ennar’s blog

 Possiblity  with  Divine Grace

Ramana Maharishi mentions that God’s ways are inscrutable. In the prescence of the Sun,which is ever shining, some buds blossom,not all. The fault however does not lie with the Sun,though it is true that the bud cannot blossom by itself, it requires the sunlight to do it. Grace is thus recognised as a key ingredient for deliverance.

Faith and unconditional surrender helps us to receive Divine Grace. Whether it is meditation, prayer, introspection or self-enquiry, the route used would depend on a person’s temperament and inclination.

Psychiatrist Scott Peck who wrote ‘The Road Less Travelled’ reveals an interesting perspective to the aspect of Grace and healing. He points out that much as one examines,the workings of Grace cannot be ascribed to a set pattern. Try as we might to obtain Grace, it may elude us, yet it might find us when least expected. He talks of neurotic patients who, on an average, are easier to treat than those who suffer social behaviour disorders. Surprisingly, he also reports of cases of complete turnaround amongst psychosis patients, while those suffering from the milder forms of neurosis have made insignificant progress,despite prolonged treatment.

The element helping the revival process has been identified as the “will to grow” akin to earnestness and faith demonstrated by a spiritual aspirant. This concept again has an element of mystery shrouding it as evidence is rather inconclusive on the dominant role of parental nurturing and love.

Scott ascribes a lead position to the role played by Divine Grace, which in some cases operates throughout a person’s life. The remarkable survival stories of Jewish prisoners of war in concentration camps substanciates this. The assertion of Jesus Christ that “many are called,but few are chosen” can also be interpreted as “All of us are called by and to Grace, but few of us chosen to listen to the call.”

Grace transports one from the platform of understanding of Truth to its full realisation. Speaking of the unpredictability of Grace, Jesus is reported to have told Nicodemis, a believer in Christ as the true Messiah, amongst the Pharisees, a sect of non-believers, “just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it will go next, so it is with the Spirit. We do not know on whom He will next bestow this life from Heaven.” Suffice to say that we are vastly limited from the dimension of our minds to find answers to the ways and workings of the omnipotent force.

Ramana Maharishi said that to try and understand the nature of Self-realisation with the mind is presumptuous. Dependent as the intellect is on the light of the self, it is incapable of understanding the magnificence of the entire manifestation,of which it is but a limited part. It is like trying to measure the sunlight at it’s source by the standard of the light given by a candle.

Instead of limiting oneself to the intellect, the wise one opts for a path of devotion or inner reflection, conscious of a higher power. The door of Grace unfolds when the mind bows in wonder,reverence and gratitude to the power of the divine. 

F  A  I  T  H  —  Quotes to ponder on

• God gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for everything He wants us to do.
• God comes at last when we think he is farthest off.
• Some things have to be belived to be seen.
• The word spirtuality dosen’t necessarily mean religion ; it means whatever it is that helps you feel connected to something that is larger than yourself.
• I am one of those who would sink with faith than swim without it.
• Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
• You can do very little with faith ,but you can do nothing without it.
• Faith is like electricity, you can’t see it, but you can see the light.
• All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment vital and worth living. Don’t let it slip away unused.

Why do we get bored ? What is the solution to boredom ?

Boredom is a state of mind.In that state, nothing appeals to us,nothing excites us,and nothing interests us. Boredom is not something that hits us from the outside.It’s nothing external.It is not like day and night or like the seasons that are inevitable. Boredom is in the mind,though it might be related to prescence or abscence of people,events or material elements that are outside the person.

Most often ,people get bored when they are weighed down by tasks that they don’t like,or don’t want to do.If that’s the case,one way of avoiding  boredom  is to learn to say ‘No’ whenever possible. For example,if you have to go shopping or attend a wedding - that you know will bore you - with family members or friends, you have the choice to say ‘no’. Sometimes you may have no choice, and will have to tag along,or will have to suffer the company of people whom you may not like. In such cases,one has no choice,but to grin and bear it,although you still have the option of engaging in some form of thinking ,daydreaming,introspection or analysis, which can go on inside your head,even as you are physically present at that place.

The most common reason for boredom is when one does not have anything worthwhile to do. Take up a hobby,call up old friends or relatives,start writing a journal,learn a new art like drawing,painting or music,remember all the things you wanted to do due to a genuine lack of time.Also,boredom is often the starting point for inspirational ideas and many discoveries and inventions have happened when people who are responsible for these had nothing to do,and were in a state of extreme boredom.

Make your boredom a rejoicing,a time to think,plan,introspect and come out with brilliant workable ideas,reconnect with others and with yourself. Instead of fretting and fuming,and generally making yourself and those around you miserable,with your continous lamenting.

