Explore the path of spiritual living (1 of 2)

Good morning everyone.  There are some people who has materialistic living.  They found happiness on that.  But did you know that you will have the best part of your living spiritually?  Just explore the path to your spiritual living and you will see the best meaning in your life.  There is one article I have read and it shows the way on how to discover or see the sights of spiritual living. 

Is spiritual practice a must for everyone? 

You have to insulate yourself from the effects of worldly living. The environment has its strong impact. The external world is in a rat race for greed, glamour and respectability. It does not bother about real joy and purity. Naturally, external influence affects an individual. In this rat race even if one wins one continues to be a rat. Glamour gives you an illusory joy but your soul needs to grow.

‘Why does a fish in an ocean try to jump out?’ asked a Zen student.

‘The fish is trying to explore a world beyond the ocean,’ answered the Master.

Consciousness in each one of us is like a fish that wants to explore the unknown, to evolve and grow. If you do not insulate yourself from negative forces, there will be a leakage of energies and that would hamper your growth. So it is necessary not to struggle in life and not allow negativity to control your life. One has to learn to float in life, to let go, let in the essentials and negate unessential feelings.

How can I insulate myself from negative influences?

People live life in fear. It is out of fear that they worship; out of fear they get married; out of fear of insecurity they beget children. Whenever fear emerges, there is a leakage of energy. Fear creates a hurt body and it then tries to survive by quoting philosophy and logic.

Money creates a false sense of independence (2 of 2)

On the other hand, some people blame money for all the ills in society. There are others who even consider it an evil. Just as possessing money brings arrogance, rejecting it too makes one arrogant. Some people who renounce money take pride in their poverty to draw attention and sympathy.

However, ancient sages honored money or maya as a part of the divine and transcended the grip of its illusion. They knew that when we reject or hate something, we can never transcend it.

They honored wealth as Goddess Lakshmi, the consort of Narayana. She is born out of yoga. It is yoga that transforms the bad karma and brings out latent skills and talents. It also brings up ashtasiddhis, the eight perfections and nav nidhis, the nine wealth.

Yoga helps one move from arrogance to self-confidence, meekness to humility, dependence to interdependence, from craving for freedom to the recognition of unboundedness and from a limited ownership to oneness with the whole.

\When people lack faith in the Divine or in their own abilities or in the goodness of society they suffer from a deep sense of insecurity. As a result all that appears to provide security is money. They rely on something that is not certain, and end up getting upset. Uncertainty causes craving for stability.

The world is of change; the Self is of non-change. We have to rely on the non-change and accept the change. This is like perceiving the real as unreal and unreal as real. In fact, all miseries are unreal. A wise man knows that happiness is real, as it is our very nature. Unhappiness is unreal because it is inflicted by memory. When we see everything as a dream, then we abide in our true nature — love, joy and peace. We then understand that money is not all-important. Values, sense of belonging, love and care are more important. – The Times of India

Website: www.artofliving.org.

Mind set: Of thank you and sorry (2 of 3)

It connotes the humility of considering oneself the recipient of undeserved merit. “He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt,” observed Roman statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Gratitude comes endowed with the power to help us create the life we want and can be therapeutic. Gratefulness emanates from looking at what someone or something has done for us. It is, therefore, about positivity of outlook, which, in turn, generates optimism and energy. Conversely, the lack of gratefulness breeds negativity and despair. In fact, proponents of positive psychology, a recent branch of psychology that studies the strengths and virtues enabling individuals and communities to thrive, consider gratitude to be a pleasant emotional state like happiness, joy, love, curiosity and hope.

The lack of gratefulness is largely because we take things for granted, brashly presuming that they are either our rightful due or are far less than what we deserve. What holds us back from being grateful is such lack of contentment and an endless craving for more. Often, we insist on waiting for the results of an action or a blessing to show up before expressing gratitude. This indicates a dearth of trust and faith, which pays us back in our own coin.

In a way, gratitude helps us realize the benefits of mindful meditation, which is all about acknowledging and feeling connected with every breath and blessing of life. Invariably, a life with gratefulness as its pivot is also a solution to the ills spawned by insatiable human yearnings.

We might wonder where the need for gratitude is if we pay for goods and services in money. Gratitude doesn’t even fetch us discounts. In fact, there is a subtle line of distinction between gratitude and ingratiation. So much so that when someone thanks us too many times, we start doubting his intention. However, as philosopher Adam Smith averred, gratitude is a vital civic virtue, essential for the healthy functioning of societies. He called gratitude a part of the moral capital required for human societies to flourish.

The act of offering and accepting an apology is as profound and healing a human interaction as that of expressing gratitude. But while the offhand “sorry about that” keeps flying around, our ego prevents us from realizing its full potential.

 

A Moment Alone: The Vogage In

There’s a deep and utterly unique pleasure that comes—when you’re travelling alone-the minute the train pulls out of the station.  It’s unlike the exhilaration and the vague anxiety of a plane’s takeoff, unlike the wary alertness of leaving the driveway.  Is it the comfort of the plush seats?  The old-fashioned charm of the fact that the conductor still says “All aboard!”?  I think it has more to do with a kind of promise.  For the next few hours, you will be out of time, free and (especially if you ride in one of the cell-phone-free “quiet cars”) at peace; nothing will interfere with your enjoyment of your own company.  It’s a bit like a long nap, except you remain awake, soothed and rocked by the rumble of the wheels on the track, reading or daydreaming, entertaiend by the spectacle of the world streaming smoothy by—a delightful reverie from which you will emerge having arrived at your destination.

Reference:  Francine Prose

Photo Courtesy:  farm2.static 

Caring without clinging -1

As we consciously cultivate equanimity in our yoga practice, we may start to refine our ability to do so in the rest of our life as well.  We may learn to keep fighting for blue whales or clear air without collapsing in despair when our efforts seem futile.  We may learn to  get up every morning and work on the screen-play we’ve always dreamed of writing, not driven by fantasies of our appearance on Oprah when the film is a blockbuster or crippled by the scathing reviews blaring in our own heads.

The world is full of losses we can’t stop and joys we can’t keep.  We may pour our whole heart into helping our teenager get off drugs, then watch him spiral back into addiction.  We may spend 10 years fighting to save a coastal wetland, then watch it get signed over to developers.  At its highest  level, upekkha can help us  stay centered in the midst of all of these experiences—to savor life’s joys without clinging to them and to open to life’s sorrows without pushing them away.

In Buddhist Literature, upekkha is often compared with the attitude of a mother who lets go of controlling her children as they grow up—continuing to support them and wish them well but recognizing that their choices are theirs to make,  good or bad.  This image particularly spoke to me that first week of preschool, when o got a tiny taste of how hard such a task could be.