Shifting Our Doors Of Perception

One lady called up the fire department and frantically said. 'Sir. I have spent a fortune just a few months ago redoing my garden and ... '

The fire department person asked, 'Where is the fire ma'am?'

The lady continued. 'My husband is already screaming at me for not maintaining the garden well... '

The person from the fire department interrupted. 'Madam, can you tell us where the fire is.' The lady continued, 'Tomorrow. I have called the garden service over for maintenance... ' The man got very impatient and asked, 'Ma'am, this is not the garden service number; this is the

fire department. Can you tell me where the fire is. ' The lady said. 'The fire is in the house next door and I don't want your men messing around my garden when they come over."

Just like this lady, who is more worried about her garden when there was a fire raging in her neighbor's house, we are all selfish and insensitive most of the time. She is able to see only her garden, not the fire in the neighbor's house!

All our thoughts are centered only on us. We only see what we wish to see and do. In Sanskrit, we have two terms to explain why we see what we see. Drishti is when we see things as we want them to be. Shrishti Drishti is what we perceive if we can see them as they are. Most often, we have already made up our minds about what we wish to see things only the way our mind wants us to see them.

This is a real incident that has been recorded in history:

When Columbus was approaching the shores of America, his ship could be seen on the horizon a few days before it actually came to the shore. Surprisingly, the native Hindus could not 'see' the ship even though it was on the horizon since a few days. They had never seen something close to what a ship looked like ever before. So, the mind could not comprehend what it could be to the extent that they never even noticed its presence.

The perception of the new object failed to produce any hits in the database of the mind and this led to non-recognition and non-acceptance of the new object.

When we see things as we want them to be, we produce supporting facts for our judgment. We judge first and then we collect arguments to support our judgment. We first decide whether we like a person or not. Then, we collect facts in support of that decision. Only the facts that support the already made judgment are retained. Any facts against the judgment, however many in number, are rejected for one reason or another. We twist our observation to suit our perception. This leads to ignorance and suffering.

99% of the time, your judgment is ready. For example, your son comes home late by a few hours. You make a judgment about him. You are not going to accept any of his explanations. It can't shake your judgment. On the contrary, you will only try to pick the arguments to support your decision. After that incident, whatever he does, you will always be biased by your previous judgment.

Similarly, after living with your wife for a few months, you will create a concept about her. Then, whatever she does, you pick up only those arguments that support your judgment.

The way in which our perception works is very deceiving to us. When a desire is fulfilled, we no longer have joy in its possession. If you look at your own life, you will understand what I am trying to say:

You see your neighbor's brand new Mercedes and you yearn to possess the same car. You work hard, driven by the strong desire to possess the car and in the hope that all your efforts will enable you to buy the car soon.

One day, you are in a position where you can afford to buy the car and you go to the showroom. You are very happy to lay your hands on your Mercedes.

You drive out of the showroom, feeling on top of the world.

Then, you are waiting at the red light and happen to look out of the side-window to see someone sitting in a bright red Ferrari.

All the joy that you had in possessing your new Mercedes just vanishes in a jiffy as the thought creeps into vour head. 'How beautiful this Ferrari is. Only now I have got a Mercedes and now look at this Ferrari!'

All the hours of toil that you invested in the hope of enjoying a new car just pale into the background and all that stands out is the new desire to possess a Ferrari. The ruming starts again in the hope of the future. Hardly a few moments are spent in enjoying the present!

Acquisition makes us solid: we become dull. we take the possession for granted and we stop enjoying what we have. We take all that we have been given including our very life for granted. How many times have we appreciated and thanked Existence for giving us this wonderful life that enables us to enjoy everything? From the morning rising sun to the people who have made our lives so rich, we simply take all these things for granted.

The same feeling applies to what we learn also, all the acquired knowledge or skills. Once mastered, our skills are taken for granted.

