Everyone goes through a dark time, the worst time, the feeling of sinking in emotional and mental quicksand. It is how we deal with the situation that helps us extract ourselves from it …being “emotional” and “sensitive” is an excuse you can well live without…
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Healing Boutique: Motherhood – the fastest path to enlightenment
Healing Boutique: Motherhood – the fastest path to enlightenment: A long time ago I came across a beautiful quotation by an enlightened man which said if you want to spiritually progress get married and if …
Healing Boutique: Save Yourself from Pain: the Middle Path of Modera…
Healing Boutique: Save Yourself from Pain: the Middle Path of Modera…: “I seem to have a lot of patients these days with what I term as Excess Personality Disorder. This afflicts strong willed individuals who ran…”
Healing Boutique: Advantages of blending Allopathy with Alternative …
Healing Boutique: Advantages of blending Allopathy with Alternative …: “One thing I feel strongly about is that there is no one way when it comes to treating an ailment. When you need help go and get it. Start wi…”
Healing Boutique: Parenting – a question of Love or Fear
Something to mull over, how were you parented through love or fear? How do you parent your kids? What is the spiritual role of parents?
Healing Boutique: Yoga Injuries…Fact or Myth
Healing Boutique: Yoga Injuries…Fact or Myth
..would you trust your health to a physician or psychologist without an accredited degree or experience? Yoga is a holistic therapy it goes beyond your body and your mind through to your emotions and your etheric or energetic body/anatomy. Entrusting your yoga therapy or practice to someone who is not adequately trained/has experience can end up being more dangerous then theraputic.
Healing Boutique: The Shift and Broken Hearts
Healing Boutique: The Shift and Broken Hearts: “In the last three years I have been consulted to enable many to heal on a physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual level. Apart pati…”
The importance of the Guru
Like so many people around the world I was always vary of the word “Guru” and associated it with someone of dubious repute. It was not until I was deep into my spiritual quest that I discovered I already had acquired not a Guru but a few in the real sense of the word. So would make a sceptic like me realise and recognise my own Gurus?
First it is essential to understand what the term ‘Guru’ means. The term Guru is derived from the Sanskrit words “Gu” which means darkness and “Ru” which means light. It is a term used to describe someone enlightened enough to lead others from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge.
A Guru is simply someone who has the knowledge of something of profound importance that the rest of us are unable to even imagine. A good Guru is able to explain complex subject matter in it terms that anyone of average intellect and spiritual growth can understand and remember. A true Guru is also one who practices what he teaches and is of such pristine character that he or she is able to inspire others to do the same and make a positive change in the world.
I will be honest about my experiences with my Gurus. I have never met them in the physical form they all passed away before I knew they existed. My only interaction with my Guru’s is through the teachings they left behind. It is only recently when I actually not just understood the teachings but applied them to my daily life that I experienced profound change in myself and more surprisingly in everyone I interact with, that I acknowledged my Guru’s.
At first I always felt the distinct loss of never having physically met or interacted with my Gurus. It was only after deep meditation over a period of that time I came to understand that I was very well acquainted with my Guru’s as I interacted with them every single time I practiced or spread the teachings. It then dawned on me that the actual person who elft the teachings behind, the physical body of the Guru was infact just a physical body. The real essence of the Guru was only in the teachings.
Every Guru from ranging from Christ to His Holiness the Dalai Lama has always focussed on the teachings. It is the message of loving kindness, mercy, forgiveness that they work to preserve in perpetuity. All they want is to lead us from the ignorance of our ways into the light of knowledge, which automatically sets us on the right path. I honestly think not one of these great Gurus wanted anyone to waste time focussing on their physical form. What they wanted was for us to practice the teachings in perpetuity.
All the greatest Guru’s, Prophets and Saint’s have always given credit for their miracles to their Guru’s, God of some higher spiritual being. They are full of humanity, humility and they are very clear that their mission is to serve others. I am sure that none of these great beings wanted anyone to worship the physical form that most of them considered so inconsequential to the existence of their souls. In my heart whenever I see huge amounts of money being expended on glorifying the physical bodies of such great beings I feel that they would much rather have had the same amounts spent on the poor and needy.
I must stress here that the Guru needs money to live. He or she is after all a human so they have to satisfy their basic bodily needs and any other reasonable human needs that they may have. Unless one supports a Guru financially buy purchasing their books, buying tickets to their lectures, donating to their ashrams the Guru will not physically be able to sustain themselves. If the Guru is not in his physical body then the Guru’s teachings need to be spread by other individuals who represent the Guru and unless their needs are met they will not be able to keep the teachings alive.
If you are happy to pay for the services of your doctor who tends to your physical body, a psychiatrist who helps with your emotions and mind, why should you grudge money to someone who helps uplift your soul and bring about profound changes in your life.
