Skip to main content

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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THE BREATHING BELLOWS

Every morning when I wake up and notice my breathing and observe my chest swelling up and down being pumped with air, I invariably remember a verse from the Srimad-bhagvatam which states that our breathing is like the breathing of the bellows of a blacksmith. Both the bellow and our body is made of leather. The bellow may feel that it is breathing on it's own and is fully independent but, it does not know that as soon as the blacksmith stops pumping air in it, it will stop breathing and lay lifeless. Similarly, we may be proud of our breathing and our life and may feel fully independent but, we don't realise that as soon as God decides to stop pumping air into our system, our body will stop breathing and lay lifeless.  What is there to be proud of when we don't even have control over our breath?  We should be grateful to God for giving us the wonderful opportunity and gift to breathe and live. And, the way we express that gratitude is by using ...

THE POWER OF QUESTIONS

The quality of answers in our life depends on quality of questions we ask. Special prerogative of the human mind is that it can think and ask questions. Given a problem, we have the ability to find solutions. The ability for making inquiries is in-built in us. That's why one of the most important medium of knowledge comes through questions and answers. It's not astonishing then to understand why both the most important Vedic scriptures - the Bhagvat-Gita and the Srimad-Bhagvatam are in a question-answer format. But not everyone is interested to ask questions and find solutions to problems that they face. Most people prefer to embrace a life of unthinking - "of playing dead", they prefer to run away from problems rather than find solutions to them. Why? For the simple fact that the answers - the truth may not always be palatable and the more difficult part is that, it may be demanding of us. We may have to leave our comfort zone and tread an unknown path. The e...

THE JOURNEY OF EXCELLENCE TO EXCELLENCE

" We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. "   - Aristotle I generally don't like to speak about myself, I am a very shy person in that sense. But here, I would like to share a small story from my life just to make an important point. You see, most lessons we need to learn are stored in our past, we just need to visit it once in a while to refresh the lessons learnt without getting caught up in it. THE EXPERIENCE OF EXCELLENCE I started chanting 16 rounds of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra and became committed to spiritual life, towards the end of my 11th std. This was way back in 1999. During this time, there were few dozen devotees in ISKCON, all over Goa. When I entered 12th std, I decided to focus fully on my studies and top the college. I thought, this would be the best way to preach to all my friends - by showing them how spiritual life helps one achieve success in life. And, it was also the best way to protect my spiritual life ami...