Glory of Action

This post is also available in: Hindi Marathi

An Extract from the New Year Message Delivered by Sirshree

Happy New Year!

Welcome to GOA!

The message for 2020 is simple… Get to GOA! You may wonder why you are being asked to get to Goa. But wherever you are – at home, at your workplace, at your school or college, or at the marketplace – consider yourself to be in GOA. The world wherein we live and act is GOA!

GOA stands for Glory Of Action.

So, the intention for the year 2020 is to dwell in GOA – the Glory Of Action. When are our actions imbued with glory? There is glory in action only when it arises from pure consciousness – the Source within us.

In 2019, we had taken the intention of GOD – Glory Of Dhyana. It could also be referred to as GOA – Glory Of Awareness. We had focused our attention inwards to place the body-mind in the Practice of Silence (Read the 2019 New Year message). We had practiced various types of meditation that lead to the experience of the Self, to dwell in Self-awareness.

This year, we will focus on bringing the Presence of Self into our actions. We will persevere to remain receptive for inspiration from the true Self beyond our body-mind. Let our actions be inspired from the Source of all. Let actions emerge from that Silence that we experience in meditation.

When we are seated with closed eyes in meditation, we are preparing ourselves to dwell in the Self. Meditation is complete only when we are able to continue that state of Self-aware presence and let our actions emerge from that state. Let our actions carry the touch of the Self.

When you return to the experience of the true Self, you realize the grandeur of that state. Divine qualities like the highest creativity, bliss, love, peace, compassion, courage and patience manifest through your actions. You don’t act to gain happiness; rather your actions emerge from happiness. You don’t act to attain completeness; rather you act from that state of completeness.

You participate in the race of life and begin from the finishing line, where you are playing in the utter joy of playing, not for winning! This happens when you happily relinquish the desire to win. You don’t look forward to the fruit of action, because action itself becomes the fruit for you. This makes your actions magnanimous and of superior quality.

When we perform actions in this manner, it leads you deeper into the experience of Self. And the more you abide in the glory of Self, the more it manifests as the resplendent glory through your actions.

Glory of Action comes from a two-fold practice – the Practice of Silence and the Practice of Surrendering of actions.

As you have practiced during 2019, you shall continue with the habit of regular meditation and Tap Arpan – where you offer the merit earned from meditation for the well being of all living beings. This is the Practice of Silence, which helps in unfolding the qualities of the Self in your everyday actions. If you had developed the habit of practicing meditation for 20 minutes to earn and offer one merit, then this year, you can increase it to two merits by practicing meditation twice a day – say, in the morning and evening.

The Practice of Surrendering of actions involves performing actions in the remembrance that it’s allowing to the Presence of the Self. You surrender doership by attributing all mental and physical actions to the Self, by surrendering your thoughts and actions. The word “remembrance” is important here, because you are converting every action into worship by remembering the truth – everything that happens is the expression of the true Self (God, Consciousness, Allah, Ishwar, Christ, Waheguru, whatever name suits you).

You also surrender whatever is happening in the world to the Divine Presence. By honoring whatever comes in your life and remembering that it’s all the play of grace, you rest assured in the faith, “Let Thy Will be done, not mine.” The ego drops and the Self shines forth.

When you are asked to surrender all actions, it may sound vague and unclear. Hence, it helps to create a system to practice this. Hence, you can practice the Karm Arpan – the conscious surrendering of actions to the Self.

You can practice the surrendering of actions in three ways during the day –

– When you wake up in the morning, you are habituated to mechanically complete your daily morning routine chores like brushing your teeth, showering etc. You can begin the day by reminding yourself that the experience of Self has connected with the body-mind at waking time. You can then be mindful of every activity and consciously tell yourself that “God (or Consciousness) is doing this,” or “God did this,” or “God will do this.” Practice this at least for 20 minutes.

– During the day, you can decide and consciously surrender another 20 minutes of your work activity. Whatever your occupation may involve – working on the computer, writing something, coordination with others – consciously decide that “God will now consciously engage in awakened karma through this body-mind.” Then focus on the activity without giving into any distractions. If your mind gives into distractions, then you re-start the 20-minute session, so as to enforce rigor in your practice.

– Just as a swimmer touches the pool wall and then swims back, you can also touch the Self before getting into action. Dip into the experience of Self-awareness before you commence your activity and then function from there by being in the feeling of that presence – at least for 20 minutes.

This way, you can practice at least 3 sessions of surrendering of actions in a day. The more you practice, the deeper it gets engrained in your nature.

Additionally, you can follow some specific techniques to increase the rigor and deepen the practice of meditation –

– When you are seated in meditation, if your focus is distracted by stray thoughts, you can blow the thought away by breathing out loudly on an imaginary housefly seated on your upper lip. The thought-fly is being blown away using your breath. This is an effective way of making use of physical action to direct your thoughts inward.

You may also use this technique when you find the mind taking credit for any deed instead of surrendering it. This will help you bring rigor in your practice of surrendering of actions.

– Regard all those people, who cause feelings of discomfort within you, as your mirror. Use their behavior as a mirror to introspect yourself and weed out your own negative behavioral patterns and tendencies.

– When you invest your time in meditation, you will begin to witness the churning of the ocean of consciousness within you. This is analogous to the mythological churning of the ocean of milk, where both divine and demonic forces participated, leading to the exudation of various elements of life.

You can witness anything that emerges during meditation from a detached standpoint without getting involved or pursuing any one thing. Persist and persevere in that state of detached witnessing until such time that you recognize and experience the sense of conscious presence. Continue to dwell therein, for that is the elixir of life!

We shall discuss the Churning of the Ocean of Consciousness in a separate post in due course. Follow our blog for this post.

Embrace the two-fold daily practice of Glory of Dhyana (dedicated meditation) and Glory of Action (surrendered action) during 2020 with utmost sincerity and devotedness. Let it become an integral part of your life; the very fiber of your being. This will propel you on your journey towards stabilizing in the Self, thereby fulfilling the very purpose of human life.