“One must become colourless while playing with colours.” – Rev. Babuji Maharaj. 

Smt. Padmaja G.

Respected brothers and sisters,

My humble pranams to all.

I am thankful for allowing me to present this paper.  I would like to mention that this paper was written with little experience and more on trying to understand the above topic by reading related literature and quite many discussions with my trainer.

My understanding of the above topic is while leading a family life and attending to our duties we can achieve our goal.  Our system of PAM assists us to lead a happy and balanced life.

I used to think that spiritual life is different from personal life.  All decisions were also based on that presumption.  Sometimes it drastically affected my happiness and happiness of people around me. Spiritual life and personal life go side by side and linked with each other.  Events in our life teach us different aspects of Divine attributes like

-        transitory nature of things

-        trustee ship

-        simplicity

-        dependency on Divine

-        fraternity

-        purity

-        honesty

-        humility etc.

Commandments are principles of way of living.  To lead a balanced life under all circumstances following of the Commandments is necessary apart from the meditation practices mentioned. Meditation on Point A and Point B helps us in the same.

1.  In the present day society where everything is in a rush/hurried life and later glued to a box of someone’s ideas, Silence, appreciating nature and the language of feeling is lost.  With the umpteen number of advertisements focusing on maintaining a good physique, rich life and eat outs, one is lost in enjoyment and a feeling of permanency in everything.

Most of the times one remains entangled in their own problems and remember God easily during misery.  Once the problem/misery is solved they are back to their old ways. Oneness with God as the primary duty should be kept in view always to lead a contented life at all times.

“That means, the base or the destination must never go out of our mind.  We must ever keep our base in mind.” – Silence Speaks Pg. No. 534

2.  This does not mean running away to a forest or neglecting the duties to people dependant on us.  We must do our duty to everyone as a trustee.  Initially a conscious effort is needed to think every task as Divine Duty with a feeling of humility and gratitude.  It might all feel like a drama or an attempt in the beginning.

“We must remain alive to our sense of duty to them as much as to God but without any undue attachment.  For this we must snatch a few minutes from our hours of rest (preferably at bed-time) and pray to God with a sincere heart for His guidance and support on the path of duty.  If we do it regularly with a heart full of love and devotion, the prayer shall never go unheard.” – Reality At Dawn – Pg. No 86

“Mere consciousness of God cures many of the evils of the mind and removes difficulties from our path.  We have thus to become conscious of God for the most part of the day during all our worldly activities.” – Reality At Dawn – Pg. No. 86

3.  Problems do occur for everyone.  Most of the times all the energy is spent on solving the problem – finding the root cause of the problems.  We have to only perform the required action and leave the results to Him.  Getting to the root of the problem or expecting results as intended will only keep one’s attention away from Him.

4.  Due to misunderstanding of some of the stories/puranas I read when I was young, I used to think Mother Earth has become impure and some vivid imaginations how it will become pure.  Pujya Sri K.C. Narayana garu clarified that Mother Earth is always pure and reverential attitude should be maintained. Reverential attitude should be maintained to all elements in nature.

One should learn to admire and respect His manifestation.  I observed that we learn this aspect also when we do our sadhana. We should cooperate with everyone and everything around us.  We teach children to love and respect nature and conserve natural resources.  Children at young age mostly observe and learn.  It’s our duty for the next generation to learn some aspects naturally.

5.  Sometimes due to some situations, one gets a negative/disgust feeling to everything that goes around.  This is all a play of mix of past experiences, samskaras and expectations. One needs to step back and observe the thoughts and yield to the circumstances.  This will help to develop gratitude and humility towards Master. Stepping back and observing the thoughts with a sense of detachment made me feel “why all this unnecessary thinking?  It serves no purpose” and helped me attend to the duties properly.  Suddenly life seems all happy and beautiful.

