Esoterica

I was just wondering, the different ways in which different people lead their different lives. At first I thought I’ll come across several different types of leading one’s life, but I was amazed to find that everything narrows down to just three major ways of leading one’s life, they are: Religion, Spirituality, and Positive thinking attitude. I came to this conclusion based on a focused observation I made in the last six months. The observation just included to observe and understand how different people face various problems in life. For example, for a given problem, the people who are religious will pray to their Gods they believe in, they’ll go to temples, mosques, churches more often and maybe also try to practice and indulge in some religious practices by inviting Brahmin saints to their houses. Whereas, the people who are inclined towards spirituality will meditate and try to find the solution of the problem within themselves. They’ll try to dissolve their emotions and feelings through their practice of meditation. On contrary to this, the modern positive thinkers will suppress their real feelings like anguish, ridicule or anger and coat it with an artificial layer of hope. They’ll live in the future, and assume that everything is fine or everything is going to be fine. They’ll leave the problem to their subconscious minds. They somehow have an unusual unwavering belief on the power of their subconscious; they surely expect that everything will be just right and in place.

Well, differentiating all three kinds:

Religion, people often tend to have a misconception that religion and spirituality is the same thing, but its’ not. Religion is surrendering yourself to an unknown supernatural force commonly known as “God”. Different religions have different Gods, but they follow the same principle. They believe that everything happening in their lives is planned and is occurring due to God. They hold God responsible for almost everything that is occurring. During bad times, they see God as their savior and are very firm that God will see them through the bad times.

Spirituality, people who seek to know the ultimate honorable truth. They believe they can achieve that in two ways: - Meditation or Unconditional love. In both ways they strive to unite their conscious, bounded, logical, “society based” mind with their subconscious, limitless, illogical mind. They try to reduce the common conflict within themselves, practical VS impractical, something you need to do VS something you want to do. Living in the present with unfocused alertness, being conscious while doing everything; that is the basic principle of spirituality. Stop the mind from wandering off in the past or the baseless future is what spirituality says. It says, hope or expectation is the basic root cause of all suffering. If you don’t expect, why would you ever be disappointed? That’s spirituality, according to me. For example, Gautam Buddha (meditation) or Jesus Christ (unconditional love), I hope this will give you a better picture now.  

Positive thinking, as it says is, being positive. More and more number of people have now started to adapt to this way of living. It is simple, just think about something you want, and imagine it’s already done. Keep thinking about it as many times as you can, just keep hammering your subconscious mind about what you want. The urge for that thing should be really, REALLY strong. When you think about it again and again, you create a similar frequency that goes out in the universe and orders it to fulfill your dream, make your thought a reality. That’s it, simple, isn't it? But you need to be patient, and you need to have an unwavering faith that your dream is going to turn into reality.

All three ways seem to be flawless, if so, why do dreams of majority of the people don’t turn true? Why doesn’t God bless all his followers with a splendid life? Why majority of people who meditate don’t find the solution within themselves? Why aren’t all positive thinkers’ millionaires?

Often, people in temples are found to negotiate with God, they place numerous offers in front of God in order to get their job done. For example, I heard an uncle in the temple, he said: “Ganpati bapa, mera tender paas kara do, main roz siddhi vinayak chalke aaunga.”à “God, please somehow get my tender accepted, then every day I’ll come walking to the temple.” And I was like, yaa right! How can god possibly refuse or turn down such an offer! Also depending entirely on god is wrong, blaming him for everything is wrong, the belief that one’s fate is sealed is wrong.

Nowadays, there are camps for “vipassana” everywhere. Thousands of people go there to find peace and answers to their problems. Unfortunately, not even 10% of them are satisfied at the end of the camp. That is because they are “doing” meditation, whereas Buddha said, real meditation is what happens, it doesn't need to be done and if you are “doing” meditation, it isn't meditation. So basically, people are faking meditation; obviously they won’t achieve anything except for they can claim that they meditate.

Positive thinkers have taken the “being positive” thing way seriously. For everything, they start thinking positive, so as a result they lose their practical approach. Also, they tend to hide their real feelings, even if they want to cry or shout at someone, they’ll just put on a smile and tell themselves “everything’s fine”. Now that’s suppression, killing oneself in a way. This may lead to create a dual personality. At some point of time, you’ll be afraid facing your problems or maybe you’ll just run away from your real feelings.

   

If observed closely, all three have something in common and that is -------> our mind. Confused? Well in positive thinking it is obvious; the entire technique is based on the mind. In spirituality, the basic principles and all technique point out to control and stabilize the mind. It is controlling the mind, and not allowing the mind to control you. Uniting the conscious and the subconscious mind, therefore no conflict in the mind. While in religion, the part played by the mind is a little oblivious, but it is vital. If seen technically, the temples and mosques always have a dome shaped roof whereas churches have high roofs. These roofs help in creating a serine atmosphere, good ventilation, and importantly voices echo. Flowers and scents are all around adding to the tranquility of the place. Also you generally have your eyes closed. Now when you pray to God, you tell him what you want, you either list out your wishes in your mind or you say it loudly, so actually if thought intensely, you are actually telling yourself or maybe repeating to yourself what you want, relating this to the positive thinking technique, you are actually hammering your subconscious and reminding it what you want.

I prefer to live in the present without worrying about the future and the past, making the best of what is in my hands and take the rest as it happens. I prefer believing in myself more than believing in some unknown supernatural force, not that I don’t believe in God, I do believe in him and I know that he’ll help me more when I’ll believe in myself rather than being completely dependent on him. I am optimistic, but I won’t force that on me, I’ll cry when I need to, I’ll get angry when I need to, I won’t suppress my real feelings and put on the fake smile.

So what about you? Which way did you find the best and which technique do you follow??

NOTE: - All above statements made are my personal opinion. I am not against any sort of belief. I am sorry if I've unknowingly said something opposing your beliefs. This is what I feel; I don’t intend to imply anything.