Rich people have money but rarely do they have happiness; they are constantly afraid of losing their wealth. Poor people don't have this kind of problem. They are happy to be alive. Their perspective of life is very basic and much larger than money. Of course, poverty brings its own worries, but there will be a certain carefree-ness in poor people, because there is no fear of losing anything! There is nothing to lose! It is a liberating feeling if you really see.

The more you have the more suffering because greater is the fear and insecurity of losing it. So in a way poor people are more peaceful although their poverty pains them at times. I am not saving it is good to be poor, no! I am only talking about perceptions here. Try to understand.

The concept of 'I' and 'mine' bring only misery and suffering. The more one seeks 'mine', the more the burden, the more the suffering. The greed for acquiring something in the future never brings happiness. Enjoyment of what one has, however little it is, at the present moment, brings true happiness.

A beautiful small story:

Once Narada, a devotee of Lord Vishnu, the Hindu God who protects and sustains the Universe, was going to Vaikunta (abode of Lord Vishnu).

On the way, he saw a yogi (man who does spiritual practices) sitting and meditating. The yogi asked Narada, 'Oh Narada, please ask Vishnu how long I have to wait. When will I become enlightened?'

Narada said, 'Surely I will ask' and he went on his way.

Again, on the way, there was one more person who was just jumping and dancing under a tree. He asked Narada, 'Oh Narada, please ask Vishnu when I will have his darshan (appearance),'

He said, 'Please tell Him to grace me. How long should I wait for His grace?'

Narada said, 'Surely I will ask, don't worry.'

Narada went to Vaikunta and came back with the replies.

The vogi asked him what the Lord said.

Narada said, 'The Lord told me that you will have to wait for 4 more janmas (lives of birth and

death) to become enlightened. '

The yogi simply fell into depression, 'Oh, 4 janmas! What will I do?' The other man who was dancing, jumping around, asked Narada, "What did God say to me?" Narada said, 'God told me that you have to wait for as many janmas as there are leaves on this tree. Only then, you will become enlightened: only then will His grace come upon you, ' The moment the man heard this, he said 'Oh! That is all right. I don't care how long I have to wait. He gave me the assurance that He will grace me; that is enough'. He started jumping and dancing again. The moment he uttered this, lightning struck and the Divine descended: he became enlightened!

The so-called spiritual man was still caught up in the workings of the mind. of hankering after desires. Even though these may be lofty spiritual desires in the eves of society, these are desires nevertheless. The other man was just enjoying life in the present and did not mind the wait. He was happy with just the assurance that the divine grace would someday lead him beyond. This ultimate trust will automatically lead to fulfillment.

These days, people change things so often. They change their car once in 6 months, change houses once in two years and change even their wives or husbands! This happens because we are never happy with what we have. We think happiness and contentment are connected to things in the outer world. No! It is something that happens within us; it is a state within us irrespective of what happens outside.

You have a great desire to eat a particular sweet. When you eat that sweet you feel jov. If you associate that feeling of joy to the sweet, you wish to eat more of that sweet. If you keep eating more and more of it, at one point in time after some sweets do you think you will feel the same joy? No! You will feel revulsion not joy; you will not be able to eat any more. If your joy was associated with that sweet, then you should be able to eat as many sweets as possible and feel the same joy, is it not? But that is not the case. Understand: Your joy is not associated with the sweet.

What is it that gave you the joy then?

When you feel that you are enjoying an object, the moment that object is near you, the number of thoughts in your mind reduces, and when the number of thoughts per second reduces. when vour TPS (thoughts per second) falls low, a feeling of joy permeates within you because you are near vour center, your core. It is because of the reduced number of thoughts that you experience this inner joy.

But instead of associating this feeling of joy with the reduced thoughts in your mind, with the subject, you associate it with the object, that is the sweet. Whenever the frequency of thoughts comes down, you experience bliss.

Because we associate joy with outer world things, we are very easily subject to sway from happiness towards misery. Many people perceive life itself as a great misery.

One lady had just finished sending her six children to school, washed the clothes, swept and mopped the house and was going to have her lunch with sweat on her brow when the door bell rang.

