The password for attracting miracles into your Life: “Let Go!”

Miracles happen to you only because you need them – and not because you prayed harder or that you deserve them over someone else!

In continuation of my post yesterday on Shirdi Sai Baba, some readers pinged me wanting to know more about the miracles he is known to have created and continues to create in the lives of his followers. Well, the miracles Baba created in his lifetime are well documented and I don’t wish to enlist them here one more time. However, let me share my personal perspective on miracles here.

First, let’s get a better understanding of what is a miracle. The truth is that you are a miracle. I am a miracle. This moment, and your ability to read this post, is a miracle – you are educated, you have a laptop or a PC or a mobile device, have internet connectivity and, above all, have vision (eyesight), which is why you are able to read this post! Isn’t that a miracle? There are millions who don’t have any such luck! You and I are miracles – because, think about it, else, we may well have been created as the swine that gives the flu than be created as the human being that receives the flu! But we are all so obsessed with the rat race that we run, earning-a-living, that we don’t consider any of these as miracles. We simply take everything that we have for granted and keep pining for what we don’t have!

Deepak Chopra, in his beautiful book, ‘Why is God Laughing?’, says that miracles happen when mind-body-soul are in alignment. He says there are three levels of mind-body-soul alignment and hence three types of miracles are possible. At the most basic level of mind-body-soul alignment, he says we can BUY whatever we want to. And that is a miracle. Believe me, the ability to BUY something with money is a miracle. I have, through the years of my family’s financial strife, and the several spells of pennilessness we have been through, known what it means when you can’t afford to BUY even groceries for everyday survival. At the second level of mind-body-soul alignment, says Chopra, when you WISH for something, it often happens. For instance, if on a hot summer afternoon, you wished for a cold lemonade or beer and a friend passing by decides to drop in with some cans for you. This may have happened, in our own ways, at least once in our lives. Chopra says that whenever this must have happened, our mind-body-soul may well have been in alignment. If that alignment can be consistent, at that level, more of what you WISH happens to you or comes to you! At the third, and perhaps highest, level of mind-body-soul alignment, says Chopra, you can actually CREATE whatever you think of or visualize. This means you can CREATE an object or an event or a situation. And this is what the Himalayan Masters (please read Swami Rama’s ‘Living with the Himalayan Masters’ for a better understanding) or Shirdi Sai Baba or Swami Sathya Sai Baba were capable of. In the name of rationality, the less spiritually evolved folks, dismiss this ability to CREATE miracles as “cheap magic”. Fine, so be it. To each one, their own. To me, Chopra’s reasoning is both powerful and true.

So, how does one attract miracles into one’s Life? Is it by praying to someone like Baba or to a Higher Energy? Or is it by following rituals or tantric practices? Actually, if you can just let go of this view that you need to do something about your Life, your mind-body-soul will reach a basic level of alignment for you to be able to attract miracles into your Life. Again, let me reiterate that the most profound miracle of them all is the fact that you are human and are alive. But if you want more “apparent” miracles to happen to you, please let go! You will then attract the right people, the right opportunities and the right energies. Which means you will get the job you want, the companion you have been longing for, the wealth and assets you wanted and everything that you once thought was beyond your reach. So, the password for attracting miracles into your Life is “Let Go!”.

This is where Shirdi Sai Baba, or any of the world’s greatest teachers, comes in. He teaches Faith and Patience; and in championing Sab Ka Maalik Ek (There’s only one Creator for all of us; one Higher Energy!), he invokes in us the spirit to let go!  “Let Go!” means to simply stop wanting to control your Life. It means to live with the awareness that this lifetime, from your birth till your death, is nothing but a series of pre-ordained experiences. Unless you go through all the experiences, your lifetime will not be complete. Letting go, therefore, means to let Life take over and you simply (learn to) accept whatever comes your way. This is how your mind-body-soul get aligned in a special, natural, sub-conscious manner. Then you will notice how things happen to you. You will realize that the miracles in your Life are coming to you, happening to you, not because you have prayed harder or that you deserve them over someone else – they are there simply because you need them and because you have “Let Go!” 

The man who taught me Faith and Patience

Let’s not miss learning from fellow human beings, and being human, in our quest for God – a God who belongs to a (our) religion!

