With a clear Buddhi or Intellect which has the power to discriminate between truth and untruth, and the enormous power of Sankalpa Shakti, we become the highest breed of gifted human beings capable of achieving the biggest goals in life that we can dream and set for ourselves.
Things may happen around you, and things may happen to you, but the only things that really count are the things that happen in you – Eric Butterworth
It is not important what your circumstances are and it doesn’t matter how life is treating you currently, ultimately what matters alone is how are you responding to life. Our response is a function of what is happening inside of us. That alone determines our progress and success in life.
It means whatever is happening outside of you is happening in the material world and whatever is happening inside of us is happening in our spiritual world. Most of us forget that our spiritual world governs our material world and instead of focusing on improving our spiritual world inside of us, we are struggling to change the material world outside. It is like we are ignorantly trying to change the result rather than trying to change the cause which produced that result.
We forget that our progress in the material world is completely dependent on our progress within our spiritual world.
Most of us forget that the journey of life is basically a journey of personal development. It’s a journey of continuous improvement of our qualities and capabilities. Unless we are focused on self development, we will not be able to fruitify our desires in the material world.
That’s why though Yoga practices are considered to lead one to the ultimate goal of self realization, they are infact a means for developing you as person from good to better to the best. And anyone who embarks on this journey of becoming a better version of oneself becomes capable of easily fulfilling all his material needs without much struggle.
The smartest people who know this secret, spend more time and effort in inner evolution and inner development which in turn makes them more capable in managing their material world better.
Following are the two most important tasks we must perform to evolve into a better version of ourselves:
- Unclouding our Intellect by removing the veil of Avidya or ignorance about the true nature of ourself. The really evolved beings are those who see the unity of consciousness in all beings.
- Break the association between Ahamkara or the I-Maker and the memories or vrittis stored in our Chitta.
Once you have understood the importance of these two concepts, then you will realize the real importance of principles that our Rishis, Saints and even new age Gurus tell us to become happy and successful in life. Let us examine some of those success formulas and why despite knowing these principles very well, we end up doing exactly the opposite things.
- The first principle is – Do not allow the past to define you. We all know how important this principle is for moving ahead in life. But on our own we often find ourselves helpless to follow this. But now with this new knowledge when you examine your thoughts, you would be able to clearly make out which thoughts are colored with past memories stored in our Chitta. When our Ahamkara associates with memories of past guilt or shame or failures, we start associating our I-ness with these memories. And ego is always fearful. So an ego-consciousness would not allow us to make new efforts towards our goal because it is fearful of failures. Each one of us has many stories to tell and when we remain stuck in our stories, we are not able to move ahead in life. Every association of our Ego with a past memory is a story we want to remain stuck with. But if you are able to disassociate Ahamkara with those memories, the fear goes away. You are then able to make a fresh start on your new goal. You now realize that those were only memories whose purpose is only to learn from them. You then realize you cannot change the past but you can definitely change your future by continuing your efforts. And your Ego disassociated with the memories now provides positive self-esteem to you to move with a renewed vigor on your life path.
- The second principle is not chasing for approvals or validation. The best example of this can be those of us especially the young generation who are addicted to Facebook and Instagram culture. We are in a culture of counting the likes on our social media profiles. If enough people have not posted their likes on their pictures or on what they have posted, they even get depressed. Now try to look at what is happening in our minds when we are frantically only looking for validation every moment of our lives. This is our ego mind or Ahamkara which needs appreciation even if its false. Our ego always needs praises and appreciation and keeps our mind involved in only those pursuits from which it can expect appreciation. Our Manas then becomes a puppet at the hands of Ego consciousness especially when our Intellect is also clouded and is unable to clearly guide our mind on what is beneficial and what is not beneficial for our true progress. It is a wasteful expenditure of our time and energy. In our scriptures, all the Deva’s or the spiritually evolved species were depicted as having Humility as the main quality of their character. While the one main personality trait of Asuras or Demons is that they have bloated egos. And the mightiest of the demons be it Madhu Kaitabh or Mahishasur or even the Great Ravana had very highly bloated egos. And it is this excessive ego consciousness that was the main cause of their destruction. During the process of Kundalini awakening, our inner demons are systematically annihilated by Maa Shakti the primordial power of the cosmos. Interestingly, the demons Madhu Kaitabh denote two sides of our ego consciousness. Madhu means sweet which means that if anyone praises us, our ego finds it sweet and we want to hear those words of self-praise time after time. Similarly, Kaitabh means our ego hates to hear anything which is critical of our actions. Both these aspects of ego are demonic in substance and are driven by our inner kleshas, Raga or attraction, and Dvesha or aversion. Therefore, the more we can move away from the need for validation, the higher we can evolve as a person of substance.
- The third principle is to respond with Grace. This is the responsibility which means the ability to respond. When our past memories of Raga or Dvesha or Asmita associate with our Ahamkara, our response to every moment of our life turns out to be that of Anger or hatred or fear. Since the grip of memories over our Ego is so powerful, we are unable to forget the wrongs done to us in the past. We keep blaming persons or situation or even God for what happened to us in the past. We are unable to forget and forgive and take responsibility of our actions. We forget that everything that happens to us is borne out of our own Karma and no one else is responsible for them. The more we are stuck to our anger and hatred and blame game, the more we keep increasing our own sufferings. But the moment our Intellect is unclouded and we realize that there is no one else out there, it’s the same consciousness that is within me and everyone else and that I am responsible for my own Karmas, we start ascending on our evolution. We then start re-writing our own destiny.
Remember, we attract in life what we feel and think. Whatever we give out comes back to us in like measure. If we give out anger and hatred, the same is bound to boomerang to us in day-to-day situations of life. That is why forgiveness is the greatest virtue since it rescues us from our memories of past hatred and anger.
The 4th principle is What you focus on grows in your life. If your focus is stuck in the past memories associated with our Ego which keep your mind engaged for most of the time, your focus will always be on the pain points of the past. It only increases our pain and mental suffering. But if we are able to disassociate our mind from past memories, we can focus on our goals, we can focus on our efforts to improve our future, we can focus on giving love and helping others succeed in life. In such a case you are bound to get back love and people and circumstances to support you move up the ladder of success in your own life. When you are no longer driven by Asmita or fear of loss, you will not be fearful of the failures in life. Every failure would then be a learning lesson for you to make a new beginning with renewed vigour. And then if you also have the attitude of never giving up, no power in the Universe can hold you back from success for long.
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