1. Our Nature is Aloneness🔗

We constantly live in the fear of facing ourselves. We are always busy, always asking 'what next' in the pretext of being busy.

In fact we are afraid and unhappy with ourselves. We think we are inferior to the next person, and superior to others. We never think or accept ourselves as we are. If we can accept ourselves as we are, we are in enlightenment.

We need to enter into a state of aloneness to reach bliss. This state does not mean that we reject our family or friends. We have to embrace aloneness and its beauty, with all of them around.

Aloneness is not loneliness. Aloneness is our inborn nature. Loneliness arises out of social conditioning. You feel lonely when no one is around you. You can be alone even when surrounded by people.

How do we reach this aloneness? If we try to search for aloneness we get into one more bondage. We should just let it be. Let everything and everyone be as they are or how they are.

The simplest way to enter aloneness is to bring in awareness. When we bring in awareness, we will be able to feel our real nature, our Self. It is very easy to slip into this mode, but the problem is we are afraid of it. So we resist it. So what happens is, even if we are alone physically, we will try to relate mentally with others and try to harbour some emotion or the other. Drop that habit.

When you are alone, enjoy your own self. Tell yourself that it is the best possible moment for you to be with yourself. When you are with yourself, you can feel God best. Allow the aloneness to happen to you without resistance. You will then feel alone even when people surround you and when this happens, you will enjoy life as a grand drama while being yourself centered in the universal consciousness.

To start with, we need to experience physical aloneness. Once the joy of aloneness happens, once we experience the joy, it stays with us even when we are not physically alone. To have aloneness, we need to do nothing. Aloneness is our reality. Only for material comforts, we need to work and struggle.

A disciple once asked a Zen master, 'How long does it take to be enlightened?'

The master said, 'Just the time it takes to blink your eye. You are already enlightened. You only need to declare it.'

The disciple asked again, 'What happened when your enlightenment came? '

The master said, 'Nothing. I decided that from that day, I shall live my enlightened state.'

People ask me, 'What will happen to my children, my business when I get enlightened?' I say: nothing; you will be better than what you are, in whatever you do. You will not go to an ashram or run away from your life commitments. Do not be afraid of your own transformation. There is no need to be afraid. Life will be so much more beautiful after the transformation.

2. Truth Transforms

I was twelve years old when I had my first spiritual experience.

It was Buddha poornima day (the day Buddha got enlightened). I sat on a rock below the Arunachala hill, deep in meditation. It was dusk. I was searching for the source of my thoughts within me.

Suddenly, I was jolted into a grand experience. I could see 360 degrees around me even with my eyes closed! Normally, we have only 120 degrees vision. But now, I could see all around me and above me and below me as well. I lost my identity; there was no 'me'. Everything was 'me'. I was the stones, the hill, the trees, and the sky. Everything in me vibrated with the feeling 'I am the universe'. I felt the whole Existence with the same sensitivity that I felt for my body. I was in complete bliss. Within 3 or 4 hours after the experience, I started moving and walking. The inner ecstasy continued for 3 days.

When I came out of it, my first thought was that a ghost had possessed me. It never occurred to me to connect it to a spiritual experience. I ran to an elderly sannyasin (female ascetic), who had a small ashram near the rock. She took care of me for a few days. She convinced me that I was not possessed by any ghost but possessed only by God; that it was a spiritual experience. I however never went near the rock for the next 3 or 4 months.

Soon, I was longing for the experience again. When I came out of the fear I started meditating earnestly. The search had begun. The longing to know the 'truth' took over me completely. I started to chase it.

I was about 13 years old when I ran away from home to North Bharat in search of Truth. I had to come back after a while though because I was too young to cope with the hardships of such a life. But the urge to know the truth was so strong in me that I soon left home again. And this time for sure.

We cannot handle too much of truth. We can handle small doses well. Deeper truths start transforming us. The ground on which we stand moves away. None of us really want to know the truth. Honesty and truths frighten us.

We cannot accept the truth and so we pretend, fantasize, and lie. We hide from the true self within ourselves. We know that we are not what we show ourselves to be. We even lie courteously.

Understand: only truth leads to enlightenment. Truth transforms us completely. When we invite truth into our life, we invite bliss.

3. Respect Food, Waste it!

Overeating is a modern disease.

People think that it is alright to eat more vegetarian food. Let us be clear here. Overeating is bad. Be it vegetarian or meat.

Overeating creates a lot of problems for us. We have never learnt to eat only what we need. We should be firm and eat only what we require and how much we need. We overeat because of our greed.

Vegetarian food is the best for people interested in spiritual practices. It digests easily and promotes good energy in our body. It helps in gentle energy flow connecting all the chakras or energy centers in our body. The compassion of Buddha led to the wide acceptance of vegetarian food.

A further refinement of vegetarian food is dining on what is called as satvic food. People on satvic vegetarian diet avoid jalapeno peppers, onion, and garlic. These vegetables contain steroids. They are all right as medicines and ingested in small quantities once in a while. Regular intake of these vegetables interferes with the energy flow in the cakra.

Overeating has the same effect as eating jalapeno peppers, onion, and garlic. When we overeat, we stuff food and make our body a trash bin. As if that pain was not enough, we end up wasting a lot of our body's resources in processing it inside us.

My devotees consider it a privilege to feed me. They pile my plate with many varieties of food. They expect me to eat it all up! They advise me not to waste it. They expect me to clean up the plate.

Be clear: wasting food outside is better. It is better to leave the food outside our body than getting the excess food inside our body. We will waste ourselves from within if we stuff ourselves with food.

When we decline the food in the plate, it remains outside. Others can share it. But, if we stuff ourselves with food, we are serving ourselves a double dose of harm. The excess food is wasted in the body. Our body has no use of it even as it sits in our body. We are exhausting our body's resources in processing it. If we overeat, food becomes a poison.

When something is consumed in excess, it becomes poison. The food, instead of nourishing, can become poisonous.

It is better to decline excess food than to consume it. Be aware of what and how much you eat! If you respect food, your body will respond by being respectful to you!