Author: Ravishankar Krishnamurthy

THOUGHTFUL ACTIONS MANIFEST YOUR REALITY IN LIFE – PART – 1

When you nurture the thought that there is someone to make you feel good, you latch on. What is important for you to realise is that, it is the goodness that is within you that makes you feel complete and whole.

Thoughts form actions. Allow them to create the reality you want to make you feel alive. This way, you will make every moment of your life meaningful and you will start to do something about it.

Every thoughtful action should bring you closer to your dream self that you want to be known for and be know as. Dreams are visual expressions of your innermost desires that help to manifest your reality you are looking forward to.

Therefore, actions you take should resonate with your innermost desires. Such actions will complete you and give you a huge sense of purpose.

DO YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE JOY ?

IF SO, THIS IS A SUPER FAST METHOD 

Step 1 – Just say this to yourself Loudly “I am called….. (Say your name). Repeat 25 times as loudly as you feel comfortable. For eg. if your name is Suresh, say “I am called Suresh”. 

Step 2 – Now say to yourself “I am called”. Repeat 25 times, little softer, with your eyes closed. Do not tell your name this time.

Step 3 – Now say to yourself “I Am”. Repeat 25 times, a little more softer this time (almost to a whisper) with your eyes closed. 

Step 4 – Now say to yourself “I”. Repeat 25 times, in an extremely soft whisper, with your eyes closed. After you finish the repetitions, keep your eyes closed. 

You will find your mind totally still and quiet. You will have discarded your identity and your association with who you have become. 

All that remains in you now is your glorious self. 

Adore it, Love it, Cherish it. Its you. This is your real you 🙂

ENJOY THE BLISS. REPEAT THIS EXERCISE AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT.

THE DESTINY OF TRUE SURVIVORS

My jungle experience over the years have revealed such strong feelings for the animals. 

Whenever I hear an alarm call of a deer or the barking of dogs, it signals a predator close by. The animals are scared that they or others of their kind should not lose their lives. Yet they live every moment, enjoying the green grass and quite solitude of Mother Nature. 

We humans are so miserable. We have everything, we save up for tomorrow and yonder. Yet we are scared of what? We are predators of our own happiness. We seek happiness but search for all those actions that give us sorrow. 

Our predatory skills are only to put others down, to walk over their heads to scream success. So shameful, so retarded in thought! 

We have predictable moments of everything, the law, and every other institution to secure our life whereas the animals have only their instincts. 

We we lost our instinct to live. We are just fighting the ghosts of our own imagination. Our failure to live looms large as our fate. Whereas the animals live by their graceful surrender to nature. She gives them life and also decides their destiny. 

We have a lot to learn. We have only learnt to accumulate wealth and sorrow. But the animals have accumulated wisdom to live in the moment. 

Are we intelligent? Not at all! We are the most miserable creatures who have learnt to destroy, to project hate as news and have learnt how to make our lives hell. 

Mother Nature has everything. But we are destroying it for our greed, not realising that we are pulling our own carpet from below our own feet. 

The jungle is my home. I have realised this after all these years. My Himalayan jungle experience as well as that in the south has only shown me how to live, to survive and to be happy… in the moment! 

I love the happy and joyful animals. And I have only prayers for the humans, to learn to become as sensible, sensitive and as decent as the animals.

ARE YOU TRULY MEDITATING?

Meditation is not an activity to seek but it’s trying to establish a state to receive. You cannot be the meditator as in meditation there is no individual present. There is just you, meaning your higher self, not you as in your name and form.

I have come across people who have claimed that they are expert meditators as they have been doing meditation for 15 years, 20 years 

, 25 years etc. 

How can this be possible? In meditation, there is no You. Meditation is going beyond yourself, your mind, your personality. It’s just not about you in your form with a name. 

Meditation is not an activity. You cannot do meditation. Meditation is the end result of a quiet mind after you have discarded all unnecessary thought waves and emotions through active and purposeful contemplation. Thus, when your mind is completely rested and quiet, you just go beyond it into the blissful comfort of your Consciousness. Now you are in a meditative state

Meditation is going beyond time. So every time you sit for meditation, you are just losing yourself more and more of your ego self to seek your true self.  Therefore, there cannot be a  cumulative meditation experience. 

