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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.

Identity: Whats yours?

Identity: Whats yours?

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Imagine this:
You wake up one morning, only to find yourself in another body. Maybe even the opposite gender. You walk out into the streets, only to meet ‘you’, walking around, doing exactly the things you do, as if the absence of your consciousness has made no difference whatsoever. How will you feel?

And how will you feel that all of a sudden in ‘this’ body, you don’t like the things you used to, your height is different, you tend to dress differently. What if everything you knew about yourself was now different?

I know its never going to happen. But this simple exercise gives you an idea of what things you tend to attach to yourself as your ‘identity’.

What do you consider your identity? Is it the way you dress? Or your best qualities? Or your addictions? Or those million little things about yourself that you forget at large, but are so used to?

I’ve heard the phrase ‘don’t want to lose my identity’ very often when people talk about marriage. Thats probably ok, provided it doesn’t miss out on progressive growth.

But what if our ‘identity’ is preventing our progress? There are certain things we believe about ourselves.
‘I never cook’
‘I can’t stand up for myself’
‘I always misbehave with that person’

No! It doesn’t always have to be that way! When we need to change a long-standing behavioral pattern, there is always a resistance. Subconsciously we’re thinking ‘If I change this attitude, then I won’t be me anymore’ and it is accompanied by the fear of being a different person. Is it really worth holding on to your negative traits, just so you can remain ‘you’?

As the sages say, the biggest hindrance in your progress is your ego. The ‘I’ factor. The person that you think you are. Let go. You are not your qualities, they are just there to serve you – so pick only the best!

Change The World

Change The World

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The state of your world is in your hands

I came across an article the other day. It is an article that states facts that most of us wouldn’t want to believe. I would highly encourage you to go through this beautiful article by Joe Vitale about a method of healing called ho’oponopono.

I think it will test the limits of your belief, because this system does what almost no one likes – it puts all the responsibility squarely on your shoulders. It is as simple as this. If you believe it, you can change the world. If you don’t, you can continue to blame the world.

Change is such an intriguing word, evoking both fear and excitement within us. What will it bring? Will it be easy or tough? Will it be big or small? But change isn’t just about the unavoidable effects of passing time – it can also be something we choose. Improvement and growth are changes too. Are you looking for that kind of change? Are you willing to kill the nastiest parts of you so that you can grow?

We always want others to change. Somehow it isn’t a very exciting prospect when it comes to ourselves. We’re so used to the kind of person we’ve become, negatives and all. But wouldn’t you want to be the best person you can be? What if someone makes you meet a rich, successful, powerful, kind, loving and happy person – who looked just like you… and then you found out that it IS you, but when fully developed? Would you be able to live with the half-baked, underdeveloped person you’ve let yourself become? No. And that is why we need to change.

Ok so now you’re wondering, the title talks about changing the world, why am I trying to change myself then? That is because when you change yourself, you change the world. As the article above elaborates, it isn’t just about perception, it is real. When you want someone to change, ask yourself how you can improve instead.

The world is a mirror. When someone is nasty to you, it is really just a reflection of your own nasty self. So if you want a nasty person to change, look for the nasty aspects of yourself. When you nail it, you’ll be surprised how the other person changes.

It isn’t the easy way out, but it is a sure-shot one, and one that will benefit you and help you improve as a person too. We are all just a manifestation of the same universe, the same God. And therefore a change in you will reflect in the world. Because when you grow, the universe evolves. We can change the world. We can help it grow. And we will.

Can You Prevent Death?

Can You Prevent Death?

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Almost everyone I know, believes that doctors can save them or their relatives from sure death. I’ve seen and heard of many cases where a person went to the doctor with a major or a minor complaint, only to be told that if they didn’t operate on him or her within a few days, he or she may pass away. The person and the relatives then went into a complete panic, resorting to foolish decisions and a number of operations to ‘save their life’.

When we were at Akshardham, Delhi, we were shown a video of Swaminarayan’s life. At one point of time, he chose to meditate under a tree in the forest, when he was informed by a nearby ashram that a man-eating tiger was on the prowl, and would he please take shelter inside for the night. He asked just one question, enough to silence them all. ‘Do you think the doors of your ashram can keep death away?’

Let me add that a few months later, I watched a program on television, that talked of a man – injured and disabled – who spent an entire night unable to move in the African jungles alone and survived unharmed, something that no one could imagine. A man cannot die before his time. Neither can he postpone his death.