Picture Courtesy: Outlook/Internet

The latest issue of Outlook magazine, through its cover story, examines the “controversy” over Shirdi Sai Baba stirred by the Shankaracharya of Dwaraka Peeth in Gujarat. The Shankaracharya, Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati, says Outlook, believes that Sai Baba was neither a God nor a Saint, besides he was a Muslim who ate meat, and hence he should not be worshipped by Hindus. In response to a question from Outlook’s Prachi Pinglay-Plumber, Saraswati adds: “We are worried that if our devotees go there, they will stray from our religion. We believe one gets salvation by remembering God’s name at the time of death. But if people take Sai’s name, then what? He was not a god or a saint.”

I don’t wish to either educate Swami Saraswati on secularism nor do I wish to ask Outlook why it has chosen to project, on the cover, personal opinions of a few and make the whole story “appear controversial”. To me Shirdi Sai Baba was one of the greatest human beings that lived on this planet. There’s no bigger religion than humanity itself – and Baba espoused the cause of humanity through his teachings and the way he led his Life.

My own encounter with Baba’s teachings was a sheer accident. One weekend night, about 10 years ago, I was bored switching channels on TV. I was drinking my favorite whisky and, for lack of anything else better to do, I glanced at my bookshelf. Our personal copy of Sai Satcharita had been there for many, many years. But that night I picked it up and started reading it. The volume we had was a poor English translation of the Marathi original. The sentences were badly constructed and reading it was struggle initially. But in the hour or so that I spent with my drink and the book, three key takeaways emerged: 1. (Keep the) Faith 2. (Practice) Patience 3. Sab Ka Maalik Ek (There’s only one Creator for all of us; one Higher Energy!). Over this past decade, Baba’s twin doctrines of Faith (Shraddha) and Patience (Saburi) have become the guiding posts of my tumultuous Life. They have not only helped me find my way each time I am lost, they have also helped me anchor within. Through Baba’s continuous championing of Sab Ka Maalik Ek, I have inferred that Life is the Greatest Teacher, the Highest Energy, that powers the Universe and keeps us all alive. This awareness has led me to stop seeking God outside of me and has helped me go within, to find my true Self. One of the most admirable qualities in Baba, which I learnt about from studying his Life, was his compassion for people – irrespective of who they were, what religion they followed and what backgrounds they came from. I salute him for the practice he followed of cooking for and feeding people – everyday that he lived. In fact, this is a best practice that all Sai institutions across the world follow even today.

To me, therefore, Baba’s religious background is irrelevant. I don’t even want to know if he was indeed a Saint or if he was an incarnation of God. What is important is that he was a great human being and taught us all to be humane.

Yes, he did perform miracles. I was born almost half a century after he left this planet. And I did not turn to learning from Baba’s teachings, until a decade ago. Even so, I have felt his presence in my Life – through the compassion and kindness of fellow human beings. Every time my family and I have needed something – someone has always walked into our Life and fulfilled those needs. I have recounted some of these experiences in my Book “Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money” (Westland, August 2014). Now if you want to call them Baba’s miracles, so they are. But if you were to look at them as “the milk of human kindness”, Baba wouldn’t have a problem with you at all – for that’s what he championed. That we humans be there for each other, irrespective of our social and religious backgrounds!

A large mass of humanity is searching for answers to live Life better. Some of that search, as in my case, takes us to people, like Baba, who inspire us to be better human beings. Don’t you think we miss the whole point when we don’t salute a great human being just because we are obsessed with finding a God who belongs to a (our) religion!?  

Living prayerfully

Make your Life your prayer. And you will be soaked in peace.

The popular notion that we have, thanks to our upbringing and conditioning, is that prayer is an action that requires a time, a place and certain necessary and sufficient conditions. Each religion preaches worship through prayer differently. Therefore, while all of us have become adept at prayer, and praying, we have become completely incapable of living our lives meaningfully! Even when in prayer, the mind is distracted, often anxious, fearful and disturbed! How can merely, mechanically, by rote, chanting a mantra or reciting a hymn, compensate for intelligent living?

This is my humble, personal view. Over the years, I have learned that your entire Life, the way you live, think and work, can be prayer if you understand that this lifetime is a gift and that you must forever be grateful to Life for this experience! Choosing forgiveness over angst, love over hatred, postponing worrying than postponing happiness, serving others over seeking deservance for yourself, practising gratitude over harboring expectations and making each moment count are all ways in which you can live your Life prayerfully. When you do this, repeatedly, over days and months and years, you become the peace that you seek. This doesn’t mean that Life will not serve you any more problems. Problems – perhaps even complex ones – will always be there. But you will be able to deal with each of them effectively and efficiently, because you are now anchored in peace.

