How to Stumble into Infinity?

#MyTakeaway 

Let's say you are a scientist. You have a bunch of equipments that you need for your research. Would you allow any Tom, Dick and Harry to be around the equipment? You would care for those equipments more than you care your toothbrush right? 

In India we tend to worship all such equipments. The idea is to create the sense of sacredness around our work objects. Wherever there is sacredness there is honour and respect. Whatever you respect you care for it more. This feeling allows you to dive deeper into whatever you are doing. 

More than the rituals behind the worshiping, it's important to understand the reason behind those rituals. Otherwise even rituals can become a mere checkbox and not bring in the sense of honour, respect and gratitude. You need not do puja in traditional manner. Even if you do anything that honours your study and work material, you will still be able to dive deeper into your own work, allowing you to create better results. 

When you respect your elders, you take care of them with all your heart and then that helps you take better care of them. It allows you to go deeper into their needs. When you take care of them just because you have to, the quality of that care goes down. 

While I was watching The Crown on Netflix, I noticed that there are so many rituals to coronate the queen. She just doesn't sit on the throne the next day with a crown on her head. Had it not been for those rituals the crown would have become a hat. But since people have faith in God and those rituals link the Divine to the crown, people automatically start having faith in the crown. They start respecting the crown. And respecting the crown is very essential part of running the kingdom. 

This is applicable to our regular practices too. If we meditate as a 'checkbox' activity it won't have depth to it. If we treat our practices with honour and respect then we dive deeper into Self.

Maharshi Patanjali says this in Patanjali Yoga Sutra, 'सातो दीर्घा काले निरंतर सत्कार सविता दृढ़ भूमिः'. Anything you do for a long period of time, without a break and with respect and honour becomes firmly grounded in you. If you want to learn a language, keep learning for a long period of time, without a break and with respect and honour, that language will be firmly grounded in you. Let's say you want to learn how to sing, keep practicing for a long period of time, without a break and with respect and honour, the quality of your practice will enable you to go deeper into the Art of singing. 

Similarly, if you are keen to know more about yourself, take a sankalp for a long period of time, without a break and with the due respect and honour towards your practice. You will realise that you can go deeper in your meditation. 

Also know that Maharshi Patanjali has not asked you to do it forever. Because when you say "From today, I will meditate everyday" the resolution will crumble down after some time. Hence take a sankalp for a long period of time. It can be 30 days, 40 days, 90 days etc . It can vary from person to person.

Whatever you do do it with respect and honour. You will start noticing the difference. 

Nature know what's best for you.

Worrying about the future is such a waste, 

Nature knows for me what's the best. 

I was once attending a satsang with Swami Suryapada (Chaya Anna) 

He said, "You see that tree 🎄 on the top of the mountain ⛰? See how tall it has grown. Did you go there everyday to water it? No right? So The Entity that took care of that tree, don't you think It will take care of you too?" 

I remember once I failed miserably in my academics. For a moment it seemed like the end of the world. But in hindsight when I connect the dots today, I realise that the failure was extremely necessary for me to land up on my first job. This has happened to all of us. Whatever failures, obstacles we have experienced in our life, have contributed to our success. So let's have faith that whatever we are going through right now, it's for the best. It's necessary for something beautiful in store ahead. 

Now how to sustain the phase of pure agony and pain? Meditation has the power to take care of a big deal of the pain. It has the ability to heal. Surround yourself with positive uplifting people. Don't indulge in unnecessary gossip and negative news. Ensure your body is getting tired and that you are getting a good night's sleep. And if none of the above is working, sit in an advance Meditation 🧘‍♂️ program. 

Restore your faith. 

Jai Gurudev 

How to deal with extremely boring work?

Does it ever happen to you, where you have to do some mundane work which doesn’t suit your interest? Or maybe it is a mammoth task that requires some extra time and energy. Or it can simply be work that doesn’t suit your current mood and you just have no choice of escaping it at that moment?