Boredom  or constantly feeling bored can mean two things:  1)you do not know yourself.You don’t know what you like,what you dislike,what makes you tick and what irritates you.For if you really know yourself, you would also know why you are bored and would also know what would get you our of this boredom.So if you are bored and don’t know why, maybe it is time for some deep introspection and meditation,in an effort to know yourself. 2) the other reason,many of us complain of being bored, and this is especially true of children, is an attention seeking measure. we hope that those to whom we complain will drop everything and pamper and mollycoddle us, will give us more of their time, and will attend to us.

Like everything, boredom too has its benefits. If you use the time effectively and creatively. Otherwise, you can keep complaining that you are bored, and waste the one and only life that God has given you, in a bored mundane fashion. Feeling bored is also a choice - no one is stopping you from going ahead and doing all those things that could make your life interesting or exciting,except yourself.

Mental Exercises for  young people

Why are young people quick to feel angry ?        Generally,we find a youngster who is disturbed is also angry.He is angry with life.He has the passion to achieve,but lacks direction.He is frustrated at others success.He wonders what is missing in him.In such a state,he finds his energy being drained.In his angry state,he is not able to enjoy life.

When one is youthful one has the energy but less maturity ; and when one is old one has the maturity and experience,but lack youthful energy.To be able to have both youthful energy and maturity,is a challenge,faced by the young people of today.          To make this happen one needs a healthy attitude. Attitude creates altitude.

What should be one’s attitude ?    Apply the  ABC  technique :  A  is for attitude, open and explorative ; B  is for having a belief which is powerful and not limiting and C  is to bring in caring energy in whatever we do.

There are two aspects to youth, thw physical and the psychological. Physically,a person can be young,but psychologically,if he is not open with a positive belief and without a caring energy,he is old. This distinction is a must for one’s growth.

What should be the vision of the youth ?           The vision of the youth should be to be an outer winner and an inner winner. Being an outer winner gives you success and being an inner winner gives you satisfaction. To bring in success and satisfaction in your life is the greatest challenge. To get what you like is being an outer winner.One should have the freedom to choose what he likes.

The desire to reach a goal is your freedom.Achieving this goal is being an outer winner.You should know how to maximise performance,You should know how to be a team player,you should have negotiating skills and you should know how to delegate and be a leader. You should be a leader and a follower. You should walk your talk and talk your walk.

Talk to yourself and say that you will be an outer and inner winner. Talk to yourself and say that you are always going to be young,mentally.

Actions are an expression of one’s thoughts and thoughts are an expression of one’s belief system.To change one’s actions,it is necessary to change one’s thoughts and to change one’s thoughts,one must change one’s belief.The course of one’s actions is belief.If you have a limiting belief,then your life will be limiting ; If you have a poweful belief,then your life will be powerful.

All successful people achieved success because the consistently held a positive belief,which is not a mere thought but something more than a thought.

How else can one change one’s belief system ?          Belief is nothing but a sense of certainity.It can be a negative certainity or a positive certainity ; either way it is a sense of certainity. If it is a negative belief,create a doubt in that certainity and then you will find you have destroyed the sense of negative certainity.

If a person saysthat he cannot be successful since he is not a graduate,then he believes that only graduates can be successful. Create a doubt by giving an example that Bill Gates is not a graduate but is still successful. In this way you break his cerainity by creating a doubt.            Every great achievement initially appeared impossible.

Whenever a negative belief comes,kick it off like you kick a ball towards the goal. When you get a negative belief,see it like a ball and push it off to the goal. Your goal should be  —  being both successful and satisfied. Keep this thought always and do not allow the opponents to shake you.

  IS IT NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING

Once on a journey by bus,I overheard a person seeking help and hinting at a death wish.The cause of his acute depression was that ‘the love of his life’ had left him and didn’t want to marry him anymore.She wasn’t taking his calls nor answering messages and he was left dealing with a sudden void. “Please tell me how to deal with this stress and immense pain.I can’t sleep,can’t eat,can’t do anything… and sometimes i feel if God takes me away,it will be good…” was the plaintive cry.

What compounded the problem was that he just couldn’t understand why he was jilted.And in trying to grapple with the situation,he had put his entire life on hold.Everything else stopped holding a meaning for him as he tried to figure where he went wrong.The ending of that one relationship seemed to symbolize the end of life to him.

How often we are bothered by ‘WHY’ ! More often than not, the ‘ why ‘ becomes bigger than the situation itself and we apply ourselves more to understanding what led to the particular situation rather than dealing with the issue in hand. Why was he rude to me? Why was she unfair when I have done nothing but my best for her? Why did this happen to me?Why me? We waste a lot of time trying to figure out what cannot be understood. This leaves us with little time or energy to take stock of the present situation and move on.

