Sadhguru in Hyderabad to #SaveSoil – LIVE | 15 June | 7:00 PM IST

It seems to be a universal need to somehow want to be right. You are convinced that your belief system is the right one.

This is a message from Jesus Christ to the Episcopal Church. I am the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. You are dead and I am calling you to wake up.

How does God communicate with us? And how do we know it’s God speaking to us?

My experience as a counselor suggests Dark Night symptoms are occurring at one or more periods during the lives of many people in our time. For some, symptoms of disorientation and loss appear after sudden trauma, bereavement or severe illness. For others it is experienced as a disintegration of ego identity accompanying age, retirement, redundancy, accident, debility or when our children leave home. It might even come when, amidst the outward appearance of success, there seems to be no direct explanation for the lack of purpose and depression they feel. It can even reflect disillusionment and world-weariness resulting from the cruelty and inhumanity abounding in our times. I believe this common experience is an indication of something very wrong in the way we are conducting our lives. In our modern times we are living in a mentally-based world, one in which we most value progress, status, possessions and competitiveness. The problem is our lives are unbalanced. We are failing to take the soul into account and this neglect is having serious repercussions.In this era of increasing knowledge and information overload, we know very little about opening the heart and even less about the real meaning of Love.

The Loving Fathers make it clear that it is pointless attempting to attune to higher wisdom while harboring resentments or grudges that keep you bound to the lower levels. Lower levels of consciousness with their limited perspectives and petty concerns are the home of such negative emotions as anger, feeling vengeful and deceit which drag down and limit the vibrancy that your soul requires. Indulging in negative emotions or small minded issues also clutters the channels to spirit and creates heaviness and disharmony within – the anathema to the buoyancy of spirit. Vigilance in keeping the energies within the higher levels cannot be underestimated. We can be dragged down by being dependent on the opinion of others for our well being, being unable to deflect criticism even when it plainly is a product of the accuser’s own pathology or unresolved issues, or allowing another to curb your natural self-expression and limit your autonomy. It is important that your spirit is allowed to soar, to sing, and to express the whole of your being. It is your joyous wholeness that invites Divinity within.

When dissatisfaction arises, it is our usual reaction to want to change something or, as is often the case, change someone, in order to find peace within once again. We think in order to feel contentment we must have everything, and particularly everyone, conform to some inner idea we ourselves hold of how it should be. With this mind set, it becomes imperative to put a great deal of energy into making ourselves more comfortable so we may become peaceful. In order to feel OK about ourselves we feel the need to compete on an equal, or preferably a better social footing. This usually involves having more; more of whatever it takes. We hear about the latest in household gadgetry and rush out to buy it. Retail therapy may even involve expensive jewelery, cars, and houses. “More”, in fact, becomes a never-ending struggle.

There seems to be some inbuilt time limit to our state of being in love, or to maintaining a love relationship with another. Inevitably tensions arise because we both bring differing expectations and trigger points to the situation. It is true that the honeymoon stage eventually leads to a time when mundane considerations take the forefront position; our need to earn a living, financial pressures, housework, the laundry. All these require a very different level of functioning from the one you enjoyed during the honeymoon period. So when separation and conflict strikes, what do you do?

Spirituality is your natural condition. Spirituality describes your inner self, your essence, that essential part of you which is deeper, more profound and more original than any other part of you. Becoming spiritual means becoming who you are, through stages of challenge, expectation and personal growth. The authentic spiritual life is the way beyond fear, because it is the path to truth and reality, and the way to what is eternal.

“Love the beauty and strength that is your Being. Do not fight who you truly are. Step into your glory. Never lose sight of the wondrous being that you are, for to become the fullness of your higher Self, is to create the consciousness shift that is required of you.” This quotation from my inner guidance, which originally I personified as the “Loving Fathers” in order to try to understand it, had to be repeated many times before I began to incorporate it into my life. Somehow it is easier to believe in our limitations than our larger selves.

Perhaps we’ve been taught that regularly going to church on Sunday or Saturday makes us spiritual people, or at least religious ones. I suggest that it could correctly be said that all it really shows is that these are people with strongly held habits. I should draw attention here to the distinction I make between “religious” and “spiritual”. Not all religious people are spiritual and not all spiritual people are religious.

People in corrupt environments are presented with difficult dilemmas, when it comes to using unethical means to survive their way through. This article discusses, through examples, how refusing corruption (ultimately a spiritual test of integrity and faith) strengthens people’s power and social cohesion.

Unique to Saharan dwellers, the Arab boy made his way across the towering dunes in a graceful undulating motion like a dhow navigating the waves. Barefoot when he stopped a few feet in front of me, he held his pet iguana in his arms. We stared at each other while the scorching sand roasted the bottoms my shoes. In the distance, the crumbling relic of a French Foreign Legion fort.