If you expect people to appreciate your meditative experience of so many years, you have just failed in your Sadhana. 

In meditation, If you have reached soul consciousness, the realisation that the soul has no beginning or end; meaning it has no age, time or space will dawn upon you as you are the soul. 

Then you have succeeded to connect with your Higher Consciousness.

OPEN YOUR GATE TO ETERNAL BLISS

We allow ourselves and our minds to get attached to all material things and we feel the need to possess them. Behind all this craving is our need to feel happiness. 

We get so addicted to these tendencies that we are performing these desire quenching activity in our minds without awareness or discrimination. It’s happening all the time. It’s a trap we have set for ourselves and we have allowed ourselves to suffer from it. 

This whole process only increases Greed, Attachment and Expectations and of course, this leads us to expect Eternal happiness from all these insensitive and meaningless actions. 

Our blissful self is forever waiting to please us, to envelop us into its bosom and comfort us that everything is ok. We seek its grace only when we feel let down by situations, circumstances, events or from the actions of fellow human beings. But do you notice, when you surrender so desperately to your inner self, the comfort is so genuine, so reassuring and so deep that it relaxes us immediately?

The truth of Eternal bliss is felt by all of us. Yet we are foolishly going after temporary sense gratifications. It’s so small and irrelevant, so minuscule in comparison to the huge rush of an incomparable Spiritual euphoria. 

If all the negative emotions were to be truly elevating in experience, we would not have any greed or lust left in us. We would be forever unconditionally happy. But the truth is, we are left feeling incomplete and empty. A sadness dawns in us and we seek out to an instant Spiritual gratification that can quite our minds, settle our breathe and reassure our ego. We attend a discourse, watch a video and do some satsang. We feel truly elevated. 

It is now that our ego tells us that we are elevated beings. We start preaching Spirituality till the next wave of greed and lust takes over. And then,  we are back to square one. 

This madness that leads to sickness needs to end. We need to stop punishing ourselves and stop taking the hypocritical Spiritual pill. We should instead surrender to our blissful self and genuinely seek it’s ever existent blissful balm of comfort that soothes our minds and our senses. 

EXERCISE – Bring your awareness to your breathe. Let go of all your thoughts, your mental chatter, your biases, your prejudices, your judgements and your lofty thoughts of righteous indignation and self importance. Truly observe your breathe with complete focus and wait for your blissful self to guide you. 

This experience is truly elevating. If you practice has sincerity and diligence, you will soon find that you are in fact transported to the world of eternal happiness. And this will become more and more “You” as your practice gains momentum and strength.

Desires are not actually bad. But getting attached to them because of your own mental weakness is bad. Then we cannot say “our worldly desires” do not leave us. It is you who will decide which desires to entertain. Do not leave it to your mind to make the choice. 

It is very important for you to understand which of the desires lead you to what kind of actions and are followed by what kind of consequences. By thinking this way, you will have the discrimination to only entertain desires that bring out the best in you for a productive day. 

Use your mind intelligently and with wisdom. The mind assume the shape and quality of the work you do. If your tasks have a Spiritual intent, the mind will turn Spiritual. If your thoughts are ridden with guilt or fear, the mind will also act likewise. 

Remember, your mind is your servant. You can only expect it to do your bidding. It cannot lead your life or help you. Because you are the master.

If you expect the mind to help you, it will only lead you astray as it is filled with impression of your past (both good and bad) and it may choose to take any one of those impressions. Can you afford to take that risk? 

Think intelligently and act wisely! You will be happy!

EXERCISE – Watch your thought and kind of images and information they project. Reflect upon them rather than acting upon them.

YOU OWN YOUR SENSES, YOUR SENSES DO NOT OWN YOU

It is very important for us to master the art of controlling our senses. Our senses are our resource for gathering information from and of the outside world. That’s the end of it. But does it really end there?

Our senses are designed to feed us information of the outside world. But we end up being coerced by them or misuse them, knowingly and unknowingly. There are two ways of perceiving information through our senses;

1. *Through direct perception* – Here we observe with complete detachment. We just gather information and not let the object become a cause for distraction. 
2. *Through our mind* – When the mind observes through our senses, it is also actively trying to match the information it gathers through the senses, to resolve the incomplete information or experiences from the past. So, when it perceives and gathers information, it is also getting deeply influenced and attracted by what it sees, hears, tastes, smells or feels. 

