Loneliness is being experienced by people at various stages in life and the triggers could be loss of a loved one, being rejected in love or simply not being open to love and it can be very suffocating.
We experience life through the lens of being a separate entity and we seek “company” / “purpose” outside ourselves and that is the crux of the problem of loneliness.
“Truth would set you free”
If you simply enquire into the nature of your existence, you will eventually realise that we are “all-one” (Advaita) and its impossible to be alone and the question of loneliness doesn’t arise…
The difference between the unrealised and the realised is that the unrealised seek company/purpose without and the realised know that there is nothing to seek without…
Good health and peace of mind are what we seek in life and yet chase things that take us away from it by indulging sensory pleasures/ego trips…Who is to blame for this?
Pleasure seeking and pain avoiding is considered “normal” so as Nisargadatta Maharaj points out “Moments of pleasure are merely gaps in the stream of pain” and this is our experience of life since we are under the impression that we are our body/mind.
The point is, you are not your body/mind, you have a body/mind. Then who are you? That my friend is the question that you need to meditate, reflect & contemplate over and arrive at an answer for yourself…
Silence helps in this process – just sit still and observe the urges of the body/mind and allow them to pass without indulging them, this settles the mind in due course just like if you allow muddy water to settle, all the mud will settle at the bottom and you will have clear/still water through which you can see. In this process you will realise that you are nothing but a witness to the entire process of life and only then perhaps the body/mind attachment will wane…
Everybody knows not to get caught in Hell(Pain), but a very few people know how not to get caught in Heaven(Pleasure) – Zen
The auspicious month of Shravan is on-going and the pious have their code of conduct to be maintained during this period like abstinence from Himsa(Violence) hence non-vegetarian food is not consumed during this period, moderation in other sense indulgences/intoxication – hence abstinence from alcohol, etc. This actually proves the point that we very well know what is not good for our system both at an individual level and collective level and yet find it difficult to adhere to what is good, that we need periods such as Shravan, Ramaadan, Lent, etc to remind us that moderation is the way of life and not indulgence.
The desirable qualities(Daivi/Deva’s) and the undesirable(Asura’s) are both within us, it is upto us which ones we choose to uphold. According to the Bhagavad Gita (16.6-16.7), all beings in the universe have both the divine qualities (daivi sampad) and the demonic qualities (asuri sampad) within each.The sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita states that pure god-like saints are rare and pure demon-like evil are rare among human beings, and the bulk of humanity is multi-charactered with a few or many faults. The Gita states that desires, aversions, greed, needs, emotions in various forms “are facets of ordinary lives”, and it is only when they turn to lust, hate, cravings, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness, hypocrisy, cruelty and such negativity- and destruction-inclined that natural human inclinations metamorphose into something demonic (Asura).
Devas(God’s) and Asuras (Demons) are within all of us & are simply expressions of our own intent – noble or other”wise”… Most of us are fence sitters who would normally prefer noble intent till it is inconvenient or the other”wise” seems more “interesting” as the lyrics of a famous Billy Joel song says”I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun….”
We put Saints on Pedestals and pray to them since it is easier to simply pray to a saint than to be one and in the process miss the point completely that we ourselves could be one only if we are able to observe Sh-Ravan in its true spirit and that is to subdue the “Ravan” within us….
I was reading this article on “reducing carbon footprint” and ways of doing so, when it struck me that whilst we may be blaming the climatic changes on “Global Warming” nobody is actually interested in making a change to their lifestyle that would not only reduce global warming but also provide a healthier lifestyle. We are addicted to our unhealthy lifestyle choices that we simply don’t want to give up. So the root cause of the Global Warming that we are witnessing is our own callousness.
It doesn’t need intelligence to see that the present mess is the consequence of the past callousness and that the future would be the consequence of the present callousness.
Callousness is the virus responsible for this Global warming and it is even worse than COVID-19 pandemic since all of us are infected but are unaware of it since there is no RT-PCR test for callousness. However, the problem can be tackled provided there is collective will to tackle it and the vaccine in this case is self administered by changing to a carbon reducing lifestyle for each one of us…
There is no simple way, you simply have to educate yourself and discipline yourself to follow a low carbon footprint lifestyle.
But wait! that involves change! “Change” is even a bigger problem! So what do we do? Look the other way, lead our lives as we know best and leave the problem for the generations to come…
Now here is the funny part: As per the theory of Karma and rebirth, what is biting you in the ass today is your own past doing…and the generations to come are our own souls being reborn to deal with the mess that has been created.
So the past mess is haunting us in our present lives and our inaction on dealing with it, or worse still, adding our two bits to it, will haunt us even more in our next lives. That is inescapable karma.
