UNDERSTANDING SELF-LOVE

Q-Dear Dadashreeji, As 'self-love' is very important, is there any particular process that will help us love ourselves more?

Dadashreeji:

Dear Friends!

One can aim at experiencing true Love in two ways. One way is loving the self and the other is loving the Divine. The first way demands knowledge and practice. The latter requires devotion. You may follow any path of your choice. Any path may work for you. However, to experience true love it is not mandatory to practice self-love first and then the Divine. Many do talk about this myth. They say, “ You can’t love any-one unless you love your self first.” Does anyone define what the self is here? This passing comment should not govern your life. To practice anything in your life, first, understand it and then work on it.

The self has got layers of ignorance, a mixture of good and bad qualities. The self knows its strength and weakness. Your self is a bundle of past experiences and memories. Some of them are pleasant and some are annoying. Having known the mistakes of the past, you have to love this self unconditionally. It is defi-nitely a taxing act for a human mind to accomplish. But there is a way to begin with effective steps to ele-vate your state. Now, Let us understand three key steps one can take towards self-love! These are easy and practical steps for anyone to practice.

i)Acceptance: It is a state of being at ease with oneself. You are required to accept your self with your strength and weakness. The difficult part is to accept deep-rooted negative judgments within one’s consciousness. Such negative memories resist the process of acceptance. These block formations keep you tied whereby not allowing you to accept the self. However, it is not impossible. We have seen seek-ers successfully doing it when helped through the process of Divine intervention. Self-acceptance lays a strong foundation for your spiritual growth. Start practicing it!

ii)Do what you love: A majority of the population ends up doing things they never loved doing. They ex-perience anxiety, restlessness and a lack of interest in life. They are drained and remain indifferent towards things around them. The prolonged state of hopelessness in life invariably results in a depres-sion. In this manner, you move away, which is opposite to the state of true love. If you can’t do what you love to do due to any reason, at least devote some time for it once a week or a few hours a day. It will do wonders in your life.

iii)Give: An effective remedy to brighten up your low-spirited life. It is an act of love. You give what you feel is right. You have complete freedom and a choice to offer help to someone. There is absolutely no force or rule in this. You bring a smile on someone’s face. Your life becomes more meaningful and someone’s purposeful. In the end, both are benefitted from giving a new direction to life. Hence, get in-to the giving mode to initiate the change!

These steps will get you closer to love your self. Make these steps an integral part of your life! When you try to follow these steps wholeheartedly, you attract the blessings of the Divine towards you. What you receive at the end is immense blessings turning your life into the Light.

The easier path to experience true love is through loving the Divine. Here, self has a lesser role to play in your spiritual growth. When you connect with the Divine directly, you do not have to separately practice loving the self. The state of loving the Divine is more profound than the external self-love. You just have to practice devotion or love your Inner-Divine to receive the boon. The path we teach about connecting with the Divine is ‘Maitri Yog’. In this, the Divine is your true friend. Your entire consciousness is filled with Love. You exude only Love at the end, transforming the world around you.

Love the self!

Love the Divine!

Love Nature!

Love and Blessings!

Dadashreeji

om namo shivai!!

Ash-smeared ETERNAL YOGI

Why do we adore Shiva sitting in meditation with ash covering his body? Just to remind us that everything is ash. This body is ash and it will become ash. That is the symbolism of vibhuti, to remind us that we are dust and nothing else.

The body that we call ‘I’ is actually just a pile of dust. When we pray and offer ourselves to Shiva, we cannot forget that everything belongs to the Supreme. Our bodies will go through the furnace, through fire, then where are all our possessions, knowledge and other acquisitions? The spirit will go on in another body; it will carry on in other spheres to grow, advance, to look for the Divine. Shiva is a great Yogi who is seated within each of us. That is why we say Shivoham, we identify our Self with Shiva. These are not mere words. When we say Aham Brahmasmi, it means we are Divine. I do not say ‘I am God.’ I say ‘I am Divine’ because that is the essence of human nature.

Each of us is Divine and when the external identity is dissolved, the true, Divine identity of what we really are, reveals itself. Shiva is always seated in meditation to represent that the mind has to calm itself. As long as the mind is wandering, there will be misery.

But when we have learnt to calm the mind and surrender it to the Supreme, then He can reveal Himself. That’s the essence of Mahashivaratri — to surrender your mind. Focus it on God. Chant the Divine Name. The three cosmic energies, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, are the three cosmic energies of creation, protection and destruction. These energies create balance in the universe and these are ever-present inside us. We have so much inside us; yet, we are only looking outside.

Only when we look inside, when we forget our body, mind, chores and worries, and sincerely say to Shiva to cleanse our Self so that we can realise Him in each moment, we can understand the meaning of our existence. ■

Seeking Supreme Reality

Spirituality has nothing at all to do with callousness or lethargy. A lazy fellow who daydreams and does nothing useful should not be mistaken for a saint. People have this fear; they say, “If I get absorbed in Brahmn what will happen to my work?” This is an excuse invented by the mind to prevent you from moving in the right direction. First of all, the man who is a serious seeker, seeks the Supreme Reality seriously, not caring for the consequences. He realises that, far from being or becoming inert or inactive, great sages, after realising the Supreme Reality, had always performed their functions much more efficiently and had done such marvellous work that ordinary mortals were astounded..

