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Author: Ashwita

Learned Responses

Learned Responses

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An article I read once, talked about a scientific study with a monkey, a banana and a water hose. The monkey was kept in a cage, with the banana at a height, with a ladder right underneath it. Every time the monkey tried to climb the ladder and grab the banana, ice cold water was sprayed on it. It tried numerous times, with the same result. Eventually it learned its lesson – reaching for the banana = ice cold water. And this led to fear, and even preventing other monkeys from reaching out for the banana.

Our lives are just the same. Our personalities are nothing but a set of learned behaviours. Fortunately or not, the situations in life change. The ice shower is taken away. But the fear remains, the learned behaviour stays. Many even develop a paranoia towards bananas altogether. Is it sensible? No. Is it common? Yes.

So what impact does this have, in our own lives and in the lives of those around us? If we observe ourselves, we realise that we rarely react to a present circumstance. Whenever we react, we are effectively reacting to a set of similar previous situations. And we react that way, because that particular way worked for us in the past. What we don’t realise, is that circumstances have changed, and the same things don’t work anymore.

Typical examples of this shift are
1) When we start working
2) when people get married, or even go to hostels and make new close friends
3) When people around us themselves change, for example children becoming adults/ getting married, or parents getting older and helpless.

In the first case, we would tend to behave around our bosses similar to the way we behave around parents – because this is how we are used to tackling authority. Ofcourse, if the boss behaves very differently from your parents, even if that behaviour is better, there will be a level of discomfort, because we don’t know how to handle this new behaviour.

In the second instance, we react in the same way with our spouses/ room mates as we did with our siblings or parents. What usually happens here, is that our behavioural patterns are so strong that even if our mates are completely different from our parents/ siblings, we will eventually recreate this behaviour in them, because this is what we are used to. If you’ve found yourself telling your spouses to stop doing the same things to you that your mother or father does (in a negative way), then you know that this has happened already.

The third scenario is the most difficult to adjust to, because we are used to associating certain behaviours with certain people, and suddenly the same things don’t work anymore. It requires far greater work adjusting here, because nothing has really changed – there is no change of scene, location, or life patterns. Merely the person has changed.

How do we apply this to our own behaviour? By questioning ourselves regularly. Everytime you see yourself reacting to a situation, ask yourself whether that behaviour was productive, or simply a waste of time and effort. If the answer is the latter too frequently, you know you have work on your hands. We could also approach this the other way around. If we are starting to feel helpless about not being able to get through to a particular person, we could start analysing what our basic attitude and behaviour is with that person, and whether this pattern is still valid.

An understanding that every reaction is a learned response helps us accept others more easily too. Once this concept is clear, you start to understand that no one is really reacting to you – it is not personal. They are merely replaying a response they learned long long ago, and they really don’t know what else works in that situation. So the next time you are puzzled or hurt by someone’s behaviour, give them the benefit of doubt, shower them with love, and move on!

Getting What You Want

Getting What You Want

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The latest trend has seen people asking me how they can influence their surroundings. While some want to learn hypnosis so they can influence other people, others are interested in the law of attraction to get what they want. Yet others have simply asked me how they can use Reiki to change their current circumstances.

And as usual, I tell them all the same thing – the only change you should be trying to make, is within. The law of attraction, the secret, and other such information have become so popular lately because it is so easy to make money by promising people what they want. Tell a person you can help him make his dreams come true, and he’ll pay you whatever you charge. Tell him, on the other hand, that you will teach him to accept his present circumstances, and he’ll probably walk away with a smirk. And that’s why you see so many books and stories of the law of attraction. Because it sells. Not because it works.

It’s just plain, simple logic. Why would you want to attract things? Because you want to be happy. And…? Anyone with a basic background of spirituality will know that happiness is a choice, a choice you can make this instant. So, what are you waiting for? Why wait to get that big house, that big car or that big fat pay check to be happy? And no, those things are not going to make you happy anyway, but then it’s going to take you a lot longer to realise that. By the time you get that, you’ll want something else, and so on until lightning strikes you one day and makes you seek true happiness.

