Journey to becoming better human being - 45

What is required for my transformation?

 

Suresh was talking about a person who broke-down because of a problem in his life. What was amusing was that the profession of this person was to give public talks on Positive thinking. We realised that to talk about and to teach others about such things seem to be easy but to implement in own life is not that common. Why is it so? We proposed that as a topic for our weekly meeting.

 

“Personal transformation is a process.”

 

If something disturbs me beyond a point, I get angry as almost an automatic response. I might have read many books or attended many lectures advising that I should not get angry. But that does not help me when I am getting angry. Instead what is important is to bring about changes in myself in such a way that what was disturbing me at one stage does not disturb me anymore. That is a personal transformation involving a process of consistent and systematic work on oneself. It seems that it Is not possible to have crash course for the same.

 

“It is not what you want, instead it has to do with what you need.”

 

It was fascinating to understand the difference between the two. What I wanted was to control my anger. But the anger was a response to something that had disturbed me. So, what I needed was to understand what was disturbing me and to make changes so that it does not disturb me.

 

Now we could better understand what was happening around us. There are people who want quick solutions and for them quick-fixes abound. Flooded with super-hyped, dubious testimonials people are attracted with promises of crash solutions. The providers play with the emotions of the people particularly greed and fear. They ride on religious, spiritual and often mystical sentiments to bring about ‘miracles’. And they even use out of context scientific terms to substantiate their offers. They are addressing what people ‘want’ and for that hordes of people rush to them. In the process the want may or may not ger addressed but certainly their need for personal transformation is neither realised nor materialised.

 

“Each one of us have our life with own ‘contents’ and each one requires own personal work.”

 

What disturbs me will not be same as what disturbs Rohit and vice versa. So, my comprehension of what disturbs me will not help Rohit. Instead he will have to find out his own factors. Thus, each one of us must do our own personal work and there is no one ‘capsule’ that can quickly resolve everyone’s issues. A good learning. Now the issues is how to go about doing it?

 

“What can be given is the Orientation, Tools and Conditions.”

 

This was not that easy to grasp, and we had to deliberate a lot to understand it better. Orientation has to do with guiding you and not solving your problems. It has to do with throwing light on the path, but walking has to be done by you. It can be provided by one who has already walked on that path before and who knows the obstacles on the way so that he can prepare you for the same. Orientation on life has to do with deeper aspirations of human being and has to be beyond the provisional wants of money, status, recognition etc. Orientation is different from preaching and teaching and is about helping you have your own search, own understanding and own experience. Now we realised how orientation has been helping us in our journey so far.

 

With orientation there must also be appropriate tools. Since the objective is personal development, the tools should be about self-knowledge and about personal transformation. It should be about understanding personal and social processes and enabling ability to bring about the changes. It became clear to us how tools such as Guided Experience, Principles, Relaxation, Psycho-physical gymnastics, Self-knowledge, just to name a few, which we have been systematically working with in these weekly meetings that has been helping us in our personal work.

 

Finally, the importance of the conditions that are conducive to bring about the change. Our weekly rhythm and occasional retreats, the ambit in which we can share our personal reflections without any hesitation in a friendly tone. Working together on subjects of common interest with personal contents and sharing of the learning. And finally, the action in the world in forms of various social projects enabling us to recognise the beauty of self-lessness with us.

 

“This coherent system brings meaningful direction in our life.”

 

As we reflected we realised how harmoniously all these have been woven together in this work. There is clear and consistent orientation. There are tools to work with. And there are conditions where all of us, with diverse interest come together and work for personal transformation. In the process, we have learnt about our role in the world and that our work is also for personal as well as social transformation.

 

We have experienced great changes in ourselves. Now we could understand that compared to all other work that we had tried earlier, what has made the difference, was the coherent orientation, tools and conditions provided in this work. Here we have experienced the great sensations of being a part of the global project of becoming better human being and building a better world.

 

Grateful about being part of such a meaningful project and realising the larger meaning of my life, I was moving ahead in my journey to becoming better human being.