Return to Innocence

Live from the heart; with an open heart, you can feel things as they are without the burden of past conditioning, writes Paula Horan

Happiness is something we all unconsciously seek and more so when times get tough. Ironically, I have discovered, after many years of trial and error, that happiness is not the ideal objective. Life is fraught with ups and downs, even in the best of times. There will always be periods of happiness and periods of pain, comfort and discomfort. Thus the equanimity which fosters contentment is perhaps a wiser aspiration which when pursued, requires us to wake up to who we are, minus the veil of ego.

It is eminently more practical, to get in touch with and anchor ones attention with the true self — the awareness within us which is unaffected by life's ups and downs — than to try and "fix" the mind and make it happy. Fixes are always only temporary. It behoves us to discover the 'beingness' that we are, which rests in a perfect state of equanimity, no matter what outer circumstances may be; whether they are good or bad.

Shed your ego

It is ultimately who we are, minus ego identification. This presence is always with us, for it is our essential nature, yet while we are identified with a busy mind, we fail to notice it. A certain shedding of mental burdens has to happen so that it can be felt and directly experienced. The most direct way to do this is to shed the burdened one with all of its various masks. For this to occur, the illusory experiencer (ego) has to be unveiled.

From this perspective, the problems and challenges of everyday life take on a whole new meaning. All at once, nothing changes and yet everything changes. We cease to take life so personally because we realise there is no "personal" self to begin with. Instead, we begin to perceive the vastness of who we are: wholly indefinable, wholly unknowable.

As we begin to peek through the boundaries of the conceptual mind, our previous comfort zone, bound by our encyclopaedic memory of the past, with continued noticing, loses its hypnotic quality. The freshness of living a true present, unaided by past programming, gradually becomes more appealing.

What is called for now, is a return to innocence, an innocence which must be intensely present with what is. Fierce energy keeps us in the present. The fierceness is not to protect our innocence, for it needs no protection, but to make it come alive, to fuel an open heart. Contrary to what we normally think, true strength lies in the vulnerability of an open heart; not in a heart which is closed. With an open heart, we can feel things as they are without the burden of past conditioning.

Show more Understanding

There is a story of a holy man from the Middle East who was in the habit of not eating breakfast each morning until a hungry person came by to share it with him. One day, an elderly man came by. The holy man saw him and invited him to share his breakfast with him. The elderly man thanked him profusely and sat down at the table to join him. As they began to say a blessing over the food, the elderly man said aloud a prayer to the pagan gods. The holy man was taken aback since he only believed in one God. He felt that the elderly man was a non-believer and so he became very upset. "If you believe in pagans, then I don't want you in my house!" he said to the old man, who scurried off. 

When the holy man returned to his table, he heardGod speak to him. God said, "What right have you to send that man away?" The holy man said, "He did not believe in you." God replied, "Look here! I know he does not believe in me. But I have been supplying the unbeliever with food every day for eighty years even though he doesn't believe in Me. Couldn't you tolerate him for one single meal?"

We sometimes become righteous about our own beliefs and our own goodness and look down upon others. Who is good and who is bad? No matter how bad we think someone is, God provides for everyone. There are people who lie, who cheat, who deceive others, and who slander others. There are people who hurt others and even kill others. It takes all types to make the world. Some of us believe in a God, others don't; still others are agnostics. Yet, God provides life to each of them. No one is perfect.

Even those of us who are on the spiritual path feel righteous about ourselves. Some people criticise others who do not meditate as much as they do, who do not do as much service as they do, or who do not live by the ethical values as well as they do. Sometimes people become very outspoken about the faults of others. But have we ever analysed our own selves? Is it our duty to become the reformers of others? We should accept the fact that no one is without fault. God knows everyone's faults. God sees everything we do and everything everyone else does.

We should be kind and loving to all. We should respect and learn to live amicably with people who have different beliefs and customs from those that we have. Why be critical of non-believers and agnostics? Are we not entitled to believe in what we are convinced about, as long as we do not hurt anyone?

God has made a world with people following many different religions and yet provides for each of them. Each one of us is different; this fact alone should enable us to show more understanding to those who do not agree with us. When we show love and understanding to all, then we are acting like true children of the Lord. God is love, and when we show love for others, we too are filled with love and come closer to God. 

Why we suffer

Shantanu Nagarkatti tells us how to overcome misery. A report by Mansi Choksi

In the Yoga Vasishta, Sage Vashishtha tells Prince Rama the story of the enlightenment of Leela. "This story is for those who have lost a dear one, who live in pain and for those of us who are plagued by the anxiety of anticipatory loss," said Nagarkatti.

Leela was the beautiful wife of King Padma — a fair, wise and kind man regarded as the 'lotus of his race'. They were deeply in love. Often, she would be overcome with fear, when she would think of the possibility of losing him. The fear became so overpowering that it sometimes prevented her from enjoying his company and even the present moment.

Leela called on all the wise men in her court to find a solution to her problem. They advised her to engage in tapasya, fasting and meditation so that goddess Saraswati could show her the way. She chanted for days in secrecy and finally Saraswati appeared. "She asked the goddess for two boons: first, that she would appear each time Leela called her and second, that when Padma's soul left his body, it would not leave the room they shared," recounted Nagarkatti.

Decades later, Padma passed away. As Leela sat next to his lifeless body, she was overcome by sorrow.

Nagarkatti explained: "Patanjali says that all unhappiness arises from advidya or ignorance; when we seek permanence in impermanence," he said. "We look for sukham or happiness in things that are designed to cause dukham or sorrow. The nature of the world is to change and we always look for something to hold onto — the idea of I, me, myself."

As Leela sat in her room, plagued by sorrow, she called out to goddess Saraswati. "Let me see where my husband is," she pleaded. The goddess obliged, and Leela went into a trance and saw her husband looking younger, sitting on his throne and ruling over his kingdom. She went to him, spoke to him, tried to embrace him, but he couldn't see her or feel her.

Befuddled, she asked Saraswati, if what she had just seen was a dream or a reflection of her world. "How do you know that what you're experiencing now is not an illusion?" Saraswati asked. "When one is in a dream, everything seems real — tears, blood, pain and even happiness. You realise it's a dream only when you wake up," said Nagarkatti.

She told Leela that there were three dimensions to existence — bhoota akasha or physical, chitt akasha or psychological — which drives the bhoota akasha with the karmas stored in it, or the spiritual dimension, the highest state of being, which is limitless. In this stage, there is no duality, and dwesha. "There is not one universe, but multiverses, not one Padma but several Padmas," said Nagarkatti. With meditation, one can enter the chitt akasha that traverses time and these universes.

Leela undertook nirvikalpa samadhi and reached the highest state of consciousness. Through her travels, she came across mourners near a hut and asked what had happened. The relatives wept furiously and said that this was the hut of Sage Vashishtha and his wife Arundhati and that they had passed away eight days ago. But they could feel their presence in the room.

Goddess Saraswati told Leela that Vashishtha was none other than Padma and Arundhati was none other than Leela. One day, the learned Vashishtha had noticed a huge procession of royalty and had said, "How wonderful it would be to be a king". That wish was granted and he was reborn as Padma. "That's why, be careful of what you desire. As Oscar Wilde said, when God wants to punish you, he fulfils your desire," Nagarkatti said.