GROW UP, Don't Just Grow Up!

GROW UP, Don't Just Grow Up!

To create a `Better I` could be a nice New Year Resolution.

Recently, one of my childhood friends commented that over the years I had really evolved as a person. He is absolutely right. What I was two decades ago and what I am trying to become today seem like opposite ends of a pole, yet the truth is the person is the same. When I look back at some of my old photographs, the contrast is stark. I feel good that I look better, have more confidence, have a deeper sense of purpose, and most importantly, is keen to learn and grow.

This blog obviously is not about me, but when I reflect on my life and the year that is just about to slip into a new one, I feel happy that God has instilled in me the capacity to constantly work on myself. This has happened in 2012 as well as over the past so many years. The turning point of course came in the year 1989 when I met my spiritual Guru Dadaji, and then again in 1993, when I learnt Reiki Level 1 from Dr Sudhir. Meditation and Reiki have since been the foundation on which I have based my life, and they have led me through series of `personality evolving mechanisms` and transformed me from my core, so to say. It has been a truly fascinating transforming experience.

But as I look around and observe the way people go about their day-to-day business, I find that many of them are simply growing up physically, but their mental, intellectual and spiritual potentialities lie suppressed under the heavy weight of a survival instinct. To say that people evolve and mature with age is just a stereotype. People really evolve when they make learning and self observation a critical habit. Physical growth is an automatic process, and survival a very basic talent. As a process, they don't require any great human interference. Yet, I find people are so entrapped in living for living sake that the true purpose of life is lost on them.

Growing up is really about understanding, changing, learning and behaving. It is a behavioural process. The kind of words we use in our daily conversations reflects our internal maturity. Physically, we all grow older everyday, but the real thing is to grow on the subtler planes – mental, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Life is really encased within these planes, with the body being the critical vehicle to create the life of our perceptions.

Death to me is a great concept which enriches life. But when people are stuck in survival mode and refuse to grow up, they behave as if they will never die. This pushes them back everyday and constricts their vision of life itself. Nobody wants to die, but the desire to live for living sake is a sure recipe for a life of struggle. While struggle is inevitable, the choice to be made is whether we want to indulge in a struggle for survival, or a struggle to become better today than what we were yesterday.

Thus, life truly has to be lived intensely everyday without a break. While the days, weeks, months and years create a pattern, every day we have an opportunity to add to the dimensions of the pattern. Much of the sufferings people experience as they add years to their lives is because of the lack of ability to frame responses to various situations – both foreseen and unforeseen. The answer really lies in becoming not just better at what we do, but in becoming a `Better I` every day.

So, as we bid goodbye to another year and usher in a new one, I urge all of you resolve to make yourself a better person – mentally, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually – by the end of 2013 than what you are right now. To create a `Better I` could be a nice New Year Resolution.

Thank you 2012, and Welcome 2013!