She opened the door and found two men dressed like preachers standing at the doorstep. They told her, 'Ma'am, if you can spare us two minutes, we will tell you how to live till eternity.' The lady looked at them and said, 'I don't think I can take it.'

Life itself seems like a punishment to us because we have not found the inner happiness, the happiness of the soul. A general feeling of discontent and misery sets in because of this and we blame life for everything. Everything is in our mind, but we blame life for it. Because of this general feeling, we feel others are more blessed than us.

A small story:

Two ladies were talking to each other over a cup of tea. The first one asked, 'Does your husband love you?' The second one replied, 'I think so. Why do you ask'?' The first one said. 'Well. I always thought we were like desserts for these men.' The second one could not understand what she was saying. She asked, 'Desserts? What do you mean?' The first one said. 'Well, they order for their desserts after considerable choice and when the desserts arrive they always feel the other's dessert looks better. '

From small things to big ones, we never realize the worth of what we have and what we are till we are at the point of losing our possessions and ourselves. We always have an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in us.

When we are on the brink of losing our possessions, we start realizing and start scrambling after our wonderful possessions. We always feel what we had was more beautiful than what we have now, that the past was golden and the present is not so great. But when that past was present, we would not have felt that it was golden, we would have said the same thing about the previous past, that's all! This is how we always function, deluding ourselves all the time.

Just like the vision in our eyes extends only to 120 degrees, our mental vision is also very limited. Life is 360 degrees: remember that. By confining ourselves to this 120-degree vision and restricting ourselves to a limited enjoyment, we become solid and dull, without joy.

Because of our habit of seeing things in a limited fashion, seeing things through a negative frame of mind, we miss the joys of life. But this has become the normal code of conduct in society, to talk of one's problems endlessly, to be dissatisfied, to seek for more. As long as each one is immersed in his or her own problems, life seems to be all right and everyone is happy. Not really happy but happy that each one has got problems.

If people see us being serious, they think we are ok. If we laugh without reason, they think we are crazy. By being serious, we make our life our graveyard. Scientifically, it has been shown that the number of muscles that are to be kept tense in order to frown are much more than the number of muscles that are tensed when you have a good laugh!

I tell you, people who are against life are the ones who find it difficult to laughter is life; love, song, dance, all these are life. In laughter, you include everything and everyone. In your grief, you are alone. Laughter is all encompassing. When you grieve, you are stuck somewhere; it is excluding. But society strangely feels good when you grieve. It is too much for society if you laugh.

Society tells you that you are mad if you laugh for everything. It cannot bear to see you simplify things with your laughter, because if you simplify things, then society becomes powerless. As long as you are not laughing, society has a control over you. If you start laughing, society cannot handle you. You go out of its control. That is why children are often suppressed if they laugh too much.

Children are always liquid, always full of jov; they are intelligent. They are curious, always learning; they never think that their learning is over. They never take things for granted; everything is new for them: each sunrise, each tree and each flower. They do not need a reason to laugh; they are so spontaneous.

A small story:

A 40-year-old father was dyeing his graying hair.

His child, watching him curiously, asked him, 'Dad, why is your hair white when mine is all black?'

The father replied, 'Every time a person tells a lie, one hair turns white and after some time, in this fashion a lot of hair become white.'

The child promptly turned around and looked at her grandfather and shouted out, 'What a big liar my grandfather must be!'

This is how innocent and open children are! Intelligence is simplicity; it is also spontaneity and innocence. When we try to be intellectual, we are trying to impress people with our knowledge and not with our wisdom. We force ourselves into highly complex and convoluted logic just to show that we know better.

The problem is that we absorb knowledge only partially. What happens when you eat a lot and are not able to digest it? It will lead to indigestion and you will just vomit your half digested food on others without absorbing anything! The same thing happens with half digested knowledge. You just spew it on others without internalizing anything.

