Dissolve in Loveful Trance through Sufi Meditation

 

You have to accept the calling of a path that is receptive to life, love and peaceful living. Sufism is calling attention to the inherent unity under different caste, class, creed and religions. It unearths love, which in turn melts pride, prejudices and ignorance, the breeding grounds of hate and jealousy.

My father named or nicknamed me as Sufi. As a Hindu, I rate it as a great syncretic sentiment. And why not, probably I am the only Hindu in Haryana who is called Sufi.

Coming to Sufism, it’s the best mystical offering by Islam to the overall humanity. The strands of unity, oneness, universal brotherhood and love for all waft around from the esoteric incense of Sufism. So, I am happy to be called Sufi.

Music plays a big part in Sufi meditations. Meditation is nothing but being vigilant and aware of your loving self in a totally relaxed body. No wonder it is the best exercise for the soul. Play some soulful Sufi music on a higher volume so that it swathes you in its gripping, haunting pools of melodious surrender to the ultimate. I am going to explain the steps of a simple Sufi meditation technique. This meditation is best done in a spacious room or hall because it involves swirling around.

Listen to the initial notes and you will feel some spiritual haunts spreading from the central Asian lands. It is about connecting to mother earth, and from her to the solar system, galaxy and the ultimate. So perform it on naked feet, or be in socks at the most if the climate in your part is too harsh.

Stand still as you listen to the build up of the Sufi melody. Just relax and look within, taking the enchanting trilling of the music seep into you. Now spread your right arm by your side, raise the arm to the level of your shoulder, elbow turned at an angle and the hand raised up, palm facing upwards . Your elbow shoulder and chest being in a line. Spread the left arm to the other side, keep it comfortably straight, without putting strain to straighten it. The palm spread out and pointing to the ground. The hand dangling at an angle from the horizontal.

And start swirling, go round and round on your feet in anticlockwise direction. Just slowly build up the momentum. There is a difference between exercise and meditation. In the latter, your spirit is involved. The body is just the starting point. Keeping the hands as mentioned above, as you start swinging, swirling, allow the divine forces to take control of your body. If you really do it, believe me you won’t fall, because there are balancing forces all around you.

When we stand, we think we are in control of our body and only we are managing its position. Little do we realise that our apparent control is just an illusion. The all-balancing forces of eternity are what which maintain our standing. And look at the eternity’s grace, it allows us to think that we are solely responsible for maintaining our posture.

Your body will be swinging in circles, like a swinging top, but that is just the outer periphery of your being. After a time, you will realize that just the matter or food body is going in circles. The real you, the axis of your being, the consciousness, remains immovable. Just like a swinging top swirls around a central nail, you will go within to the immovable point of your being. The externalities will be swung out by the centrifugal forces of divine realization. The centripetal forces will suck you into the core of your being. And the apparent objectives around you—and so will the illusions—will just merge into an all-pervading continuum, one layer of energy, which even quantum physics has verified.

The differences will melt. Going in circles around the point of your consciousness, you will realise it is all just one energy, spreading, transforming, altering, from here to there. If you maintain that equipoise of spirit, soul and matter, you can build up the momentum to continue forever! Well, you need not do that of course. Haa Haa.

So continue as long as you enjoy the deep sips of solace. After that lie down on your stomach. Surrender to mother earth and grandmother eternity. Just lie like a child. You will have glimpses of that cosmic security and protection when your mother carried you in her womb. Remain like this till the momentum of mystical oblivion embraces you.

Open your eyes later. Take a turn to lie on your back. But move very gently, without giving any jerk to the body. Be so soft as if you want to preserve the softest things in you. Rub your hands. Place them gently on your face, smile, be thankful to the eternal law for the moments of peace. 

Learn the Art of Emptying

 

Well before you take steps to fulfill your dreams, learn the art of emptying, of letting go, of letting out unwanted mossy dregs in the container of your destiny. Emptying isn’t defeatist in nature. It’s not surrender. It’s a calculated step towards victory, towards fulfillment, towards love. It’s the preparation for gain, the beginning of filling up. Instead of running after the mirage of fulfillment, first focus on emptying. Fulfillment is just a step away.

Fullness starts at the moment of complete emptying. Wash, scrub, rinse and drain out the muck from the pot of your destiny. Wash away hate, anger, jealousy, ignorance, unrealistic desires, phobias, complexities and overblown ambition. Drain these out. Let it be a perfectly clean and swanky pot of emptiness. The universe is expanding. It wants clean chambers to pour its energy into. It will sneak into the clean house in the form of your dreams and aspirations. And love of course in a form spread out in an unimaginable way.

The swabs clinging to the bottom are the repellents to fulfillment. Clean these. Work on emptying. Work on emptiness and you are in fact moving towards fullness. In a perfectly clean container, there is no limitation on fulfillment, no hurdles to materialization of dreams, no restrictions on the infinite cosmic harmony pouring its vastness into it.

