Sahaja Yoga: Tough to talk || Easy to experience

First thrill:

A couple of months ago, I received an email on my Wipro mailbox with the subject “Sahaja Yoga-17th Dec, 6:30-8:00 pm’. I am always a forerunner to participate in activities like aerobics, yoga and meditation. The hall was filled with almost 100 aspirants including me and contained people of age groups varying from 20’s to 50’s. I stopped discussing with my supervisor about the comfort of dress after realizing that the session is about meditation and not Yoga. My interest levels surged up as I had a belief, since my schooldays, that meditation would improve the levels of concentration and devour all the problems of mind & body.

All of a sudden, my attention turned unto Mr. Yogesh, instructor for this program, when he asked the crowd to give some examples of stress activities in our day-to-day life. Pronto, a voice from one corner said “Code-Gym assessment” (an assessment on technology for Wiproites) and everyone burst into laughter. He played a video, which focused on the stress of software people and small intro about Sahaja Yoga meditation. He said that everyone has kundalini inside their body and one can get cold breezes and vibrations on their palms & head. The session went on for about one hour.

Why and what!!

Every human will have thoughts of past & future which will keep on running in his/her mind. Many of these thoughts are often unnecessary and lead to stress. Your own thoughts are adding stress and you are not able to handle it because you are not aware. Can you believe this? How many times you felt that the way ahead of you is strewn with difficulties?? Losing peace & gaining stress became part of this contemporary living. Through meditation, you can achieve a unique state called thoughtless awareness state. This state best uses the present by taking the experience of past to build a better future. All humans have three channels (referring to past, present & future) and seven energy centers inside their body. The kundalini rises from the central channel passing through the seven centers. You can gain the knowledge on the process of Sahaja Yoga at any center available in numerous countries. Mind you, it is free of cost.

Cold breeze effect:
When the kundalini rises to the top it can be felt in the form of free-flowing cold breeze on your palms & fontanel bone area. This is a state in which you are connected to the all pervading power. It is an amazing experience and may sound weird to beginners. Everyone may not get this on day one. But everyone can experience this, after few days, by doing daily meditation and purifying their energy centers.

In my voice:

I did meditation during my school days but this one is different. This is not to know about the market, world, friends, foes etc but to know about a very important person –yourself. I am pretty sure that three-fourth of the audience might thought ‘what the crap is this?’ when they heard the instructor saying about kundalini rising, vibrations & cold breezes. I had full confidence that I would see all those experiences. After two weeks of daily meditation, I got the cold breeze for the first time on my left hand. After one and half month of daily meditation, I realized the mild cold breeze on top of my fontanel bone area. I tell you, believing is achieving.
You should be a staunch believer before you expect to experience. Most of us say, “I believed sincerely for one week or one month but I did not experience kundalini”. These people will stop doing meditation after a while. Just ask yourself: do you love your kid (or parents/spouse) for one month or one year? Your heart retorts "No", because your love to your loved ones is not conditional. You don’t put any time constraints. Your love to them will be for life time. Similarly, love your mother (=kundalini) unconditionally and surrender yourself. Sooner or later, you will be blessed to experience kundalini. If you are a wimp, you might take long time (or never) to get the experience.

At the main center of Hyderabad:

Like in many cities, Hyderabad city has many centers with a main center at Vidyanagar. Shri Mataji’s photo is austerely decorated to resemble her presence and we (people doing meditation) pay homage to her by doing acts such as aarthi, bhajans. It is believed that collective meditation will purify our channels and centers in a faster way. Later, a video is shown in which Shri Mataji delivers a speech. The program ends with aarthi. Sessions for beginners run in parallel. We all believe that the blessings of Shri Mataji are not scanty but abundant.

Walk-in to feel the experience:

By now, I am sure that plenty of questions are running in your mind. It is expected as I did not explain the process of meditation in this blog. Why don’t you walk into the nearest center and get the doubts clarified. Napoleon Hill said "You can do it if you believe you can". Well, I felt the cold breeze experience and I am sure that you too would definitely feel the same.

A+B->C; Revise your habits if you desire for outstanding results

Friends!! We often revise our habits and at times, we try to incorporate new habits. This will happen, by and large, when a person reads an inspiring article or watches a motivating speech etc. The challenge to a person at this junction is to continue the new habit for a longer period. In this blog, we will see how to create meaningful new habits and how to leave the disparaging old habits forever.