Intelligence, on the other hand, is spontaneous; it is fresh. In the gurukul (traditional schooling) system in ancient Bharat, what was valued was intelligence and not intellect. There were many child sages, who were celebrated, not just old men. The greatest guru of them all, Dakshinamurthy, is always portrayed as a young boy teaching a number of older sages. There was no linkage that was seen between age and wisdom.

A small Zen story:

A Zen master had to choose his successor. He drew a small black dot on a white board and called all his disciples together. He then asked them to tell him what thev saw. Almost all of the disciples said that they saw the black dot. One disciple alone told him, 'I see a huge expanse of white, in which there is a small black dot.' He was chosen as the successor.

Most of us are not able to actually see all that is visible to us. Our brain interprets just 2% of the images that the eyes send and that corresponds to what matches our expectations from the past.

In the same way, as we get tired of what we have and what we have learnt, all of us forget all the good things that happen to us; we take them for granted. We only remember the negative incidents that make us feel dissatisfied and unhappy. Actually this is the truth. The mind strangely recounts only the hardships, the moments of pain more easily than the moments of joy and pleasure. This is because of the deep and unconscious training that has gone into us.

By and by, we start talking of our problems in a big way with a lot of pride that we are managing such great problems! We boast that we are on sleeping pills or antidepressants or whatever. Our mind, our ego makes us feel big when we have big problems. Actually if you observe, the bigger our problems, the more important and solid we feel. We may not accept it but you will see that when people talk about their problems or hardships, and how they tackled them, they will talk with so much zest in them. The zest is an indication of the ego in handling the problems.

Over time, children learn these from us; it is nothing but neuro-linguistic programming handed down from one generation to another as a liability, not as an asset! We influence each other in this negativity. I tell you, share your sorrow: sharing reduces your sorrow in a way because you give vent to it when you share. Share your happiness as well, since sharing increases your happiness. Often, for fear of arousing envy or jealousy and constrained by what we believe to be the evil eye, we avoid sharing happiness.

All these are foolish things we do. Don't ever be carried away by things like the 'evil eye'. If you cast your eves properly on yourself and live with awareness, no one can cast any eve on you. This is the truth. Stop believing in these superstitious things. Start feeling the power within you, the energy within you, then, automatically you will stop thinking about the power that others can wield over you. You believe in all these things only because you don't feel strong enough within yourself.

So, share all the good things of life. Sharing is the basis of satsangs, a meeting of spiritual people. When a group of people gets together with good intentions, for the purpose of sharing goodness, for the purpose of doing good to others, there is enormous positive group energy that uplifts everybody. We rarely realize how powerful words are. If we listen to good words, we find peace; just being in the company of good people, just hearing good words being exchanged, even if we are not aware, it brings peace to us.

Those who are in professions that deal with a lot of negativity should take precautions. They should work towards building positive energy. Doctors particularly should be careful, they should meditate; they have so much negativity being poured into them. If you go to a hospital, you feel you are being drained of energy because the atmosphere is low on positive energy. In the same way that doctors are particular about washing their hands, they should also wash their minds. What we think, we become. We must work at building positive energy within us.

The problem is that we find it difficult to be spontaneous with others. We find it necessary to be guarded; we find it necessary to guard our ego.

Even if you have to go to meet a friend, you prepare what to discuss, what to do. This is because vou have no strength to face the situation with spontaneity. So, you write a script and just enact that. If something happens that does not conform to your script, you struggle to handle the

situation. If you understand that Existence is your friend and it deeply cares for you, you will not feel the need to live according to a script. Instead, you will have tremendous courage and trust and you will live life spontaneously; instead of just reliving life as you are doing now, over and over again on the same worn out path; you will actually live your life in bliss.

When we look at ourselves and others, we tend to look down, not up. By looking up towards high standards, we grow. By focusing on negatives, we drag ourselves down. That is why we even say that getting attracted to some one deeply is 'falling in love'. If it were truly an uplifting emotion, we ought to be 'rising' in love, not falling!