A scribbled canvas has limitations of painting, but a clean one has infinite possibilities of shapes and pictures. Scrub the slate clean before you start the journey. Even if it means a lifetime of emptying, it still will not be a loss. Even a second of fulfillment will be worth it. It will still be better than pouring the nectar of your efforts into an unclean pot, and just adding to the stinking broth that never gives happiness and satisfaction.

A clean empty house is a magnet. It pulls positive forces by itself. It's natural like gravitational force. It invites fullness. Complete emptiness invites complete fullness. Put your house in order. Set up your invitation to fullness on the door. Forget about the rest. Very soon, you will hear the knock of fortune and love on your door. Like water flows to pits and hollows in earth, good luck naturally flows to clean, emptied and tidied containers. Come on, let your share flow in! Love will be its major proportion, don’t worry!

Love your Duties to Retain your Footing

 

Our duties, responsibilities and commitment are the roots that keep the tree of freedom and rights standing. The tree of rights falls without the roots of duties. Read the constitutions anywhere in the world and you will realize what I mean.

Loving one's job and many other duties is a huge step in self improvement. You hardly realize when you step over from the small stage of individual duties to general to universal responsibility. I call this sprout of love. Love sprouts.

The weeds of hate and anger are growing too rapidly. Don't we need more and more love sprouts? Once you start loving your commitments, gone is the discontent, brighter turns the light inside, and happier you are. Love is the destination where one can enter from so many alleys open on all sides.

Phillips Brooks says, “Happiness is the natural flower of duty.” Even George Washington found happiness and moral duty inseparably connected.

Your sense of responsibility fuels your flight of independence. The ability to respond (responsibility) is the price you have to pay to achieve your own type of grand greatness. The more your sense of responsibility, the lesser you are prone to blame others. With less blame in your heart, and lesser grudges, there will be more reasons to smile and accept others as they are.

All the talk of universal brotherhood, love and sense of responsibility are incomplete without your own contribution, your love for your responsibilities. And mind you, privileges, responsibility and opportunity are part of the same system. They sustain each other. You just cannot have one of them and stay happy. Not sustainable man. 

Seen the fate of a free kite? It falls man. A stringed kite is better than a free flier. Any day.

We can fly and rise higher only if we are tied to certain responsibilities and commitments; our freedom-lorn spirit tamed to an extent by tolerable social conventions, individual values, family setup, the sweet-sour tides in our offices, etc. But most of the time we find it as a drag on our real enjoyment of life. We just feel how great life would be without all such irritating stuff of the mundane life. But guys tell me, can a stringless kite fly? The kite flies because there is a string pulling it down to help it rise higher in the sky. It also tries to negate the limitations set up by the string. It shakes its head in negation. OK! No issues. It has every right to create a scene. But tell me, what happens when its dream to be string-free become true? It just takes a few ecstatic circles in air and falls onto the ground. Those free swirls of its dreams prove to be its death dives.

We are the stringed kites fella. We fly and rise high only because our destructive passions and straying traits are tamed and tied to a string. So love your commitments, your responsibilities, and your struggles for small-small things in life. The moment you love and like the stage on which you slog out to carve out the things that define your life, everything turns loveable. Try it. A very simple cause and effect phenomenon.

Love and liking go a long way together on the synonym path. Increase you quota of likings for the things that define your personal and professional lives. You will be free to harvest your love crop under the beneficent sun of your heartfelt likings. All the best!

Give an Ear to the Melody Inside

 

There is a voice inside, soft and musical but with biggest nuggets of sanity.

A.R. Rahman: “Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.”

So, guys take a step away from the busy pavement. And listen to the voice of your best guide.

Even a thief knows someone is watching. It’s his inner self, the conscience, the real observer. It catches him long before law and society seize and condemn him. He knows, he is being watched by the real objective self. This real self is detached enough to mutely observe everything done by the carrier body in the folds of ignorance and darkness. Just that the thief shouts over the inner voice and makes off with the illegality. It's hard to have a thief who was in fine tuning with his inner voice and still carried out the misdeed.

No man killed, or injured, or committed crimes born of hate while listening to the soft inner voice. These are exceptions when the unfortunate person totally forgot the inner voice, and the door to his compassionate self bolted temporarily. Even the feeble-most rays from the real compassionate self are strong enough to remove the last traces of shadows under which one could have done some wrong. The alchemy of love is too strong to allow any poisonous traces remain in the cauldron.

So don't allow that little reminder to be drowned in the drama of life where we try to imitate others' lives, where we get trapped in stereotypes, enabling prejudices to subdue the real us. If you want to be the best version of yourself, you have to give an ear to the little best friend. It is your pathway to realize the most genuine self, the loving you, the compassionate and considerate you. It needs no repeating that it brings the best you have to offer on the basis of your inborn talents and skills.  

As you open up the channel to allow the gentle notes to come above, the all-knowing instincts will shake off the dust, leading you to the right path. And no correct path ever bypassed love, compassion, peace, harmony and happiness. These are simply the milestones falling along the right path.

As you dash on the rough and tumble of the outer show of life, keep your ears open for the best advisor, the inner voice. It will lead you over the hurdles that have been so far preventing you from fulfilling your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi says everyone who wills can hear the inner voice that is within everyone.

