And when one is oneself, when one is joined with oneself, then only can one be with others;

  Photo Credit: Pinterest The Present Moment Swamiji always tell us to stay in the present moment, but we keep vacillating between the past and the present. Swamiji’s entire stress is on the present moment, because reality lies in the moment. – that is the only reality. If we ponder – for even the past to exist as a memory, now is needed. It doesn’t exist as the past; it exists as a thought in the present. Similarly true of the future – the future does not exist as the future; it exists as our imagination in the present moment. All that exists, exists in the now. Now is the only time there is and to become more and more alert about now is to become aware of the presence of God. Our present is crushed between our thoughts of the past and our fertile imagination about the future. We never learn to live in the present – always vacillating like a pendulum from the past to the future. Our present becomes negligible or non-existent as the past and future occupy our mind space. If we th

  Photo Credit: Sundry Mind Spirituality in the Digital World Is the digital world a hindrance on the spiritual path? I have heard this question many times – the problem is not digital; the problem is with us and how we use the digital world. The problem is our mind, our heart. If our mind can change, no matter what happens to us, we will be fine! We have all seen how Swamiji who came from the Himalayas has used the digital platform to take Samarpan to all corners of the world! We come to the spiritual path for various reasons, but once on the path do we get the quality of meditation that is required to progress. Not really, for many of us we are doing it because so and so told us to, our mind is not yet on it. It is like hunger, if we are truly famished, we cannot resist eating whatever is on the plate and find it to be tasty too! If our mind is calm it is filled with energy and we can tune in to universal energy. But the mind cannot be calm as it is always agitated. Various thoug

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Awareness and Superficiality When we become aware, then everything becomes superficial, outside us. When a moment of awareness is there, then nothing is deep; everything is outer and superficial because we are standing at the innermost core of our being. From that vantage point everything is superficial. For example, suppose we are sitting on the balcony of our house. It is not on the outer or superficial, but from inside the house it will be just on the boundary, on the surface. The more aware we become the more things will become superficial. One can become scared sometimes, because even love will look superficial. If we watch and are alert, then whatever we do will look like acting, because we are no longer identified with it. It is no longer an act, but just acting. So, a really aware person becomes an actor on the great stage of the world. He is never in anything deeply. He cannot be, because something transcendental is always there. Whatever he is

  Photo Credit: Gaia Creating a Protective Aura Let’s try an experiment. Every night before we go to sleep, just sit on the bed and imagine an aura around the body, just six inches away from our body, the same shape as the body, surrounding us, protecting us. It will become a shield. Let’s do it for four, five minutes, and then, still feeling it, go to sleep. Fall into sleep imagining that aura like a blanket around us which protects us, so that no tension can enter from the outside, no thought can enter from the outside; no outside vibrations can enter us. Just feeling that aura fall asleep. This is the last thing to be done at night. After it, simply go to sleep so the feeling continues in our unconscious. That is the whole thing. The whole mechanism is that we start by consciously imagining, then we start falling asleep. By and by when we are on the threshold of sleep, a little imagination continues, lingers on. We fall asleep, but that little imagination enters the unconscious.

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Meditation and Mind Games We should make meditation the first thing in our daily schedule, and not the last. Then when we feel that now it is not an effort, when we can sit for an hour together completely immersed in breathing – aware, attentive – when we only know this, that we have achieved attention of breathing without any effort; when we are relaxed and enjoying it without any forcing, then we have attained it. Then add something else – for example, walking. We should remember both; then go on adding things. After a certain period, we will be capable of being aware of our breath continuously, even in sleep. And unless we are aware even in sleep, we will not be able to know the depth. But as we progress deeply, this comes. The mind will give us a wrong start. So, always remember to begin rightly, because rightly begun means half done. But we start wrongly. We know very well that attention is a difficult thing. This is because we are totally asleep. S