Doesn’t that moment of lack of productivity become really agonizing? What do you do in such times? I generally get tempted to open up Facebook / WhatsApp / Twitter / Quora. Or I get tempted to eat something at that moment. I am sure you would have some other comfort zones where the mind tends to get diverted at that moment. And the one who succumbs to that temptation, eventually lives life in the country of ‘Procrastination’ which is ruled by Queen - Petty Pleasures and where we pay frustration, agitation, guilt and embarrassment as taxes. And trust me that is The Hotel California – ‘You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave’.

So what is really happening in your mind at that time and how to steer yourself back to productivity?

Here are certain things that I do and they work for me.

Consume fluids but avoid coffee.
Such times, mind gets tempted towards eating spicy or sweet. These are the elements that further add rust on the current situation. Lack of concentration, is quite a lot of times due to lack of water in body. Drinking water (preferably warm) helps. If you can find a mug of green tea, perfect.

Take a power nap of about 10 mins.
Many a times, mind loses concentration due to lack of oxygen. This can very well be due to lack of sleep. Closing your eyes for 10 mins, taking a power nap helps rebuild concentration levels.

Pranayam.
A very effective technique to boost your concentration levels is Pranayam. Do Bhastrika Pranayam or Nadi Shodhan Pranayam. If you have done Yes!+ course then you know the Concentration Pranayam.

Meditate.
If you know how to meditate, nothing like it. Meditation relaxes your mind, boosts your focus, and enhances the capacity of your mind to receive more. And trust me, investing those 20 mins would help you way better than saying ‘Don’t have time for meditation right now’. If you really really don’t have 20 mins, spend at least 10 mins, but do meditate.

Mind in such times always seeks an easy way out. Starts pleading for things like earthquakes and fire to avoid such work. It gets tempted to get up and do a lot of other stuff. But understand that the work is your karma and you have to do it. Despite the earthquake, despite the floods somehow you will have to do that piece of work. This acceptance is very important.

Now when acceptance dawns, I would say begin work by splitting it in fragments. Don’t take up a task for more than 20 mins. By breaking the giant mountain into smaller stones we confuse our mind into believing that it is barely 10 to 20 mins task. “Let us finish it.”

Take break after every 20 mins. Take a stroll outside or simply close your eyes for 2 mins. Yes! It is not easy for many people. Closing eyes for 2 mins requires a practice. You can download some ‘Pomodoro’ type apps to facilitate that.

Never resist your mind from doing something. “Don’t open Facebook” tempts mind more than ever to open up facebook. I give my mind the option to close eyes. So I either work, or close my eyes. “Want to check whatsapp? Ok, let us close our eyes.” “But whatsapp?” “Oh yes, correct, let us first close our eyes” Then I simply observe the temptation fade out. That might take less than a minute (depends on whether yours is a meditating mind or not). Once the temptation is out, I open my eyes and start working again.

This way, I save my mind from spending energy unnecessarily, develop my mind’s capacity to observe, get multiple opportunities to relax my mind and I become more aware to correct my body posture.

When your eyes are closed, a relatively focused mind would find it attention on the breath. What is the breathing pattern? If the mind is really focused, breath is steady, calm and deeper. Simply taking the attention on breath improves the quality of mind drastically.

Do try these techniques out and let me know if any of this was helpful.

Happy Producitvity to you!

The notes of stress beat

He was aloof, alone, sitting with his head down in the Ram Temple at Hyderabad. One of my friends, Kiran approached him and asked him to join us for the meditation centre. As a new project we started running free meditation centres at different places with an intention to reach out to people who are yet to experience meditation. We call this club as Meditating Monday. When I initiated this project in Hyderabad in the year 2011, I had no idea about the gravity of this idea until this boy decided to follow Kiran to the room where our team was conducting the meditation. A simple 10 minutes meditation and we could see wrinkled foreheads becoming soothing smiling faces. This is quite a regular experience for us now. People do recognise the peace within them during guided meditations by Sri Sri. All the participants hugged the volunteers and expressed their intention to join us again. This boy did not seem to move. When Kiran approached him, he hugged Kiran tightly and started crying profusely. "I was planning to jump from 6th floor yesterday. Today I came here to say my last prayers." He had no idea then there exists something in this world that can take him out of his depression.