Why did I lose out to another candidate at a job interview? Why can’t I top my class? Why can’t she be interested in me rather than my colleague? Why can’t the day be longer?Why can’t I do as I please? So many ‘whys’ to burden the mind…

Some things are best dropped where they are and left behind without trying to figure them out.Some one’s tag line on Facebook the other day said it best… “The biggest thing to understand,my dear,is that it’s unnecessary to understand everything…. we can be happy anyway…”

In fact we can learn to be far happier if we drop the habbit of worrying our minds with unnecessaries.It’s just a question of getting your priorities right — and what can be more important than your own mental health ! Surely the biggest enemy of our peace of mind is the question ‘why’? Look at it this way.When we drive a car,do we understand all about it’s working? Not many of us do,and yet we don’t stop driving.Not understanding how electricity works dosen’t stop us from using it either.

Who says we must have answers to everything? That of course dosen’t mean we needn’t have answers to anything ! There are issues that are worth pondering over and others that are best left behind. We cannot hope to tie all ends meticulosly before we move on : certain threads must be left open ended for life  or others to sort out for themselves.

In fact it is far more important to understand one’s own self — your motivations,your strengths,weaknesses,dreams,desires,successes and failures,rather than anything else.We spend a life time trying to understand everythin and everybody else but ourselves. In his final days,Albert Einstein admitted, “Sometimes I suspect that my life has been a waste.I inquired into the fartherest of stars and forgot completely to inquire into myself — and I was the closest star !”

Interstingly,most religions too discourage trying to understand all around us…. Gurbani exhorts us to stop trying to understand the world and understand ourselves instead. The Bible says, “The Lord directs our steps,so why try to understand everything along the way?” (Proverbs 20:24)

I felt pity for the jilted lover on the bus,and gave him a piece of advise,in which I told him it was time to move on.He must get up,dust himself and start moving.There’s no idea wasting away wondering about the ‘what ifs’. If he is destined to be with his lost love,she would walk back to him one day.If not,who knows there may be a better,more loving person waiting for him at the next turn?

Very often as we move on in life,mysteries and open ended situations we left behind,start fallng into place.And invariably we realize as the coins start finding their slots that everything had a reason and a time… and much as we may have imagined,didn’t need us unraveling or understanding it…. Somebody,somewhere understood it all….

• It is better to believe than to disbelieve ; in doing so, you bring everything to the realm of possibility.
• Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
• Faith is spiritualized imagination.
• The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.
• The difference between a flower and a weed is judgement.
• Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.
• There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

Success can be measured from two standpoints. — the external and the internal. Externally it is the measure of a job well done and recognition. Internally it is a feeling of achievement and wholeness derived from the completion of a task or the fulfillment of a desire.

Our goals are based on our desires and aspirations.When we fulfil a desire or achieve a goal we feel happy and successful.But shortly another desire arises and we feel incomplete and begin to strive again. Ocasionally,when we reach a goal we feel a void in our lives and do not know what to do next.

Success can also be measured by the feeling of comfort we have with ourselves.This happens when we live according to our intrinsic nature. If we attain what we want and still find something lacking then we know that either our desire was not desireable or the means adopted were not in accordance with nature.

Modern management philosophy says that if a person is satisfied there is a lack of motivation and this works against the interest of the corporation. — This is a negative approach. When people are positively satisfied, they want to share their feelings with others……. Their motivational levels get higher. They want to work more and also efficiently.

Success should include and embrace all aspects of life. Some may be great at work but utter failures in the family arena.Some may be good in the family but are of no use to society. We must be whole individuals, just as God intended us to be. Take the case of a mango seed that grows to be a tree giving the world its sweet fruit. The seed does precisely nothing, but by remaining true to its nature finds fulfilment and completeness.

Why do people want success ? It is associated with perfection, wholeness and joy. It is an ex-pression of our Higher Self, which is Supreme and perfect. We have this thirst for success because we are that Supreme alone. We want to be great because we are intrinsically great ! It is a natural desire fulfilling its natural goal. If we understand this in all its connotations then our success will not be dependent on anyone’s failure, nor will it be gained by pulling others down. Our joy will emanate from a deep sense of contentment and completeness.

How do we purify and soften our mind ?  A pure, soft mind is a gateway to divine living. Thinking positive isn’t enough. It is essential to think divine. Only raising ourselves from the level of human thinking to divine thinking can soften and purify the mind. This can be done as the seer’s suggest by reviewing the working of our mind at least three times a day,– was my mind assertive or calm ? Did my words and actions hurt or bring joy to people ? Because, remember an object that slips out of our hand can be recovered, but an inappropriate word that slips out of our tongue cannot be undone. Self-review will cleanse our mind of all the mental dirt. Ideas and inspiration flash freely in a pure mind to transform information to knowledge. Knowledge can be defined simply as the idea of how to put information to use for the welfare of many in the form of an action.

