CHANGE OF HEART

In today's world, we are blessed to be surrounded by so much knowledge. In fact we are almost swimming in an ocean of knowledge. We have the best of spiritual books, best of the speakers who share deep wisdom still we feel there has been 'no' or 'very minimal' tangible transformation in our lives. Why? This could be one reason...We somehow inadvertently believe that just having access to knowledge will guarantee us success in spiritual life.

But one may argue, Is knowledge not sufficient! True, knowledge is the first step to success. But it's not the only step.

People say knowledge is power, but it is only potential power, latent power. Applied knowledge is power. Only when knowledge is applied in our lives can true transformation begin. 

That means we need to put some internal effort to realise the knowledge. It's not an automatic process. There's a difference between theoretical realisation and actual, true realisation. Theoretical realisation is knowledge in the head, but actual realisation is knowledge in the heart. We tend to confuse both.

So, how does knowledge go from head to heart, how does information become transfomation? For that, first we must genuinely want transformation - we must genuinely want knowledge to reach our hearts. That means we have to be greedy for it, we can't be satisfied with mere knowledge in the head. You see, we live in a ' YES Universe'. That means whatever we want The Universe or  God says Yes to it. So the first and most important step is to intensify our desire to want transformation. 

Secondly, for God to understand that we genuinely want transformation, we need to show Him our eagerness by our action. We tend to think of getting knowledge as a passive process, but the fact is that it is one of the most active process involving internal action.  So the action steps that help in speeding the process of converting information to transformation are - 

1) Read or hear

2) understand

3) meditate

4) digest

5) apply

Just like a cow who eats grass and keeps mulching on it to digest it thoroughly or like a student who is desperate to top his exams, goes back to his lessons again and again till he has internalised his learning, similarly we need to put some efforts from our side to keep going back to what we have read or heard, ponder on it's meaning, try to see how it applies to us. 

As someone rightly said - It is not what others tell us that can change us, it is what we tell ourselves from what we heard from others that can change us.

Few tips to internalise our knowledge -

1) Reflective reading

An interesting and the best way to read or hear is after we have read any spiriual book or heard any lecture, we need to take few minutes to stop and ask ourselves questions like what did I understand, how can I apply this wisdom in my life. This is called REFLECTIVE READING or HEARING.

2) Apply Now

One of the common mistakes we do when we get knowledge is we fail to implement it immediately. We wait for the right time to come to apply it our lives. But the fact is that the right time has already come - it's NOW. This one small tip can literally open the door to transformation in our lives.

3) Sharing

One of the best ways for knowledge to seep inside us is to share with others what knowledge we have acquired. 

In essence what we are doing through all this endeavor is to show God that we are sincere in our pursuit of transformation. When our signal reaches Him then and only then can knowledge seep from our head to our heart. Otherwise it will be head-deep not heart-deep.

- Achyut Gopal Das