The Word - The void!
Hello all,
Namaste! All of you, my dear blog readers, know about my website-swaroopa.net. I have started my business, Swaroopa store, which can be accessed from Shop tab on my website, for beings who are interested in a personal reading. There is also the Swaroopa Store link, on my blog's left side. Now to the post.
Hope all of you are taking care of your health and well-being. Even though, the world as such has been in the pandemic for more than one year, it is still very much a part of our life. Only so many people have been vaccinated in this world. In many countries like India, even vaccine is not available. For example, my home state of Kerala is under a triple lock down to reduce the community spread and to treat all those who are already infected. But tough times demand tough measures. Hope the world comes out of this pandemic as soon as possible. Hope the global community enjoys the same freedom and ease of travel as the previous times.
Anyway, back to the topic of the word, last week, we discussed how inner faith to trust ourselves is very much needed. Before that we discussed the necessity of a very silent mind that can channel the inklings of the heart as well as the insights of one's own spiritual team. If we truly understand, each of us are provided a spiritual team as ascended masters, our own spiritual guides, teachers, ancestral guides and others. But when a person lives from the mind, this whole connection to the spiritual realm is cut off.
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| The Mandukya Upanishad Image credits - Ms Sarah Welch, via Wikimedia Commons |
In Malayalam, there is a proverb, "Than pathi, Deivam pathi" - You, the person is half of the equation, the other half is the God. People many times consider, the other half of the God is outside sitting in some upper realm of unknown heaven. But all of us also have learned the Mahavakya- great sentence from the Upanishads- Aham Brahma Asmi- I am the Universal creator! (Brahman, in a creative perspective- Brahma). So, if we ourselves are the creators, why should the divine be outside? It can be inside, correct?
Inward journey: Instead, of thinking the God as an outside entity, why not think of the divine as within, but not as a single all-encompassing entity. More as a team of guides, masters and teachers, who are non-physical entities whose own consciousness evolution is tied to guiding/ mentoring less evolved beings.
For example, nowadays I like to call myself as a mentor or guide. But there should be someone to help me, when I get stuck, isn't it? What if for this life, my guidance is from within through my own insights and intuition that is provided by a bunch of non-physical, spiritual guides? This guidance is coming from other realms and can get obstructed if the higher realms, Soul, heart and mind are not aligned.
The stream of guidance can get lost anywhere along the line and never reach our conscious mind. Even in the conscious mind, if the mind is chaotic and stressed, it can get lost in the million thoughts that arise every second. So, for those pearls of guidance to reach us we have to keep our mind as silent as a calm and peaceful lake. Humans find it utmost difficult to calm and quiet the mind.
As I have written previously in my blog posts, Upanishads consider mind as a tool that is fitted to the being to be used to have a good life in this Earth school. But the unfortunate part is the person gets stuck within their mind and never goes deeper than the surface mind. The true treasures for this life are never kept in the mind level itself. First a tonne of familial and ancestral treasures are kept in the subconscious mind. But along with these treasures there may be many vices that keeps the being as a prisoner.
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| The bridge to the guidance of inner void Image credits - Pixabay.com |
These vices or essences that are patterns or behaviors keep the person limited and bound. So, this is the first inner rope the person has to come out by themselves. But this is a humongous task as the patterns and behaviors are carried through generations and generations of ancestors who most probably struggled with the same issues. The vices need to be removed and the treasures should be embraced. Then when we go deeper, we find our own heart that is filled with passions.
Passions of our heart: What we truly want to do and achieve for our lives. This is where our true desires sit. As long as these desires are not fulfilled, the human feels there is something missing in their life. It is this purpose and meaning that makes the life of the human very worthy. But these desires are well hidden behind all the mental chatter and million thoughts. Thus, the people becoming prisoners to their own thoughts never gets to the point where they can start to work on their true desires. By the time they realize, it may be too late or the outer conditions of life may not be helpful to bring out those desires.
As I understand nowadays, each human comes with some deep duties wired in their heart. But many times, life itself come as hurdles against finding these duties. A person who has to go for a 9 to 5 job cannot sit and think about their deepest desires. They have a rent to pay, food to put on the table and mouths to feed. So, not everyone is graced to pursue the path of their heart. Today's modern society has made humans to go to work for eight hours, then come and rest at home. The mental work of eight hours every day pretty much makes the mind very tired. After that who can even think of going within and pursue inner work?
So, majority of humans just go for routine, every day, mental work and later are very tired to pursue any deeper heart's work. So, the subconscious mind is not looked at, heart is not listened to and finally the person slowly loses their inner spirit as well. How do humans become lifeless and spiritless beings? It is because the mind, the heart and even the Soul are slowly lost to mindless, heartless everyday existence. Sometimes even other beings can make others prisoner of their will. This is why humans who were very colorful, vibrant teenagers, later find themselves as rote, grey beings.