For this the wise have prescribed three basic steps : (1) Allow others the freedom to be as they are, without imposing your mindset of thoughts and ideas. (2) Have faith and belief that GOD is in you. (3) Spend some time quietly, alone, everyday thinking about your Inner Self and chanting the name of God. This way the mind that seeks information can be changed into a mind meant for the transformation of our very life from human to Divine.

(friends, is the priscription hard & tough to follow ? what do you think ? )

My Dear  Friends…..  In order to bring in a sense of purpose and quality into our lives, we need to look at the nature and working of our very mind.

The mind is meant to absorb information, transform it into knowledge and lead it into action. Action and speech determine the quality of our life and these come from the mind.

How can we understand the nature of absorption of the mind ? Wise men who have dwelt on the truth of this, have said that most people’s minds are as hard as rock. Just as the rock is impervious to water, information that falls on a hard mind bounces off without a trace.

A hard mind offers immense resistance ; it is full of previously absorbed information that prevents the flow of new knowledge and action. Our mind must be soft as sponge for maximum absorption. Just as water can be easily absorbed by a sponge and squeezed out, a soft mind easily absorbs information and allows free flow of knowledge to enable suitable action. The two processes are reversible — a soft or open mind can be easily hardened and a hard or closed mind can be easily softened. We only need to be aware and exercise caution.

What makes our mind hard and closed ? Sages have said that this is an automatic, front-line defence mechanism for the protection of our belief systems based on our state of ego. If we encounter an idea or a situation that is not in line with our thinking, we immediately close our mind ; we put up a block against it ; this is what we call mindset. Ego creates mindset. Mindset is a protective mechanism of self-defence because we are scared of what others think about our notions and beliefs. Mindset is self-destructive and we have quite often experienced this. For example, a simple discussion develops into an argument and leads to a verbal fight, and can get more intense because of mindset.

Therefore, mere gathering of information by our mind is useless. We must transform this to knowledge. Our mind must be pure to be able to perform this conversion efficiently. The work of an impure mind will rebound while the work of a pure mind will reach out to the world for its welfare.

(How to purify and soften our mind?…  continued… (part -2)

When everything is taken away from us, we become grounded in reality very quickly. A sage was once asked why he was so happy, he responded,”I have nothing left to lose !”. Being grounded in reality happens in that split second when we know all is lost ; a moment before the car crash, a moment after the diagnosis.

The reality we then face is quite different from the day dreams of our everyday illusions. There is something we can learn here, because many times, the result of a traumatic experience is that we come out of it a changed person, and the changes are usually for the better. New vistas open up for us and we findourselves and our interests somehow strangely altered. We actually become happier. There are times in our lives when we do things and don’t know why, and although these things may appear foolish to our friends, we feel compelled to do them nonetheless. Sometimes these things involve letting go of something very dear to us, and we can hardly believe what we are doing. This can be a crushing experience, yet we do it. Just when things are going swimmingly, there is sometimes an underlying urge to cancel everything out.

In the East, a tradition exists where people pile all their belongings into a boat, sail out to sea, and dump them every seven years. If one followed this tradition, think of how careful one might be in what one purchased !

In addition, how aggressive would we be in making money ? Maybe we would forget about money and do what we love for a change. That would certainly produce some happiness. If our karma is good,howver, so good that we are protected from disasters, we might need to become proactive in causing our own disasters — to help things along.

Great men in the past have done just that; Christ lived as a homeless wanderer ; the Buddha left royalty behind to live in rags in the forest for six years, seeking and finding enlightenment. Foolishness ? Perhaps, but who has affected the history of the world more than these two men have?

In essence, what the Buddha and Christ were saying is that until the bottom drops out of your life, you will continue to love your life.

True happiness is that Reality we touch when all is lost. Money, love, family; these are all caught within the web of existence ; and existence is nothing but stress compared to this Reality.

Existence has three characteristics, three laws of universe, and they are that  1) everything changes. 2) life is stress. 3) no “self” stands behind life.  Reality, on the other hand, has never been born, will never die, does not come from a previous condition, and has the characteristics of eternity and unchangingness. The three characteristics of existence are unassailable, and while we remain caught in them, we can never be truly happy although we try to convince ourselves otherwise.

Everything that we think will make us happy, all that they tell us to acomplish, to be ambitious about, and to compete for, never does so for long. If none of this makes any sense to you, then you must continue seeking happiness in the things of the world.

If for some reason seeking happiness in the world does not work for you, in the long run, then there are things that you can do to ease yourself into a Reality where happiness is assured.

By easing yourself into this Reality, you are not required to give things up in a violent fashion ; they fall away by themselves. If you ever become serious about real happiness, weary of temporary happiness slipping through your fingers time and again, then go after the missing element.

The missing element is emptiness, and there is a good way, a gradual way, and a certain way to bring this element into your life. Emptiness is the doorway to a new life, and the doorway to emptiness is MEDITATION.