Do you know Self Reflection, is the single most important thing required for our growth? Self-reflection allows you, to grow your understanding of who you are, what your values are, and why you think and act the way you do.
In our ancient scriptures, three key elements have been prescribed in the practice of self realization and self-reflection. These three elements are —
- Tapas or Self-Dicipline.
- Svadhyaya or Self-study or self-reflection, and
- Ishvara pranidhana – Surrender to Divine consciousness
Tapas or self-discipline helps in the training of the willpower,
Svadhyaya trains the intellect while
Ishwar Pranidhana trains emotions.
स्वाध्यायादिष्टदेवतासंप्रयोगः I
Self-reflection (svādhyāyāt) leads to a pure connection or communion (saṁprayogaḥ) with one’s spiritual deity or ishta devatā.
The practice of Svadhyaya as a Niyama is performed in many forms. One form of Svadhyaya is mantra meditation, which anchors the mind to one thought. This practice prevents the mind to wander, silences the noise of thoughts, and ultimately leads to an inner resonance.
Another form of Svadhyaya is, reading spiritual scriptures, which absorb the person to a state of trance and a unifying oneness. By svadhyaya there is ishtadevata samprayogah, says the sutra; that means, there is the union of oneself with the deity of one’s worship. There is an inner alignment with the character of Deity. Whatever we think in our mind, we become that, and we get that.
Yet another form of Svadhyaya is the process of self-reflection, where one reflects, on one’s own behaviors and one’s inner motivations and voices in the head. This self-reflection, is not merely contemplation of our own motives and behaviors, but also of our circumstances and the environment we are in. What is the direction our life is taking on, and what desirable changes, can lead us to a more fulfilling Self.
Lao-Tzu has said:
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” -Lao-Tzu.
We are, at the core, divine consciousness. And around this pure consciousness, we are packed in “boxes” of our experiences, our conditioning, and our belief systems. But owing to ignorance about our true nature or Avidya, we identify ourselves as these boxes. We identify ourselves with our likes and dislikes, our fears and imagination.
The root cause of our suffering is only, that we forget who we truly are. We mistakenly believe, that we are the boxes we are wrapped in, and forget that we are really the Divine essence “hiding” inside those boxes.
Svadhyaya, or self-study, is about knowing our true identity as a Divine being. This process of knowing ourselves, and knowing about the boxes that we are wrapped in, creates a pathway to true liberation.
Every thought that you think about the world, every thought you have about another person, about the circumstances of your life, is just a projection of your own self and reveals the nature your interior boxes.
Lord Krishna says in Bhagvad Gita :
*अनुद्वेगकरं वाक्यं सत्यं प्रियहितं च यत् |*
*स्वाध्यायाभ्यसनं चैव वाङ्मयं तप उच्यते ||*
Words that do not cause distress, that are truthful, that are inoffensive, that are beneficial, as well as Svadhyaya i.e regular recitation of the spiritual scriptures—these are declared as the austerity of speech.
The world is simply a reflection of what we see, not what is there. The world is only a mirror that shows us the pictures of ourselves. We cannot love or hate something about another person unless it is already there within us first.
We feel happy, when people or circumstances, conform to what we believe is right. But we get disturbed, when people and circumstances, are not as what we want them to be. We forget, that its not the people and circumstances, that are the cause of our disturbance. It is our model of reality that determines our happiness or suffering. We foolishly fight, with all our energy, to justify our beliefs, rather than “unpack” the boxes we are contained in.
SVADHYAYA, beautifully illustrates, the reality of what sits inside us.
If we can just start witnessing the play being unfolded in our lives we will have the ability to step outside of our ego consciousness. We can discover that we are same spark of consciousness. And then our ego becomes a function of the soul rather than a function of itself.
The profoundness of this witnessing is that we begin to know ourselves as something different than who we thought we were. It is this ability to witness that begins to heal to our lives.
Meditation is very important aspect of self-reflection; it is a place where we start witnessing, we start recognizing our belief systems, and start shifting our identity from being a box to being Divinity within. As we start shifting our attention to the Divinity within, the boxes of belief systems begin to crumble away, and we become free.
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