Beginning the lifetime journey now!

Neeraj Saxena

How to attain a higher spiritual plank without giving up your worldly duties and responsibilities? It may seem tough, but isn't.

It is a matter of accepting that you are not who or what you think you are. Strange? But true. We are not the mask we think we are. Yet, we carry it all the time, sometimes all our lives. We are also not the body that we are and that we are busy servicing like a client.

Most of us would be loath to admit that we are how our minds have been conditioned over several years since birth; having imbibed what one comes to recognise as the "socially acceptable" manner; colouring of our vision and thought in some manner or the other; and serving the forever-pleasure or satisfaction-seeking needs of our five senses...

The end result is that most human beings have one mask or the other all the time and starts believing the Mask to be him. He never gets to ask himself who he or she really is, what is his or her purpose in life and how could one achieve that?

We carry many baggages: of our intentions, expectations, dreams, desires, relationships et al, but the most difficult is the baggage of one's persona, the sum total of these masks.

We are all born clutter-free and pure, but gradually lose it all as part of what modern growth calls the “growing up process”. Ever stopped by and wondered why a child forgets the pain, insult or hurt much sooner than an adult? Because the child does not know how to remember what is not worth remembering. The society makes him develop an ego. Our do’s and don’t contribute to that process tremendously.

It develops as part of the “growing up process” and so also does the feeling of being insulted or praised. Hence, to answer some of the most fundamental questions of life and seek wisdom, we do not need to grow older or grow up as one would say, but get younger in our approach. Awaken the kid in you again!

We need to unlearn a lot of what we have learnt. Why, don’t we even need to learn how to breathe properly all over again? We do, and earlier the better.

Our life is spent fulfiling our desires thrust on us by the five senses, and which at times become so overriding that we end up serving them like a faithful servant serves his master all his life.

I have no argument with those who say nobody has seen the nether world beyond this, and that this body is the end of your very existence, and those whose common refrain is that since “you get only one life, you should live it up” in the pursuit of happiness. But happiness can be defined in as many ways as there are atoms in this galaxy!

Yes, indeed you should learn how to be happy and there is no set definition or parameter for that. Some may get it in climbing the Mount Everest or scouring the depths of Mariana's Point; some may get it by flying a Mirage supersonic. Gobbling down a 10-course dinner could prove to be orgasmic to some others, so much that they will remember it all their life perhaps.

To some, it may be personal milestones or achievements, relationships, or material acquisitions such as the most expensive villa in Dubai or Palm Springs, or driving a Jaguar… You get the import? To yet others, happiness may be derived in the form of a high of having done their customary one small good deed each day...

Yet, there is nothing even remotely as satisfying as understanding your spiritual inner self, the higher being within you. And if YOU are not the body, then how can temporary feeling of happiness give you permanent peace. The real inner self, or the soul as we call it, is the true inner self.

It is this being which is the real you and which indeed was never born, nor will die, but only dons different Yonis like different clothes (for all those believers in the Hindu philosophy!) as per our Karma in this birth. It is indeed the part of the large sum we know as God, or the collective consciousness (in whichever form or shape we may know or worship Him).

Deep down within, I believe we are all aliens. But what we see as the inter-planetary world spanning across galaxies is not perhaps how it may be. The real world is the nether world or the unseen world that humans cannot see.

Living in a matrix, we fool ourselves all our lives and wait like a sitting duck for fate or our destiny (a highly evolved system devised by the creator to be rated and rewarded upon the virtue of our Karma of the past and sometimes the present lives) to lead us in a certain direction.

Indeed, Karma plays a major role and has a bearing on whether a person will even begin to seek answers and start a journey to the real truth in a pre-ordained fashion. It is like enjoying the liberty of setting your own KRAs in an organisation.

So, unlearning and shedding all kind of baggage, ensuring good Karma, shedding doubt and self-servile system of Hedonism that we so diligently follow is the way to go. One can gradually fill the void in the lives with thoughts of the creator (in whichever way we may choose to see the creator, whether in a particular shape and form, or as shapeless). These, and this way alone, can one start taking baby steps towards achieving the real and eternal happiness.

(The views expressed here are author's only. This article is protected by copyright laws. No part of the text should be lifted without attribution. Violation will invite appropriate action under copyright laws.)