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Spiritual Helplessness Authentic power lies in the hands of God who created the world and, having created, admires it. It is all in His hands. All strength, all power lies in His hands. Become weak, helpless, we will get His support. If we are strong, we need no support. God is the strength of the weak and helpless. If we become helpless here, God awaits us there; but He belongs to the weak, not to the strong. The strong do not need Him; they believe in helping themselves. They deny God from all their endeavours, their arrogance is still strong. They do not feel the need of God’s help. Realising our worth and taking shelter in the Lord’s grace, we have infinite power and wealth to back us. We can move mountains provided we keep our trust in God and are fully conscious of our own insignificant strength. We have seen this practically and experienced it when we do Swamiji’s programmes – the programmes are great and till the last moment everything is dangli

  Photo Credit: Pinterest What Makes Our Guru Happy? The Guru always wants us to meditate, be compassionate and show gratitude – we should ask ourselves - do we do this on an ongoing basis? Whenever we are meditative, we feel blissful; whenever we are in compassion, we feel ecstatic. And then gratitude arises - not towards anyone in particular, gratitude just arises. We feel so grateful just for being here, just for being alive, just for being able to be meditative, just for being able to be in compassion. We feel simply grateful. That gratefulness is not towards anybody, it is towards the whole and the whole (cosmos) is represented by our Guru. If we feel grateful towards our Guru, it is a gratitude of the mind. If we meditate and if we flower in compassion, we will feel simply grateful, not grateful towards the Guru. Then there is no “towards” - we feel simply grateful towards all. And when we feel grateful towards all, that is really gratefulness towards the Guru, never before

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Love and Awareness Love and awareness are the highest form of polarity – just like man/woman, life/death, darkness/light, summer/winter, outer/inner, yin/yang, the body and the soul, the creation and the creator. Love and awareness are the highest form of polarity, the last polarity, at which transcendence happens. Love needs two. It is a relationship, it is outgoing, it is energy moving outwards. There is an object: the beloved. The object becomes more important than oneself. Our joy is in the object. If our beloved is happy, we are happy; we become part of the object. There is a kind of dependence, and the other is needed. Without the other we will feel lonely. Awareness is just being with oneself in utter aloneness, just being alert. It is not a relationship, the other is not needed at all. It is not outgoing, it is introversive. Love is the movement of the light out of our being. Awareness is the reverse movement, the backward movement of the light to the

  Photo Credit: Shrimad Ramchandra Mission Finding and Sharing Eternal Bliss The spiritual search starts as a seeking for eternal bliss, as a seeking for eternal liberation, as a seeking for divine light and divine life. But the centre remains within us. In the beginning it is a self-centred search. Whatever we are seeking, we are seeking for ourselves. This self-centeredness ultimately will prove a barrier, because we cannot be in total ecstasy if we are self-centred. This self-centeredness is a deep hindrance, but in the beginning, it is bound to be so. It’s natural that one should start the search for oneself. There is no other way. We cannot start for someone else. It has to be self-centred in the beginning, but it must not be so in the end. In the beginning it is okay. In the end it is dangerous. A point comes where our self-centeredness must cease. Only then our being will flower into total bliss. It is just like this - we take breath in, we inhale. This is half a breath. W

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Follow Your Inner Voice We live on two levels. One is the periphery: the world of action. The other is the inner being, the world of no-action: the world of existence, not of doing. All that we do is on the periphery and all that we are is at the centre. We have to continuously move from the centre to the periphery to do something. Whenever we are doing something, we are on the periphery. Whatsoever we are doing, we are on the periphery. When we are not doing anything, then we are at the centre. Witnessing is a non-action. Meditation is non-action.  When we sit for meditation, we are on the periphery, we watch our breath, chant mantras, and so on – we are doing something, and then suddenly we get a meditative state, we are not there, we have connected with our innermost core – the centre of our being. This centre is our witness. Once we know this centre, once we recognise this centre, once we have felt this centre – follow the orders. We will be directed