It is only because you relegate peace and prayer to a specific time, and do it with a ritualistic obsession and not with soulful fervor, that you are unable to escape fear, worry, anxiety, guilt, grief and suffering. But if you make your Life your prayer, always being grateful for all that you have, you will always be at peace – with yourself and your world! 

Don’t shed a tear for those who insist on misunderstanding you!

Sometimes in Life people may choose to consistently, continuously, systematically misunderstand, misinterpret and not relate to you. When these relationships are with people that you are close to or with immediate family, the situation gets confounded and it becomes very difficult to accept the reality.

Our biggest grief is not that we are being misunderstood but that close people, whom we imagined as our own, are the ones misunderstanding us. Relax. You are not alone. It happens to all of us at some time or the other in our lives. It has happened and continues to happen to me too! I can relate to your sense of anguish if you have been in a similar situation. You then try to redeem your image not with an external audience, which still is a social or professional requirement and so is understandable if it takes time or some machinations to be successful with, but within your closed circle, where ideally you must be accepted for who you are and not for what you are perceived as!

Don’t despair. Hear this story that a spiritual thinker once told us.

There once was a blind man. And he lived in difficult circumstances. His family did not quite appreciate his blindness. They felt he was a blot on the family’s otherwise ‘happy and beautiful’ existence. One day, the God of Luck, arrived in front of the blind man. And said to him, that he could ask any number of wishes that he wanted – and they would be immediately granted. The blind man said he was humbled that the God of Luck had visited him. He expressed his gratitude and said he had no wishes of his own. The God of Luck insisted though that he ask something. The blind man said, that while he didn’t want anything for himself, he did want the God of Luck to grant whatever each of his family members wanted! The God of Luck was perplexed. And wanted to know why this man did not want to avail of his lottery. The man replied, “Sir, look at me. I have no wants. All my needs are met. I have made peace with my blindness long, long ago. I am happy despite being blind. It is my family members who grieve over my blindness. My sister often says she is embarrassed that she has a blind brother. My mother thinks that I am useless because I am blind. And so, each of them has a different grief. And all of them grieve over my blindness. So, I ask that you too teach them to be happy despite their circumstances. I have no image to protect or to redeem. And I love the world I live in and can’t see. I am not sure I want to see the world I live in and then discover that I don’t love it at all!”

Big lesson there for all of us who are grieving, wishing, pining that people close to us understand us than misunderstand us. Our grief drives us to trying several methods, often with no avail, for rebuilding our credibility among those that have chosen to doubt our integrity and suspect our intentions. The truth is they are not true to us. And not the other way round. Because true friends, true family, will believe despite evidence to the contrary. It is the flippant lot that will insist on misunderstanding no matter what evidence you place, in your favor, before them! There’s no point shedding a tear for such people!

Idiot or Buddha?

We fuss so much about growing old. Instead can we think about growing up?

If there’s one thing that humankind uniformly obsesses over, it is age. Everyone wants to look younger. But few people want to be wiser. Growing old is mandatory though. If we lay in bed for a whole year, we would be older by a year more. But since growing up is optional, many people gloss over that choice! Hear what Osho, the Master, has to say about this. It is brilliant! “Our whole education is absolutely unaware of the fact that growing up is a different process than growing old. Even idiots grow old; only Buddhas grow up.” Growing up is not about knowledge and qualifications. It is about going within, connecting with your source, your core, your Self. When you delve deeper you will find value in the silence that will greet you there. And the peace that you discover inside you, in that silence, that peace makes you a Buddha.

So, idiot or Buddha? Make your choice today!

To meditate is to learn to live meaningfully all the time

Learning to live in the moment is when you can bring your mind to attend to that moment and not to your worries or your fears.

Whenever I share this perspective with people they immediately equate it to their experiences with meditation which they must have tried at some point or the other. And they quickly conclude that because they do not do meditation anymore, they continue to struggle with their lives. Or there are others who say they struggle despite meditating for an hour daily! 