Here’s a simple formula

Law of attraction = Possibly, a means to get what you want

Getting what you want <> Happiness

I’m not saying that if you attract things into your life you will not be happy. Attracting things and happiness are simply unrelated. The strange part is, if you are happy, you will probably not feel the need to waste your time attracting so many things, and focus instead on remaining in the present, which by the way, is the secret to real spiritual growth and true happiness. You will probably still get all those things because you are happy from within, but that is besides the point.

Bottom line? If we focussed on healing ourselves and accepting the current situation instead of focussing on trying to change everything and everyone around us, yes, we’d be happy. This doesn’t mean we take everything in life lying down. Where you can make a difference, please, go ahead and make it. Where you can’t, accept, and thank God for giving you another opportunity to learn and grow.

Faith is a bare minimum essential here, which is probably why so many scientific studies show that religious people are happier than atheists. The basic ingredient for happiness is faith. Faith that everything is going to be alright. Not in the sense that the situation will change for the better, but in the sense that we will have the strength to cope, and to learn to be happy in this situation too. That we will learn to be able to make the choice to be happy, no matter what.

The first step is to accept the current situation, the second to allow ourselves to feel miserable about it. And when you’re done with these two steps, you’ll realise that it’s ok, that the current situation is completely fine, and that you could live with it for the rest of your life, even though it would be convenient if things changed. This is when you could use the law of attraction to make your life easier, if you feel like. And this is also when you’d be a lot more effective at it, getting results almost instantaneously. But the point is, before you changed the situation, you would have learned a very valuable lesson – you would have learned how to be happy in that miserable situation too. And taken your capacity to be happy, one step further.

Finding Your Purpose in Life

Finding Your Purpose in Life

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Many people come to me for help, because they want to find out their purpose in life. These are perfectly normal people, with good health, good families, good financial statuses, and good jobs. But something is missing. Something to live for.

And like I do for everything we explore, I ask them the same question – ‘Why?’.

If you’re one of those feeling lost and trying to explore the purpose of your life, I’d like you to ask the same question to yourself. ‘Why do I need a purpose to live?’. I know it may sound quite ridiculous to be asked that question. The most common answer I get is that they want to be able to make a difference to people’s lives, and not waste their time on a meaningless job.

It seems quite legitimate to want and need a purpose to live. Is it really? Just look at the one generation above us – our parents. Most of this generation spent their lives working in a monotonous job, possibly as a clerk in a bank, working 9 to 5, having the same routine every single day for 3 or 4 decades. When they never needed a purpose of life, why do we?

Much as we’d like to believe that we’re generation ‘Next’, and ahead of our ancestors, I beg to differ. These were people totally content with their lives. They lived in a small house, possibly a rented one, had cheap furniture, clothes bought from the roadside vendors, a small two-wheeler for a family of four and a monotonous 9 to 5 clerical job. Most people in our generation own a house by the time they are 30, have an interior designer furnish it, buy expensive branded clothes and shoes, drive around in expensive cars, have challenging jobs that consume all their time – and surprise! They are still not satisfied with their lives.

I believe that the success and progress of a generation is not measured by how much they have and how much they want, but by how much happier and content they are. Are we really better than the previous generation? What is the difference?

The difference can be summed in just one very small word. EGO. Yes, thats all. The previous generation lived as a society, followed its rules, and if you were in India, married people chosen by their parents and had no problem with that. This generation is individualistic, doesn’t care what others think, focusses on looking good, rich and successful, and doesn’t care what inner realities are. We cannot be insignificant, we MUST make a mark. This is why we have to have style in everything we do, this is why we don’t mind paying more than double the money to buy clothes that have a stamp on them, and take loans to buy expensive things we clearly cannot afford at present – because we want to feel that we are different from others, better, smarter.

Therefore, being stuck in a seemingly meaningless job drives us crazy with desire to ‘be’ something. I say seemingly meaningless because no job is truly meaningless. Everybody has a role in the society, and everyone’s work is important. It seems that our work is useless when we don’t see the results, and don’t get any adulation. And that is when we start hunting for a purpose to live. In effect, we are just looking for appreciation and rewards for our actions.

So if you are asking the universe everyday why it is not showing you the purpose of your life, think again. What is it you are really looking for? Every minute, every second of our lives is spent in progressing towards the ‘purpose’ of this life. If you were destined to be a singer, but you were an engineer for 5 years, that period greatly adds to your wisdom and progress in many ways, both directly and indirectly. When you are ready, you will automatically head towards your ‘purpose of life’, if you have one, in the first place. And every other moment until then is important because it is making you ready for it.

