Spirits to Spirituality

‘Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.”   writes Clare Boothe Luce.

It requires enormous courage to acknowledge our deficiencies and make a 360degree change in our personality  to be acknowledged and acceptable. Normally we live in a state of denial.

Man is a social being who is in seek of recognition and positive strokes. Only a sage or a mad person does not require attention.

This piece is on my personality development and various bottlenecks encountered in the path.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says” If you can win over your mind ,you can win over the whole world”. Body and mind are the precious gifts of nature. And we neglect them leading to physical  and psychological  disorders.

We torture our bodies through various forms of addictions, be it excessive sex, smoke, substance, alcohol, food, desire for power etall. The mind is cluttered with innumerable thoughts which impede clarity in thinking. On an average we receive around 50k to 60,000 thoughts and most of them are negative in nature. These thoughts are either fretting about our past or anxiety of what is expected in the future. We are never in the present moment.  Living  in the present moment is  a state of meditation  and almost  devoid of desires where nature  works wonders .  How does one reach  being in the present state?  There are several techniques  and each one finds his or her path . 

I  became an alcoholic  and a heavy  smoker . It had a deleterious impact  on my mind and body .  I was hospitalised, operated upon  and put in a rehab.  Simultaneously   relations with  family, friends , parents , place of work  get jeopardised . One gets categorised as a no- brainer.

My  dalliance with alcohol was for more than 15 years .  Astrologer friends blamed my fate  on  planetary configurations. Basically I was at war with myself . I could not pursue my areas of interests  that is theatre and  had to settle for a job in the government ( Indian Railway Traffic Service) . I was selected to the Indian Police Service but was dissuaded from joining that job . This added to my frustration   as I  lost out on  POWER.  Slowly I hit the bottle and the situation worsened.

I overcame addiction through various Art Of Living Programmes . The  fulcrum of all Art Of Living programmes is the unique breathing technique called Sudarshan Kriya( Proper Vision Process) which has  magical  curative  powers. Today  by the  grace of the Master ,  I am  an Art Of Living Teacher aswell.

As Sri Sri says” Only the presence of the master will bring fulfilment to your life and to all your relations.”

Breathing techniques  and meditation are extremely powerful  and can harmonise  body , mind ,thoughts complex . Srinivas Iyengar says” breath does not mean air taken in and exhaled , but the Prana( subtle life force) that is the magnetic current of breath.