All the fanaticism that is going around us is just ways of guarding our ego: Men against women, one religion against another, the rich against the poor and so on. Just let go of your ego. The feeling of separation will disappear. You will be liberated.

Only those who are rigid, those who cannot forgive and forget are the ones who suffer. They are caught in their web of morality and ethics and they find it difficult to forgive themselves for what they consider lapses in behavior. This anger and guilt settles within them and corrodes them.

Also, do not try to be perfectionists; nature itself stands testimony to that. Nature is so diverse and each creation is so unique, but not perfect in your sense of perfection. But it is total! It has such a totality and fulfillment in itself, is it not? This is what I mean when I say, 'Be Total'.

A beautiful small story:

A water bearer had two large pots, one hung on each end of a pole.

He used to carry the two pots everyday to the river nearby. fill them up with water and then carry them slung on the pole across his neck to his master's house.

One of the pots was a normal pot and capable of carrying the water filled to its brim.

The other pot had a crack in it and half the water in it spilt on the way from the river to the master's house.

The water bearer, however, did not mind and he used to carry the one and half pots of water to his master's house everyday.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, as it fulfilled the design for which it was made.

The cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection and miserable that it was unable to accomplish what it had been made for.

Day by day, the cracked pot felt more and more miserable.

Finally, one day, when the water bearer was filling it with water from the river, it said. 'I am ashamed of myself and am really sorry for having to put you through this.'

The water bearer asked, surprised, 'What are you feeling sorry about?'

The cracked pot replied. 'Everyday, you fill me up with water to the brim. But, I have been able to carry only half of it because this crack in my side causes the water to leak out. Because of my flaws, you have not been able to get the full benefit of all vour hard work,'

The water bearer felt sorry for the cracked pot and told it lovingly. ' As we return to the master's house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path today.'

As the water bearer went to his master's house, the cracked pot noticed the warm rays of the sun falling on the beautiful, glistening flowers on the path and it was happy.

However, when they reached the house, it remembered the old feeling of not being useful and was again ashamed and sorry that it had leaked out half the water in it. It apologized to the water bearer again.

The water bearer said. 'Did you not notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path and not on the other pot's side?'

The cracked pot said "Yes."

The water bearer continued. 'Everyday while we walked back from the river, the water that leaked from vou has watered the flowers. Only because of that. I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the master's table. Without you being just the way you are, the beauty in his house would not be the way it is. '

Each of us has flaws. We are all like the cracked pot. But, we have to remember that we are all God's unique creations. If you think you are not good enough, you are saying that God is not the perfect energy. Don't be afraid of your flaws. They are not really flaws. They are just the way you are. Acknowledge them and you can bring something beautiful to life.

To do this, you need to start loving yourself, your body, your disposition; start becoming aware of vour body language, and it will become beautiful. Make this as a meditation and do it whenever you remember it. People ask me when they should do meditation. The best way to do any such meditation is whenever you remember it. Of course it is good to allot a certain time for it so that you don't miss doing it, but if you make it your all-time meditation, it will become your very nature, which is what you want it to become!

Life is continuously teaching you and that too, by the most powerful and effective means, that of experiences. It is up to you to open your eves and ears and absorb these, rather than being iudgmental and that too, based on your poor intelligence.

If you put all the people in this world in a line with the so-called best in the beginning of the line and the so-called worst in your opinion at the last, where will you stand? Most probably, you will be somewhere in the middle. You are neither going to stand out as the best nor are you going to stand as the most worthless person. If you are going to be somewhere in the middle of the line. then it is up to you to decide whether you want to look in front and feel sorry for yourself or to look behind and decide to make the best of what you have been gifted with.

There are some people who take life as it comes; they let go of things, including what we think are principles, morals and ethics. They have no guilt, no regrets. They are happy. Being moralistic does not make you happy; in fact, it makes you suffer because you wish to enjoy but are not courageous enough to enjoy. You suppress your wants and emotions. These suppressed emotions are dangerous like dormant volcanoes. We need to face our desires and emotions and manage them. The only way to do this is through conscious awareness. The only way to reach conscious awareness is through meditation.

