Spirit + Ritual = Spirituality

========================= THOUGHT PROCESS 1=========================

Lets go through this questionaire:

(1) What are our first thoughts when we wake up in the morning on a Monday morning?
(2) What are our first thoughts when we wake up in the morning on any weekday?
(3) How do we feel when it is Friday?


The answers are (for most of us...):

(1) Oh God! Its monday again...
(2) Let me sleep for some more time... or let me go a bit later.. or should I take the day off ...
(3) TGIF (thank God, its friday)


========================= THOUGHT PROCESS 2=========================


Each of us want to live happily. We work because we want to make money and we intend to live happily. We think that working hard or studying hard will give us the happiness that we are looking for. We think getting a promotion in job, getting a higher degree in university, getting a better post will help us live happily, will help us lead a successful life.


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Aren't the two thought processes that we go through totally contradictory? We want all the wealth in the world; we want to live happily; we want a big post, a big name in the society. We want everything but we are unwilling to put in what it needs to get those. Given an option, most of the times, we want to relax and enjoy but when we are given an option to relax, we are scared about our future, we get frightened to be left behind in the race to the top.


Paramahamsa Nithyananda says, "As a human being, we are gifted with two things - freedom and will. We exercise our freedom in every possible way but we do not exercise our will. We use our freedom to postpone things and relax but we do not have the will to actually sit and work towards what we want."

This is so true. We procrastinate and postpone even our sources of enjoyment. We want everything and we have all the freedom in the world to work towards getting those. But what is missing is our will to actually for it.

We are not intense in whatever we do, that is the problem. At work, which we believe brings us money, name and happiness, we are not intense. We are not enthused enough to really go and work. At the same time, when we are given an opportunity to take a break, we are not intense even to enjoy that. At work, when we go for coffee or tea, how many of us really enjoy that cup of tea and relax completely?

We do not have the will, the intensity and the enthusiasm for anything. Nithyananda says, "Your own lack of intensity and awareness is the main reason for all our stress, worry and all your emotional problems. We blame the external world for everything but the problem really lies inside us."

Nithyananda says beautifully,

"A ritual is a mechanical process till you add spirit to it; then it
becomes a meditation. Similarly, spirituality is all about adding spirit to
life. For most of us life is a mechanical process or a ritual. All we need to
add is spirit to life; then the ritual becomes spirituality."

The meditation and yoga programs like Life Bliss Program (LBP1) and Nithya Yoga, teach only this - adding intensity and awareness, just to enjoy every moment of life. They are not about some mystical stuff labeled as 'spirituality'. They are life solutions to explode in 360 degrees.

Come, enjoy life... enjoy spirituality...

Forgiveness - a Golden Quality

Today it is July 11 or 7/11, as it is called in India. On this fateful day, the bustling city of Mumbai was attacked with seven bombs and hundreds of people died. I was reading an article related to the aftermaths of these bombings and the last few statements of the article moved me. This article tells the story of a son who went searching for his father's body after the bombings. After some investigations, he found that a poor construction laborer had falsely claimed the body hoping that he will get the compensation. The laborer even cremated the body according to Hindu rites. The son was heartbroken that he couldn't see his father's body but he was happy that he atleast got to perform the last rites with his father's ashes. What was most touching was, when police wanted to arrest the laborer for false claims, the son refused to lodge any complaint and forgave the poor laborer.

Forgiveness is beautiful quality, which is rarely found. We are not talking about forgiveness with ego; we are talking about forgiving completely without any ego at all. Most of the times, if somebody does something, we do forgive but with ego. We put ourselves at a higher pedestal and look down upon the other person as a wrong-doer and then forgive him. And why do we do that? Just to instill guilt in the other person and hence, boost our ego.

Here we are talking about forgiving completely and freeing the other person of any guilt. When something happens to us, the first thing we do is to either accuse others around us or blame the situation. We constantly build negativity inside us about other people who have hurt us. Forgiving wholeheartedly only relieves us from that negativity. It just removes any kind of negative energy blocks that we may have accumulated in us.

Another important point is whenever such incident happens where we think we are hurt, we think the person is at fault for our suffering. Most of the times, it is not the person who has hurt but it our own expectations as to how the other person should have acted or behaved, bring us that suffering. So who are we to throw our anger on others or spew out negative words and blame others? We see people keep that anger and negativity towards the other person for years together, sometimes even till their death.

During the first level meditation courses, Life Bliss Program 1, our Master takes us through a beautiful gratitude meditation where we offer gratitude to everyone, even our enemies and forgive if anyone has done any thing to us. I have seen people breaking down during this meditation. People find it the most relieving meditation. All the built-in negativities towards others which we have suppressed overtime just evaporate with these two - forgiveness and gratitude.

When we forgive whole heartedly and replace that it with love and gratitude, we are transforming and our transformation transform people around us. That is Paramahamsa Nithyananda's message - transformation of humanity through personal transformation.

(You can read the article here.)