The real purpose of our life is to grow, and to be a better person today than yesterday. If you are working on that, you are already working at great speed toward the purpose of your life, and you don’t need an ego-satisfying role to get there. If you’re really keen to start making a difference to people’s lives, start with the adage ‘Charity begins at home’.

Focus on helping the people closest to you, and starting with having faith in their abilities and wisdom. Respect them, their personal space and their needs. Focus on becoming the best version of you there can be. When you are truly capable of helping others, you do not need to change jobs or locations, help will happen naturally to everyone around you, without effort. Colleagues, friends and even strangers will automatically approach you for help, and you will be able to help them without even trying

Poison for the Soul

Poison for the Soul

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Are you keeping the poison in?

What would we not do for the ones we love? We pamper them, show our affection, care for them, protect them, and sometimes, even sacrifice ourselves for the sake of their wellbeing.

It is the last aspect where we go wrong. And it is the last aspect that this article is all about. We can save one person from another, but what do we do when a person becomes his own worst enemy? The worst part is, we don’t even realise how we are damaging ourselves, because it is masked in the feeling that we are making our families happy.

I’ve met many people who have been the pillars of their families. In the process of supporting everyone else, they tend to neglect themselves. Their own physical, emotional and other needs are left unexpressed and unprioritised. For example, a boy I met recently suddenly had to support his mother when his father passed away. Having promised his father that he would take care of her, he felt pressurised to never cry or get emotional about his father’s death. Being the only son, he was now expected to live up to his father’s dreams, or the mother would get upset about how she could not bring him up properly. He loved his mother, and he wanted to see her happy. So he never let her know how difficult things were for him, he never talked to her or let her know when he was going through hell, because he didn’t want her to feel guilty. As a result, he ended up carrying a huge emotional baggage that manifested itself through various physical and emotional problems.

This is an extreme scenario, but this happens in every house, all the time. Every family has one major pillar of support. One person chooses to sacrifice himself so that the others can ‘prosper’. These unfulfilled needs and suppressed emotions accumulate and rot inside the person, poisoning their souls. Eventually this poison either causes problems or comes out in other damaging ways, such as the person losing interest in the most demanding family members and/ or becoming hostile.

As a society, we also take part in making others suppress their negative emotions. When a friend is depressed, we take them out shopping or for a drink to ‘cheer them up’. What we are really doing, is telling that person that it is not ok to be depressed. When a child cries, our first reaction is, ‘don’t cry, thats not as embarassing/ hurtful/ painful as you think’! Our whole focus is on supressing our emotions – whether sorrow, misery or anger. Some of us are so good at this, infact, that we believe we don’t feel these emotions at all!

A client recently mentioned to me how he envies his colleague, who is just never angry. Even in very difficult situations, he would at most become serious, but never rude or loud. What a wonderful person! But is this behaviour really good for him? Probably not. There is a very good chance he does feel angry, and feels frustrated that he cannot express it.

If there is an emotion you are quite confident you never feel, chances are you’ve got plenty of it just buried under several layers, waiting and hoping to be healed one day. But before we reach deep hidden and suppressed emotions, we’ve got to reach the ones above them! We’ve got to learn to let ourselves feel – by first acknowledging our emotions in the current situation, and then letting ourselves and our dear ones know that it is ok to feel bad, and that this feeling too shall pass.

What we all need to tell ourselves, is that unless we take care of ourselves, it is impossible that we take genuine care of others. While we do get ourselves into situations where we feel that we have no choice, this is nothing but an illusion, and often an excuse to escape harder choices. There is always a way out, and not only do we need to find it, but stick to it no matter how hard it is, for our own sakes and for the sakes of those we love. We’ve got to let family know we have our emotions, and are comfortable dealing with emotional pain. This is also a very important lesson for parents – if your children see you suppress your emotions, they will learn this from you and imitate it – if they see that you are comfortable with both positive and negative emotions, they will realise that negative emotions are not a reason to panic, and will go away just the way they came. This will not only ensure you have no suppressed emotions, but also help them grow as indivuals, better capable of handling not only a loved one’s emotional turbulence, but also their own.

