Choice of Our Actions

Choice of our Actions

Introduction

Life always gives us choices to choose from every situation. What we choose could be based upon many factors. The factors could be our belief systems, our strong emotions based upon our belief systems or emotions based upon the situation that we are going through in that moment.

It is not easy to be non-impulsive when emotions are very high and violent. The two choices that one can have in regular situations could be reactive or strategic. To be reactive not much effort is required. We can just go with the emotion that is strongly prevailing in that situation. However, to be non-reactive, non-impulsive and strategic we need to be really focussed on the final outcome of the situation instead of getting hijacked or succumbing to the emotion of the situation.

Choices

A reactive response is generally based upon impulses and could be judgmental, biased, prejudiced, more of a fixed-mindset and often leads in dis-harmony, non-productivity and regret.

A strategic response is non-impulsive, non-judgmental, unbiased, unprejudiced, more of growth-mindset and leads to harmony, productivity and contentment.

Solution

Mindfulness/Meditative practices will enable us to reflect on the reactions of our bodies and the emotions that we undergo in every situation. These practices will also help us to choose consciously the appropriate response.

Conclusion

Hence, next time let us consciously choose to be strategic and live a life of harmony and contentment.

What is Awareness?

What is Awareness?

Awareness is pure, untainted and enables us to see transparently through everything - the truth of the true existence of the manifested cosmos - that it is all spirit and nothing else. The spirit dwelling in each and every part and parcel of the manifested cosmos.

Pure awareness allows us to see through the thoughts, rather than the thoughts. The seeing through the thoughts enables us to let go the identities to which we are generally bound. It allows us space to travel infinitely without boundaries.  To question and challenge every aspect of life, and see through the validity and triviality of each aspect. This process of seeing through will enhance our seeing, observing, witnessing and enable us to identify our entanglements and provides us a platform to consciously choose upon which entanglements we would like to keep and not. Further, the pure awareness will also help us in letting go all the entanglements and become free to become infinite, boundless there by expanding our love and compassion unto the whole manifested cosmos. The pure awareness will let us stay comfortably in the unmanifested cosmos and witness the manifested cosmos without any entanglements.

Pure awareness is like boundless emptiness which can hold everything without getting entangled with anything. It is that one, that is present and one need not make any attempt to become aware of its presence. To become aware of the eternal presence of the pure awareness, one has to let go all the entanglements of body and mind and be comfortable in staying in the boundless cosmos, holding onto nothing. In that freedom from knowledge, ignorance, thoughts, entanglements when one stays in that emptiness, then the awareness itself becomes aware of its existence and allow us to become aware of its existence. This process does not involve any acquiring, it only involves an acknowledgement from the nothingness, by the nothingness and happens when we are completely in that nothingness. Pure awareness is infinite, boundless and free. 

Overcoming Pain through Compassion not through avoidance

Overcoming Pain through Compassion not through avoidance.

Pain is something which is an unwanted feeling, but somehow we are more or less addicted to it. If everything is fine, hunky-dory we get bored and want to have something else and look for more challenging tasks or something more stimulating. Now this is all good where we wanted to have it and somehow or the other we make arrangements to prepare for it.

What if pain comes up from a clear blue sky, highly unanticipated situations? How to face it? What if there are situations or events that you expect will go smoothly and it turns out exactly opposite? It hurts right? It hurts very badly. We enter into that realm of melancholy and don't know how long it keeps haunting us and pushes us into some sort of depression if not too deep into it. These are those situations that we would love to avoid, but inevitability keeps striking back. Life throws at us experiences that we never anticipated and it becomes really a struggle to face them or accept them.

How to deal with pain without avoiding it is the crux of this article.

Radical Acceptance

In psychology "radical acceptance" is the term which is used for these kind of situations. Instead of fighting with the reality of an untoward incident, you accept the situation the way it is. The way life has thrown on your face straight without any warning. Accept it and face it. Instead of ruminating on "why me?," "why to me only?," "why to my life only?," one can say, okay it has happened, what next, what should be my next move? Where should I go next? If the situation is not giving you anytime to think, then go with whatever flow you can just flow. If it is giving you sometime to think, then analyze it and choose the most appropriate way to maneuver through it and come out successfully.

Well it is not so easy. I know.

Sometimes the pain is so hurting, that it might as well take years to let go and heal ourselves. Under such circumstances the one beauty of radical acceptance is to melt into it. Because in denial of pain we are struggling more to come out of the entanglement and enhance the tangling's rather than reduce them.

While the pain is inevitable because of whatever the circumstances which could be not under our control, the suffering is based on choice completely. Suffering is where one can make a choice, either to suffer or not to suffer.

The process

Sit or lie down in a safe place and undergo through the painful situation and while you are carrying out this process don't try to deny anything, even if the mistake is from your side, accept it, don't deny it. Just accept it and melt into it. Then, one fine moment of it through this process when complete denial stops and you have melted completely into it and accepted it (if you have to cry, then do that also) then a gentle relief comes up. From that gentle relief and in that moment have compassion towards you. Build that compassion for yourself. Love yourself the way you are. Accept yourself the way you are - your strengths and weaknesses, your skills, your capabilities and inabilities, your ups and downs, your praises and blames, everything. Keep accepting everything compassionately. Say unto yourselves, it is all fine. It is okay to be imperfect also and there is a perfection in imperfection. Keep remembering that. Love yourself so much that you can forgive everything about you and others also. Cultivate, develop, improve that compassion so that it becomes very easy for you to accept and go through that pain smoothly and when you are completely free, all the entanglements loosen up and you can come out of them easily. 

