The Power Of Gratitude

The Power of Gratitude---

Sri Sri Ravishankar

The Deccan Herald, Jan.11 - 2010

Beauty has many aspects. Gratefulness is one such aspect of beauty. When you don’t feel a sense of lack, then you feel grateful. You cannot be grateful and feel lack. The two cannot co-exist.When you feel lack, grumbling begins from some corner. If you are grumbling, the negativity will increase. For those who do not have this knowledge, there is no way out of their grumblings, because once they start grumbling, they keep grumbling throughout their life. They feel some lack today and tomorrow they feel something else is lacking. There is no end to it. It is then that demand arises and when demand arises, your mind doesn’t think clearly, doesn’t focus clearly, doesn’t function properly; and naturally you tend to lose everything.That is why Jesus said, "Those who have will be given more; as for those who do not have; even what they have will be taken from them."

If you are grateful, more things will flow to you. And when you complain and grumble, even what little joy, peace or love you have come into this world with, will be lost. This is the law of nature.This explains why grandmothers in India have a habit of saying, "Everything is full." If something is less than full, or empty, they never say, "This is empty, we don’t have this." They will say, "We have a lot of this."Not having is just an attitude in you; it’s the direction you are moving in. You sow the seeds and they grow; they become plenty. If the seed itself is a seed of lack, only lack will grow. Open your eyes and see what you have been given! When you recognise through this knowledge what you have been given, then you become grateful. In that gratefulness, everything grows, life grows.Similarly if you just concentrate on lack, lack will grow because you feel lack.Love is at its peak when there is no demand, no craving for it. Whomsoever you love, first of all know that they love you very much. If you doubt in somebody’s love, then no matter however or whatever, you receive from him or her, your doubt grows. If you want to be close to someone, first begin to feel that they are already close to you. Whenever you ask people whether they trust you, you already doubt their trust. You grow in doubt. There is no limit to it - there is no end to being convinced of someone’s love for you, someone’s trust in you.Gratefulness comes with knowledge. Knowledge that the divine loves and cares for you, that is why he created this beautiful universe. Feel grateful about whatever nature has bestowed upon you. Have faith that this entire creation loves you. When you have faith, life becomes full. And in that faith, there is knowledge, there is opening, there is joy, there is beauty.

Why did Communism flop? It was a great policy which said -‘those who do not have, give to them’. So, it gave them. But then what happened? Yet, the nation a whole became poorer and poorer, even on the material plane. Because the whole consciousness was flooded with a sense of lack.

Without knowledge, without the wisdom, there is no progress; and even the most beautiful gifts in life, turn ugly.

Be grateful and see how everything flows to you.

Jai Gurudev.

A Long Deep Breath

A Long, Deep Breath---

Sri Sri Ravishankar.