If this is the impact of a 10 minutes meditation, then imagine what the unique breathing technique of Sudarshan Kriya can do to us. "Nice, but I'm not depressed, what can AOL do to me?" Comes a natural question. If a depressed person can get life then can you imagine what it can do to you. Because of all these techniques, normal people have become super dynamic and dynamic people have become instruments of change that are bringing waves of positive energy to masses.

In 2013 after the Uttarakhand floods, a team from Mumbai took out time from their busy lives with a mission to bring some change in people. My sister was a part of that team. Together the team of 8 boys and 5 girls in 8 days reached out to more than 800 people bringing peace in their minds and hope in their hearts. How is it possible to generate this level of dynamism from the otherwise dormant crowd?

What makes us inactive is the inability to handle stress. What really happens when we cannot meet deadlines at our work place? Assuming that the deadlines are reasonable, we tend to reduce our speed in the fight between focus and relaxation. When we get relaxed we lose focus. When we get focused, we get anxious leading to stress. Breathing techniques taught at The Art of Living really increase the focus and at the same time keeps us relaxed. Thus we get more productive leaving us ample time to do all the things  that we always wanted to do.

We start with full enthusiasm to learn a guitar. But soon the guitar becomes a wall hanging. We end up spending more time on things that we have to do. Focus comes on ways to earn money and how to survive in the rat race. When we delink stress from our lives, we discover the gaps in our day which we generally miss, since they get covered in anxiety, worry, regret etc. This newly discovered time gives us the opportunity to do things which we always wanted to do. Be it preparing for an extra curricular exam, learning Krav maga or taking up some kind of social responsibility. The Art of Living through its stress management programs have brought in vibrancy amidst so many people that today are leading lives much higher than their potential.

Thanks to these techniques that today we are leading lives that we want to live and not the ones that we have to live.

Journeying Between Rest and; Awareness

-Nimish Inamdar  22^nd May 2012

“The overall experience was wonderful. I feel energized. While feeling the happiest moment and sensing it, brought tears to my eyes. Now I have lot of energy for the day even after lot of sleepless (less sleep) nights.”

 Many a times to reach the happiest moment of our lives we spend thousands on a vacation trip, throw parties, buy our dream home, dream car etc. Ask Madhavi on what did she do to reach this state of mind and her answer would be that, “I closed my eyes for 15 minutes.” Of course buying house, vacations are all important aspects that drive the overall growth of our life. But Madhavi and many others participating in the Meditating Monday initiative realized that happiness is merely a game of 15 minutes of closing your eyes.

The Meditating Monday Club founded in July 2011 is the initiative founded by the YES!+ (Youth Empowerment and Skills) volunteers of the Art of Living Foundation to promote the knowledge and experience about meditation. The pilot of this concept was first launched in ISC-2, Hyderabad with support from Pavan Joshi. With encouraging feedback from the participants, and a personal strong backing from Amarnath Juluri, we launched this club in DLF, Hyderabad. With close to 20 successful meditation sessions so far, the club is gaining popularity as more and more realize the benefits on meditation.

While there have been varied responses over how people feel after the session, the common factor amongst all of them was an outcome of a perfect healthy and peaceful mind. Research says that 20 mins of deep meditative rest equals the rest of 8 hours of sleep. Participants are seen energized right in the morning to face the day. “It would be a good idea to have this session every time before the project delivery” chuckled Swathi. “I think my manager needs it very badly” reported another participant on the condition of anonymity. Although it is a good idea to practice meditation every day, the Meditating Monday Club has ensured weekly meditation sessions in CSP since past 3 months, enabling CSPiites to soothe their mind ironing out their weekly frustration and discover a lot of things about themselves.

As it is rightly said, “Sometimes to open your eyes, you simply have to close them for a while.”

I am devoid of anger, I am incapable to hate,

I communicate in silence, I love to Meditate