Consider the examples of Shankaracharya,or more recently, Swami Vivekananda. Kabirdas worked on his loom while he sang his divine songs. Then there was the great King Janaka, who ruled his kingdom so well and yet was absorbed in Brahmn.

In the forest on the outskirts of Videha, Rishi Yajnavalkya used to deliver spiritual discourses and conduct dialogues on the Reality. The seat in the front row was always reserved for Janaka.

One day, a messenger came and shouted that Janaka’s palace in Videha was on fire and that the fire was spreading to the nearby forest. Many of the hermits immediately sprang up and ran to save their few belongings, while Janaka sat unperturbed and steady on his seat, waiting for his teacher to continue his discourse. “This,” said Yajnavalkya, to the so called pursuers of Truth, “is the difference between you and Janaka. He is the king and lives in a palace but is totally unattached to it. His mind is anchored in Brahmn. You are hermits, yet your mind is always anchored to the few trinkets in your huts.”

Janaka was called Rajarishi.You will find Krishna referring to Rajarishis in the fourth chapter of the Bhagwad Gita, called ‘Jnana Karma Sanyasa Yoga’. In verse 1, he says: “I imparted this immortal yoga to Vivaswan, Vivaswan imparted it to Manu, and Manu to Ikshvaku.” In verse 2: “This yoga, handed down from teacher to disciple in succession, was known to the Rajarishis. But owing to the long lapse of time it was lost to the world.” In verse 3: “I have today disclosed to you the same ancient yoga, which is a noble secret, for you are my devotee and friend.”

It is this yoga of nishkamakarma that is ideal for this age of Kali. Nishkamakarma or desireless action does not mean that you just keep on working like an automaton, no matter what the results are. You set yourself a target to achieve and you plan well to achieve it by putting in hard work with single-pointed attention. This ability to concentrate will come with the practice of meditation. But the difference is that, unlike the ordinary man, you will not be shattered if the results are not as expected. In gain or loss, your mind will be balanced, steady, and unperturbed, and therefore, fully equipped to deal with the situation or to make alternate plans.

This nishkamakarma is also applied to meditation. The practice of dhyana is continued calmly, whether the results are good or imperfect during any particular session. Soon, the mind attains a certain tranquillity and becomes fit to receive the experience known as samadhi. So a spiritual life is not incompatible with worldly existence. Actually, a properly lived life in the world is conducive to meditation. This is especially true, if you are also inclined to practise asanas, pranayama as laid down in the path of Ashtanga Yoga. A wandering sanyasin cannot get proper diet, rest and bath as prescribed for such yoga. The Gita puts it in a nutshell, “This yoga is not for one who eats too much, or too little, sleeps too much, or too little.” Moderation is the key word for the hathayogi and rajayogi. And this is best provided in a householder’s life.■

Despite Outward Differences We Are One

A colour wheel is a round, flat disk made of paper or cardboard. The outer edge is painted or coloured with stripes for each of the seven ​colours of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. When the wheel is spun quickly, the colours blend and turn into white. As it spins at high speed, only a pure white wheel with no hint of any of the rainbow colours is seen.

Children are often amazed at how all the colours can turn into white. But what they do not realize is that it is the other way around. It is white light that is the only colour, but through a process of dispersion, it breaks up into the different colours of the rainbow.

Each colour has its own wavelength. As light passes through different materials, those substances reflect light at various wavelengths, giving the appearance of different colours. But there is only one colour—pure light.

Similarly, if we look at humanity, we see on the outer surface a variety of people with different hair colours, eye colours, and skin colours. While outer colours may vary, the underlying colour of all humanity is the same. That colour is light. Our soul is our true essence.

The differences among us are only due to the different vestures in which that Light is embodied.

Just as white light manifests as the seven colours of the rainbow when it passes through different types of matter, similarly, the Light of the soul is one, even though it inhabits physical bodies having many different colours.

 At our physical level, all we see are our physical differences. When we develop a spiritual consciousness, we experience that the same Light of God is within each person. We are all united at the level of soul.

When we reach that level of awareness, we start to see all living beings as one big family of the Creator. We no longer differentiate between people based on outer form and custom. We recognize that there is beauty in diversity. We start treating all people with love and respect, because we know at their very core is the same essence of which we are made.

If we want to get a small glimpse of how this is possible, we need only look to our primitive technology today. We think we are very advanced, but it is just a small beginning for what humanity will develop in the future. If we look at the Internet, we find that all information is available to us by logging onto different sites. The server that hosts all the sites is a storehouse of all the information on all the sites. By logging on we access all the information we want.

God is like a giant server that hosts all our individual souls or websites. Thus, all knowledge about us is known to God. God is also able to simultaneously know what is happening to each of us at every second at the same time. When we tap into that spiritual consciousness and merge into the ocean of God, we too have access to all-consciousness.

 We can attain spiritual consciousness by focusing our attention within through a process called meditation. Through meditation, we contact our true nature, our soul, and discover it is one with God, the Source of divine love. Then we will experience peace and bliss.

Women are key in Ebola response

The current Ebola outbreak in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the tenth in the country since the disease was identified there in 1976, and the largest they have experienced.

Response efforts have been complicated by insecurity and armed conflict. Another challenge is how this outbreak has disproportionately affected women in some of the cities and towns, though not all.

To face this challenge, local women have taken a leadership role in explaining the disease, and learning how to stop its spread.

As of end-January 2019, there have been over 700 cases of Ebola in DRC, of which about two-thirds are women. Historically, Ebola tends to affect women and men at about the same rate.

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