Everything these days is well planned, convenient and has made our life easier than it has ever been. We have solutions for every problem and there is nothing we can say that nobody has an answer. Type your problem on Google and you will see thousands of companies ready with a solution. None of the problems of past haunt us anymore; you want to go somewhere- a car miraculously appears on your doorsteps: you are hungry- a man magically knocks on your door with the food of your choice: you need to pay all your bills-it can be done in less than a minute by few movements of your finger: you want to see your friend-you will be connected in few seconds: you are afraid of being cheated on a deal-you just have to type few words and you will know everything you need to know: you are confused about the school you want to send your kid-you have the right choices at your screen. There are thousands of examples you can add to it. These days you just have to think about the question-someone else has already found the answer for you, making your life easier than ever. Then, why are we still not as satisfied as we would have wanted? Has nobody found an answer to that?
I don’t claim to have any answer but an argument. All of us plan for a good life but when it comes to things like satisfaction, goodness and peace of mind we think of it as philosophy or spirituality which can be a small part of life but not the core of life. Our life (cliché as it may sound but it is the truth) is based on providing ourselves with every comfort and luxury. This is our central idea of life; the proof of the fact is the increasing usage of the word-Practical. Being practical means having a reasonable amount in your bank, a car or two, a job that pays well, a holiday trip every 6 months or so, sending kids to good schools etc. And, it’s a never ending list. Once we start on our journey of becoming practical we don’t know when to stop. When you had one room in your house, looking for two rooms looked practical and when you had two, third looked practical. The same applies for the length of the car or resolution of your mobile. My simple argument is- isn’t it practical to plan about the most significant things like peace of mind and satisfaction of life. But, as a matter of fact, we don’t? It’s not a part of our practical thinking. We simply assume that it would be taken care of, somehow, and is kept behind everything else.
Then, suddenly one day you wake up to realize that all your practical thinking couldn’t stop you from feeling that void inside. We try to use our intellectual mind but don’t really help, does it? The void keeps growing and in desperation some people head off to temple while others meet a therapist, hoping to find an answer. Suddenly, you see an atheist talking about finding the God inside and most insensitive ones talk about being nice to everyone.
Thousands of years and generations after generations it has been confirmed that the void develops. It doesn’t matter whether you call it a midlife crisis or loss of inner harmony. It doesn’t matter what religion or philosophy says or what psychology says. The truth is that it happens and happens to all. But, somehow this is one part of life we never plan. We wait for the worst to happen and then run around looking for a remedy. Wouldn’t it make sense that rather than looking for cure, as the popular line says, we should be looking for prevention? Why wait for the worst?
But then if there was prevention, somebody would have surely packed and sold it to you by now and they are probably trying but as a matter of fact the prevention is absolutely free of cost. It’s just a slight change in your life that you need. If you remove the religious connotation from Yoga, it is one of those things that prepares you well for the higher order experience that can either lift or lack of which can bring us down. Yoga has been promoted as a physical exercise to keep your body fit but that isn’t the complete story: that is just the beginning before it takes you to a journey of your inner universe. Yoga isn’t something you do on a weekend or an hour in the morning or at a resort during a holiday. Yoga is a way of life, a way of thinking, a way of seeing, a way of listening, a way of feeling, practicing which can open you to higher realms of life. You don’t have to travel to the top of the mountain to do Yoga: you can do it but that isn’t the requirement of Yoga. You can only know Yoga when you start inculcating it in your life, embracing it with wide arms.
The purpose wasn’t to promote Yoga (it was just an example of my experience) or any other form of meditation but to raise the basic question in your head. Do you have any plans for the inner peace and satisfaction or you are just assuming that your other plans will make it happen, miraculously? Think again. This part of you might also need a little planning!   Â
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