Being Rooted in Ourselves

These are few questions which will put us in touch with our true self, our essential nature. The following can be a simple, but powerful daily meditation.

- Are we the constantly changing life situations that we go through or are we the constant underlying life below the life situations?

- Who are we? Who were we before this life, who will we be after this life?

- Who are we without our names and our life stories?

- Are we human beings with a spiritual experience or spiritual beings with a human experience?

- Are we our feelings or the feeler of our feelings?

- Are we our thoughts or the witness of our thoughts?

Answers to these questions are beyond the grasp of the mind and intellect, they put us in touch with our true spiritual nature, our very soul.

As long as our sense of identity comes from our life situations, thoughts and feelings, we will be constantly tossed around, face constant anxiety and instability of mind. But if we derive our sense of identity from our spiritual nature we can hope to experience stability and peace of mind irrespective of our external situations, just like an ocean, which appears very rough and agitated on the surface but deep down it is calm and serene.

We need to learn and practice the techniques to connect to our inner world on a regular basis. A tiny glimpse into our true nature is all that we need for the puzzle of life to fall in place.

As it is said - The only way to solve the problems of this world, is to transcend it.

- Achyut Gopal Das

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KEEPING THE MUSIC ON...

Yesterday night while sleeping I played on some devotional Bhajans on my mobile in a very low volume. In the early morning while I was awake, all of a sudden the music stopped playing. As you guessed it rightly - the mobile got discharged and it switched off. I was thinking that my life is like this mobile, anytime it can get fully discharged and stop functioning. After all, our body is also a mechanical material device like a mobile. That the body is going to fall dead is a given fact. What is important is what we do with our short life? I prayed to be like this mobile spending my life constantly chanting the glories of the Lord (the real music) till the last moment of my life - till the body switches off. Then our soul will be transferred to the spiritual kingdom where the music (chanting the glories of the Lord) is always on because the bodies there never ever switch off. Achyut Gopal Das

A DEVOTEE OF SUBSTANCE

By changing our externals our internals is not going to change. By wearing dhoti - kurta, our desires are not going to change. By wearing a Vaishnava tilak, our desires are not going to change. Yes, the external appearance of a devotee is an important aspect of Bhakti and it does have some effect on our consciousness but it is not the all in all of being a devotee. The real challenge is to bring changes from within. Donning the dress of a devotee externally is difficult but not that difficult - the real difficultly is in donning the attire of a devotee internally because who we are is not a product of our externals but our internals. God doesn't see our externals, He is more interested in our internals. The world may be impressed with the externals but God is impressed only by the internals. A devotee is not a person of form but a person of substance. Our internals change not by changing our externals but by working on changing our internals. - Achyut Gopal Das

SEEING THE WORLD FEELINGLY

In a play written by Shakesphere, King Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?". Gloucester, who was blind answers: "I see the world feelingly." Shouldn't we also see the world and others with feeling of love and compassion. The problem is as soon as we become selfish and identify ourselves with our mind and senses, we disconnect ourselves from our own feelings and thereby we disconnect ourselves from the feeling of others too. This is when, we reduce people to mere commodity whose only purpose is to satisfy our selfish desires . Selfishness makes one insensitive to the needs and feelings of others. History is filled with stories of people like Ravan and Kamsa who didn't mind inflicting pain and suffering on people because of their own selfishness. In the Ramayana, there is the character of Queen Kaikeyi. When she became selfish and started to think of her own interests and enjoyment, she became so ruthless and hard-hearted that she coul...

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