Only a healthy bud can blossom and only a healthy being can succeed.So what is being healthy? If you are feeling rough inside, then you are not healthy. If your mind is stiff and not calm, you are not mentally healthy. When the emotions are rough, you are emotionally not healthy.To attain a perfect state of health, one has to remain mentally calm, steady, and emotionally soft. The state of health has to flow from the innermost of your being to the outermost, and vice versa. That state is called swaasthya in Sanskrit.Swaasthya means health. It also means being in one's self. Ancient people said that we exist in five sheaths. The first is the environment, the atmosphere. It is the prime body. Then there is the physical body.Then prana, that is the life force energy. Then there is the mental sheath - that has the thoughts, emotions and ideas. There is also the intuitive body , the instinct, with gut feeling. It is much more subtle in nature and effective.When an illness arises, it comes first in the thought form, then the sound form, and then it manifests in the light form or in the aura. It is only then that the illness manifests in the body.So how do we bring good health to our system? First of all, find out for yourself whether you are healthy. Health is (having) a disease-free body, a quiver-free breath, a stress-free mind, an inhibition-free intellect, an obsession-free memory, an ego that includes all and a soul that is free from sorrow.The holistic approach of wellbeing includes exercise, breathing and meditation. Breath is synonymous to life. If your breath is hot, quivery, shaky, not straight, not easy, you can predict that you will be sick. The main purpose of meditation, pranayama and related breathing practices, is that they increase prana or the subtle life energy. When you are able to handle breath, body gains good health.If you observe infants, you will be amazed at how balanced their breath is. As they breathe in, their belly comes out and as they breathe out, their belly moves in.But the more nervous and tense you are, you will do the reverse. When you breathe out your tummy will come out and when you breathe in, it goes in. But as we grow, we tend to lose this natural rhythm with which we are born. By attending to our breath, we can regain that balance.Breathing is the first act of life and its the last act of life. In between, the whole life we are breathing in and out, but not attending to the breath.Ninety per cent of the impurities in the body go out through the breath because we are breathing 24 hours a day. However, we are using only 30% of our lung capacity. We are not breathing enough.The mind is like a kite and the breath, a thread. For the mind to go high the breath needs to be longer. Your breath gives enormous energy and it also helps in increasing the prana, ie, the life force energy. There are four types of energy - energy from food, energy from sleep, energy through breath - that you can learn through the breathing exercises which will energise every cell of the body.And then, a few moments of pleasant mind through meditation give a lot of energy. All these are important for our overall wellbeing. The immune system can be boosted by attending to the breath and by attending to the breath you can easily handle your mind as well.

Jai Gurudev

Living The Mystery Of Life!!

Living the Mystery of Life---

Sri Sri Ravishankar.

If you want to lead a life full of joy and happiness, forget the past, worry less about the future and live in the present.What is the purpose of knowledge? Purpose of knowledge is to make you feel that you dont know! If knowledge makes you feel that you know it all, then it has not fulfiled its goal. The more you know, the more you become aware of the unknown.There is one I dont know that comes out of ignorance. But when one goes through knowledge then it becomes a transformed “I dont know. " This I dont know is wonderful. This is how you can turn every question into a wonder. The difference between a wonder and a question is that a question is associated with sorrow and restlessness whereas wonder is an expression of joy.The purpose of knowledge is to create awareness of the Being. This creation is enormous and infinite. It is a mystery. Mysteries are not to be understood but to be lived. Love is a mystery, sleep is a mystery, your mind is a mystery and all that you see around is a mystery. Your life is also a mystery. Trying to understand mystery is confusion, but living it fully is called enlightenment.What is your life? In the time scale, millions of years have passed and millions will come in the future. After all, how many years are you going to be here on this planet? Maybe 60 years, 70 years or 100 years? Your span of life is insignificant. It is not even a drop in the ocean. In terms of space you simply dont exist! This understanding dissolves the ego. Ego is ignorance of your reality, ignorance of your existence. Just open your eyes and see, who are you? How are you on this planet? This brings awareness and then you do not worry about small things like, this person said this thing to me and how could he do that to me, etc. You will see that all the smallness will simply drop away.Ignorance has its necessity. Ignorance keeps the joy in the game. In a game if you know the result before you are playing you wont be playing sincerely. If you know whether you are going to win or lose the game there is no charm in playing. The game is joyful when its results are unknown. Nature is so kind and loving that it does not tell you about your future and does not remind you of your very old past. But, even with the short little memory it has given, you try hard to make your life miserable!Have you noticed that the mind is not at all stable; it is like a roller coaster, crowded with thoughts going up and down. This is because you want to know all the time. You try your level best to understand your feelings and your emotions and get into more and more confusion. This is what has happened with psychology today. It tries to explain to you why you feel the way you feel. The question why arises always when you are unhappy. Nobody ever asks, why am I so happy? or why is there so much joy and beauty in the world? Everyone wants to understand, why am I not feeling good? or why this pain is given to me? The more you try to understand and try to dig it; you seem to understand it less and less. The mystery deepens and there is just an illusion that you know all. But thats for a short while.Just be in the innocent state of I dont know! and you will feel the mind becoming quiet. This makes life simple.

