Spiritual Blogs

By Baba Shuddhaanandaa Brahmachari

http://AshtarCommandCrew.net In Partnership With OmTimes
Life is not complicated. It never was, and never shall be! Life is simple, spontaneous, pristine and flowing, but that is not our experience. It appears to be quite a riddle and a juggle! Those who have practiced meditation for a long time, and have reached a state not so much of “practice,” but of “being,” tell us that all complications are our creation. We all know our happiest moments always come from the simplest things of life.

In our ego we create a myriad of complications day in and day out. We even make our relationship with God complicated. We talk on about how God is not available to us, how God does not give us what we ask. We believe that God favors someone else because they have a new job or a new car.

How can we say that God does not talk to us, but is partial and talks to someone else? First we need to take in the fact that the God of this Universe is not out there, somewhere, but is in every cell of our body. It is nothing but a notion of our minds that God is somewhere else — in the heavens, deep in the clouds, far, far away from us — and that we need to call God to come to us, to bless us and rid us of our troubles. God is nowhere else. God is now and here. If you could squeeze all the religions of the world into one drop of wisdom, it would be: God is now and here . . . nowhere else.

The function of all religion and all spirituality is to bridge the illusory gap between the seeker and the Divine within, between the individual and the whole from which we are all inseparable.

No one creates this distance but us. The distance, the separation between us and God, the separation between us and all of Creation, is an illusion of the mind. That illusion may be stubborn. That illusion may be convincing, but it is also the source of all human misery. The habit of dispelling the illusion each and every time it arises is a central, critically important practice of the sincere seeker.

We are the ones who make our relationship with God complicated. We ourselves create the distance of our separation. That core illusion veils our consciousness like a darkened shroud. We are also the only ones who can begin to dispel its shadow.

The human mind is conditioned by eons of inherited patterns of perception and response, by our personal, existential ethos — those sets of attitudes and beliefs that support survival in a given environment. All of these impressions are buried deep in the multiple layers of our subconscious mind. It takes time, perseverance, faith, inordinate compassion, and commitment, to uproot and weed them all out.

Self-awareness is the ancient, meditative path to liberation. Our minds are only marginally aware of ourselves. Through self-awareness, we collect ourselves, and return to here and now. Meditation brings us here, right now, to our experience at this instant, so that we are nowhere else.

We cannot climb a mountain to reach God. We cannot walk a hundred or even a thousand miles to reach God. We cannot go to a church, mosque, or temple to reach God. We cannot go to the forest to find God. God can only be found in the truth of nearness. God is within us all.

This Message is available to all of us because the Truth is One. The Source is One. It is non-dual. The human excellence is that we can have Spiritual Experiences. We as humans are infinitely intelligent beyond the imaginable.

We need to make space in our mind so that the Divine can speak to us in Silence. We must de-clutter our mind and detoxify our bodies so that God can communicate with us. God talks to each one of us, just like the sun shines on all of us, whether we are an enlightened master, have a new house or car or not! God is always available to us, like a flowing river. It is up to all of us to go to the River and quench our thirst.

Ignorance is not only lack of knowledge, but it is to know the simple truths, yet not live them. Ignorance is to make life complicated when it is so simple. Spirituality and our making ourselves available to the God within is to bridge this gap and to help us live a life of less regret, moving to NO regrets. Perseverance and trust in one’s own Self within take us to a state where despair and depression cannot reach and we are released from the fetters of karma to taste what true Freedom is! Freedom from complications, freedom to live life inside out. Remember, life is simple, spontaneous, pristine and flowing…
To learn more about Sri Sri Shuddhaanandaa Brahmachari and A Course in Mindfulness visit http://www.courseinmindfulness.com/

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