Live Quality
Many people alive at this time, loss is experienced as loss of meaning. In other words, life seems to lack purpose and doesn’t make sense anymore. Loss of meaning is often part of the suffering that comes with physical loss, but it can also happen to people who have gained everything the world has to offer – who have “made it” in the eyes of the world – and suddenly find that their success or possessions are empty and unfulfilling. What the world and the surrounding culture tells them is important and of value turns out to be empty and this leaves a kind of painful inner void, often accompanied by great mental confusion.
Now the question arises: What exactly is the connection between suffering and spiritual awakening? How does one lead to the other? When you look closely at the nature of human suffering you will find that an essential ingredient in most kinds of suffering is a diminishment of one’s sense of self.
In reality, of course, what feels like a diminishment or loss of your sense of self is the crumbling of an image of who you are held in the mind. What dissolves is identification with thought forms that had given you your sense of self. But that sense of self is ultimately false, is ultimately a mental fiction.
To be identified with a mental image of who you are is to be unconscious, to be unawakened spiritually. This unawakened state creates suffering, but suffering creates the possibility of awakening. When you no longer resist the diminishment of self that comes with suffering, all role-playing, which is normal in the unawakened state, comes to an end. You become humble, simple, real. And, paradoxically, when you say “yes” to that death, because that’s what it is, you realize that the mind-made sense of self had obscured the truth of who you are – not as defined by your past, but timelessly. And when who you think you are dissolves, you connect with a vast power which is the essence of your very being.
Let Suresh share his experience to understand it appropriately:
I was working as an engineer in industry with good position and handsome salary. Everything was in place but I was not feeling complete with that. Lot of thought processes were going on simultaneously in my mind.
On one fine day, while going for duty, the question arises in my mind “Why I am going there?, What’s the purpose of doing this?, Is this what the inside of me wants to do?These questions took me to inside of me.I became more aware about my body, I felt a tension in that. This was there because inside of me wanted to do different and outside was doing different.
I started becoming more and more aware and realised that I was not made for working with machines but with humans. I am having potential of changing lives of people. This process created a clarity in my mind and I took the most important decision of my life “I resigned from job and started working on my own” – the work I enjoy to do, the passion I wanted to follow.
There was great amount of struggle I undergone during last 2 years, but I was open to new ideas and alternatives and adapting according to the challenging situations.Those challenges made me more conscious/flexible and enabled me to turn towards myself.
I unconsciously die as my identity and born as who am I. Now when I look back I realized what is death, it is the death of identification and ego. Who am I is non perishable. Thanks to the subject which gave me an opportunity to realize my eternity.