The next time you feel depressed, angry or hurt, start by asking yourself what you are really feeling. Is the deeper emotion that of shame? Or did your ego get hurt that you allowed yourself to trust a phoney person? Or is it simply that one need is not being fulfilled? Once you come face to face with what you are really feeling, allow yourself to feel it, instead of getting appalled at your feelings and trying to fight them. Remind yourself that it is natural to feel this way in this particular situation, and that this feeling will pass in a while. With practice, this will come naturally to you, and not only with you deal with your own emotions, but also help others deal with their own!

On a Spiritual Quest

On a Spiritual Quest

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When will your journey end?

Fads are such a part of the society today. Fashion fads, diet fads, even toy fads… and now I see a new thing around me – spiritual fads.

Why are we spiritual? Some of us turn to spirituality for solace from the problems of life, some others to make easy money, yet others for a wide variety of reasons I cannot probably begin to list.

There are two of these reasons I’d like to list here though. Some people are spiritual out of a genuine interest, a genuine desire to transcend and merge with the universal consciousness. Most others, although they’d like to believe that they belong to this category too, are actually ‘spiritual’ because of the highs it brings with it. It is usually rare for the second category to ditch the ego massage and join the first category, but unfortunately, it is very easy for those in the first category to join the second.

The spiritual path is a long and winding one and it is so easy to get lost. Even easier, when one’s companions are lost too, and swear to you about the beauty of the road they have taken. The most beautiful roads are not necessarily the right ones. Sometimes it is the ugliest, most boring, barren route that’ll get you to your destination.

So how do people go astray anyway? I’ve been seeing quite a few examples around me lately. We get attracted to this path due to various reasons. Some of us have an inner calling right from birth, some of us discover it in the quest of solving a life problem – but we all start somewhere. But one route is always so boring, so wants to explore other options. After all, how will we know that we have made the right choice if we don’t look at the other ptions?

Reiki, gets so boring after a while. Every path is, infact, very boring after a point so I’ve been told. After the initial kick starts to wear off, we start getting restless. The excitement that was there in the beginning has faded, and while this means that we’re supposed to get serious about the route now, we’ve gotten addicted to the excitement – we want more. And so we go, jumping from one method to another, chasing the excitement, chasing the power.

Spiritual growth brings with it a variety of powers, a variety of perceptive abilities. You might suddenly find that you are able to read others’ thoughts. Or see their auras and predict their health and energy patterns. Or more! These are rewards that are bestowed on you on the path, or maybe you could also consider them tests to see whether you are still going to stick to the path or get stuck with the new gift. But things aren’t even that simple today. Today instead of being ‘gifts’ these abilities can be learned. What a pity.

WHY?

This is a question I ask my students to ask themselves, when they come up to me with new requests. Someone wants to learn crystal healing. Someone else wants to learn astral travel. I’ve been asked for more – teach me to use the pendulum, teach me to talk to my angels, oh and to others’ angels too… it never stops!

Or maybe it does, with a simple question – WHY? Why do you want to learn these things?

When you start going deep within, you start to realise, no, this isn’t really part of my spiritual progress. I want to believe that it is part of my spiritual progress because I really want that extra power. I want to feel more powerful, I want to be able to find out people’s secrets, I want to feel superior to others. If you’re thinking no, thats not the reason, I want to learn it because I want to help people, think again. No one really helps anyone else. If you have a strong desire to ‘help’ others, it is nothing but the subtle ego talking – you need a deeper analysis.

Yes, it helps to be able to communicate with your angels, one must learn to do that if one gets the chance, because its like getting direct access to your astral gurus. But things like ‘stronger’ methods of healing, or finding out more about others, whether through aura scanning or other techniques, are in my view nothing but a major detour from the path of spiritual progress, if not a totally wrong direction. I have nothing against these systems – professional healers might use it if they are directed by the forces to do so. But pray tell me, what use is this to a layman except for ego massage?

The most evident, and yet the most hidden aspect of true spiritual growth is a simple one – hard work. When you’re on the right track, things start to become boring, and then they become worse – because past karmas then start to surface and one experiences apparently meaningless suffering. This is when we need to grin and bear it, and just let go. Don’t run around in circles in the quest of removing something that is actually a removal itself – a removal of the mess left behind by your past.

