Easy(EC) SPIRITUALITY

Before discussing spirituality let's first ask ourselves a simple looking question "Who am I?" The answer can be-I am Rajiv/Rajitha. I am an Indian. I am a nurse. All these answers are given by the mind. So does this mean that we all are just our minds. Do we have an existence beyond our mind (that controls our body)? Is mind everything?

Actually mind is just an instrument, a tool given to us. It is not something meant to control our lives. So the question arises now "What is beyond our mind?" And the answer is "Our Spiritual Self".

Who am I?

When I say "I am happy" it is the mind which is feeling happy, it is not the person who is experiencing that state. The "actual self of the person" is neither happy nor sad. It is above all such emotional states. It is always in a state of eternal bliss. This realisation that we have a deeper, more meaningful, more beautiful, more powerful, more stable, more pure aspect to our self/personality is the first step to understand the concept of spirituality. Actually it is not a concept, it is the supreme reality. And so our life, in fact every moment of our life should become a means, an opportunity a gift to experience this truth, this reality. Once we experience/ understand/believe in this then the world around us and also the world inside us is secondary, an illusion, a set of moving images, a passing phase. The awareness of this simple truth/simple reality/simple fact,this simple knowledge is spirituality.

Practising spirituality starts with monitoring the mind just like a manager oversees his employee. Every action/thought/belief/feeling/perception has to be subjected to introspection and useful insights have to be acquired.

Being spiritual is also to realise that just as a coin has two sides, similarly every thing in this world has an opposite side to it. If there is love then there will be hate, richness x deficiency, peaceful x disturbed, sharing x possessive, comfort x discomfort etc. This awareness can make a person balanced,rooted and thus empowered with wisdom while having/doing/being something.  

First, there is awareness; a choice-less observation of all your thoughts and feelings, of everything that you do. Out of that comes a state of attention which has no frontier, but in which the mind can concentrate, and from this state of attention there is quietness of mind. And, when the mind is completely quiet, without any kind of self-hypnosis, there is the coming into being of something which is not put together by the mind.

J Krishnamurti.

TO BE CONTINUED...