Monday, December 26, 2016

Living LIFE to its fullest !!! Happy New Year 2017

As we step into the last week of 2016 and get ready to usher in the new year 2017, this is my last blog post for 2016. I had a tremendous urge today to pen this down and I succumbed to that urge. I swept every thing else aside and focussed on getting this done... Here it is.... 


-          All life forms continuously seek EXPANSION. A seed, an embryo, a child, a sapling, a plant. The correct metrics for this “expansion” is surely not weight, size, monetary wealth, real-estate property etc etc. These may be the means to help us in our “expansion” but they are not “expansion” itself !! EXPANSION not just in size and shape, but a ‘seeking for more’ .... a seeking for a larger slice of LIFE itself. In this context the ad jingle for a soft drink...“ Dil Maange More” is very apt  !!  So “expansion” in the context of “Life maange aur zyaada life” ...Life seeks much more out of life !! Living life to its fullest possible potential.

-          All life forms have been gifted a set of faculties to experience LIFE. The combined set of these faculties that a particular life form has can be loosely called its internal “life intelligence” ....its unique DNA code... its unique software program.  

-          This “life intelligence” or software is dormant until activated. For it to get activated it needs hardware!! Where is this available? This “hardware”,  the life-form seeks out from its environment. Just like a seed is dormant and remains as a potent seed, till it finds itself in the right soil condition / moisture etc for it to kick-start its own unique LIFE journey and then slowly starts to sprout and morph from a small seed to a mighty tree that will spawn a gazillion seeds in its lifetime. This “hardware” can be seen as different types of resources or “experiences”  : could be sunlight, moisture, soil nutrients, pressure, time, heat.... that is,  many varied types of “experiences” that the dormant life-form has to witness, for it to start its own journey of expansion.

-          Apart from the “hardware”, for a life-form to kills its dormant inertia and kick-start its life process, it also needs some form of energy, some form of the “juice of life”. Metaphorically speaking let us take the case of a computing system. If the Software (the computer programs) and the Hardware (the computing device itself) are powered up suitably by the right form of electric current, it will start functioning. The “juice of life” has to be of the right form and nature: AC or DC, 110 V or 240 V etc etc...  If the juice of life is not of the right form and nature, it may result in the malfunctioning of the hardware and the software or it can even destroy both the hardware and the software.  

-          So for the true expansion of a life-form to happen, these three essential building blocks are essential viz
o   the “life intelligence”
o   the “experiences”
o   the “juice of life”

-          If we can focus on each of these three elemental building blocks in our own lives, we could really make our individual “expansion” happen to its fullest and thereby LIVE LIFE TO ITS FULLEST POTENTIAL. It is vital that these three elemental building blocks within us are all compatible with each other and have to be in synergy with each other for LIFE to happen to its fullest. That is when the fullest “potential energy” within us gets utilised and converted to energy of actions... “kinetic energy” !!

-          While being huge in potential, individually each of us are nothing but tiny specks of life within the unfathomable cosmos and the cosmic intelligence. We are it and it is us. Aham brahmasmi ! Ultimately each of us as these tiny specks of life, “seek” to be one with the cosmos and seek “expansion” to be one with the unfathomable cosmos. We may be doing this “seeking” consciously and with awareness OR we may be doing this seeking in a wayward, drifting, slumbering manner. “Being” one with the cosmos or better still, “realizing” that we are already one with the cosmos is what Yoga is all about. The etymology of the word YOGA itself means to unite. In Vedic Sanskrit, yoga (from the root yuj) means "to add", "to join", "to unite", or "to attach" in its most common literal sense, designating the "practical" aspects of the philosophy, i.e. the "union with the supreme" due to performance of duties in everyday life.

-          Roga, Bhoga, Yoga .... and ......Rogi, Bhogi and Yogi:  I refer to an interesting piece I saw on the internet a few weeks ago that is quite relevant to quote here: https://trueayurveda.wordpress.com/2013/.../difference-between-yogi-bhogi-and-rogi/.  If we live a life of roga / disease,  as a rogi then it prevents us from the possibility of experiencing life to its fullest. So being free from roga of the mind and body is an essential precondition. As a generation, we are experiencing life in its most comfortable form. No other generation in the past has ever experienced the degree of comfort and material conveniences that our generation is witnessing. The modern world as we see it now is a tremendous excess of bhoga !! As each of us goes through each of the “experiences”, we are “bhogis”. A yogi is someone who realizes that all the actions of a bhogi are ultimately fruitless, that cravings and indulgences are only temporarily satisfying. Then the desire for something more real arises. Like in everything else, we could explain this as a spectrum....... with 100% Bhogi at one end and 100% Yogi at the other end. All of us are somewhere within this spectrum. All over the world one is witnessing a gradual shift in the aspect of “consciousness”.  A gradual shift from being more of bhogis to becoming more aware of our true nature of yogis !!

-       Each of us sees things from our own perspectives. Each of our unique perspectives are at different levels of perception. Enhancing ones perceptions itself, is a journey that each of us have to take wilfully and with awareness. Here our own free will comes into play and thereby one gets to write his/her destiny by our own free will. 

-          In Hindu traditions, moksha is a central concept and included as one of the four aspects and goals of human life; the other three goals are dharma (virtuous, proper, moral life), artha (material prosperity, income security, means of life), and kama (pleasure, sensuality, emotional fulfilment). Together, these four aims of life are called Puruṣārtha in Hinduism. The goal of YOGA is MOKSHA or MUKTI..... freedom from ignorance: self-realization and self-knowledge. All of us are seeking expansion. So essentially all of us are practitioners of YOGA, we are all yogis... now we may be yogis with awareness and consciousness or we may be yogis without awareness of this fact that we are yogis !!

-          In my own life’s journey ahead, whatever little time that I have remaining in this mortal life, I will consciously focus on these three aspects with total awareness:

o   the “life intelligence”: enhancing my receptiveness and try and access faculties beyond the five physical senses. I realise that while these five physical senses will be powerful allies in my daily material life, I have to be more sensitive to faculties beyond these 5 senses to accelerate my journey to live LIFE to its fullest.....
o   the “experiences”:  enhancing my awareness and consciousness to enable me to see things as they truly are. Developing my “insight”. Without colouring each moment with my own individual prejudices and biases which have been developed over the past lives and in this life itself. Thereby “responding” to each moment rather than “reacting” to each moment.....
o   the “juice of life”: making my life energies more potent with the intake of right food and right thought, with right sadhana and practices....

-          By doing this, I would hopefully gradually cleanse the balance sheet of my life!! Stop accumulating bad karma, slowly dissolve the past accumulated karma. Be receptive to HIS grace. And let that grace do its magic on me.


-          With tremendous gratitude to the LIFE that I have experienced thus far, I look forward to the new year 2017, striving to continuously enhance my awareness and consciousness of “being” a yogi.  Wishing everyone a very happy new year ahead!!

Jesus said “the kingdom of god is within you”... Yoga is about experiencing it. .... Sadhguru

5 Comments:

At 2:21 PM , Blogger Narayan Menon said...

Excellent Shriram. With best wishes for a great 2017

 
At 4:35 PM , Blogger S Ramesh Shankar said...

Well written. My best wishes

 
At 6:50 PM , Blogger Shriram Parameswaran said...

Thanks dear Narayan...

 
At 6:51 PM , Blogger Shriram Parameswaran said...

Thanks !!!

 
At 6:51 PM , Blogger Shriram Parameswaran said...

Thanks !!!

 

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