Do you think the doors of your ashram can keep death away?
Let me change that. Do you think the doctor can keep death away? Do you really think so? Doctors can prevent suffering. But death? No. However, man is so afraid of death that he binds himself in all kinds of beliefs about it. He thinks that if he pays the doctor enough, he’ll survive. He dies anyway, but the doctor gets richer. People come to me too, when alopathic treatments have failed, thinking that maybe working with their energies will help them avoid death. Well, I’m sorry! No one can prevent death, not me, not you, and not even the best doctor in the world!

There are usually three reasons for sicknesses. The minor diseases usually come for cleansing some negativities from our body. If it involves doctors, then it is usually for clearing past-life debts with the doctor. There are times when people try every possible therapy to no avail, and one fine day, something works like magic – that is because they have cleared all the debts and were probably destined to be cured only by that particular doctor. The third reason for disease, which is slightly rarer, is a drastic change of life-direction. We’ve heard of NDEs and other major sicknesses that changed the entire perspective of that person – they belong to this category. Ofcourse, disease cannot be classified into only one of these reasons, it is often a combination.

Well, now that we’ve understood that death cannot be prevented or postponed, what do we do about it? We need to understand that death is not THE END. You will probably come back to earth and most probably be born or married into the same family! Even if you do not believe in reincarnation, don’t let death scare you. Understand that we are afraid of it because we don’t know anything about it, because religious books scare us about it and because nature has programmed every living being to resist death. The next step is to stop fighting it. By running after doctors trying to prevent death, one will only make his last days more miserable, and spend his last days in a dingy green and white funny-smelling room, probably half conscious and not even able to bid his relatives goodbye.

We all want to make the best of life. Why not also make the best of death? Don’t fight it. Accept it as a certainity, and accept it with grace.

The Self Destruct Mode

The Self Destruct Mode

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When I first learned Reiki healing, I was told not to be sympathetic with my patients. ‘What?’ I thought, ‘sympathy is good!’ No, I was told. Empathise. Sympathy is a strict no-no.

And with so many years into healing now, I realise how damaging sympathy can be. Everyone says they want to be ‘healed’, but not all truly, genuinely, want it. This category of people subconsciously enjoys the misery they are in, while outwardly projecting their helplessness – and they often convince themselves too, that their misery is out of their hands.

I have, with sadness, watched too many people self-destruct in this fashion, without the slightest idea of what they were doing. These are the people which make the toughest patients – because how can you help someone who does not want to help themself?

Do you do it?
So how do we distinguish between those who genuinely want to get out of their misery, and those who enjoy it? The first detector here is sympathy. How many people know about your problems? Do you tell everyone the tough times you’re going through? If you’ve told more than one or two people about your problems – you know you’re looking for sympathy. And you know that you enjoy your misery.

The Energy Explanation
Sympathy causes a transfer of energy from the sympathiser to the ‘victim’. So those who enjoy the sympathy of others are usually people who are addicted to this technique of gaining energy. Their subconscious mind thinks like this – if people sympathise with you, you feel energised, so tell them all your problems. And then their subconscious invites more problems, thereby making their lives more miserable, so that they have more sob stories to tell. Its a vicious cycle.

If you talk about your joys more than your sorrows, then you know you are heading on the right track.

The Shrugging off of Responsibilities
As a healer, I have another easy technique to know whether the person is really keen on getting out of a problem – I just give them a simple task, something which they must do to improve the situation. And that separates the wheat from the chaff.

If you tell an obese person to avoid chips one day in a week, and get a “Nooooo, I can’t!” reply, you know that they aren’t interested in [i]doing[/i] anything to come out of their situation. They just don’t want to shoulder any responsibility!

The Remedy
Acceptance is the first step towards improvement. If you realise that you are addicted to sympathy, the realisation itself will start wearing off the effects, since everytime to try to gain sympathy, you’ll be reminded of what you are trying to do. Once the awareness comes in, you will start to alter things subconsciously.

Change is not easy, and it gets tougher when it comes to issues of harnessing energy. Learning reiki, or starting with meditation at this stage will help, as it will help you get energy directly from the universe, and you will not have to depend on sympathy to fulfil your needs.

And then, you can start to visualise yourself the way you want yourself to be – and imagine yourself taking up responsibilities, owning up for your actions and your life. Imagine yourself in control of your mind and body, and your emotions.

Finally… I would like to stress on the awareness factor. Observe – yourself and others. Observe everything around you like an outsider, and watch yourself react to situations. Ask yourself why you react the way you do. And if the answer does not satisfy you, then rectify that behaviour. Three simple words. Observe. Detect. Act.