Step aside the storm to see the rainbow

Heard of silver lining in the cloud? What about rainbow in the storm?

This post is actually a reply to one person who sent me an internal Facebook message suggesting the overwhelming external situations going on in her life, most of which does not seem to have a solution at all. Thought will share it here because it is indeed a common issue that right now everyone is going through during the existing time.

Please know that though the ego might try to convince you that it is only you who are going through tough times or challenges, it is not really true. Everyone is going through it, especially right now. Everyone feels their problem is the greatest. Can happen with self-centeredness, where it is all about I, Me, and Myself or I, We and Ourself. Collectively a family feels only their family is undergoing big challenges, it’s the collective family ego that gives that idea. So, the moment you become aware of how this quality of selfishness or self-centeredness plays such wreck, you can simply fall out of it just by pure and honest awareness and life around and how life around is struggling in so many ways. If you just even life happening outside, the kind of incidents, situations, challenges, misery, pain and suffering that billions out there are undergoing, you will instead begin feeling how lucky you are that life has spared you of such conditions and situations. See, how awareness of our own dark aspect (self-centeredness) can bless you out of a deadly frame of mind? You know what, this is precisely how life is teaching everyone lessons. i am often asked how to know what is the lesson. To know that complete honestly and integrity is needed to look within deep into our own shadowy parts. Lessons are always for the dark aspects so that we outgrow that dark aspect and transmute it into light, that is how we illuminate all the dark areas of life. Without this approach or attitude it is impossible to know lessons just with some intellectual working.

The current period is a period of manthan or churning – the churning of all our internal karmic residues. This churning is not a punishment though it always seems like it. A seeker in awareness will be clearly aware of this, able to even seen how things from one’s life is surfacing up, either to be healed, resolved and/or released. On that other hand, ‘resolving’ and ‘releasing’ is ‘healing’. But all these these terms can be related with life incidents and seen as it is only if you can look at it in awareness, otherwise you can fall into the churning and spin and toss and get worn. The sakshi (witness) bhaav is important, but easier said than done, if not careful or watchful, one can slip and fall into it. Once one has fallen into it, it can be different to see the other side of it, that is, what this article is talking about. Hence, it is always better to apply even the “awareness” as a preventive measure than a cure. It is not that it is not possible as a cure, but yes, it can be very strenuous to swim yourself out of the turbulent waters once you are in the storm, hence the advice to look at it preventively. You simply know how difficult it is to navigate out of the epicenter of a tornado, you can’t see anything with you are in it. To see it, you need to be distant from the epicenter. That is what i meant by prevention. When you see a storm coming, don’t jump into it like a superman. The ego pushes you to always become a superman and by the time you realise you may not be one, you are tricked by the ego. Awareness helps thus.