Let us promise ourselves that we’ll stay focussed on the goal. The sweetmeats on the way are of no relavance. Enjoy it while it lasts, and then forget about it and focus on the next step. Annihilation of the ego. Merging with the universe.
Aham Brahmasmi.

6 Steps to Loving Yourself

6 Steps to Loving Yourself

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Love yourself, you’re a unique, special, wonderful creation of God!

A student recently asked me, how can ‘I’ love ‘myself’? Wouldn’t there have to be two of me to make that happen? This is so true. However, for most people this is an understanding that comes much later, because they’re too caught up in hating or criticizing themselves. So if you think there is no one to love, move on to another post. If you hate yourself and want to change that, this is for you.

Now, imagine you have a plant. You love the plant. What does your loving the plant involve?

If you truly love the plant, you will ensure it gets proper sunshine, manure and water at all times, trim and prune it every once in a while and you’ll probably also spend time talking to the plant and showering it with your love, to ensure that it grows and radiates with health and happiness.

1. Sunshine

Loving yourself is pretty much the same in concept. If you truly want to love yourself, you need to ensure that you get proper sunshine – i.e. exposure to the bright side of life – happy thoughts, spirituality, love, and this comes with surrounding yourself with the right kind of people and if that’s not possible, the right kinds of books and tv programs (dramatic soap operas, reality shows like Big boss, news channels do NOT fall into this category, they’re disease).

2. Manure

You need to ensure you have good manure and that you are properly grounded and do not let your ego take flight. Use the stinky, smelly stuff that life throws at you to propel you to the top, learn new lessons and grow into a better person! Take care of your ‘roots’, i.e., remain humble and have your feet firmly planted on the ground.

One simple question helps to keep the focus on yourself instead of on everyone else – ‘what is the lesson life is trying to teach me, through this incident?’

3. Water

The watering – fuel for growth, as well as cleansing. One needs to monitor one’s thoughts and eliminate anything that is counter-productive to growth. Grab any opportunity to grow and make full use of it. Whenever you find a fault within yourself, yes, accept your faults, but don’t stop there – start changing yourself and work on becoming a better person so that you don’t have that fault anymore.

4. Trimming and Pruning

When you start to grow, you’ll realize that you need the trimming and pruning every once in a while. Growth and change are not permanent and often, we need to unlearn our lessons and move in a new direction. When a plant grows in a direction we do not want it to grow, we cut off a part of the branch and allow it to grow in a new direction.

When we realise that a part of our personality is resisting or hindering our growth in the direction we desire, then we need to (lovingly) clip that attitude and let go of past lessons. For example, a child with nasty class-mates might have learned that the best way to defend itself is to fight and bully its peers. However, once an adult, it will need to let go of that attitude to be able to succeed at its workplace.

5. Take responsibility for yourself

When we don’t love ourselves, we lack the motivation in doing things for ourselves. We then expect that those we spend our time on, should spend time on us, but this is rarely the case, because usually those who don’t care about themselves don’t get cared for by anyone else. Be your own best friend first, invest in yourself.

We try to bring the plant to the perfect state of health again. In the same way when we discover a fault or make a mistake, we don’t start hating ourselves, but start working towards it immediately.

… physically, mentally, emotionally
This means taking care of your diet and exercise for physical health, taking care to watch your thoughts and not take them seriously, for mental health, and surrendering to your feelings and let them come and go, for emotional health.

6. What do YOU want?

Most often, people hate themselves because they’ve been surrounded by critical, judgmental people for too long, and believed them. They then end up filtering their actions and words based on those judgments. In the beginning, it helps to remind oneself that those are just judgments, and ask one question ‘what do I want?’

Closing Remarks

Loving oneself does not give you the license to hurt others. It might be tempting in the beginning to just damn those who have suppressed you, and do whatever you like. But this is the opposite state of where you’ve been and will also bring you pain. Relax into a state where you are really aware of what your needs are, and ensure that those needs are met in a pleasant, comfortable way. It is possible.

Finding the Right Partner

Finding the Right Partner

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We live in a society where it is taboo to be alone. As they age, many singles feel like they’re nearing their expiry date, causing them additional stress over and above their work tensions, and making them feel older as well.