“To begin with, we should always take a conscious step back from anything which howls at us from within. This requires moral stamina and courage. Once removed, in this special fashion and we learn to observe in a detached manner we can see that any shriek of discomfort, worry, anxiety, or shame, can never be a part of who we really are. This is the first step in realizing our true nature as freedom. We begin to feel the breeze of freedom from our desires and passion.” - Lion-hearted men alone can dare approach Reality and men are made so, by Natural Path – Pujya Sri K.C. Narayana garu

6.  We face with different shades of ego problems.  Sometimes we try to differentiate on the grounds of right and wrong in actions done by us and others.  There are also shades of pride and arrogance due to comparison.  Treating others as brethren (awareness of common origin) and taking their actions as Divine blessing helps.  Only when we bow to Divinity in everyone, we bow to Divinity in true sense.

7.  Sometimes due to differences for any reason proper communication/harmony is lost even with family members.  Yielding to the Divinity, we should take the step of crossing the barrier of all negative feelings and feel compassionate to everyone.  Distancing from such situation or people is in a way running away to the forest.

Children like to imitate people/characters they admire.  They try to impersonate all the traits of the character and associate with them.  That’s the reason our elders always emphasized on stories with moral values for children.  Earlier I have tried to follow good values learnt from the stories.  It helped me to follow at least some of the moral principles.  Now I try to keep in view the lives of our Masters to overcome some obstacles.

For example the well known office incident from Pujya Babuji’s biography :

“Once a co-clerk on account of his caste prejudice teased Sri Ramchandraji when he joined a new post in which he had no experience. Instead of teaching and helping him, he resorted to harassing techniques so much that he even opted to resign from office. Despite this attitude of his colleague which had driven him to such an extent as to make him think of suicide also, his treatment towards him was as cordial as ever. He had no enmity towards him and he even loved him more. Others called him simple and naive but from his point if others do not do their duty why should one not do his duty? He puts it like "What I do for you, it is my duty; what you do not do for me, it is your duty".”

8.  We should try to be in thought of Master during the day.  During free time we should try to remember the condition felt after the morning meditation.  Not minding the different distractions during free time, one should make effort to be in thought of Master.

9.  Simplicity, Service and Sacrifice – We should a live a life of simplicity, sacrifice one’s own interests and service fellow brethren as duty to Master.  Pujya Lalaji used to say “God has hidden himself inside our hearts and exposed us. Hide yourselves and expose God!"  When we expose God, Service and Sacrifice is our only concern.

10.        The tenth Commandment says, “At bed time, feeling the presence of God, repent for the wrongs committed.  Beg forgiveness in a supplicant mood, resolving not to allow repetition of the same.”  Sometimes after the prayer, I tried to follow the contemplation method given by Pujya Sri K. C. Narayana garu in the article “Repentance and Pardon” – B.P. Vol. V.    I would like to share the paragraph from the above topic.

“Logically it follows prayer is the right brain function while meditation is the left brain function.  If we continue to be in a state of prayer after concluding our prayer seeking pardon we tend to contemplate on various aspects of our life where there were errors and follies.  Such contemplation can also lead to sincere introspection.  On such introspection lie the clues for betterment.” – Pg. No. 23

This process was exhausting and very tiring initially but it helped me to look back at various errors, look at things with more openness, feel repentant and seek forgiveness for the same.

When one prays before going to bed with earnestness and humility and sleep in that thought, it sure helps in next day’s morning meditation.

“This Commandment thus is very important as it preaches the practice of constant remembrance of the Master through day and night and always.” - Pujya Dr. K.C. Varadachari - Volume -1 – Discourse on Commandment 10

One can become Divine while playing the game of life.  The game has to be played courageously and patiently by living at the current moment.  Goal should always be kept in view for the game to be played with all seriousness and not be succumbed to the feelings of “how much is covered or how much more is there to travel.”  We will then lose to live in the present moment.  We know where the pitfalls are and can try to be cautious and at the same time when we fall down, instead of brooding, we should try to look up and continue courageously with dependency, love and devotion.

      In the spirit of bodhyanati parasparam I tried to share some views.  Thank you for the same.

Pranams.