The storm outside a couple of mornings ago was glorious. What happens outside happens on the inside too. The elements causing the storm outside cause a storm on the inside too. No where are we taught how to deal with these storms. Just knowing that storms are caused by the elements is liberating. You stop blaming yourself for the storm exactly like I wouldn’t blame the storm above on myself. It is identical. The storm inside happened on its own through the interaction of the elements just as the storm outside happened.

If you have been watching the news, you realise how everyone that promises to lead the world out of the current state is clueless. The challenger blames the incumbent, while the incumbent claims things have never been better. In the end it is our emotions that make the decision for us between the challenger and the incumbent. For both the challenger and the incumbent prey on our emotions, our fears or our desires.

Both fear and desires depending on their intensity cause physical sensations.. Growing up I was a very anxious person, anxious about doing well. The nervousness would invariably give me a backache and an ache in my left leg. I have overcome that. Too much of fear is debilitating. But a little bit allows things from going out of control. It brings discipline and orderliness. The fear of my backache keeps disciplined in exercise and the memory of discomfort keeps me away from temptations.

Yet fear and desires can grip you despite your best intentions. We can either succumb or observe to let them dissolve.

Curiosity versus wonder is a wonderful realisation. Curiosity dies because it puts pressure on the intellect to make sense of things and the intellect has a limited capacity to understand. People have bucket lists of what they want to see or do out of curiosity. It just tires them. On the other hand wonder keeps us alive. Keeping the wonder stoked keeps us alert.

Even after years of Sudarshana Kriya, despite reading many scientific articles about the benefits of it, believing we know why it works can make the experience listless. But acknowledging with wonder and amazement how little we know of it and remaining innocent keeps the experience alive.

Knowing has no end. It is a journey from unknown to even more unknown. When I promote the Happiness Program, I talk about how the Sudarshan Kriya helps. The truth is ‘I don’t know how it works’. If I said this, no one would ever come to the program. It is also impossible to explain how exactly it has changed my life. The truth is that we don’t know how it will change life for every individual. Besides the concept of happiness people have is very far from what happiness really is. And yet in my heart I know I am better off through the Sudarshana Kriya. It is just inexpressible.

We started another course today. The environment of the course allows us to recognise how sacredness brings us to the present moment and the quality of what we do improves manifold. We never get tired of teaching this course whether there are 20 or 5 people in the class. Sacredness or reverence is the key to engagement and commitment. If only corporates could recognise this. Guruji has built an organization effortlessly on this basis. No one ever has to do an engagement survey to determine if the volunteers are engaged. What an irony that organizations that talk about engagement have poor engagement scores while one that has no such formal metric has such engagement and commitment.