True awareness!

Hello all,

Namaste! Hope all of you are having a fantastic blast with the new year where you are actively taking part in your own life. Last week we discussed the difference between intellect and wisdom. Intellect is good. But 'true wisdom' is great. How can we capture the wisdom of our own higher self or Soul? It is easier said than done.

To access it we should start developing true awareness. How? The whole world except for very few is running on 'autopilot'. I was also doing the same thing just two years ago. We just go about our everyday life, in pursuits of 'mindless activities', whether it is daily work, everyday routines, or everyday interactions. Many times this mindless pursuit without proper thoughts make us mentally and physically very tired.

Remember, the ship or boat that is going in the endless ocean of ignorance without a direction or map we discussed way back, that is the result of a life without 'awareness'. All of us need to stop, and ask ourselves this very important question, 'Where are we planning to go in this life? Are we doing anything towards what we came to this Earth in the first place?' For this, we have to totally change the perspective we are keeping as a normal everyday human being.

Our boat in the ocean of life!
Image courtesy - Pixabay.com

A pearl or a necklace of pearl? Think about a very beautiful pearl. It is beautiful, with an off white color, having the shiny sheen, with smooth, elegant texture, and round in shape, with a hole or not in the middle. If the hole has not been added, the pearl cannot be put in a necklace. It is just a single, individual unique pearl. That's it. Now to bead it into a necklace, a hole through which the string has to be passed should be made. Without making a hole, this pearl just sits like that- individual, unique, and shiny,

Once we drill a hole into that pearl, we have strung it as a necklace with different pearls into very different necklaces. Of course, this is a metaphor. What does a pearl have to do in a deep, thoughtful Philosophy blog? So, here it goes. This individual pearl is the human and the current life we are living. Just a pearl. It just 'exists'. Is that enough? Just to exist. Is that all there is? Just exist as a small, helpless, powerless human being? Should we think more about us and more for ourselves?

The truth is as a single pearl, one can only do so much. To do more, the drill of 'awareness' has to be taken and a hole has to be laden to string it with other pearls to make it into a pearl necklace. Here the pearl is representing two scenarios. One-the single pearl is part of a series of continuous pearls. Each pearl is one lifetime the Soul is going through. One pearl- one lifetime. So, this particular lifetime is just one single pearl in a series of pearls. 

The true pearls of our life!
Image courtesy - Pixabay.com

So, this concept suddenly pushes us to look at our own life from a higher perspective. Until now we were sitting within the pearl and looking at ourselves. So we can only see the inside of the pearl. We cannot sense the shininess or smoothness of the surface. We cannot see the offwhite color or the roundness. The same way, when we sit deeply within our own life, get stressed about every single decision, thought, and perception we have, we become prisoners of the life itself. The deep 'Maya' of the material life that keeps us prisoner till the end of our life. In this viewpoint, we are stuck in this life, and if the heart also feels like that, we are stuck for eternity.

So, we have to get into a perspective of going outside of our life and looking at our life. Then we see that this is just one pearl in the sets of pearls or lifetimes we have accumulated. Each pearl as it progresses in the necklace becomes shinier and shinier. We would have lived as a hunter in one lifetime, or as a soldier in another life. We would have been a homemaker in one and an emperor in another. But with every life, our Soul becomes wiser and the pearl becomes slightly shinier. But, if we don't take any effort towards that, do you think this lifetime (pearl) would be shinier than the previous one we had? 

So, it is very important to have the awareness that we are a 'Spiritual being' having a physical existence. We as many times perceive are not a physical being having just some random spiritual thoughts. That is why many times we feel lost in this life.  A physical being has nothing to anchor it. It just floats around through life. So, even though we live, in a deep spiritual sense, living like this we never own our true power. The body has just some knowledge. The true wisdom comes from the Soul. When we are ignorant and totally neglect that knowledge, how can we ever access that deep jewel of wisdom? We cannot. We roam around the world like a leaf in the wind, all through our life wherever the wind takes us. This is one perspective.

Two- This necklace we have made with our own pearls now interconnects with the pearls that others bring into our life. The way we have our pearls of this life, others also have the pearls of their life. So, from the point of that higher perspective, our lives are interconnected. We are not random occurrences happening in another's life and they are not random occurrences happening in ours. If a Soul comes as a parent, spouse, kid, friend, acquaintance or even as our enemy, they either have to teach something to us or they have to get some guidance from us. It is always that. 

The pearl necklace of our existence!
Image courtesy - Pixabay.com

Guidance or teaching doesn't have to be a teacher sitting under a banyan tree or in a classroom and teaching us. It can also be a Soul standing and obstructing us so that we grow as big as a mountain and make that obstruction or block as small as a pebble. If that Soul hadn't blocked our path, we wouldn't have become aware of our own power and grown to make that obstruction a pebble. So we need to be grateful to even that Sou who made us aware of our own power, not to the person, but to the Soul. The person has complete unawareness and it doesn't help to show them any gratitude. But to their Soul you silently bow and say, "Namaste", Namah- I bow, Te' -to your Soul.

Shining Pearl: So how can we make our pearl as shiny as possible, so that we can say we 'lived well'? For that first, we have to accept there is the mind and then there is the heart, where the Soul resides. The mind brings us the parade of thoughts, unending, incessant, and literally mind-boggling. That is the job of the mind. It is just doing the duty it has been given for this life.

