I have been very upset with myself lately as I have started loving my sleep as opposed to getting up in the middle of the night when thevfamily was fast asleep, to utilise that time in meditation. My meditation time was the time to communicate my wishes and desires to the universe and seek support to fulfil them. At best, my desire was to meet God. For some strange reason, I have stopped meditation, Reiki and any other form of rmembering The Creator. It feels like I don't want to communicate anymore. I have remorse but still I can't motivate myself, as if the brain and the heart are not supporting each other. Its the brain- dead phase of life where I am doing the least. I can't even remember the dreams I see at night.
Secreatly inside I don't want to know the immediate future. When meditating, I had visions. Know I don't want them. It was too much information b'cos once I am aware of what's going to be against my wish, I had to pray to change that.
Now I don't know, so I don't have to bother changing anything.
What a cop out? I know difficult time is ahead and I need to prepare but instead I pretend I am living an average persons life - go to work, come home eat dinner and watch movies; wake up in the morning and repeat the same.
Tonight, I woke up to change the pattern. I am awake while the others sleep. And I read the most appropriate article on Planning your day. It gave example of a school teacher that teaches 5 lessons a day but have the one lesson free for Planning the lessons. The example that stuck me was of the builder who starts using bricks and mortel but doesn't stop to plan his next move using the excuse that he doesn't have time to stop and think. It is simply something we can't avoid.
If Planning is most important to the success of the day, the meditating is essential for life. Meditation time is the time for giving time to know your emotional turmoil, your thoughts that are sucking life out of you and planning how to fix the issues. It really doesn't help to say that I have no issues and nothng needs a fix. Even if that is the case, then you must meditate to thank the universe for looking after you so well. So either way, there is no case for 'no need to meditate'.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
10 percent of time to be devoted to community and 90 percent to God or vice-versa
I was amazed to hear the other interpretation from a local caucasian guy about where we should spend our time. He said that his religion says to devote 10% to the community. Therefore, he believed that the other 90% of time must be devoted to God.
I was truely amazed to hear this and thought carefully about it.
Gurbani says - Hath paon kar kaam, chit niranjan naal. Let your hands and feet perform the jobs nessasary for daily living but keep your heart desiring the God.
Gurbani further says - Aathh pahar aradhiyai, puran satgur gyan.
Keep God in your conscience, 24 hours a day.
Talking of a Panjabi mentality, we are very aware of donating our 10% of money to the gurdwara and take this duty very seriously. It's ridiculous that 90% is much more than 10% and yet our focus in life is the 10%. on the same token, TIME is more important than MONEY but we worry more about donating money than devoting our thoughts to God.
It's actually appropriate to think about What is God at this point. If you believe that God is the Superconscious that created this uni-verse and that every particle of the physical world has God in it, then what are we to see in every being?
How are we to treat our customers, not how we speak politely because they buy our product. I mean, how are we to see our job/ duty to serve the humanity through the trade we have decided to adopt. I am getting at the doing our job consciously meaning that we must take responsibility for what we serve. If we serve poison when we are expected to serve the masses, who we are really serving is God. So when we hide behind the big names like Monsanto and other corporations and try to serve poison by pretending to be nameless worker - just a cog in the wheel; we need to know clearly that we are responsible for the time we are devoting to these Corporations.
Similarly, we have to be conscious of what we are buying. We can't simply blame others for our misery. We chose to be a customer of a corporation selling poison, then we must endure the cosequences.
So back to the Conscience - think very carefully about what thoughts are occupying our Mind and also of the actions / jobs we are performing with our hands to earn the money. Buddha talks of the Eight right things to do, Right Job is one of them. If you are doing a job that your heart / conscience doesn't agree to, then you are on the wrong path.
I was truely amazed to hear this and thought carefully about it.
Gurbani says - Hath paon kar kaam, chit niranjan naal. Let your hands and feet perform the jobs nessasary for daily living but keep your heart desiring the God.
Gurbani further says - Aathh pahar aradhiyai, puran satgur gyan.
Keep God in your conscience, 24 hours a day.
Talking of a Panjabi mentality, we are very aware of donating our 10% of money to the gurdwara and take this duty very seriously. It's ridiculous that 90% is much more than 10% and yet our focus in life is the 10%. on the same token, TIME is more important than MONEY but we worry more about donating money than devoting our thoughts to God.
It's actually appropriate to think about What is God at this point. If you believe that God is the Superconscious that created this uni-verse and that every particle of the physical world has God in it, then what are we to see in every being?
How are we to treat our customers, not how we speak politely because they buy our product. I mean, how are we to see our job/ duty to serve the humanity through the trade we have decided to adopt. I am getting at the doing our job consciously meaning that we must take responsibility for what we serve. If we serve poison when we are expected to serve the masses, who we are really serving is God. So when we hide behind the big names like Monsanto and other corporations and try to serve poison by pretending to be nameless worker - just a cog in the wheel; we need to know clearly that we are responsible for the time we are devoting to these Corporations.
Similarly, we have to be conscious of what we are buying. We can't simply blame others for our misery. We chose to be a customer of a corporation selling poison, then we must endure the cosequences.
So back to the Conscience - think very carefully about what thoughts are occupying our Mind and also of the actions / jobs we are performing with our hands to earn the money. Buddha talks of the Eight right things to do, Right Job is one of them. If you are doing a job that your heart / conscience doesn't agree to, then you are on the wrong path.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
A sikh must devote 10% of their time to spiritualism daily and yet ensure to not disrupt the daily life and resposibilities of home, community and humanity. We must not use religion as an escape from reality or responsibility.