You just have to learn to listen to it. It's your conscience, the seed of real you. It has all the motherly talks about what is best for you. The moment you start connecting to it, true liberation starts. Happiness, health, love and generosity are some of the simple fruits of this tree. You just have to listen. That's it. Only this much awareness will do. Awareness of this voice itself is the solution. It's like watering the great tree and it flourishes. So guys, keep your ears open. And believe me, it never misguides.

Far away from opinions and criticisms, it will help you discover the real you. Just have a look around, all the so called less-brained species have an innate ability to go intuitively in the game of survival. I think they are in league with the natural intelligence spraying around on the atoms of cosmic energy going round and round in cyclical transformations. No harm in feeling proud of our brainy bulk. But that is to win the war in the matter world. It unfortunately falls short of the real goal to be happy, which is the domain of our spirit.

To nourish your soul, you can hardly depend on the material world that is just one of the means to your real goal, not the end. So guys, amplify the soft notes of the inner voice. They carry the potential to turn you into the luxuriant canopy of a beautiful persona. Love and compassion are the fruits on the tree.

O traveler,

Forget about the hoot and holler

emanating from the world outside,

And give an ear to the soft and murmurous

cooings emanating from the soul,

It has a soft and sympathetic

message for you only, —

Your most personal message,

meant only for you,

Listen to these delicate chimes,

It’ll help you in finding peace in chaos,

In getting a foothold in the stampede,

In feeling rest, repose and respite

in the face of constant buffeting by the world around,

It’ll help you in breaking

the hardest of superficial layers,

which suffocate and limit your identity,

And put you face to face with

your  true self, your real worth,

Listen to it, close your eyes,

And pay attention with all your heart,

Just for a change,

don’t look far, look closest at yourself,

It’ll be as uneventful as looking

at a dust particle around your feet,

But it changes the universe for you,

You will have the biggest message

in the softest of whispering phrases!

And it’ll help you in finding yourself,

You will surprise yourself in being love incarnation.

Reaching the Shrine of Love through the Wooded Path of Happiness

 

Do you find the mythologically grand idea of love and compassion too much for you? No worries. Relax. I would ask you to hold the nose from a more convenient angle. You may find it more lucrative for the self in its direct form. Guys, it’s about happiness. Target happiness. The world is yet to see a happy person who isn’t loving in nature. 

And mind you, happiness can be taken as simple as breathing.

It’s basically we who repel happiness away from us. We don’t allow it to come to us, embrace us, take hold of us. We set it as a goal too far down the line in future. Some house, some power, some position, some accumulation of pleasure, some relationships, etc., etc. We set up goals as the preconditions for our happiness. And the goals keep on piling up, over the years, and set up a wall between us and happiness, pushing it more and more distant from us.

I will set up a home and then be happy. Happiness delayed. Then I work over the years. There is no end. I set a goal to raise a family and then be happy. Again it sets up a wall between happiness and us. Relentlessly we just push on while happiness stays a distant goal never to be achieved. The biggest folly is that we make it conditional on endless goals, which are never met, because it’s the destiny of a goal to merge into another bigger one. They never die, only we perish. Huge immortals as they are. In pushing for them, we die, separated from happiness that could have been the greatest gift of life, had we not pushed it away from us.

We keep on forgetting to celebrate the milestone that we had promised to ourselves to enjoy on reaching it. It happens because the moment we reach there, the mirage shifts further down the line. It’s thus our destiny to be in the journey. Here lies the key. The journey itself is its own reward.

The remedy lies in taking away happiness from the far end of our endless goals and keep it safe in our house, like we store some grains for the harsh winters, near us, in the safest part of our house. It has to be cut away from the trail of endless goals and ambitions and kept with the self, in the present. It has to be set free from any conditions of meeting some goal. It’s a state as good as being healthy. Just being happy and living for a day. We have to learn to separate being from becoming.

You should be pushing towards yours goals as a happy person, rather than somebody who wants to be happy in future after completing the goals. The goals never come to a halt, only we do, at the moment of our death. So we die unhappily, separated from the natural state of happiness that could have pumped our life with unthinkable contentment and satisfaction, only if we had set it free from the chains of goal-setting and placed it unchained from those unreachable spots in the future.

Let happiness be a precondition for our doings, not a poor outcome of our efforts. Do everything as a happy person; instead of doing the deeds to become a happy person. Happiness is a state of being so, not the specific result of some hot pursuit. There is only one way it can be availed. Either we embrace it in the condition we are in, or it just eludes us. Keep it with you while you fly. It will boost your determination to go far and high.

So the only way to remain happy is just to be happy, instead of slogging it out to become happy later. Fella, kindly decide to keep happiness as a routine, let it take possession of your present, like a monkey eating fruits, the birds flying and the trees standing with stoic muse. All in the present. Now. Just being so. Simply being happy. This is the natural state of each and everything in nature. Had it been otherwise the system would have collapsed under the heat of agitation.

It pays the way to reach a stage when you find it actually possible to become happy without any reasons. Choiceless happiness and loving kindness are same by the way.