This life is a beautiful mystery. Just live it! It is only when you live the mystery of life that joy dawns.

Jai Gurudev.

Atheism

Atheism is when one does not believe either in values or in the abstract. When an atheist comes to the Guru, what happens? You start experiencing your own form and discover that you are indeed formless, hollow and empty. And this abstract non-form in you becomes more and more concrete!!! The guru makes the abstract more real and what you thought as solid appears to be more unreal. Sensitivity and subtlety dawns. Perception of love, not as an emotion, but as the substratum of existence becomes evident. The formless spirit shines through every form in creation and mystery of life deepens, shattering the atheism. Then the journey begins and it has four stages. The first stage is Saarupya (to see the formless in the form) Ö Seeing God in all the forms. Often, one feels more comfortable to see God as formless rather than with a form, because with a form, one feels a distance, a duality, a fear of rejection and other limitations. In life all of our interactions are with the form, other than in deep sleep and in Samadhi. And, if you do not see God in the form, then the waking part of life remains devoid of the Divine. All those who accept God to be formless use symbols, and perhaps love the symbols more than God himself! If God comes and tells a Christian to leave the cross or a Muslim to drop the crescent, perhaps he may not do it! To begin with loving the formless is possible only through forms. The second stage is Saamipya (closeness) Ö feeling absolutely close to the form you have chosen and reaching out to the formless. This leads to a sense of intimacy with the whole creation. In this stage, one overcomes the fear of rejection and other fears. But this is time and space bound. The third stage is Saanidhya - feeling the presence of the Divine by which you transcend the limitations of time and space. Then the final stage Ö Saayujya Ö is when you are firmly entrenched with the Divine. It is then you realize you are one with the Divine. There is a total merging with the Beloved and all duality disappears. THIS IS THAT AND THAT IS THIS.

Jai Gurudev.

Self Confidence And Ambition

Ambition indicates lack of self-confidence! When you know you can achieve something easily, you are not ambitious about it. You are simply confident about it. Your ambition indicates challenge and uncertainty, which is contrary to self-confidence. So one you have total self-confidence you cannot be ambitious!! At the same time a person who lacks total self-confidence cannot be ambitious either!! For ambition to be, one must have a little bit of confidence and total ignorance of the Self. It is next to impossible to have total confidence without Self-knowledge. With the knowledge of the Self, there is nothing left to achieve, for the entire nature of existence is mere play and display of one's own consciousness. People take pride in being ambitious. The wise man will only smile at them. Ambition can never be for something you know you can achieve effortlessly. You can only be ambitious about something for which you have to put effort, which poses a challenge and of which you are not even certain you will be able to achieve or not. Moreover it takes away the joy of the moment. With the Self-knowledge nothing is challenging to you, nor you need to put any effort. Nature is ready to fulfill your intention even before they arise, giving you no chance to crave or desire. Nature does not allow the wise to have a desire (ambition), and the unwise to fulfill or get rid of the desire (ambition). Do you still want to be ambitious ? Or is your only ambition is to get rid of ambition !! (Laughter)

Jai Gurudev.

We Must Practise Meditation Regularly Why????