What upsets me is when there is a free mediation, talk or lecture and then there is dissent when donations or charitable contributions are asked for. Why should that be an issue someone has taken time to help you meditate or provide you with some spiritual knowledge so why grudge them something. If you have a voucher for a free meal at a restaurant don’t you tip the waiter for serving you? Is that not the decent thing to do? Wont you automatically do that? So why be mean when it comes to someone serving you spirituality?
Most Guru’s never exert any ego. They are beings of knowledge and love and have little time for self-glorification and they are not known to describe themselves as God or Godmen. They are great souls with pure hearts through whom messages are passed from the divine. They are specifically chosen for those tasks as they are so spiritually advanced that they will not distort the messages and convert them into simple teachings that can be comprehended by the masses.
There are and will be occasions that certain fanatical disciples or certain individuals seeking to make money off their associations with the Guru, especially after the Guru’s passing acted in manners contrary to the Guru’s teachings. It is not uncommon for even close relatives of the Guru to claim that they are the Guru’s successor.
The Guru is a spiritual being that has incarnated in a physical form. It is the greatness of the soul and not flesh and blood that makes a Guru. The Guru may train teachers, instructors and even confer titles on others but they are not successors but disciples. It is not uncommon for a Guru to acknowledge other great souls or Gurus but not really a successor. If you are even in doubt my only advice is forget every thing and focus on the essence, the principles and teachings.
Oneness, Individuality and Life
They say we are all born knowing we are one. Most children I know refer to themselves in the third person when they learn to speak. I always dismissed this as one of the cutest things I have ever heard. As time went by and I came into contact with more children I realised that this cute grammatical error seemed to plague children all around the world.
It was not until I began to tread down the path of yoga and spirituality that I realised that perhaps it’s the small children who have the grammar right and we have it all wrong. After years of study I began to acknowledge the fact that we are all born as individual souls but we are all part of the same source or we simply we are all one.
As we live in this materialistic world, through our environment we are encouraged to identify with the physical body our soul resides in. It is a process whereby we are convinced with time that we are not one but all different. Western Psychologists call this the development of an “ego”.
Ancient Indian philosophies have always maintained that we are all born chanting the mantra “So Ham” which translates as “I am that”, or I am one with the supreme being or I am one with all. As we age we tend to forget “Soham” and then our mantra seems to be “Hamsa”, which translates as “Who am I”. Most people when they get to a certain age feel something is lacking and they then try to focus on “Hamsa” and make it their quest to try to find out who they are by focusing on their individuality when its actually all they need to do is focus on the aspect of oneness.
I love the concepts of free-thinking and free will. So I don’t tend to follow any principal the way its set out and I truly value my individuality and that of others around me. Life would be so terribly boring if we were all the same. However, I thrive on yoga and spirituality so my belief in the fact that we all are souls, which arise from the same source is unshakable.
I reconcile these two very divergent almost opposite concepts by knowing that spiritually we are one and that is unchanging. However, the powers that be have blessed each soul with its own chores and to perform those tasks we have all been given different personalities, physical appearances, intellects etc.
For those who believe in the principle of Karma and Life After Death, basically believe that in every life we are provided the opportunity to improve and it is due to the fact that one wants to get to the next level that one are provided with certain circumstances. These circumstances can make attainment of the lesson or next level easier or harder as it is willed and these circumstances leads to one’s individuality. The aspect of oneness never alters that remains the same. Certain philosophies tend to stress on the fact that when one has perfected themselves one automatically merges with and becomes part of the divine or the one.
I feel that the trick to life is to strike a balance between ones individuality and the fact that one is a part of all. Its simple all it requires is for one to be true to one’s self and the natural abilities and gifts given to us by the supreme, while acknowledging the fact that one is more then their physical identities and one is actually the same and a part of everyone else.
Turning to a spiritual path is the simplest way to attain the confidence and knowledge to acknowledge oneness. However one should not get carried away and loose one’s individuality. It is also a great way to re-connect with that part of you that is lost when you convert from “I am” that to “Who am I?”.
Yoga or just breath awareness is simply enough to get one started on this track too. All one needs to do is sit still and watch one’s breath. As the breath goes in you can actually hear the natural “Soooooooo” and as you exhale “Hummmmm”. It helps clear the mind of clutter created by intrinsic human ability of identifying with our physical body.
I always begin my yoga therapy sessions with breath awareness and it has worked wonders. I don’t always take the time to tell all my students about what they are doing or explain the Soham mantra. To be honest I never really focused on the mantra much when teaching myself but it works as if by magic.
The effects are nothing short of amazing. Even though we may not consciously know the meaning of the mantra Soham as “I am that”, our being or soul remembers it on some level. It resonates through our physical, emotional and mental states and brings about an unimaginable change in a very short duration of time. It enables one to let go and release tremendous amounts of stresses that one has created by identifying with the physical body.
The next time you feel completely stressed or cant sleep try to watch your breath and hear the your breath chant “So””Ham” and experience the change for yourself.