Why we should review our lives in the time gone past

 

As we flip the calendar, we need to keep flipping our mind as well. Often, our diaries are filled with memories. See that you don't fill your future dates with past events. Allow the space for creativity to unlearn from the past and move on.

In the past year (and many of us rang in a new year just a few weeks back), how many days were you in sanyas? How many days were you struggling, being caught in maya? Turn back and remember the whole year.

Do not run away from anything. Do not reject anything. Do not go away from anything. At the same time, let your attention be on the self. This is a delicate balance. That balance is yoga.  

A poor man celebrates New Year once a year. A rich man celebrates each day. But the richest man celebrates every moment. How rich are you? If you celebrate every moment, you are the Lord of Creation.

Review the year while you celebrate. This is your homework. Compare your performance in the year before last and smile. This year is fortunate because you are living at this time. When you are living for the sake of the world, the world is fortunate.  

Let time celebrate your presence. You keep smiling as ever. When you let time celebrate you, you are witness amid celebration.  

The heart always longs for the old, the mind for the new. Life is a combination of both. Let the New Year bring into our life ancient wisdom and modernity, as life is incomplete without either of them.  

Don't feel shy to speak about human and spiritual values. The time has come now to call the whole world. Be ever new, happy you.

Who are you?

 

I’m the first and the last. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. How do you introduce yourself? Do you know who you are? When someone asks, “Who are you?” 

Do you often end up saying what you do and what you are in relation to someone else? “I’m so and so’s son”, or “I’m a doctor”, or “I work in such and such a place, I do this”. 

You could be doing anything, but who are you? Are you what you are doing? Is that all? You could be a tailor today. Tomorrow you could be a cook. The next day you could be a teacher. You are a parent. You have been a child. You are a student. You are a patient in bed. You have many roles to play in life. But the sum total of all the roles cannot equal you. You are more than all the roles that you play in your life. When a person identifies himself with a role he is playing, all parts of his personality are not united. 

He is in so many fragments, It is like living in compartments, not being aware of the total potential that he is. Essentially this question - Who are we? What is our nature? Is the beginning of the spiritual journey.

The human nervous system has the capacity to inquire about itself, about the nature of living and the nature of being. This very quest is the beginning of humanness. The process of identification, I’m somebody, I’m an American or I am Mexican, I’m Canadian, I’m English, I’m German serves some purpose. But it is not the final truth, it is not the absolute. The spiritual journey is the search for the source. From where have I come? What is the source of this life? 

All the major religions of the world move toward this, the search for the source. But in the process people have gotten stuck in their positions. Today the wars and the fights all over the world are in the name of religion. One takes his position, I’m a Muslim or I’m Christian, I’m Hindu or I’m Sikh, I am Buddhist stand those who are not that, they are not mine. They don’t belong to me. So in the process of identifying with this position, that I am a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu, I don’t even mind losing my life. Even if I die it doesn’t matter, but I’m a Muslim or I’m a Hindu or I’m a Christian. 

This must be me. That is what is happening, isn’t it? Is it not sheer madness?  We call it patriotism when it comes to the question of nationality, I’m a Canadian or I’m an American. There is no difference between Canada and the United States, just a line on the map. There is no border, nothing has been drawn on the earth. The land does not speak. It doesn’t say, ‘I’m Canada. I am America’.