Five secrets for building a healthy relationship

What are the secrets of relationship? How does a relationship develop? First is the attraction. But, if you get what you are attracted to too easily, the charm goes away. However, if it becomes just a little bit difficult to have what you are attracted to, then you develop love for it. What happens when you fall in love? When you love someone, you give yourself to that relationship, and start making demands on that relationship. The moment you start demanding, love diminishes. Then you say, “Oh! I have made a mistake.” Now there is struggle and pain to get out of it. And after you have got out of it, you get into one more, another one, and the story repeats.

The golden three

The way to make relationships long-lasting is through the right perception, the right observation, and the right expression. Often people say that nobody understands them. Instead, you can say that you have not expressed yourself properly. To express yourself properly, you need proper perception, and that can happen only when you put yourself in the shoes of the other person. Then you need the right observation. The way you react when you perceive something is important. Observe your sensation, tendencies, and patterns. Life is a lesson of just three things – perception, observation, and expression. Every mistake you make is really not a mistake; it is a learning process of the three vital aspects of life.

So, the first secret of relationships is to widen our lens of perception and accommodate others’ behaviour, instead of blaming them. If someone is grumpy or a little finicky in his or her relationships, we just hold him or her responsible for the behaviour. But if we see from a wider perspective, many aspects will come together. When people are working for nine to ten hours, they may be upset with something that happened, and they come home to find solace. At that time, you should see the circumstance, situation, and allow them the space to express their frustration or anger.

Life is a lesson of just these three things: perception, observation, and expression

When someone is undergoing labour pain, and if you say, ‘Don’t deliver, keep it, keep it, keep the baby inside.’ What can they do? How long can they keep it inside? So allow them to express and offload. Try to understand why they are upset or unhappy. If you expect them not to say anything, be nice to you 24 hours every day, and 365 days in a year, or if you find fault with them saying, ‘You are useless, you are hopeless’, what will they do? They find that they have no support, and they get depressed. Therefore, you should interact with others, not only through their words and actions, but also from a broader perspective.

Give with a smile

The second thing in a relationship is to give. Relationship means giving, but at the same time leaving some room for the other partner to give. Love involves an exchange. And that can happen only when you give the partner an opportunity also to do something to you. This needs a little skill – to make the other also contribute without demanding. If you demand, the relationship is not going to last long. Demand and blame destroy love. Then, if your partner does not do something that you want to do, then you will get into the self-pitying mode “I do everything. I have been used.” The feeling “I am being used” should be taken out of our consciousness. For love to blossom, self-worth is essential. You should only know how to praise others and uplift a situation instead of finding fault. Any problem in life should be handled with style and a smile.

Advice for women: Never step on the ego of your man or say he is good for nothing. If you do so, he will become one. Always praise and shower him with compliments.

Advice for men: Never step on a woman’s emotions, or insult her family. She may complain about them, but you should be quiet.

Advice for both: Never ask for proof of someone’s love for you. Do not ask each other, “Do you really love me? Even if you find something lacking just say, “Why do you love me so much?” Take it for granted. Even if the spring has died out, it will start again.

Spaces in togetherness

The third aspect of relationships is to give them space. When you do not give people any breathing space, they will suffocate. And suffocation destroys love. The ancient people knew this. So they had a tradition of sending the wife to her parental home once every year. This separation creates longing. If there is no longing in your relationship then love will not grow.

The fourth aspect in a relationship is that it should be treated as a dessert, not as a main course. If your life is based on some goal, then relationship will move along. If all your focus is just on the relationship, it will not work. You cannot have a dessert for your main course, can you?

The fifth aspect is to understand your own self, your own mind, and to be calm, not feverish. Only then, your charm becomes long-lasting. Take some time off and go within your silence, and you will see the strength that comes from within you. From that, your charm becomes eternal, and your love becomes unconditional. If you meditate even for half an hour in a week, you can eliminate these negative emotions and make your presence come alive. The nearer a person comes to you, the more charm there is. That is the nature of our consciousness.

A relationship is like two wheels moving together. It needs attention and effort. We should not allow our love to grow old. The highest mortality rate in our society today is that of love. The strength of a relationship lies in the ability to accommodate rough patches. How well you handle it, gives you skills. See the situation as an opportunity on how to adapt, be accommodating, understanding, and considerate. Excel in exhibiting your character rather than changing the other person. If the relationship comes from the space of giving rather than need, it is a good quality relationship.

 

Holi lessons for the spiritual seeker

 

When sacredness is attached to a celebration, it becomes total, complete. It’s not just the body and mind but the spirit also celebrates. Then celebration dawns spontaneously and life becomes a vibrant fountain of colors. The sacred festival of Holi is not just about outward celebration but also inner wisdom that we must pay attention to. When you are in knowledge, then all the colors in your life coexist peacefully. Harmony in diversity makes life vibrant, joyful and more colorful.

Make friends with enemies

One of the messages of Holi is: Make friends even with the enemy. Let there be no enemy. Why is an enemy born? When we have animosity within us, then an enemy is born. If we have no animosity left in us, then we would have no enemies either. We shouldn’t mind if someone else considers us as an enemy but we shouldn’t perceive any animosity from our side.

All colors co-exist

Life should be full of colors! And each color is meant to be seen and enjoyed separately. All colors emanate from white, and when mixed again, they become black. Similarly, in life, different roles played by us should exist peacefully and distinctly inside us. For example, when a father continues to play his role of a ‘father’ in office, things are bound to go for a toss. When your mind is white and consciousness – pure, peaceful, happy and meditative, different colors and roles emerge. We get the strength to play various roles with full sincerity against the background. All we need to do is dip into our consciousness time and again. Between all the roles, we have to take deep rests, in order to play each role sincerely.