‘I desperately feel the need to have someone to care for me – someone who’ll be bothered whether I’m hungry or healthy’, one friend told me, adding that he wasn’t able to find the girl of his dreams – either he liked them, or they liked him, but it just didn’t seem to happen together. Those who are undergoing the process of ‘looking’ or ‘hunting’ for boys or girls for arranged marriages, are even more agonized. While a girl whined that she’s just not able to find a man who is willing to take a working and independent woman, and one who wouldn’t ask about the dowry before he enquired about her name, another guy friend complained that girls only seemed concerned about his salary, family property and whether he had scope of working abroad.

What we all need to do here is stop and ask ourselves – Does this really have to be this difficult? And to anyone acquainted with the universal laws of attraction (not talking about male-female attraction here), the answer is clear – NO.

No, it doesn’t have to be this difficult. No, they don’t have to suffer this much. No, not everyone in the world is concerned only about money, and no, you don’t have to settle for that last person just because you’re fed up and have lost hope. No.

It can be easy, yes, you can find that one person you’ve been waiting for all your life. Yes, you can have a happy married life, and yes, you can find joy, freedom and growth in a bright and happy relationship after marriage. But is that what you’re really asking for? Let us begin at the beginning.

We’re going to start with looking inside ourselves. There is just one real requirement to finding a partner – a desire to find one. And before you jump in your seats screaming ‘ofcourse I want a partner!!’, wait. Do you really want one? I mean really, really want one? Are you really, truly willing to let your defences down and allow a person to see the deepest, darkest sides of you? Are you really willing to place all your trust and faith in another person? Are you really willing to share every aspect of your life with another person? Yes? Probably not. There is a fear – and that is the fear that prevents that special someone from stepping into your life and sweeping you off your feet. You can’t be swept off your feet if you’re afraid of letting go of the ground. Let go.

Secondly, all our focus is on what we want from that other person, and not on what we can offer to them. We all want someone to care for us, someone to bother about us, someone to worry about us, someone to wait for us until we get home. But are we ready to give yet? Have we ever focussed our attention on being able to give of ourselves? Are we waiting just as desperately to care about someone? To bother, worry, and wait for that special someone? Are we looking forward to loving someone else with all our hearts for all our lives?

Despite the desperate want for that special someone, we’re afraid at the same time that we will lose our freedom. Marriage is looked upon so frequently as a permanent bondage, that it is hard to think of it otherwise. The desire to find a partner, and the fear of being bound do not go together. Fear sabotages any bright plans for the future. That marriage is not bondage, is a topic that requires an entire essay to emphasize the point. Only if a person is not willing to work at marriage, does it change a person for the worse and binds him/ her. If you want to be a person who doesn’t want to give his/ her all to the marriage and doesn’t want to work at it, you’ll be stuck with an unhappy, miserable relationship for the rest of your life, the type your children will look at and say ‘I don’t want to marry because people get miserable after marriage’.

For those who look forward to marriage and are willing to give it their all, it is a completely different experience. If you’re a person who wants to find that life -partner to love, care for and grow with and are willing to change yourself for the better to help the relationship, you’ll find the perfect man/ woman and live the kind of relationship that people will look at and want to emulate. Don’t resist change, embrace it – because these changes make you a better, stronger and happier person – isn’t that the kind of person you want to be?

A happy married life actually adds much more fun to one’s life! One never has to depend on friends to go on a trip, one tends to be more careful about expenses and hence has more money at one’s disposal, salaries are often double to boot, and you have someone who’s always there to help you become a better person – all you need to do is ask! Marriage is the easiest way to bring out the best in you.You can choose whether you want to be stuck and bound after marriage, losing your freedom, or whether you want to enjoy more than you ever have, and celebrate twice the freedom and love you’ve ever experienced in your life. Its your choice, and you have to make it both consciously and subconsciously.

So all you really need to do is take a good look inside your mind, figure out what is bothering you, what you are afraid of, and eliminate it. Thats all – and your life partner will breeze into your life so fast that you won’t even know what hit you. Trust me, I’m not exaggerating. Follow it correctly and you’ll find someone within a couple of months. It really is that fast.

The steps are simple to list, a little difficult to apply, but certainly doable, and bring great results.

1) Identify the emotion / fear that is preventing you from allowing yourself to totally submit yourself to another person.

2) Eliminate the fear/ blockage, talk to someone wise at this point if you have to. Or just talk to a happily married couple and get their views on the topic.