We should be very careful and be very vigilant about the way we receive and perceive the information the senses provide to us. We should not be unduly attracted, influenced or attached to what we observe through our senses. 

If we are not vigilant enough, the mind will project the object of perception to us as most valuable and cause an attraction we cannot resist. We then end up owning the object. The attraction is so deep that the object in turn, starts to own us. All our actions there after are in relation to the object we own. 

We end up making impulsive purchases and waste our money on sense gratification which happens only because we let our minds influence our intelligence and we got swayed by our motions. Soon we realise the mistake we made as the object has lost its importance in our lives. 

We also end up flaunting our decisions and make a mockery of ourselves. For example, if we wear an expensive watch or dress, or we drive an expensive car, these objects (the watch, dress or car) own us and we project them as extensions of our personality and expect people to respond to the way we project ourselves. 

I was once a witness to a very funny incident. There is a mobile phone manufactured in United Kingdom. It’s laden with jewels and is designed to attract attention. It clearly stands out from other phones. 

A person who owned one of these instruments (I came to know from the conversation) was saying that when he made calls from this premium mobile phone, he managed to get his work done (like booking a ticket for a concert or asking for a special favour etc. etc). But the same did not happen when he made calls with other normal phone he owns. People around him, who were his friends sharing the same affluence, were amused by his tall claims. 

If people do not acknowledge our character we play then, we are disappointed. Imagine even an inanimate object can control us and make us behave and act ridiculously. The ego feels hurt and we feel we need louder expressions to attract peoples attention. We are then pushed and pulled by our emotions. These actions are the very reasons for our sadness, grief and arrogance. 

Senses are precious instruments for our survival and right expression. We need to use them judiciously to ensure they provide us the information in the “Here and Now”. We should not be influenced by them rather we should be more aware of the information we gather through them with discrimination and dispassion. 

We need to understand that the senses are our servants and we are their master. 

*EXERCISE* – Whenever you observe any object, situation or any circumstance, tell yourself, “I am the CEO of my life, my mind is my Manager, my senses are my staff. My senses are only observing and providing me information through my manager without being unduly influenced, attracted to, prejudiced or biased by what they are perceiving. They are obeying my command to help me take the right decision and are not trying to teach me or influence me in any manner that will cause hurt or damage the peace of mind within me”.

SURE WAYS TO SUCCEED IN LIFE AND ENJOY YOUR SUCCESS

We often look to Miracles to work for us when we pray. And if they don’t manifest, we lose faith in ourselves and also in our prayers. We are forever hopeful that a miracle human being has been assigned to us by God, sometime in life to take us out of our troubles. We feel we are entitled to this favour by the divine. We are often looking for such individuals who promise us an easy path.

We feel we are entitled because we have prayed so much that God has to listen. In our search for such individuals, we offer money in exchange for the service to give us material, religious or other forms of gratifications, in the form of blessings which can perform miracles in our lives. 

More often, we feel our wants have not been completely serviced by these individuals because we are blinded by what we want. We feel our entitlements have to be serviced as per our requirements only. 

Have we ever asked ourselves if we have honestly performed our part of what God asks of us?

There are 3 things we most often miss, which if done, can definitely get us God’s attention towards us and we can get blessed. 

Now do not take me as God’s agent or that I am making a frivolous promise. What I am telling you is a sure shot way of how God has programmed it for us. These ways are;

1. STOP SEEKING SELF GRATIFICATION FROM OTHERS – Man is a selfish being. So selfish that he is completely attached to his personal needs and is blinded by his cravings. In spite of all his efforts to secure his life (which is but natural), he still yearns for gratifications from others. Somewhere deep within him is this feeling that he is special and therefore deserves special attention. 

We make such moves like enforcing our point of view on others, expects others to respect us out of turn. We want people to do us favours and want people to talk about us or to simply acknowledge our presence. We also dress loudly to announce our presence. 

We start having unrealistic expectations out of life and put ourselves under tremendous societal pressure. We begin to compare ourselves with others. We blame others for judging our financial worth not realising that it is our own projection that is haunting us in return. 