Be Aware of Your Desires

The only way out is to focus attention on the desire and surrender it. This act of focusing awareness or sight on desire or Kama is called ‘Kamakshi’. With awareness, desire loses its grip on our mind and surrender happens and then nectar flows out from within. If you look at the picture of the goddess, Kamakshi, holds a sugarcane stem in one hand and a flower in the other. The sugar-cane stem is so hard and has to be squeezed in order to obtain sweetness, while the flower is soft and collecting nectar from it is so easy. This truly represents life, which indeed has a little of both! It is far easier to obtain this bliss from the inside than it is to try to extract pleasure from the outside world – which needs a lot more effort.

Become a witness

Nature has all colors and so does your mind. You feel happy, unhappy, angry, jealous, compassionate, generous…all these colors of emotions come up in you. The mind is not the same all the time. But when you know you are not that, you are not these colors, moods then you can truly enjoy these colors. You become a witness to all the mind games that go on inside of you. What troubles you most in life is not someone else but your own mind. When you identify yourself with those emotions, you think that is you, then you are in trouble. Meditation is the way to move into this witness state.

This itself is the message of Holi - go hug and color everyone, bow down with respect and radiate love. On this occasion of Holi, spread the colors of love everywhere making life buoyant and colorful.

Wishing all Happy Holi!

Meditation and its many meanings

Meditation is not an act; it is the art of doing nothing. The rest in meditation is deeper than the deepest sleep that you can ever have. When the mind becomes free from agitation, becomes calm and serene and is at peace, meditation happens. When the mind is engaged in some activity, it gets tired.

So any type of concentration, contemplation or any activity in the mind can drain your system. Meditation is that which doesn’t drain you, but just gives you deep rest and we withdraw from all sensory activities like seeing, listening, smelling, tasting. It is almost like sleep, but not exactly sleep.

Meditation is not concentration; it is de-concentration, letting go. When can you rest? Rest is possible when you have stopped all activities. When you stop moving around, stop working, talking, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, thinking—then you get rest or sleep. In sleep you are left with only involuntary activities like breathing, heartbeat, food digestion, blood-circulation, etc. 

But this is not total rest. When the mind settles down, only then total rest or meditation happens. There are three modes to our consciousness: waking, dreaming and sleeping; and a fourth mode is the meditative state. That is, you are aware from within and yet fully in a deep state of rest. Meditation calms the mind and gives it deep rest.

What happens in your mind when you have to wait for something? Do you notice the time passing by? In waiting, you observe every moment that is passing by and this very waiting can take you into meditation. When you have to wait, you can either be frustrated or meditative. Feeling time is meditation.

Meditation is that journey from sound to silence, from movement to stillness. It complements activity, though it appears to be completely opposite. For a layman, we can categorize the whole thing in seven layers of existence: body, breath, mind, intellect, memory, ego and the reference point of change which we call the “self.”

You know in life, we notice everything is changing. And how do we know the change, if there is no reference in the mind? There is something in us that is not changing. That something that has been with us, we call it the Self or the non-changing aspect of our consciousness. So, meditation is a journey to the non-changing reference of our Self, the consciousness.

Now, many people ask how to quiet the mind in meditation or how to get into a deeper meditation? So I would say, first accept the noise and not fight it. You fight with it and feel that you should not have this noise. The more you want to get rid of it, the more it will stick to you. The principle of consciousness or mind is such that resistance does not eliminate it but makes it grow. So first you have to let go and not resist it.

Second focus on the five different ways of getting into meditation. Breathing will help you get rid of the noise. Proper food can also make an impact on meditation. Exercise, posture and refined emotions, good understanding, all of these will aid meditation. 

Effort and effortlessness

 

Anything that is natural does not require effort. You bathe in the morning. Do you bathe with a lot of interest? Do you brush your teeth with a lot of interest? No, you don’t. Just because you have to do it, you do it! It’s natural and effortless!

Like when you are smiling naturally, that smile is effortless. But if you are asked to smile then that becomes a difficult task. Doing an action that requires effort is aasakti. However, doing work that comes naturally and gives you inner peace is done in nirasakti.

If you ask those who prepare food every day, they would be able to prepare it without much effort. However, if the same task is handed to a person who never cooks, he will flip through the pages of a recipe book again and again, to prepare the same food. He will keep tasting the food to check the balance of spices. So wherever effort is applied, the job is done with aasakti, and this leads to feverishness.

You being feverish about going to, for example, Mysore is aasakti; and effortlessly driving your car to Mysore is nirasakti. Nirasakti is not disinterestedness or depression; it is just an effortless attitude. The next effortless thing is meditation. If you put effort into meditation, that is it! You will not be able to do it. Meditation happens effortlessly.

All other things need effort – memorising anything requires effort, learning skills need effort. If you want to learn the computer, it takes you some time to adjust to the keyboard! If you want to learn some sport, you have to give 100% effort. If you want to play the sitar, you have to put in effort. And if you need to tell a lie? – 500% effort! This is because when you tell a lie, you forget what you have told, and it needs a lot of effort to keep it in mind!

Life is a combination of effort and effortlessness and they are complementary. If you work dynamically, you sleep well. If you have memorised well, you remember automatically. If you are doing service, you are able to love more, because there is satisfaction and your heart is opening up. If you can see beauty everywhere, you can appreciate beauty!

When you can do this, things become effortless; even jobs requiring effort, will not be strenuous. Do you see? When you want to do something, when the heart is in it, when there is an appreciation of beauty, then even effort is not strenuous.