Why simply smiling is a big contribution to the society!

Photo by Elizeu Dias on Unsplash

A joyful person becomes like a magnet and attracts everyone. Krishna was one such personality, all attractive. We all have potential to become joyous. The key is to focus on your own transformation. Then your presence becomes a source of inspiration for everyone. It is easier said than done as it requires a consistent work on oneself before one can become truly joyous.

Here are some obstacles or roadblocks one can face in this journey.

1. Following universal truths — Focus on what is your Truth instead of following what is told as truth. This way you can start where you are and improve slowly from there. It is better to go from known to unknown rather than vice versa. Abstract spiritual concepts even if true may not help unless you can practically relate to them. As a lactose intolerant person shouldn’t drink mill even the quality of milk is too good.
2. Ignoring implict knowledge — One can learn the most from self. We are always learning from life implicitly. We should reflect on it and spend time with what we know implicitly rather than wasting energy on collecting new and new explicit knowledge from books and gurus. Example child learns grammer from parents and don’t know he already knows it.
3. Trusting our senses beyond its capacity — We can trust only what we feel about our ourselves. Our senses to judge about others are limited and can be questioned easily. We can only be confident about our own consciousness, but we cannot even prove that to anyone else.
4. Focusing on Gross — Material things and experience both are important. But a wise person always give priority to experience over things. Pleasure has levels — material things, then art and music and then service to others and so on. As the level evolves it becomes more subtle and abstract. What gives the biggest pleasure — It depends on where you are now and what you need!
5. Addictions — Any addictions make us dependent. Very little is required to be happy. Most of our requirements are actually just habits and slowly becomes addictions. It can be because of liking and disliking towards aything. We can drop our affection or aversion to our own mind and body too. This will create a distance with the mind and body identity and allow to let go other addictions of body and mind.
6. Thinking in extremes — Become king and saint both not either of them. (na sadhu na bhogi )— become karma yogi. There are many dangers of only becoming a yogi as one may become dependent on others to survive. Become king from outside and sadhu from inside. Try to do this in daily life like looking your job as a role play.
7. Not centering regularly — When we are connected with self, we are connected with higher consciousness. A connected person cannot harm anyone while when we are disconnected with self / higher power, we become selfish. There is no one point when anything is not connected with anything else. There is no separation. We just have to notice it by becoming still. When the mind is stable, all the secrets start getting disclosed. We can see that we cannot live if there are no trees or sun or so many things.
8. Validating our progress— We don’t tell our bank balance to anyone. Similarity we should keep our most valuable things like spiritual growth only to ourselves. Our transformation is to satisfy ourselves and not others. It is performance without an audience.
9. Not acting on free will — here is no or little free will in terms of body while there is full free will to develop our mind and soul. There is no free will in things outside of us while full free will in things internal to us. We can see our free-will increasing as we move to higher consciousness similar to a mother allows her intelligent child to do things on their own while restricting a child with less intelligence.
10. Thinking Moksh as a goal — Moksh is not something one get because whatever one gets will be taken away. It is something one already have because soul is untouched and always pure. All effort is to just clean the mind because, once cleaned mind works like a mirror and allow us to see ourselves or our soul or who we are.
11. Wrong identification — The only way to disidentify oneself with body and mind is to become a observer of them by regularly cultivating our awareness (Seer vs scenery). Spend time with self more and more. Observer is always in bliss irrespective of pleasure or sorrow in life. Beware overdoing self-time can result in tamasic or rajasic tendencies so incorporating it along with actions during the day is much better.
12. Not questioning others advises — Even a best Guru can also only help us 99% — the rest only we can know and put required effort. Only you can know whether you hungry or full. Someone asked a person to leave his dirty house, which the person immediately obliged. Now when the person asked him where do I stay now? The one who suggested has no answer now!
13. Not following our Dharma — Dharma is doing anything which is right, moderate and balance all dimensions. Kaam represents all your needs and desires across dimensions. Arth is valuable or meaningful. Only when ur desires are fulfilled. Swarth means what is useful for me. Here what is “me” is important. Moksh is the zero state when desire is fulfilled. When dharma is not followed, we over- fulfill some dimensions of desires like money or physical ignoring others. This cause continuous unsatisfaction in us and cause pride and other pains in some corners of life. When there is pride or over indulgence, it requires more dharma to come to zero state. Even need for helping others is a desire and needs to be cleaned by giving credit to the god. Lord Ram was a living embodiment of a dharma. He faced all situations with equanimity.
14. Getting stuck with Satvik — Our day of 24 hrs can be divided into 3 parts — morning for satvik, afternoon for rajasic and evening for tamasic tasks. We can see how different people are active accordingly. We shoudl also know that Rajasic person is more powerful than tamasic, similarly Satvik is more powerful than rajasic. This is true even though world does not acknowledge it clearly. Then there is a path to go beyond Satvik. Like instead of going to pilgimage, we can consider our home as Rishikesh, our food as prasad etc. It is good to persue satvik, but we should go beyond satvik and let go of situations where we “need” satvik. Developed spiritual person is part of all groups and part of none. Use mind as a boat to cross the river, once we reach the shore, then we have to drop the boat.

Love:)