So wake up, smell the coffee and get over the callousness to transform your lifestyle to an environment friendly one by reducing your carbon footprint. It will not only give you a healthier life in the present one but would also provide your next lives avataars with a reduced carbon habit pattern, lesser mess to deal with and a great environment to live in…
It couldn’t have been said better – love is the absence of judgement. Judgement is the function of ego and we spend our lifetimes judging people (including ourselves), ideas, issues, things, etc which creates/reinforces our ego. We then gravitate towards people who share our judgements – likes and dislikes… and it simply narrows down our own possibilities/perspective of the world.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. … For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged.” – Jesus
The basis on which we categorise things becomes our lens of viewing the world and becomes our karma – what you sow, so shall you reap. The faculty of judgement is given for the purpose of discriminating what upholds common well being and in aligning with that, our own well being is taken care of. Instead we misuse the faculty to form our own world view(which could be filled with negative emotions of hatred, anger, etc) and gravitate towards people who share it, thereby perpetuating it.
If you simply open your heart to caring about common well being and aligning your actions to it, your well being will automatically be taken care of. This involves the bold step of dropping your own narrow worldview(judgements) in preference of love (Well being of All), regardless of the fact that others may not live by this code. That is true courage and bravery.
As Saint Teresa puts it – “If you judge people, you have no time to love them”
We may claim to live in the same world, time & place but are we?
We perceive the world from our understanding of it. That’s why it is said that each one of us lives in our own world, since our understanding is shaped by our experiences which are varied & the wisdom/maturity it has brought us, which is even more varied… The trick is to go beyond duality into the field of equanimity and rise above
Words are an inadequate means of conveying an experience regardless of how eloquently it is expressed. That is an inherent limitation of words. There is a vast difference between the actual experience, the words used to express them and the understanding of it by the listener. Its somewhat like Chinese whispers, the truth is lost the moment it is expressed and more so in subsequent stages depending on the understanding/intent/capability of the expresser to express and the limitations of the listener to understand what is being conveyed.
Experience is the only path and hence the importance of life itself, life is an opportunity to experience. Now what you want to experience is entirely dependent on your maturity in life. But one thing is for sure, the path towards Self-Realisation goes through direct experience. Hence regardless of how many books you read or Guru’s you listen to, unless the knowledge is converted from information to practical application in your own life, it is useless to your spiritual journey.
As Sri Yukteswar puts it beautifully: Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary, sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is assimilated. Otherwise, continual intellectual study may result in vanity, false satisfaction, and undigested knowledge.
We experience the world due to the cognizing, retaining, thinking, discriminating, willing and acting functions that are enabled by a Force that is within all beings. There is nothing else, the Force is the Guru and your work is simply to remove all the barriers that are not allowing you to experience the Force as it is. These barriers are the attachments to various things – people, emotions, ideas, possessions, etc that give you an illusion of duality in a world that is Advaita (Non-Dual) in reality.
Masters through ages have pointed us in the same direction that is beautifully expressed by Sadhguru – “In is the only way out”. The Masters are pointing us to the right direction but are we truly listening? I pray that we are blessed with the wisdom to accept the path and the sincerity to walk it.
Space exploration, Wimbledon, Euro 2020, etc being tracked & enjoyed by millions at one end and on the other- Millions infected with COVID & other diseases, thousands dying of poverty, conflict ridden regions killing thousands, global warming/floods & other natural disasters killing thousands are bizarre contradictions that co-exist in our world.
I recently shared a WhatsApp forward of a “circular logic” that stated “Pharma funds the media, The Media funds your fears, your fear funds your disease, your disease funds Pharma”. That Pharma has also contributed immensely to the betterment of mankind, is needless to be stated but sadly there also co-exists a profiteering element that is based on the greed of men…
How do we reconcile these contradictions that seem to co-exist in our world and we seem to be turning a Nelson’s eye to them? Since the world is merely a reflection of us, we need to get to the source of the problem which is that we want to view ourselves as pure and the problem as “out there” but in reality the problem is within each one of us being unable or simply unwilling to deal with his/her own Shad Ripu(six enemies of the mind) which are the seeds(and perhaps trees) of all contradictions we are witnessing in the world. We all know that we should refrain from the Shad Ripu- Kama (lust), Krodha (anger), Lobha (greed), Mada (arrogance), Moha (delusion), and Matsarya (jealousy); but do we? Instead, we keep a curated front for others that purports to hide these but in reality we all have these in varying proportions and the reflection of this is in the world we experience.
So as soon as we take responsibility that the problem is not “out there” but “in here” and cleanse ourselves from within by practicing virtues of Maitri (Loving kindness), Karuna(Compassion), Mudita(Pure Joy), Upeksha(equanimity), we also make the world a better place to live in.
Bodhisattva 