Conceptually, there is a problem here. You don’t schedule a mediation. It is not a session. You just meditate. Meditation is just mindfulness. Awareness. Alertness. Just being. When you have reached the point of staying in the now, doing whatever you are doing, consciously, then you have begun meditation. It is the ability to be present. Because the present moment is all that you have. Meditation need not be done at a particular time of the day or at a particular venue. It is the continuous, conscious feeling of being in the present. If you are peeling onions, do it with full awareness. Then you are meditating. If you are drawing up an excel sheet and crunching numbers for tomorrow’s meeting, you are meditating. Now, that’s the quality you have to bring into every living moment – which is, immersing yourself in whatever activity you are doing without letting your mind wander. This also applies to tasks you have to do, even though you don’t like doing them much. For example, I don’t like book-keeping and accounts. But I have to do it. There’s no one I have who can help me with that. I postpone it all month. Then, one day, I just do it. Fully. Without hating it. I love it the day I do it. And then I feel liberated. That’s the power of living in meditation.

I learnt this technique through the practice of ‘mouna’ or silence periods. I began by first practicing it at a particular time each day. But over years of practice, now I can slip into ‘mouna’, anywhere, anytime __ even at a busy traffic intersection or in a crowded airport or in a boring meeting. I trigger my awareness by slipping into my ‘mouna’ spells. I choose to be silent at these times and it floods me with a sublime energy instantaneously that helps me see each situation or circumstance in which I am placed with amazing clarity. Often when my mind works up to worrying, my auto-pilot, the ‘mouna’ switch embedded in my mind, gets self-activated and awareness steps in to remind me to let go of my ruinous emotions and focus on the miracle of the moment. To meditate is to learn to live meaningfully all the time.

Here’s a Zen story illustrating the same point. A Japanese warrior was captured by his enemies and thrown into prison. That night he was unable to sleep because he feared that the next day he would be interrogated, tortured, and executed. Then the words of his Zen Master came to him, "Tomorrow is not real. It is an illusion. The only reality is now." Heeding these words, the warrior became peaceful and fell asleep. Now, many of us will have a problem with this story and its lesson. Some will say, that it is defeatist. Others will say that it is impractical. How can you sleep soundly with an impending catastrophe tomorrow? That really is the problem. When you think of a past that is over, and of a future that is yet to arrive, then, you are really not present in the moment. All your Life’s challenges, fears and insecurities come to torment you only because you are absent from the now. Just learn to do one thing at a time. As an old Japanese saying goes, if you try to catch two rabbits at the same time, you will get none. If you want to worry, worry incessantly. Then don’t aspire for peace. If you want to fear the future, then fear totally. Don’t hope for that fear not to come true. But if you want to be happy, drop the worry, stop fearing and just be. That really is what meditation is all about.

We are all hostages of our own perceived limitations

We are all ordained with greater strength than we are conditioned to believe we have.

Yesterday I watched a beautiful Malayalam film called “How Old Are You” (2014, Rosshan Andrrews). The main protagonist in the film, Nirupama Rajeev (played brilliantly by Manju Warrier), a clerk in the government, discovers her true potential when her college-mate reminds her of what a firebrand student campaigner she (Nirupama) once was. Until then Nirupama is at the mercy of her male chauvinist husband’s whims, and the target of petty politics at her workplace. But once she’s finds her lost verve, Nirupama sheds all her inhibitions and goes on to be a change agent not just in her neighborhood, but in the entire state of Kerala. The movie is not just inspiring, it is awakening.

Nirupama’s story is not her’s alone. It could be the story of any of us. All of us, at various times in Life, under pressure from our challenges and situations, stop believing in ourselves. We feel lost. Our self-esteem hits rock-bottom. And we think we can never be who we want to be again. But that’s not true. We are all capable. Our circumstances can constrain us physically but nothing – except our attitude to Life – can cripple our spirit. Think about a  wild adult elephant. This elephant can easily uproot trees that have been standing for years and that weigh tons. That's how much strength an elephant is ordained with. Yet a temple elephant, through its conditioning from the time it is a calf, thinks it is incapable of breaking free from the iron shackles that a mahout has imposed on it. So it is with us humans. We are all hostages of our own perceived limitations. We are who we think we are. If we think our circumstances are so challenging that they are insurmountable, we will forever suffer from them. But if we decide to face our challenges and rise above them, whatever be the context, a way will emerge. A solution will be born.

The way to rise above what challenges you is to go within and anchor yourself. All change starts with you. And all change begins within. It is by going within, and realizing your true Self, that you can find the way to forever change your current reality and overcome whatever you are faced with!