Spiritualism calls for the deciple to be aware of his/ her internal feelings and conflicts. Feelings are the language of the soul, just like Words are the language of the Mind. THOUGHT is responsible for every ACTION. Together they become our KARMA. Behind every thought is a feeling. Happy feelings generate good thoughts and vise-versa.
Internal conflicts lead to dis-ease making the body lose control. Normally body run on instinct and automatic systems that are in place by nature and not on Mind. Mind is a great yet the most distructive weapon we possess. It can generate a negative thought pattern that makes our self-created reality a living hell resulting in disease and eventually death.
Therefore, it is imperitive that we stay very aware of our Mind and guard our thoughts before they create havoc in our lives.
Thoughts are directed by our wishes and desires (WaD). WaD are created by our five senses based on our previous experiences and likings. Ears like listening, eyes like viewing, mouth likes uttering, skin likes touching and nose likes smelling. Its easy for the five senses to find things to like in the physical world as they are tangible.
To devote 10% time (2 hours and 40 minutes) in the Spirit world or spiritualism or on devotion of the unknown, unseen and unfathomable is not at easy task for the five senses. Then how must we spend this time?
To successfully and attentively devote our 100% attention to Spiritualism will mean the involvement of all five senses. Therefore, we must have something to Speak, Listen, See, Touch and Smell. God is beyond the reach of all these five senses, and yet we must involve these to achieve our goal.
Generally, Sikhs read their Nitnem - daily prayer from the Gutka - holy booklet which engages our eyes and mouth. Most of us have memorised at least four of the five morning prayers. This means that we have only the Speech engaged and devoted. Then we wonder why it has taken us a lifetime and yet we have not accomplished much spiritually. We can't expect a 100% result by devoting only 20 % of the senses.
To achieve desired result, we must engage all five senses together at the same time. For this, we focus on the WORD that we utter. We must HEAR what we are SPEAKING. Alongwith this, we need to focus on our Breath and FEEL the temprature of our breath, focus our eyes on some point to SEE and try to SMELL the air around us.
There are two ways to do this. First method is to engage the senses in the Physical action - that is looking at a physical object like the holy granth/ book or gutka/ booklet. Similarly, the smell can be physical, like an incence. This is OK in the ealy stage of devotion.
Eventually, one must realise that the purpose is to be in the Spirit world, therefore, this process must be internalised and the five senses must be engaged in non-physical action, that is visualisation.
Visualisation is the vital part missing from our devotion. Very few sikhs achieve results with their Meditation, prayers and kirtan due to this issue. Gurbani has tried to clarify the methods of meditation clearly but we fail to contemplate on the meaning and in understanding it.
About Speech the guru says - Ek akhar jo gurmukh jape ta ki nirmal soi
About Seeing - Gur ki murat man mai dhyan
In Japji sahib the guru says - Sunyai, manyai, man keeta bhao
Speak, Listen and Feel the essence of the message.
Spiritualism calls for the deciple to be aware of his/ her internal feelings and conflicts. Feelings are the language of the soul, just like Words are the language of the Mind. THOUGHT is responsible for every ACTION. Together they become our KARMA. Behind every thought is a feeling. Happy feelings generate good thoughts and vise-versa.
Internal conflicts lead to dis-ease making the body lose control. Normally body run on instinct and automatic systems that are in place by nature and not on Mind. Mind is a great yet the most distructive weapon we possess. It can generate a negative thought pattern that makes our self-created reality a living hell resulting in disease and eventually death.
Therefore, it is imperitive that we stay very aware of our Mind and guard our thoughts before they create havoc in our lives.
Thoughts are directed by our wishes and desires (WaD). WaD are created by our five senses based on our previous experiences and likings. Ears like listening, eyes like viewing, mouth likes uttering, skin likes touching and nose likes smelling. Its easy for the five senses to find things to like in the physical world as they are tangible.
To devote 10% time (2 hours and 40 minutes) in the Spirit world or spiritualism or on devotion of the unknown, unseen and unfathomable is not at easy task for the five senses. Then how must we spend this time?
To successfully and attentively devote our 100% attention to Spiritualism will mean the involvement of all five senses. Therefore, we must have something to Speak, Listen, See, Touch and Smell. God is beyond the reach of all these five senses, and yet we must involve these to achieve our goal.
Generally, Sikhs read their Nitnem - daily prayer from the Gutka - holy booklet which engages our eyes and mouth. Most of us have memorised at least four of the five morning prayers. This means that we have only the Speech engaged and devoted. Then we wonder why it has taken us a lifetime and yet we have not accomplished much spiritually. We can't expect a 100% result by devoting only 20 % of the senses.
To achieve desired result, we must engage all five senses together at the same time. For this, we focus on the WORD that we utter. We must HEAR what we are SPEAKING. Alongwith this, we need to focus on our Breath and FEEL the temprature of our breath, focus our eyes on some point to SEE and try to SMELL the air around us.
There are two ways to do this. First method is to engage the senses in the Physical action - that is looking at a physical object like the holy granth/ book or gutka/ booklet. Similarly, the smell can be physical, like an incence. This is OK in the ealy stage of devotion.
Eventually, one must realise that the purpose is to be in the Spirit world, therefore, this process must be internalised and the five senses must be engaged in non-physical action, that is visualisation.
Visualisation is the vital part missing from our devotion. Very few sikhs achieve results with their Meditation, prayers and kirtan due to this issue. Gurbani has tried to clarify the methods of meditation clearly but we fail to contemplate on the meaning and in understanding it.
About Speech the guru says - Ek akhar jo gurmukh jape ta ki nirmal soi
About Seeing - Gur ki murat man mai dhyan
In Japji sahib the guru says - Sunyai, manyai, man keeta bhao
Speak, Listen and Feel the essence of the message.
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