Such is the poverty of our self esteem that our happiness depends only on how others treat us. We need to get over this poverty and know that we need our own approval for being happy. We need to Look within ourselves, spend time with ourselves and sort out all our emotional baggages and pent up feelings. 

2. ACCEPTING WHAT WE GET – We often pray for God’s attention on us. We constantly seek his undivided attention and his blessings on us. We in turn get a lot of blessings in return. 

But we are only seeking what we want as we are blinded by our fixed desires and wants. God is offering us plenty of things but we do not recognise them. For a moment, let us relax, close our eyes, and see what is coming our way and not judge what is coming to us. 

Let us openly accept them and ask God why he has sent us these material things or certain situations or people into our life at the moment. 

Let us have the confidence in our prayers and know that God knows best what he is sending our way and he knows best what should come to us at what time. We need to keep aside our personal views of what we want and graciously and prayerfully accept as blessings what God is sending our way into our lives at this time. 

For some of us, these are learning’s to make us more knowledgeable, for some it is filling up certain voids in our life and empowers our journey , and for some, it is fulfilling our needs and not wants. Let us open our consciousness to receive unconditionally.

If we challenge what we get or abuse what we receive, we are only limiting what God will give us henceforth as our ego becomes a big hinderance and we block God’s blessings on us through our own through less actions and insensitive behaviour. 

3. SERVICE TO OTHERS – Selfless and unconditional service to others gives us a realistic view of our lives we lead. It tones our unrealistic desires and grounds our emotions. When we offer to selflessly serve others, we are also shown our own wasteful habits of unnecessary actions and our over expressive ways of flaunting what we have. We will also stop having unnecessary demands from life or from God. 

By serving others, our emotions get fine tuned and we feel a deep sense of satisfaction and gratitude. We thank God for giving us a good life and the ability to extend to others what we ourselves enjoy. We feel blessed indeed. 

Note that our selfless and unconditional service should be rendered by our own hands and not through someone who is performing it at our behest or command. Those who perform service are the ones who get the blessings. So if you are intending to serve and are asking someone to do it on your behalf, you  get a small portion of the blessings that comes your way. One who serves by his own hands gets the immediate and wholesome blessings. 

Blessings bring out the humility in us and makes us realise that we are actually distributing God’s wealth to his own people. We are only the channels of distribution. You need to feel grateful that God has chosen you as the channel who will serve as per his command. 

The more we serve, the more we get. It’s a divine cycle of giving and receiving. We should Give with selfless surrender and we will receive plentifully in gratitude. 

This is true living. You will be forever happy and will feel complete in every way. This will define your success in life. 

You will feel your success, live your success and enjoy your success too. 

Have a wonderful day. Happy Vijayadashami 

WHY ANIMALS ARE ALWAYS HAPPY AND HUMANS ARE NOT

Animals perform all actions as designed by nature. They have no free will. That is why they eat only certain foods, live in a certain way, mate during only certain seasons and die helplessly as nature intends for them. 

Animals are tuned by nature to live. So they have no ability to plan their lives. They do not need a purpose in life. They have no active consciousness to plan, to forecast and to look at the future. They live for that day. 

And animals are content and happy!!!

The innocence in animals is absolute. They are completely surrendered to their programming. So they are free. They have no actions that bind them to their karmas, unless they become cruel and act out of their programming because of some aggressive instincts. Something drives them to become overly aggressive and they become destructive. 

Humans on the other hand have free will. We have the ability to discriminate between right and wrong. We can plan, forecast and think ahead of time. 

But unless we develop a sense of purpose which is Spiritually guided, we cannot perform the right actions. 

We feel we are doing our duties. But the assumption of our duties are conditioned by our inner environment, based on our understanding of what is right and what is wrong.

Our definitions of rights and wrongs are changing as we perceive them. It’s all very momentary and fluctuating. We are dishonest with ourselves and with others too. We largely favour our selfishness and act according to what suits us and we convince ourselves that we are right. 

We have built around us a concept of God so that we can keep the element of truth intact within us. But as that concept is invisible, we take God for granted most times. And in the time of need, we extend our limbs shamelessly to beg for help and mercy to this same invisible source. 

