Girish's Blog

  Photo credit: Pixabay Death Meditation The biggest fear everyone has is that of dying – that is always at the back of your mind! The other day a friend of mine told me that I should try death meditation. What is death meditation? Just tell yourself that you are dead, keep repeating that in your mind. “I am dead, I am lying on the ground, people have surrounded my body and they are in grief, I am watching all this from above, I am dead.” Keep repeating these words or whatever words you are comfortable with in the language you are comfortable with. After this feeling of being dead is etched deeply in your psyche, you will suddenly start feeling lighter, feeling empty inside. When this feeling comes the mind also dies down and becomes quiet. At this point you can invoke the Guru-energies, chant the Guru-mantra and then go into meditation or go with the flow and just drift off into meditation. Whatever works for you! This is an experiment in meditation which really worked. A lo...

  Expecting and Accepting Expecting and accepting are two sides of the same coin of life, expectations raise desires and wants, leading to stress, tension and illness whereas acceptance leads you to peace, serenity and joy. It is for us to decide which side of the coin is good for us. Expectations linked to ambition for achieving education goals and career goals are fine as long as you don’t attach a mental compulsion to it saying that if this goal is not achieved it will be the end of the world! Everything on earth happens for a reason and hence it is important to accept the result of one’s efforts, even though the result is not what one expected it to be! When we expect something, it is mostly to do with the material world and anything to do with the material world always has one’s ego playing a role. I want this, I can do this, etc – expectations are feelings which never end. We keep expecting more and more throughout our life as we keep shifting the goalpost further and fur...

  Enjoying Life Each individual has his/her own unique way of enjoying life. There are things which make one happy and the same thing may put another person off. There is no point in being judgemental about this as each individual is different and the means of enjoyment could be different. The purpose of life is to live it, to experience it in its fullest, to reach out eagerly and without any fear for more and more newer and richer experiences. A sense of adventure is a must if you need to enjoy life both in the material as well as in the spiritual world. Whether you are into spirituality, mindfulness, yoga or any other practice which takes you into your inner world – it is a journey filled with adventure, just as when you travel, go hiking, sailing, paragliding or an any other adventure sport! Adventure sports give you a rush as the adrenalin pumps you up and you get that tremendous feeling of being indestructible. People who are unafraid and do not have fearful thoughts will more...

  Imposing Your Will All of us have a very strong sense of identity and many times we feel hurt if things do not go as we wish them to! Whether it is school, friends, colleagues, business situations we try to impose our will so that things go the way we want them to. Many times, this work and many other times it does not! When it does work it gives a boost to our ego – we think – see I willed this to happen and it did, ‘my’ will power is strong, I can will it to do anything! This is your ego dominating your thinking. When the ego starts dominating your thinking process then rest assured you are headed for a thumping fall sooner or later – the universe always gives a person who is on an ego trip a reality check. It is extremely important to be aware of what one says and does on the spiritual path. Meditation under the guidance of a spiritual Master takes you on your inner journey. During the course of this journey a lot of things become clearer, your mind becomes quieter, your...

  Two Great Spiritual Qualities The primary spiritual quality which we all should have, is the feeling of complete and total surrender to a higher spiritual Master. We have discussed complete surrender in an earlier post. So apart from this we will look at two other essential qualities – forgetting other people’s mistakes and developing and bringing forth the goodness within. We are always affected by others’ mistakes only when they affect us or have an impact on our life – obviously it won’t bother us if it doesn’t affect us, isn’t it! Such mistakes could happen between friends, relatives and colleagues and when they do happen, they have an emotional impact on us, resulting in anger, disgust, frustration and similar such negative emotions. Any emotional impact on us has a direct bearing on our spiritual growth and progress. Our heart chakra and brow chakra are immediately impacted resulting in adverse effect on our physical and mental health. The best way to counter such neg...

  Needs and the Self On being born and as we grow up, we start our life by serving our own needs. Everything we do is for satisfying our basic needs first and then as we grow academically and financially, we start following the Maslow’s theory of needs. It is a kind of human psychological requirement to have more and more needs satisfied in the growth phase of life and as we stabilise ourselves in all respects by the time we reach middle age, we start focusing on satisfying the needs of others. We start thinking of helping others either financially or materially in some manner, we may start our own NGOs or support those whose cause we believe in. We actually start giving back to society what we have received during our initial growth phase. Over time, our journey progresses to serving the needs of all mankind. How does this happen you may well ask! Some time during this phase we meet our spiritual Master and he guides us and motivates us on to the path of meditation. A spiritua...

  Inner Peace through Collective Meditation In India, seekers from time immemorial have sought the company of saints or have sought to be associated with them, or have meditated on their pictures along with other spiritual aspirants. The spiritual masters ask those who wish to attain perfection to stay in the close proximity of others who are of the same inclination and are searching for the same inner peace in order to strengthen their own aspirations. This is the power of collectivity. We tend to become like the people we mingle with, this happens not only through conversations or physical interaction but silently, through magnetic vibrations that emanate from them. When we come into the range of their magnetism we are affected. That silent divine vibration which is emanating from each individual is enhanced when we sit in groups for meditation, therefore the collective vibrations uplift those souls who are at a lower level and those who are at a higher level come down, so th...