Whatever that drove or motivated them during the teenage years, that driving force is gone and is replaced by struggles to make the two ends meet. If you have heard about the Japanese work culture, it is relentless, high strung and stressful. People work every day without a break or holidays. As the body is very stressed, they develop heart attacks, strokes or starvation. Some die of these diseases and others commit suicide due to the mere mental and emotional burden of over work. This phenomenon in Japan is called Karoshi or death due to overwork.
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| Passions of the heart Image credits - Pixabay.com |
If the human is stressed out and running through life, where is the respite to think about the choice's life presents and how to select what we want? So, due to the stressed mental world we ourselves close our own opportunities and select less than medium choices for ourselves. Many times, the choices are presented as an everyday matter, which we don't put much thought into. For example, when I applied for Biology during my undergraduate years, I just thought I deeply loved biology and went for it. At 18 years, I never gave it a thought, I was selecting something for the next thirty years of my life. I left the field of biotechnology at 47 years of age. That was 30 years of my life.
I didn't even give it a month or two months thought. I liked biology and went for it. Many times, just like that every day decisions keep us held in place for decades or rest of our life. So, heart should always be deeply with us and mind should have clarity of thoughts.
Spiritual team: If we are discerning enough to maintain the passion of the heart and clarity of thoughts, with a calm lake of a mind, the inner channels of guidance open so that the guidance from our spiritual masters or ancestral guides can percolate into our inner mind. Living from a logical and conscious mind, this whole guidance is closed to a normal human being.
Remember the "Than pathi, daivam pathi" proverb? If we think, we are just this physical body and the mind, the pathi or half that is of the God or inner Divine has been negated. Then, it becomes all us. Think of the amount of work as a solitary human we have to do? Every thing starts and ends with us. In between some few helpful Souls come to help us. But other than that, everything is on us. We have put that total burden of responsibility on us. That is a heavy load to bear. Anyone who thinks everything starts and ends with them are actually taking up the total burden of responsibility on themselves.
My question is, if half part, the spiritual team or inner divine is ready to take up, why should we drag the whole burden as a donkey upon ourselves? Should we be asinine like a donkey? Why not give that part to them? For the last four years this is what I have realized. There is a definite half we are supposed to do and a definite half the spiritual team are ready to take up. Yes, the path of Dharma is a team effort with the spiritual team fully invested in the outcome.
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| The ideas of excellence as fast as race horses Image credits - Pixabay.com |
But this is how it would be. The seed thought and idea would be provided by the spiritual team every step of the way. The why of our Dharma or purpose is deeply wired within us. We came to this Earth realm to fulfill that why. But the "how"- the correct action to be taken would be provided by the spiritual team. But the part of taking actions and clearly aligning the "how" is in our own hands. For example, in 2018, while I was doing a random Google search, the platform Quora just popped up in front of my eyes. The spiritual guides were bringing the platform Quora before my eyes.
"This is a platform; you can write for. What are your thoughts about it"? The action part and whether to pursue and write there was fully my free will and choice. They cannot force me to do anything, because my free will and choice are involved. Here I also had to overcome my own inner fear and hang-ups about putting my thoughts out there.
Now, think like this, every single human being has a team of spiritual masters and ancestral guides. So, my question, if such a team of inner guides and teachers are available, custom tailored for us, should we pursue every concept, thought, value or perspective that is cooked up outside? This guidance is tailor made exactly for that one single individual- You or I. So, is it wise or foolish to avail this guidance? Nowhere in this whole globe, we would get such a custom-built guidance. Nowhere. Each step is guided and mentored.
Inner Void: Now, this was the concept, I was planning to write for the last four weeks. But every week another concept would pop up and I would push this concept to the next week. Remember the calm lake of an inner mind? It is not enough to keep this mind calm and static. No. This mind has to be like a workshop where only the thought that are deeply valuable for us show up. Every other shallow, worthless thought should not even show up into our mind.
Think of the stable of a prize-winning horse racer. Let us consider he/she has ten horses. Most definitely the horses would be from excellent breeders. This particular horse racer is only focused on winning or achieving excellence. Such a breeder won't buy horses that are weak, diseased or not up to the mark. Because the excellence and winning at the race are the criteria. Let us take this concept to our own life.
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| Nikola Tesla Image credits - Napoleon Sarony, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
So, the mind should be like the stable of a prize-winning horse racer, where the ideas (horses) are brushed to a shine, nurtured, given water, nutrients and food. Then, put a cool brass horse shoe on their hooves, because they have to run the race of our life. Also, we should select the very best horses or ideas that bring the best value and worth for our life. Here, I want to give an example of the great visionary Nikola Tesla.
He was a person who could take an idea, imagine and work out it to very last detail within his mind, and bring it out into the world. He used to think about the idea, polish it so much, work it out within his mind to the tiniest aspect, when he put it to work, he almost never had to reconfigure or rethink the idea. When he brought it to life in the physical reality it was almost perfect, it glowed with excellence. The stables of a prize-winning horse racer. That is how our ideas and thoughts should be and work for us.
The internal custom tailored spiritual guidance is ever-ready sitting within our inner void. Whether to access and avail it or not- always our free will and choice!