• Remember in the denial the strangling's get more complicated, in acceptance they can get loosened up.
• In practice of acceptance we let go the resistance
• In letting go the resistance we allow the compassion to get in
• With compassion we should and able to love ourselves first, and then we can spread that compassion to others

Acceptance does not mean agreeing

Now acceptance does not mean agreeing. If something bad has happened, that does not mean you agree for it to happen again and again. You are not becoming someone's door mat. You accept for the current situation or the situation that has occurred in past and take all those measures so that you correct your course and shift the direction of the sails and proceed towards higher realms of compassionate living, harmonious success, peace, tranquility and poise.

The Essence of Spiritual Practices

 What is the essence of Spiritual Practices?

The essence of Spiritual Practices or for that matter any practice is to "breathe consciously" and become aware of the presence of awareness.

While breathing consciously you are focusing on any of the following:

• the breath itself
• the breath moving in and out at entry and exit point of nostrils
• the soft sound of breath hhhssss at entry and exit point of nostrils
• the breath moving in and out and along with that movement of breath, movement within the body from upper portion of lungs to the abdomen and reverse
• the spiritual heart (anāhata chakra)
• the pit of throat
• the sound of breath that it makes at the pit of the throat
• moving consciously along the spine from mulādhāra (coccyx) to kūṭastha (ājna chakra) along with the movement of breath
• focusing just at kūṭastha (ājna chakra)
• chanting some syllables along with the inhalation and exhalation
• the movement of energy from uvula to up into the sahasrāra
• just awareness or nothingness

After any one of the above practices are strengthened and high efficiency is obtained due to effective conscious method of practice, one can go beyond the mind or thoughts and become aware of the presence of awareness. One can just become aware of the stillness and silence that is ever present within.

The Essence of Bhagavadgita in Two Words

 The Essence of Bhagavadgita in Two Words

If we have to summarize the 700 verses of Bhagavadgita in two words, those two words would be "svadharmamācaret स्वधर्ममाचरेत्." 

Goal

स्वधर्म Svadharma is the duty of the Self. 99.99% of our day-to-day activities are related to our body and we take out very less time to really look into our true self. If we can take out some time and start reflecting within and understand what is that, that we really require to live the most meaningful life? Then we would find the most surprising answers.

Instead of having reference point of we as our bodies, if we can change our reference points to our true self or soul, then it makes a lot of difference. And, what we feel, and get so much attached to, and give highest important aspects of the external materialistic life will vanish away into oblivion just like that.

Mindfulness or Meditation practices are the only way to take that 180 degree turn and shift our attention to within and become aware of the true presence of what is that is eternally present within us. We have to own this process of shifting. Someone else will not be able to do this for us.

The Process

If the goal is to carry out the activities of the self, then what is the process? How to do it?

To carry out the activities of the Self, the process is very simple and it is again given in two words - abhyāsa vairāgya अभ्यास वैराग्य - meaning practice of detachment. What does this mean and how to practice it in a day-to-day life?

Every time we get involved in an activity, we can ask the following questions:

• how much mindful I am in carrying out this activity?
• am I identifying myself with the emotions involved in the scene and getting hijacked with it? or
• am I able to dis-identify from the scene and look at the screen?
• how many times I identify with my body? and
• how many times I identify with my true self?
• in my thinking, how much time I am spending in the past or future, rather than in the present?

Strategy

Once we have the data on the above questions over a minimum period of 6 months, then we can develop our strategies. The data will provide us information on:

• our reference points where we got hijacked with our emotions, identities, egos, opinions or pre-conceived notions
• the number of times we got identified with our bodies rather than with our true self,
• the number of hour or days that we were thinking about either the past or future rather than being completely present and aware of the present moment

The strategies to change the patterns would be:

• changing the reference points from the scene to the screen
• making a conscious effort to dis-identify from the body, thoughts and shift the focus to the true-self
• entering more into the now, stillness, silence or the nothingness

With the above strategies we can enhance our well-being and along with that we can also enhance the well-being of the human species and make the world a better place.

The duties of true self would be in harmony with nature and all the surroundings and understanding every being more on the level of heart rather than on the level of mind. This approach will enhance compassion towards every being and instead of having conflicts and rages over opinions or pre-conceived notions, there would be more of compassionate conversations and exchange of heart's energy rather the heated argumentative energy of a conflict.

People would start looking more on to the heart rather than the mind or body, more on the spiritual front and the sustainability of the human species and the ecosystem rather than the mundane non-meaningful existence.

Meditation or Mindfulness in simple terms

What is Meditation or Mindfulness in simple terms?

When we remove all the advertisement paraphernalia, the concepts, ritualistic chauvinism around the phenomena of spirituality, what simply remains is "breathing consciously." That's all. Nothing else.

Human being as a physical entity of a community of trillion cells is being conscious of the breath that is either flowing in and out or not flowing at all, and is just aware of the breath happening or not happening. No other thought. Just conscious eternal awareness.

Either we are being conscious or not being conscious. If we are being conscious then there is an eternal awareness or else it is not. The choice "to be aware" or "not to be aware" is what we have to make.