God is one who remembers one good thing we did and forgives and forgets millions of bad things we do. Man is one who remembers the one bad thing of others and forgets million other good things! Such is the mentality of man.

We have no right to judge people. The sense of virtue and sin itself is a creation of society. That is why one thing is regarded in one society as a virtue and the same is considered a sin in some other society. Polygamy is considered to be all right in some societies while in some others, it is condemned. The laws of society are not ultimate truths. Rather, they are time-bound as they get created according to the needs and conditions of the given time and place. When you forget what went behind the making of that law, you start believing it with no reason to back it and get caught in the web of tradition.

There was a monastery where Lord Siva was worshipped.

The Master had a cat and it was so close to him that he allowed it to jump on him during worship and disturb the daily worship.

When the cat became too playful, the Master would instruct his disciples to place the cat inside a basket during worship.

This became a daily routine.

One day the Master passed away. The cat ran away that night.

The next morning, the successor to the Master took over the proceedings, the daily routines etc. Before starting the daily worship, he asked where the cat was.

On finding that the cat was missing, he declared, 'We cannot do the worship without the cat'. The disciples tried to catch other cats but did not succeed and eventually, they stopped performing the worship!

They were under the impression that the cat was part of the rituals in the worship! This is how most of us blindly follow tradition and norms without understanding the underlying reasons why thev came about.

Once caught in the web of religion, we don't want to miss out on anything related to it. We don't want to leave out anything for fear of doing something wrong, for fear of being the odd one out. Such is the control religion wields over us.

A Vicar in a particular church was concluding his sermon for the Sunday.

He announced, 'Next week, my sermon will be on Truthfulness. On getting back home, I want all of you to read the twenty-ninth chapter of Leviticus which is on truthfulness.'

The following week, the vicar started his sermon. But before that he asked, 'Last week I had requested all of you to read the twenty-ninth chapter of Leviticus. How many of you read it?' Almost all the hands went up.

The Vicar said, 'Just as I had expected. And this is why today's sermon is on truthfulness. Leviticus has only twenty-seven chapters in it!'

How many godheads and priests are willing to deal with the truth in such a jovial way? They only want to stuff their ideologies down our throat and they don't care how much we have assimilated and how much has the potential to turn into our own experience. The preachers should put religion in the right perspective to people. That is what they are meant to do.

Vivekananda says beautifully, 'May you flood your religion with logic and reasoning. Whatever withstands these, let it stay; let the others be washed away. The sooner it is washed away, the better it is for mankind.'

Do not worry about what people think of you. Drop preconceived notions about time and place like 'office is hell', 'beach is fun', 'mornings are tough', 'evenings are cool' and what not. Then, you will be happy wherever you are, whenever it is. Live and enjoy life as it is. Drop all your

prejudices of people including vourself, events, time and places. As long as happiness is bound by time and space, it is not real happiness.

The whole problem is that we bind our happiness to either some time or place or event or person. Can you ever recall being happy without a reason? I tell you: When you know how to be happy without a reason, there will be no question of even recalling! Try to understand this. As long as you tag your happiness with an event, place, person or time, you can recall specific instances of happiness and that too with a yearning that the past was happier.

When vou feel happiness when you are around that person, you will start wanting to possess the person and there the problem starts. It becomes revengeful when you want to possess. Wanting to possess is actually a way of revenge.

Also, you will find that when you try to bring back the time you felt happiness in order to experience the same happiness, somehow it is no longer the same. The joy is lacking. After a few unsuccessful attempts, you feel depressed and sick. You don't feel the energy of happiness.

Once you taste happiness as a permanent state within you irrespective of time, place, event or person, every moment is happy. Where then is the question of recalling anything? You will recall when you want to relive happy moments, when you unconsciously feel the present is not so happy as the past was. Recalling so-called past happiness is like an energy booster.

