Quest for life

“I am going for Vipassana!”, I told one of my friends. “Really? Will you be able to stay without speaking for ten days?”. Anyone who knows me, knows what kind of a chatterbox I am. Speaking and being open about my feelings to anyone and everyone comes easy to me. Although I know fully well that it makes me vulnerable but then trusting people also is one of my qualities. Anyway, my decision to go to Vipassana, a ten days meditation course came as a surprise to a few of my friends. This was not so much because they couldn’t think of me doing meditation but more because they couldn’t think of me being silent for a day, let alone for ten days!  Despite my dedication, I was afraid that I would chicken out at the last moment. I had done it five years back; I used my broken leg as an excuse. This time, however, I was determined to go and requested the center to prepone my course so that I did not have time for second thoughts. Luckily, they contacted me back and said that I could do

Rule 22: Life is a temporary loan and this world is nothing but a sketchy imitation of Reality. Only children would mistake a toy for the real thing. And yet human beings either become infatuated with the toy or disrespectfully break it and throw it aside. In this life stay away from all kinds of extremities, for they will destroy your inner balance. Sufis do not go to extremes. A Sufi always remains mild and moderate. In July, I went for a month long yoga course. There was one prayer which we had to recite almost every two hours and it goes something like this: “I commit to maintain a balanced state of mind all the time, for it is in this state that my highest self-development is possible.” Before I went to the Yoga School, I did know that balance in life is necessary and there should be a work-life balance etc. I never gave much importance to a “Balanced state of mind” however. In fact five years back, my coach had told me that one should have a balanced state and not a happy sta

Rule 15: It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human being with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God. When I read this rule I remembered John Legend’s song ‘All of Me’ where he sings , “Cause all of me Loves all of you Love your curves and all your edges All your perfect imperfections” Is it so easy to love imperfections of a fellow human being where all of you loves all of the other one? How many of us are capable of this kind of love for our near and dear ones and humanity at large? What is perfect anyway? Is God perfect? Or we make the image of God in such a way that it seems perfect to us?  It is true that it’s easy to love something or someone that is perfect or in other words conforms to our expectations and ha

Rule 19: Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That is the hardest part and that is what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything will do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Don’t go with the flow. Be the flow. In today’s world where everything depends on achieving your goals, this rule seems therefore to be very outdated. Every coach, every self-help book and many personal development classes are about goal-setting and about why these goals are so important in your life so you should always be focused. I also feel that goals are necessary to have a direction in life: they keep you focused and determined to plough through.  Then why is it that Shamz has said that, “don’t fret where the road will take you”? I feel that he gives a very important message when he says that concentrate on the  first step . We can have elaborate goals and we can always preach that focus on the journey and not the destination. H

Rule 20:  We were all created in His image, and yet we were each created different and unique. No two people are alike. No hearts beat to the same rhythm. If God had wanted everyone to be the same, He would have made it so. Therefore, disrespecting differences and imposing your thoughts on others is an amount to disrespecting God’s holy scheme. My teacher used to say that every soul has its own journey and hence everyone will choose his or her unique path to enrich soul’s evolution. It’s so true. When you look around you see that every person has different way of perceiving things. The same event is perceived in a different manner by different people according to the conditioning of their minds. Isn’t it wonderful? That’s what makes this world interesting, that’s what makes it so exciting and that’s what is constant source of inspiration, motivation, fun and creation! However, that’s what is also the constant source of stress, disrespect, anger, violence and destruction. Our diff

Whenever I do coaching for people who are appearing in some exams I always ask them a question “So what do you think you could get in exam/test etc”. This is an obvious question and the answer immediately shows what the person is aiming for. If someone says that he thinks that he will get a “b” then he is aiming for nothing more than a grade ‘B’. Similarly, when a person replies that he will get an ‘a’ then he certainly is aiming for a grade ‘A’. Do you see how a simple answer reveals so much about what you are making out of your life?  What do you feel is the most powerful tool that we possess to bring changes in our lives? Yes, you have guessed it right. It is our mind. My coach used to say ‘whatever shit you are in is your own mind’s creation’. That used to annoy me. Do you think that I chose to be in this traffic jam or work in this crappy atmosphere? I did not want to take any blame for what my life looked like. It was always either the circumstances or the other people who

As a child, I was considered extraordinarily intelligent and also had a gift of gab. One would think that this would have made me a person who was really self-confident but no… that was not the case. In fact, I converted my strengths into weaknesses by not believing in myself. I always had self-doubts about myself. This self-doubt always made me look for validation from others and even when I got validation that was not enough for me. The self-doubt always made me choose the easier path, it made me meek and fearful. I was full of fear and always tried to fit in rather than be my own person. People with self-doubt usually get in their own way by trusting others more than trusting themselves. Fear and trust, of course, can’t go together. So, the first thing to start trusting yourself comes from accepting that there are no right or wrong answers in this world. It is always someone’s perspective: why not use your own perspective to choose the course of your life. The second t

Rule 2: The path to the Truth is a labour of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide! Not your mind. Meet, challenge and ultimately prevail over your nafs (ego) with your heart. Knowing your ego will lead you to the knowledge of God. When I read this rule, I realized that I have never thought about the meaning of ‘Truth’ or how it can be related to the ‘heart’ and more amazingly ‘ego’. I, kind of, assumed that everybody lives in their own reality and that for him/her is the truth. However, this rule compelled me to delve deeper. What is the truth? Is it an incident that happened? A fact? Law of nature? Rational conclusion or conscious reasoning? In the religious world ‘truth’ has several facets. In Hinduism, it is one supreme reality which is ‘SatChitanand’, meaning it is eternal, all-conscious and blissful. To attain this one reality or ‘truth’ we have to follow the path of ‘Dharma’. ‘Dharma’ or the cosmic laws are for people who want to experience the su