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Don’t try to be a Guru It is impossible to help others till we have obtained some certainty of our own. Resist the temptation to help others. It is detrimental unless we have obtained some certainty of our own. Don’t try to be a guru, don’t try to be a helper, because we will disturb the balance; we will create more problems. Just remember that we cannot help, we cannot guide anyone unless we have got the inner light.  When the inner light is there, the help, the guidance, will flow from within. Resist the temptation. The temptation is great, because the ego feels very fulfilled. Someone comes to ask for our advice. The temptation is there to give advice without knowing what we are doing, without being aware that we don’t know. If someone asks us whether God exists, we are not strong enough to say, “I don’t know.” We say something. Either we say, “Yes. God exists. I am a believer,” or we say “No, God does not exist. I am a disbeliever,” but in both cases

  Photo Credit: Twitter Bliss - the Inward Journey We can conquer the whole world and we will remain miserable; of course, our misery will become a thousand-fold – the misery of an Alexander is bound to be tremendous… but we never become happy. That is not the way of happiness at all. Bliss that comes out of conquering oneself - that is the only bliss there is. We can have all the things and we will still be at a loss. One can pile up money, power, prestige. And the more we have, the more we become aware of the futility of it all and the more we feel an inner emptiness. Only the rich come to know what inner poverty is, because they can compare; they can compare notes. They have a background and they can see their own inner poverty against it. He is rich as far as the outside is concerned, but the inside is simply starving. Hence the paradox: the richer one becomes, the poorer one feels. The more knowledgeable one becomes the more ignorant one feels. The more we have, the more

  Photo Credit: Quora Be Alert of your Ego Many of us get the sense of becoming empty in Swamiji’s proximity, we become egoless in His presence as we are in His aura. The moment we move away from the proximity maybe after an event or even after any meeting, we return to reality, that is when we realise that our ego is present in all its glory. If we make a goal of becoming egoless, we will never lose our ego. The moment it becomes a goal, the goal itself becomes a representative of the ego. Just think about this – “If I have to become egoless, then who is this ‘I’ that should be egoless?” This ‘I’ is nothing but our ego. So, the first thing, don’t make it a goal. Any goal will feed the ego - even the goal of being egoless. When we are egoless, we should enjoy it; when we feel the ego again, be alert – but don’t expect the contrary. If we start expecting we will be more entangled with the same thing. Whenever egoless-ness is there - enjoy it, feel grateful, thank God, and when the e

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Going Astray Don’t create any conflict about going astray and being centred. Float. If we create a conflict, if we become afraid of going astray, then there is more possibility that we will go astray – because whatsoever we try to suppress becomes very significant. Whatsoever we try to deny becomes very attractive. So, don’t create any condemnation of going astray. In fact, go with it. If it is happening, allow it to happen; there is nothing wrong in it. There must be something in it, and that’s why it is happening. Sometimes even going astray is good. A person who really wants to remain centred should not be worried about centring. If we worry about it, the very worry itself will never allow us to be centred, because worrying can never be centred – we need a non-worried mind, an unworried mind. So, going astray is good, there is nothing wrong in it. Stop fighting with existence. Stop all conflict and the idea of conquering – surrender. And when one surr

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Going Deep Within There are many sadhaks who have suddenly gone into deep meditation which felt like death, and have returned in fear of death. Suddenly a key fits, and one is transported into infinity, and then the experience of deep meditation is exactly like death. The problem is created because one gets scared. Meditation leads us deep into our own self. Beyond a certain point it is felt like drowning, sinking, suffocating. If we accept it and cooperate with it and simply say that we are ready to die, then we don’t create the opposite process of trying to come out of it. Then there comes a peak where all disturbance disappears. Something happens – but we are still there. In fact, for the first time, we are there – and everything becomes blissful. Before it comes to the peak there is pain and anguish, and it is natural that one starts thinking about how to get out of it somehow. In the getting out, that cooperation is broken, so we are moving now in two