So, to control the mind, we first have to come out of the mind perspective. Think about it. We have a cauldron having a raging fire. Do we sit within the cauldron to control it? We would burn to ashes. To control a cauldron of fire, you have to come out of it and use the switches outside to control it. Same way to differentiate between the mind and the heart, first we have to come out of the constant churn of thoughts. 

We need to realize that mind is doing its duty and should start to contemplate on the essence behind it, the being, the 'true you or me'. When we keep on concentrating on that, our focus is suddenly removed from our mind, but starts to concentrate on that higher perspective of the Soul/being/heart. According to Vedic Philosophy, 'Anything we focus on increases in power in our life'. Here did you notice a funny thing?

The brilliant wisdom of the Soul behind the clouds of the mind!
Image courtesy - Pixabay.com

We are using the same mind that brings us chaos/confusion/turmoil when we focus on it, to helps us to come out of it and concentrate on something that gives us a higher perspective on our own life. Also according to the above principle as we are not focusing on the chaos, suddenly that which was eluding us comes front and center into our own life - Peace, deep, authentic, inner peace. The same peace so many are going all around the world in search of - in Asramas (hermitages), prayer halls, and on mountain resorts. The deep, satisfying peace, the Universe works from. Sitting in our own family room or living room, we find it. We don't have to go to the mountains, calm seas, or to the other side of the world, India, near the Ganges.

But we bring the Ganges, Himalayas, India- the peaceful, authentic essence of India (the very true wisdom) into our lives, in our very here and 'Now'. From this perspective we should start thinking, taking decisions and intentions for our own life. This is the true position of power. Our very true inner core, the heart where the Soul resides. Our true form, authentic Self - Swaroopa.  ;-))))

The wisdom of the Swaroopa: The true core, the essence of the being- the Soul. This is the deep, essence that lies as a speck of the Universal Soul, our own deep wisdom. Until now as we were taking decisions from the mind, this core has been silent for a pretty long time, maybe years or decades ( in my own case for around, three decades). Before in another post, we had discussed our own personal truth or the Soul contract we came with. This Soul contract as well as the true essence of our own Soul, or in other words our Swaroopa is the authentic inner wisdom.

This wisdom is not the same for everyone. For me, my wisdom is to be a blogger, writer, Quora answerer, Vedic astrologer, interested in spirituality, philosophy, and metaphysics. That is my personal truth. You, the blog reader would have your own truth. That can be as a teacher, builder, designer, IT professional or whatever you feel you are from the very core. We can access this wisdom only when we remove the mind from the picture. When we are bogged down by our own thoughts and mind and besieged by chaos, how can we even find any true wisdom? As long as we are in the mind space or intellectualization, this wisdom is not accessible. That is how it is.

Only once the mind is kept quiet or removed from the picture, of course using the very mind itself, this shining jewel starts to come into view. Our own individual pearl, shiny and bright. Not the black, muddy, dark or dim pearl. But the brilliant, effulgent pearl. Have you any time looked at the face of a spiritual master? They would have no accessories, or no shiny objects adorning them. But they would look bright, charismatic, and elegant. Why? This is their inner pearl of wisdom shining through their every nerve and cell. The authentic true wisdom!

Okay, we elaborately discussed the difference between the intellect and wisdom. How do we know, the guidance we are getting is from this soul space and not from the mind. The difference is we would have a deep inner knowing, that this is correct. It doesn't come from outside but from deep within. Do we have self-doubts? of course, very much, because, here the guidance is not from outside but from within. When nobody is saying anything to us, but only our own deep core is saying how can we ever believe it? But that is how it is. 

Yes, it is very difficult and tough, because we as human beings have been conditioned through our lifetimes, ancestors through our own DNA, familial-social-communal conditioning. Above that our own career, education, and interactions. In this method, we always look to others as leaders, influencers, great personalities for guidance. Yes, that guidance is important to a limit. When that limit is reached, then to progress further we need our own guidance. 

Think about the great leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., or Nelson Mandela. Yes, they read a lot of books, interacted with a lot of leaders, thought a lot. But at last for their own life guidance, they had to go within. Mahatma Gandhi has written about this inner guidance in autobiography, ' The story of my experiments with truth'. After listening to every leader, thought, and ideas, finally we should make decisions for our own life from our true inner guidance.

Inner peace: That guidance only our soul can provide. Nobody else can. So when we stand from this point and take decisions we innately know we are correct and remember that elusive quality we were mentioning before, a serene peace descends on us knowing that we are making the correct and most truthful decision. Yes, with the blog as well as my Quora answering decision, once I made the decision a true, calm peace enveloped me. But until making the decision the mind would be churned like in 'Samudramathana', where our mind goes through option after option, idea after idea, and thought after thought. But once our mind reaches the correct decision, a peace or a serene calmness descends upon us.

The serene inner peace!
Image courtesy - Pixabay.com

This serene calmness lets you know, yes, indeed you are making the very true decision for yourself. This calmness never comes in a mind focused decision. The mind is chaotic by nature. How can it ever lead one to peace and serenity? It never can. So mind has to be controlled and used towards finding one's core. Standing from that core, one has to take decision every time, that brings peace, calmness, and serenity, again and again, and again. 

This is the space of true awareness, the wisdom of the soul or the wisdom of one's own authentic Self- Swaroopa! 

I wish you a good weekend and I'll see you next Friday!😉

Next week: The wisdom!

Credits: Images and links from Wikimedia Commons and Pixabay.com

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried".  

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