3) Start dreaming about the life you’ll have together. No matter what you do, think about that person. Think about how you’ll cook for each other, how you’ll make your birthdays special, how you’ll go on long drives together, etc. Whatever you do, think, how would this moment be once I find my partner? Dream about him/ her as you fall asleep.

4) Prepare for that person to step into your life. Start saving up for the life you’re going to have together. Look at romantic greeting cards. Stop to look at that wedding dress hanging in the store window. Read articles on how to be a good husband/ wife. Learn cooking. Take the plunge. Believe.

And lastly, LET GO. Several studies have shown that those who are incapable of being happy before finding a partner, are incapable of being happy after finding one. Provided you find the perfect one, it will bring you at most 2 years of a ‘high’. Identify the desire to chase this belief that you have everything except ‘this one last thing’, and drop it. Be happy now. Romance life, dance with every moment and if you’re lucky, you’ll find someone else doing the same dance too.

Finding the Right Guru

Finding the Right Guru

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That which lights up your path isn’t always a special person

Who am I? What am I here for?

We know already, that spiritual progress usually starts with asking questions which do not seem to have easy or clear answers. Questions, for which we seek answers by running pillar to post, asking people whom we think to be wise or great. But does it work?

I recently interacted with someone who directed me to some ashram, along with the words ‘Salvation is not possible without a guru’. This is the saddest misconception in spirituality. I know many who have been searching for a guru for so long, that they have ultimately forgotten what they’re really here to find – bliss.

The concept of ‘guru’ has been twisted and turned by selfish teachers so that their followers stick on. What really is a GURU? One who teaches. Why does this person have to be someone with the knowledge of the vedas alone? Or someone who has attained salvation? That is like saying that the only possible teacher in the world is one with PhD and even 5 year olds must learn only from them. Does it really work that way? No.

Focus not on finding a guru, but on finding a shishya (student) in you. Be a good student, and the lessons will come automatically. You have a teacher in everything around you, living and non-living. When Newton was ready, it just took an apple to teach him about gravity. Be ready to learn from everyone that comes your way, whether elder or younger, friend or enemy.

Be an Observer

A good student observes, and this is the true essence of spirituality. One learns about the universe by looking within. Observe, watch yourself. Maintain your awareness at all times, and watch how you behave, react, and think. Observe others too.

Observation helps you pass a lot more information to your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is a lot better than the conscious, at discovering patterns and at decoding and understanding the information as a whole. When you become a keen observer, you will find that your understanding of the people and the world at large suddenly gets a boost, and you won’t really know why.

When you’re observing and not thinking, your subconscious mind kicks into gear and you’re likely to receive more information – stuff that your subconscious mind has been processing. The subconscious has access to a lot more information than the conscious, and allowing it to process the data you pick up in day to day life is more beneficial. As a result, you will have more ‘gut’ feelings about people and events, feelings that will come to you more easily when you’re thinking less.

Observing is also the essence of meditation, so when you observe without thinking, you are actually meditating with your eyes open. We have such a long way to go, and so much to learn, why waste time? Start right away, watch yourself. What are you feeling, what are you thinking… right now?

Undoing the Damage in You

Undoing the Damage in You

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Are you ready to heal now?

If we analyse a person part by part, separating the good and the bad aspects of that person, we will find some very strong links to childhood. I shall neglect the ‘good’ aspects, because they don’t need any changing.

I believe that a man is always is own worst enemy. Next, come parents.

By using the term enemy, I do not imply that one should stay away from his parents. Indeed, that wouldn’t make any difference at all. By ‘enemy’, I imply self-destructive attitudes, which is why a man is his worst enemy – most damage done to a person is by himself. Now when I say next come parents, it is because whatever damage the parents do to the child, he continues to do it to himself for the rest of his life.

Parents try to do the best job they can, but they are only humans. We all make mistakes and so do parents. They go wrong somewhere, and inflict some kind of pain on us, or some kind of complexes or fears, usually unintentionally. This suffering becomes part of our personality and we subconsciously want to keep suffering in that particular fashion because it makes us feel ‘at home’.

Take, for example, a girl whose parents always told her that she is useless. Although consciously she hates being told that, and is constantly looking for approval, you will find that her best friends and her partner will eventually tell her the same thing – that she is useless. She has grown up with the belief that she is useless, and she continues to live among people who reinforce that belief.