The results (good/bad) of any individual are the products of his/her own actions. Actions are indeed triggered by the thoughts of the person. Most of us want different & outstanding results but a very few know how to achieve these results. Existing results cannot be changed without changing the existing thoughts and actions. Everyone knows about the outcome of hydrogen when combined with oxygen, WATER (2H2 +O2-> 2H2O). Here, we will laugh if someone expects other than water during normal conditions. Similar is the case with humans => you cannot change the fruit without changing the root. If we need different results, we need to change our existing thoughts and actions. Great thoughts and great actions will deliver great results. Our daily actions are nothing but our HABITS. Good habits will promise to give good personality as much as to the hilt while bad habits can aggravate the personality of a person.

The most important point to keep in mind is to revise all our existing habits while making a new habit. One great habit cannot survive for a long duration if surrounded by ten rotten habits. Gandhiji said "One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole". Therefore, coordination and synchronization is very much required among all our habits, after all, they are our own habits. Make sure that the new habit leads to your goal. Choose your own habits and never make a facsimile of others habits. Do not get badgered by others in choosing a new habit. (Old habits and bad habits are two different things. Old habits can be good and new habits can be bad. We need conscience to decide what is good/bad).

Now that we have finalized our new habits, let us see how to implement these habits for longer durations. Many people will give up within one month or one week or one day or sometimes even one hour. I will illustrate with an experiment which would help us to understand two things: why we give up new habits easily and why it is tough to get rid of old habits. Imagine yourself throwing a ball up into the air. What are the possibilities? I will give two options and you pick the correct answer. The options are:

1. Ball will fall down after sometime.
2. Ball will remain in the air or it will continue to go up.
Your answer is correct if you have picked option 1. No one argues on this, including a two year old kid. The ball will fall down due to the earth’s gravitational pull. Given a chance to myself, I will say option 2 is correct but with different justification. For option 2 to be correct, one must throw the ball with a force to overcome the gravitational pull. We lived with old habits for quite some time and so the pulling force from old habits will be there when you try to leave them, quite similar to the gravitational pull when a ball tries to leave the earth. The force required to overcome the pull of old habits will vary from person to person and depends on how deeply the person is connected to the habit. Also, one must estimate the cost of violation for each new habit which would remind you the necessity of implementing the new habit. Sometimes sacrifices are essential and it may be painful initially but definitely helpful on the long run.

Rome was not built in one day; you should not expect to see quantum changes in one day or one hour. A child can walk only after crawling phase and one will definitely see the imminent changes over a period of time. Finally, with the symbiosis of noble habits, the fruits will reach you in torrents.

Television repercussions - see the unseen

Television is one of the greatest inventions of mankind. We can see any part of the world via TV sitting at our home. TV watching has many purposes, both good and bad. In this era, there are numerous programs coming on numerous channels. By and large, people are not choosing a TV program to watch but the TV programs are pulling the people to sit and watch. I call these people as TV addicts.

We all know the four famous addictions namely boozing, smoking, taking drugs and illegal sex. Most of us agree that these were bad addictions. Well, but why do most of us agree? The smartest answer would be: because of the direct involvement of health and money. Now, let us see the other side. We all have a defiant heart to accept that TV watching is a bad habit. Once again why? The straight answer would be: because of no effects on health and a very little effect on money. Few may say that we were getting entertainment at a very low cost. That was a straight answer, not a smart answer.

Let us ask few questions to ourselves in view of TV addicts.1) Is the above answer true?2) Are we missing any rudimentary things? If we sift thoroughly for what all the TV addicts are missing, in fact losing miserably, the smart answer would be: TIME. It is the invaluable thing which no one on this earth can buy. "Life is a drawing without eraser": this quote could have gone wrong if one could get back the passed TIME. Interestingly and unknowingly, TV addicts are losing such a precious factor of the life at a very low cost and paying a high price later on.

Let me divulge some flabbergasting facts in a heuristic manner.

• A recent survey in US has shown that the average no.of hours a family watches the TV is 45 hours which is more than the hours they work.
• In India, the number of television sets are more than the number of toilets.
• TV addicted parents are passing the habit to their children, spoiling the future citizens.
  
• Chances of getting over weight and obesity on long run.
• Wasting the TIME further on having ridiculous discussion on the programs.
  
• Sleeping disorders are observed in all the age groups.

Friends, it is better late than never, a high time for the TV addicts to wake up. Humans invented television. Let us rule but not ruled by our invention.