The concept of Karmas looms largely in front us after we have done the wrong actions. We do these actions because of our bloated egos that convinces us to be vengenceful, reactive and aggressive. But after the act, we feel we are affected by our Karmas and we seek pardon from the divine. But it doesn’t stop here. We keep making the same mistakes all over again as our egos just don’t give up. 

This whole attitude of duality and dishonestly destroys our peace of mind and the integrity to our own inner self, our consciousness. We are the authors of our own miserable journey. We lose our sleep and become depressed. 

Animals were sent into this planet for us to learn from them. Look at them for instance. They have no financial investment to safeguard them, no organic foods to give them good health, no doctors to service their health needs, and definitely no psychiatrists to counsel them. They don’t need any of these as they are completely surrendered to nature. 

Have you animals meditating to get peace of mind ?

That is where our scriptures like Vedanta, Upanishads, Ayurveda and Yoga come in. These powerful philosophies have no second and have practical tools to keep us happy and healthy. They teach us to search for our purpose in life, stay surrendered to the divine will and submit to God’s will and live happily. 

They teach us how to be healthy and happy. They are not restricted to meaningless and dogmatic philosophies because they are liberating and truly divine in their intent to help you search for your inner peace. 

Let us all understand that we are also conditioned by nature. We are also animals. But our intelligence has been misused and over used by ourselves. We tried to act smarter than nature, tried to prove that we can achieve anything and everything. But are we happy at the end of it all ?

Happiness is everything. If that is not present, peace of mind is not present. And is peace of mind is not present, health is not present. Let us unconditional love ourselves only for the sake of our happiness. Let us become true to ourselves. Let us learn to love unconditionally. Those of you who have pets in their homes will know what I mean by unconditional love. 

When you have pets at home, you are able to love them unconditionally as they give you unconditional love, but are you able to love them back the same way everytime 

? You are conditioned by so many emotions that you are incapable of giving them the same love in return everytime. Are you able to give your family members the same love you give to your pets? Think about it.

If we seek blessings from God, let us make ourselves worthy of receiving his blessings. God will not be impressed with your material offerings of money, food or prayers or acts of violence done in his name. 

God is only attracted to your rightful actions that spread love and peace.

YOUR SUCCESS IS NOT A DEFINITION OF YOUR DUTY

All of us are bound by our duties to our family. In the process of performing our duties, we get enslaved by our perceptions of how successful we should be in performing our duties.

Duties are our bindings to the family, something that needs to be done in order to make the family machinery work. It is our involvement in certain tasks that contribute to the welfare of the family. It’s a sense of responsibility that binds us to our actions. 

You cannot skip your duties as you contribute to the fabric of all the actions in totality that are required to complete a family in every way. Duties are basic and their non performance leaves your day incomplete. There is no escape from your duties. 

People often make the mistake of finding the most successful way of performing duties. As a result, they get more and more engrossed with their concept of success. 

Your concept of success is now no more duty bound as it alienates you from the family. You may feel your success quotient is a measure of doing your duty but it is not so. Duties are inclusive whereas success is exclusive. This confusion is where all your problems begin. Let me clarify;

When you do your duty, you include yourself as a part of the family and complete tasks that are inter-related to each other. Each of you performs your duties in the family so that none is over burdened with work. A sense of responsibility binds you to your duties. 

Success is a different story. It’s your personal concept. While you run behind your success, you find all the ways and means to make your concept work. You are constantly pushing your egos to find its expression in your success story. While duties are inward bound and as a selfless act, success needs lots of gratification from the outside.

Duties are thankless tasks but relax your minds and your conscience whereas successes are always ego-centric. So in chasing your success, you often distance yourself from your family. You are so distanced that your family does not feel your presence anymore. 

These examples are very common these days. People are often seen working late and are not available to anyone in the family. When asked, they say that they are doing their duty to the family while they are actually following their personal concept of success. 

The actions for success thereafter are no more family bound and are purely selfish accomplishments for personal gratification. 

Duties and success do not share the same parameters. You cannot justify your personal success as a duty to your family.

Choose your concepts wisely and bring a balance in your personal and work life. This balance truly defines your success in life.