On The Ecstatic Journey

On The Ecstatic Journey  

Life has its way to unfold itself in a manner beyond our comprehension.

While walking the journey of our life many of us might have experienced that circumstances beyond our control sometimes force us to deal with or take favor from the very people whom we might have caused some harm to or insulted or harassed for whatever reasons.  The never-failing  Law of Karma has its own way to teach us lessons of our actions. The negative traits like running after desires, greed, anger, attachment have been cumulatively piled up within us and fogged up our soul since past countless births. Due to the karmic accounts which we have opened since our past lives with others we love some and hate others.

 But even without opening our karmic accounts, we still love some people because they may have some admirable qualities or traits to which we assign higher value.  Some people have the qualities that contribute towards the welfare and uplift of others.  We recognize and admire such people with compliments like, “you are a noble person”, or, “you are a nice soul”.  These “noble” people or “nice souls” are in fact ordinary human beings like us. Since they are ordinary people, it is likely that they too may commit some mistakes.  We all make mistakes. It is from our mistakes that we learn important lessons in our lives.  An admirable quality in noble people is that they turn their mistakes into teaching tools and make a commitment to themselves to work on their weaknesses.  Other qualities that can elevate us on a higher pedestal are empathy, compassion, tolerance and forgiveness.  These are the qualities that we all can develop, if we initiate observing our own selves. Self-introspection and focusing on our inner self can help us in self-awareness and realizing where we stand.

 Difficulties and hardships that come in our life allow us to build a stronger inner self and tolerance power within us.  It does not happen automatically.  We need to understand how the process works.  In all difficult periods of our life, if we can try to identify what lesson or hidden message those difficulties bring for us, we can raise our own tolerance, inner strength and find a way out for successfully coming out of those difficulties. When we help ourselves, Divine energy notices our efforts and come half way to bring success to our efforts. We then start to experience that we are also being blessed with ‘intuition power’. It is this intuition that prepares ourselves to build up strategical and analytical skills in us which, in turn help us in making right decisions and take appropriate actions.

 It is very common during difficult times that we succumb to the stress and disappointment.  If we lose patience and hope, it may weaken our confidence to survive the tough times.  When we find we are incapable to face the challenges posed by difficult situations, we lose the ability to think in right direction.  We may take easy access to roads that may lead us towards further failure, and disruption.  This exactly is the time to learn and practice calm and patience.  Instead of reacting, if we try to silence our aggravation and go inwards, we may be able to get some directions from within. This could be our ‘inner voice’ guiding us how to face the difficulties. This may not happen trying 2-3 times, because the process of connecting with our own conscience needs silent mind and single mindedness. This requires tremendous self control and willingness to be tolerant of all adversities as much as possible.  When we are able to silent all the inner noises arising in our minds, then we can experience and listen to our own inner voice.

 The preliminary goal of life is to first know our own ‘Self’. The process of spiritual evolution starts from within. To keep walking on the righteous path consistently for several lifetimes while burning off past karma and stop creating new karma take us closer to know and realize the Supreme Soul. Knowing our own True Self, realizing the power of the soul residing within us, we are then able to build a bridge that can connect us with the Supreme Soul. This is a long, long, very long journey. But we have to keep walking on the foot steps of Divine. When we find that the soul within us is THE Supreme Soul, who is The Creator of this ‘Brahmand’, then, at that stage the world vanishes, no bridge is needed because then we may be empowered to announce: “अहम्ब्रह्मास्मि”. This is not an easy and short journey. Highly spiritually evolved saints and sages, having started their journey since past so many births, are still walking on that path which leads to the Union between ‘जीवात्मा’ and ‘परमात्मा’. The Realization of “अहम्ब्रह्मास्मि” would also be the realization of ‘अद्वैत’. It is the knowledge of ‘अद्वैतवेदांत’ which can elevate us to the ecstatic stage of Realization.