Connecting To The Higher Reality

Happy Monday friends! Hope y’all had a good weekend. Alas! We can’t say this for those stuck in Ukraine and indeed what a terrible time this is for all of us across the globe. And this is just after things were starting to get a little normal — right after the third wave of the pandemic.

I wouldn’t really be able to state the reason but I have always noticed that any news of such kind where bloodshed is involved affects me at the personal level. Be it the situation in Ukraine, or when there was the re-emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, I couldn’t sleep for days since I had read about the horrible state of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.

Amid all this, honestly, it’s very difficult to stay positive and just be able to think of oneself, but seems that there is no choice now and as we know that our thoughts affect our minds, so we have to make an effort to put our thoughts in a way that it doesn’t harm the self or anyone around. That got me thinking about how we humans function in real life. After having carefully watched the lives of many individuals all I see is that people wake up in the mornings, go to the office, come back, eat, sleep and repeat.

Ideally there is nothing wrong in leading this kind of a life but what happens is that everything seems to get monotonous after a while, so much so that every little ups and downs leave us completely shattered. Ordinarily people would say that it’s just a phase, one that’ll pass away soon but we realise that it vanishes only to come back and haunt us.

So, what is it that we can do differently? Do we just abandon our lives and seek liberation somewhere up in the mountains? Bhagwan Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita refers it to as cowardice. Instead he insists that we have to learn our bit to fight for our own lives and faithfully discharge our duties by staying here in this life itself.

So how do we go about it? Is it that easy to stay detached in this era of distractions? No, it’s not easy but is definitely achievable. We have to realise and in fact keep on reminding ourselves that life ought not to be lived just like an ordinary one, indeed we must identify and connect to a higher purpose of life. And, that is via the realisation of the Self and further establishing in the knowledge of the Self.

Few years back when I first started embarking on this journey, there would be moments when I’d go absolutely berserk, not knowing what to do, but gradually I realised that this is the best form of knowledge that has been imparted to me so far and that all I have to do is stay firm in that knowledge and train the self and others to remain firm in that.

Hopefully that day is not so far from now when we can transcend our feelings and establish ourselves in an area of permanent bliss.

Image courtesy: Klaus Nielsen on Pexels