Everybody is right now going through different type of issues and it is important to understand that these are all karmic issues that are getting worked out. Since everything is karmic, we must understand that what we go through is something that is balancing itself from the outcomes of past karmas. That is one reason why there is no point in blaming, fretting and fuming, with the situations and challenges one is faced with. If you are doing these, then know that you are in the epicenter, You will be forced to become reactive, just like a person amidst a storm will have to struggle and put so much of effort. It is impossible to observe any flying debris from within the storm than from a safe distance. i speak this from my own experiences few weeks back in understanding how crazy things seem when you look at it from within the chaos than from a distance. Am sharing this with everyone here, but this is precisely the same thing that happens in all humans, thought situations and stories may be different. When i went too deep into one such surfaced issue, i realized how difficult it is to observe things. By the time, things make you reactive even before you know and then i could see and realize “Oh, i fell into this crap!” The next moment after this awareness, i saw that i was no longer interested in dealing with all that huge muck of people, but my next immediate thought was “which direction is the shore?!” This is because the moment i became aware that i had slipped into something messy, i automatically tried to become aware and see a solution, but i saw that it was nearly impossible. This was because while i was in that soup, almost every second seemed to go protecting myself from the flying debris at close range. i was trying to justify, reason, make people understand, throw light into that darkness, etc. But you know what, it was like trying to light a lamp or fire in the epicenter of a storm. Looks cool, seems cool, but it doesn’t work that way. When all my attempts to light a torch failed, the next thing that made sense to me was to head towards the shore! Because in that turbulent storm, not just me but none could see anything clearly and all were only focussed on self-defence from the flying debris, as a natural instinctive or reflection action. Noone to blame. The storm is like that. You are trying to run, to save yourself and others, protect your dignity when your clothes are  flying or tearing apart, and amidst all that trying to light a lamp. Am having hearty laugh now. So, the next thing most sensible that came to my awareness was showed me that i am in the storm! You see, most of us don’t even realize we are in the storm but are only battling things out reactively, unconsciously, governed by our old conditionings and patterns. But awareness saved. The moment i distanced from the storm, it showed me the rainbow in that storm. This rainbow could never have been seen while in that mess. The next moment i saw that all my efforts dropped and all energies just settling towards  calming down and finding the exit path out of the storm. Many a times, we see that leaving the storm and people stuck in it is a better way of even handling the storm and perhaps even saving those in the storm. It took me a while to find the way out but when i was doing so, i saw that all my intense energies dropped down and now was only focussed on making the way out. Most of the time we don’t see a way out because we are busy utilising our energies and attention in the super-alert mode., fighting out things. This is a situation that is dominated by ego. The false “I” makes you battle – attack, defend, justify. If the battle was too strong for you, then the outcome of this battle may leave you feeling like a victim and shouting for help in cries, which is the situations from which i get requests for solutions. If the battle was a weak one and easy for you to handle then it leaves you feeling like a winner, a champ, an emperor. No one writes for solution in such cases seeking what should have been right and to even re-check if it damaged someone else in the process. So, you see how everything is about only winning, which is only fuelled by self-centeredness. Our definition of success in a challenging situation is all simply this. Awareness shows you this right on your face. So, it is again important to understand that winning the battle and feeling like a warrior emperor or losing it and feeling like a slave or victim are both outcomes of the ego – the false “I”.

This is why i am reiterating that all these happen only to teach some lessons and to outgrow and evolve from the pollution of the false “I”. These solutions offered here are only for seekers on the path, for those who sincerely are focussed on self-transformation for only then these things will appeal to you. If you are Shift Into Awareness while reading this, you will catch the whole thing and spontaneously solutions will light up within you for your own situations in life.  For others, such things are unsatisfactory because they are still seeking for solutions outside. Somewhere in them there is a belief that you change your external circumstances only without the need to change within, and things will be okay. Well that is also just a belief for nothing is going to be okay. These times right now are showing things within and forcing everyone to go within. But with the increasing pressure from the Cosmos to drive one deeper within, people desperately rush out for solutions. They will spend in lakhs to rectify the Vastu of wrong physical structures of a geographical location or property but not spend an ounce of energy and time in rectifying the wrong patterns in their life that is attracting wrong unfavourable situations. Life goes on in this prolonged pursuit of seeking solutions outside. It is the ego that drives one outside because it doesn’t like it’s death. For it is only when the ego is crushed by the painful episodes of our life, that we even think of what surrender is or going with the flow is or correcting ourselves is. Believe it or not, everything is only moving right now in that direction. It is a force that is forcing one to go within and make changes within than outside. Many don’t believe this and like to waste more precious years in this attempt until one by one everything crumbles down, leaving one to no other option than to what is natural and what is “real”.

So, all the sharing of questions and challenges i get from many, please let us understand that the solution is the same for all. If we understand what and why all these things are happening right now it is easier to hit the bull’s eye. Right now, it is all about self-purification and self-transformation, so that you can evolve. Your real soul purpose is to realize it’s highest goal and all these are attempts to make you “re-member” who you really are and what you are supposed to do with your human birth. It is simply trying to shift your awareness from the false “I” to the real “I” – who you really are!

