LIFE IS A PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATION !

You have to learn to frame an experience in such a way that there is growth. Your focus is to convert ` samsara' into `nirvana' or bondage into salvation. For that to happen, what is important is atma smaranam or self-remembrance. If we can remember to be constantly awake to our inner world of thoughts, interpretations, emotions, likes and dislikes, a new level of reality will open up and thus we will be free from our inner prisons. There are both legitimate fears and illegitimate fears. When a tiger comes near you, there is fear, and it is a legitimate fear. The fear of the future is not legitimate. In fact it is interesting, even exciting, not to know about the future. A lady came to me and said, "I am afraid of what my future is going to be since my husband's company has been taken over by another company." I told her that it is not something she has to be afraid of. Look into your life... lots of wonderful things have happened. You were born in a poor family, and see how well placed you are now. So, draw your energy from the best things which have happened to you. As children we don't have fear. Elders sow the concept of fear. Then fear becomes a part of us. A child easily falls. Then a fear is installed. Slowly as the child grows up he is afraid to fall. The body becomes rigid and resists a graceful fall. In martial art we are taught to fall gracefully, but the mind creates the fear of injury and makes the body rigid. There is a process one has to unlearn in martial art... not to bring in the mind so that you can be free to learn to fall gracefully. Then a fall has an element of pleasure. A person who lives only in the level of senses and sense pleasure is at one level. Another person who has developed the joy of opening up the body lock and the energies hidden in the body by right dieting, right exercise... is at another level. The next level is that of a person who has opened the emotional lock. He brings in the energies of love, compassion and gratitude instead of anger and jealousy... he has opened up his emotions. One is at yet another level when one has opened the intellectual lock... the energies of right thinking, having the right clarity and intelligence. Finally, what about one who has opened up the spiritual lock, the hidden energies in oneself? This happens when there is inner purity and inner calmness. Such a person is at the highest level. Life is a combination of ignorance and knowledge. It needs fine-tuning. Suppose your house has Italian marble but if it is not polished, then it will look like ordinary flooring. Similarly, you have knowledge but if it is not polished with humility and understanding, then such knowledge will not shine forth. Look at life with awareness. Everyone at some level is stupid, is helpless and this recognition helps us to act wisely. If people think, "I know, i need not change," such knowledge will bind a person; it will not free him.