That girl isn’t just an example. That girl, or boy, is you. Whatever damage your parents did to you, you continue to do to yourself today. If you ever find yourself telling anyone ‘Don’t behave like my mom’, or ‘Don’t behave like my dad’, you’ll know what patterns you are following. If your loved ones hurt you in the same way that your parents did, you have some thinking to do. If you suffer the same kinds of problems that your parents suffered, you have some thinking to do. You need to grow out of your childhood.

To start growing out of our childhood, we must first let go of it. And also, learn to forgive our parents. No matter what they did, they were trying to do their best. And in the process, you got hurt a bit, but you can choose to treat yourself differently today. You can choose to love yourself more than your parents did. Remember the things that hurt you in childhood, and forgive yourself, and your parents for it. Let go. It always takes some time and effort, but it is worth it.

The next time you find yourself suffering, look back and see if it happened to you in childhood too, especially if it has happened to you more than once. And then remember the instances when it happened as a child and remember how it felt. And then forgive everyone involved and reverse the programming. If you were told that you will never succeed, then tell yourself that you will succeed even though you messed up then.

Our self-esteem issues, along with relationship problems, are all rooted in our childhood. Unravel it, study it, resolve it, and you will find that you’ve moved ahead greatly. If something, anything, is significantly lacking in your life, that will also take you back to your childhood. We often say that the past is history. It is, I think, high time we actually let it be nothing more than just that. Free yourself from the bonds of the past, be a new person today!

Love and Emotions

Love and Emotions

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Is it love or is it just an emotional addiction?

True love is something  we all covet, but when we stop to think about it, what is true love after all, and how do we recognise it? Does such a thing even exist? Then are all other ‘loves’ false? Yes and no. I believe that there is no difference, but I use the ‘true love’ term anyway, because people seem to call everything else love too.

People seem to mistake what I call ’emotional addictions’ to be love most of the time. An emotional addiction is something that is a very convenient arrangement atleast initially. Something like smoking. All of us have gaps and holes in our emotional personalities, and anyone who fills them is a favourite of ours, because they make us feel nice. But just like any addiction, these relationships slowly start strangulating the person, preventing his growth and making him miserable. It comes to a “can’t live with, can’t live without” situation, because staying with the person is misery, but without that person, one feels completely lost and starved. Just like withdrawal symptoms, actually.

Most relationships are varying degrees of emotional addictions. Where the need is more, the addiction, the bond, is stronger. And in case of separation, the pain is that much unbearable. When you see people wanting to commit suicide after being dumped, you know its a serious case of addiction – the absence of the lover leaves an emotional gap the person cannot handle.

Someone recently told me, “whats wrong if someone fills your emotional needs; if we have needs, obviously it is good if someone fills them”. No. This is why I say life must be a journey of constant self-development, a journey where you are constantly persevering to eliminate your own emotional needs. As long as you have these gaps, you’re susceptible. To steer clear of emotional addictions, you HAVE to work at filling your own gaps.

So now you’re wondering, how do I identify addictions and what is true love anyway? Think of a person you love very much. Now imagine them dead. How will you feel, will you survive? What are your biggest fears – that of being left alone? Or how you will manage the bills or the kids, or who will take care of you?? Those are your gaps. Those fears will tell you where your gaps are being filled.

The mother-child relationship is often hailed as the ideal love relationship because it is not based on need. I’m talking generally, ofcourse, I’ve seen a lot of mothers fail at it. However, generally the mother loves the child no matter what it does. It is not a need-based relationship – you can live away from your mother and you still feel her presence in your heart.

Coming to love, it is non-binding. It is something that helps you grow. When you are in love, you find yourself becoming the best person you ever were. All the best parts of you start blooming and the negatives start getting erased. Two people in love help each other grow, and help each other eliminate their own emotional needs. They’d be making their partners more independent in the process. The most important part of love is loving oneself. Love makes you see the beauty in yourself and realise that you’re special. And this love spills over and benefits everyone around you.

If you find yourself telling your lover ‘I can’t live without you’, think again, you have addiction written all over the relationship. But if you say ‘I can live without you, but I want to spend the rest of my life with you’, you probably have something going.