Pull back, let go, relax, watch, observe, witness, take things easy. There is no hurry. What seems like a hurry is all fake, which makes you feel so real. That is the play of what is called Maya. A man slogs his whole life right from childhood in learning, hoarding, mastering, achieving, and possessing only to see that one twist of events can tumble all this. One death call will shatter every such glories of achievement in what we call success! This clearly depicts the reality and very clearly shows the illusion of life and the temporariness of it but see the power of maya, how real it all appears and how you can desperately cling on to it in eternal sufferings. To make you realize this is why life offers you all the punches, so that you finally see through the whole play and let go, relax, pull back, observe, learn and then finally question what is it that is real. Then your efforts will strive to change towards what is real and one loses interest in the unreal and the temporary. The tools to let you know this truly is awareness, meditation, spiritual practices, Yoga, breathwork – for all these align you with the real “I” and keeps you away from all that is false. The moment you Shift Into Awareness, you will begin finding the solutions to your daily life issues too! Because now those solutions are coming from the “real” self and these solutions will have an everlasting effect and also ensure that it is not self-centered or motivated by any other lower emotions like greed, hate, anger, lust, attachment, resentment, jealously, selfishness, etc. These solutions will always be for your highest good and the highest good of all, which is the purest element of Existence and anything that works on this principle thrives eternally for it is one with the principles and workings of the Cosmos.

So, the problem or challenge may be anything. Maybe even your spouse is cheating out on you and you ask what is your mistake or how to make it known to the spouse of the grave mistake they are doing or how to punish the spouse now through a divorce or separation or any other legal, physical, emotional or mental punishing. Whatever you do, you will still sense that peace will be absent. It is because you are operating from the false “I” perspective on someone else’s falseness. All a never-ending nonsense game. Rather pull out of the game. Shift Into Awareness and you will see a different perspective. You will see all the karmic drama at play, sometimes in your favour and sometimes against, but both the consequences of your own karmic deeds, either from this lifetime or past, but it all has to play out. That is why you take birth on earth – to simply play out all karmas. But what is the point if you end up “paying back” for that karma and encouraging to play the game and promising thus to keep coming back again and again only to suffer these endless miseries. Rather than that, pull out of the games and plays and watch everything. Go within. Catch your real source. Evolve. Liberate! When in this mode, you will see that lesser and lesser outer things begin to affect you and that is your reward to move deeper into the journey. You don’t then have a preconceived outcome. Whatever the outcome, you remain fine with it, because now, it is not those outcomes that influence you, but it is the outcomes that you are receiving from your inner journey, which is only known to you. When you pull out of the game, know that others in the game have an opponent who is not interested in the game and that reduces their struggle also to get even! That begins dropping the intensity of the storm and you realise that the storm was fuelled by only these opposite energies. See how difficult it is to even know this while being in the center of the storm and battling out things. This, in other words, is what many even term as surrender. Well, many find that difficult because they attempt to surrender through the ego or false “I”. Dropping this falseness is the only way to fall into surrender. The moment you Shift Into Awareness you are operating not from the falseness but the real “I”, which is what the surrender is all about in other words. You begin to move with the flow. But it can only happen with this shift, it is impossible to get that through the ego or through login and intellect. Just shift the perception. And keep doing it. Again, and again and again, and prolonging that awareness. Nonwillingness to leave your comfort zone will tempt you badly for an external solution for instant gratification. That is the false play of the mind. Being aware, you will not fall for it.

Please know that meditation or silence or non-reactiveness is not escapism. It IS the solution. For meditation and awareness gives you clarity to even “see through” and sort out things of the external, which is never possible being in the storm. The storm that is fuelled by our emotions and reactions itself. First the storm has to die down to be even able to see clearly. Going within drops the storms. There is now more clarity and also solutions are not ego-based but based from pure intentions seeking only good for one and all.  Surrender is giving up doership. Give up the efforts to change others. Most of our questions are about changing people or situations externally. Rather just change yourself and in that process what happens is your perception changes, and you will see that it is not really required to change anyone. You will have a very deep and higher realization that everyone is undergoing their own karmic fruits and learning lessons, and so it is not in your command to change anyone else’s karmic fruits or destiny. Allow them to learn their lessons without really hoping or wishing that they learn (that is cursing rather). Allow them. Let them be. Their journey is different than yours. Your focus should be on your journey. Simultaneously, your sadhna (spiritual practices) keeps dissolving all the deeper karmic debris. This is the best way to live through in the current times.