Every cell in the body has the capacity to hold infinity. While a worm also eats and sleeps and wakes and performs its daily activities, there is no point in living like that. We must tap the full potential that nature has bestowed on us, the potential to hold infinity in every cell of the body. For that we must practise meditation regularly. ( Refer 4 different states of Samadhi / meditation - Sri Sri )It only takes few minutes every day. And once imbibed into the daily routine, meditation is no more a burden or a chore. Meditation is like a seed. The better a seed is cultivated, the more it flourishes. Similarly, the more we practise meditation, the better it cultures the entire nervous system and the body. Our physiology undergoes a change and every cell in the body is filled with ``prana''. And as the level of ``prana'' in the body rises, we bubble with joy. The culturing of meditation into our system is normal. Some people call it the higher state of consciousness, I call it the normal state of consciousness since we are endowed with the ability to live in that state. Meditation helps in two ways : 1 : It prevents stress from getting into the system and simultaneously helps release already accumulated stress. 2 : Regular meditation also leads to happiness and fulfillment; to sensitisation of the sensory organs (thereby intensifying the experiences of seeing, tasting, feeling, etc.); and to greater intuitiveness. With the assimilation of meditation into daily life, the fifth state of consciousness, called cosmic consciousness, dawns.Cosmic consciousness is perceiving the whole cosmos as part of oneself. When we perceive the world as a part of us, love flows strongly between the world and us. (Love again is not an emotion but a state of being. It is not a melodrama expressed by endearments but our very existence.) This love empowers us to bear with the opposing forces and the disturbances in our lives. Anger and disappointments become fleeting emotions that occur momentarily and then vanish. Usually we tend to let go of pleasant emotions and cling to the unpleasant ones; 99 percent of the world population is prone to doing this. But when the consciousness becomes free and cultured with meditation, this tendency of holding onto negative emotions is the first thing to disappear. We start living in ``the moment'' and let go of ``the past''. This is important because no matter how good the people we interact with, there are bound to be misunderstandings in any relationship. Once a little misunderstanding crops up, our emotions get distorted and a host of negativities follow. But if we are able to let go and focus on the ability of consciousness to revel in the glory of every moment, we are shielded from all the above. The truth that every moment is supportive and complimentary to our growth dawns on us. Thus, attaining higher states of consciousness does not require any complicated strategisation; one just needs to learn to let go. A person in a higher state of consciousness is expected to know everything. But while the mind and the consciousness possess the ability to know everything, do they really need to know everything? All knowing'' simply means being conscious of the essence of all you know. In this state, both knowledge and ignorance co-exist and complement each other. For instance, while playing a game, it is not knowing the result beforehand that makes the game sincere and fun. If one knew the result even while playing, the players (and the game) would lose their intensity. Similarly, if you know that a friend is going to let you down in ten years' time, it will affect your relationship with that person today. If everything in life progresses smoothly and as per plan, life won't be fun. After all, the fun of a story is in its suspense. And anyway, what is the big deal about this one life? Just 60-80 years? It is nothing. You have had many such comings into this world, inhabited many bodies, done many things. One life is negligible. When you realise this, little things will cease to bother you. Every up and down in life makes this play of life more interesting. When you open yourself to the consciousness in any particular moment, you perceive the innumerable activities taking place in the universe in that very moment â” people are waking, sleeping, preparing for bed, driving, working; chicken are hatching, frogs croaking, virus and bacteria are infecting people and zillions of things are happening in that one moment in this infinite creation and yet the consciousness knows everything. Deep inside, each person knows about everything in this world. This knowledge is present in every person. You are a part of this whole phenomenon. As your consciousness opens and the whole system gets physically, mentally and spiritually elevated, your life becomes worth living. A higher state of consciousness will not drop on your head from heaven one fine morning. The sapling of consciousness is within you and it needs to be nurtured with simple techniques of meditation. Some palm trees yield in three years, some in ten years. And those that are not nurtured never yield! They simply exist... The confluence of knowledge, understanding and practise makes life complete. When you grow into higher states of consciousness, you find that you are no longer thrown off balance by different situations and disturbances. You become beautiful yet and a, delicate and beautiful blossom capable of accommodating different values in life without any conditions. Jai Gurudev!!

Enthusiasm

What is enthusiasm? Enthusiasm means to be connected to God within. When you are with your source, you can only be enthusiastic. Apathy is when you are away from the source of life. You cannot be but enthusiastic when your mind is totally in the present moment.You should know that dispassion is not apathy. It is simply a broader perspective of reality. Dispassion is moving towards the source. Dispassion simply means the way back home. It is the journey towards the source, which is a reservoir of enthusiasm.When dispassion and enthusiasm co-exist, that is the secret of perennial enthusiasm and profound dispassion. Though they appear to be opposite, they are actually complementary. - Sri Sri Jai Guru Dev