Spirits to Spirituality

‘Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues moun.’   — Clare Boothe Luce.

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

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

In the course of personality development, various bottlenecks are encountered.

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, etc. The mind is cluttered with innumerable thoughts which impede clarity in thinking. Most of our thoughts 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.

When 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 into rehab. Simultaneously,  the relationship with family, friends, parents and my place of work was jeopardised.

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 interest —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 as well.

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 the 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.