When you recall past happiness, you cerebrally enjoy it once more. But if you feel happiness in your being all the time, there will be no need to recall any past joy. Even if you recall, there will be no yearning in it. It will purely be one more sharing, that's all.

Every 11 days, your emotions go through a complete cycle; that is why the Hindu tradition of Ekadasi vrata of fasting on the eleventh day of the waxing moon was introduced. It is to purify yourselves emotionally. For the next eleven days, think only good things about your body and see how it changes your perception. Just be aware of the greatness of your body. Tell yourself what a beautiful body you have. Feel it while you say it. At the end of it you will see that your body is really beautiful.

It is our perceptions that limit us or liberate us. And this is based on whether we perceive them as they are or as we want them to be. In Tibet, there are communities where a man who is aged a hundred and thirty years is considered young! A 200-year-old man is this community considers himself only middle aged! People live up to three hundred years in that community because of the way they live. They live with limited wants and basic needs. They take nature as it is. Their perceptions of accepting what is given, define their expectations; their expectations in turn make their long life a reality. It is that simple.

It is time to move from the ephemeral to eternal; all we need to do is to deal with things as they are, as we find them and not try changing them. We need to change ourselves, not others or what is around us. What we need is an internal cognitive shift: from seeing things as we want them to be to seeing things as they are and enjoying life as it is. To bring about this transformation, we need to be aware. Meditation will create this awareness in us.

And let me tell you one thing: When you feel inner happiness, or bliss, your mind relaxes and allows your energy to fill your body and mind. When the energy fills you, you get healed and recharged. That is why we say bliss heals.

We have seven energy centers called chakras and this has been accepted by many cultures. Sufis, Chinese, early Christians. Their presence has been proven by Kirlian photography as well. These chakras or energy centers, when kept in an energized condition, cause overall well being at the physical and mental levels. It has been studied that these energy centers expand 60 to 70 times and are highly energized with positive emotions.

On the other hand, these chakras diminish in size and cause ill health when infused with negative emotions. We can predict diseases through just the diminished aura of the chakras. There are also seven glands in our body that are closely associated with these seven charkas. And these glands regulate the general well being of a person. When chakras are disturbed or locked through negative emotions, they give rise to disease.

What are the negative emotions we are talking about? We are referring to emotions such as fantasy, fear, worry, etc. Fantasies lock the Muladhara chakra located at the base of the spine; fears lock the Swadhishtana chakra which is located just below the navel; worries lock the Manipuraka chakra which is located just above the navel; the Anahata chakra in the heart region is related to love and attention-need; jealousy locks the Vishuddhi chakra in the throat region; ego blocks the ajna chakra which is between the eyebrows and discontentment blocks the Sahasrara chakra on top of the head.

When you are blissful, when you have found happiness irrespective of the outer world, then you cannot come under the sway of these emotions. Then your chakras remain in a healthy and energized condition. So again, bliss heals!

And bliss provides us the energy to face and solve our problems. Firstly, when you are not blissful, your energy is used to create more problems. When you are blissful, you disconnect from worries and also use the available energy to solve problems. It has been scientifically proven that when dopamine, the chemical associated with bliss is released, the frontal lobe of the brain, which is responsible for decisions, is activated. When this happens, you find that wisdom just flows.

I have worked with two hundred thousand people over the last two years and seen this to be so. You will see a new understanding come up within you. You have never given a chance for bliss to enter your life.

Bliss attracts fortune says Tantra. When you are really blissful you work intuitively, with higher intelligence. Simply decide that you are not going to think about your problems or work on solving your problems, and you will see that a higher intelligence comes into play. Just do this for the next 48 hours. One lesson you will learn: Without your awareness, Existence comes in to take over and help you. You will take a quantum leap in your awareness that you do not need to work on your problems to dissolve your problems.

We always question this, based on the assumption that we do not have enough intelligence to solve our problems spontaneously, that we do not have the capacity to produce that spontaneity. But let me tell you: However much you try with your intellect instead of intuition vou will only struggle. So move towards bliss and watch your intellect drop!