God is watching us! Part 1

I’ll start with a short story. Once a blind beggar was begging in a train and when he passed by; a man on upper seat wished to give him some coins but was far so asked the man sitting beneath to pass the beggar the coins he wished to give. The man sitting beneath did so and passed the coins to the beggar. The beggar took it happily and said, “bhagwan apka bhala kare” ( may god bless you). Hearing this, the man sitting beneath who had just passed the coins to the beggar mocked at the man who actually gave the coins saying- “paise diye aapne aur dua mujhe mil gai”(money was given by you and blessings came to me)to the man. To this, the blind beggar said-“saahab andha Mai hun uparwala nahi”(sir it is I who is blind, not the God). To this the man got speechless. This is not just a story but the truth of the world today. These days, it has become very common thing that whatever we do in life or whatever action we take; many of those actions are taken by two reasons- either we want to impress someone or make them happy to get blessings(for our own benefit in return)or we do it to portray ourselves in a particular manner. This trait of humans has become not less than a fashion trend these days to do something and show or prove the world what we are and how we do what we do or what kind of person we are.Many people today do charities and post the pictures while doing so on social media platform. Many of them say that if we are doing charity or helping others then why can’t we expect some admiration and praise from others. Some of them say that if no one will witness us doing something for the welfare of others, then how will they get to know how humanitarian we actually are. Here comes the topic which I have dedicated this blog post of mine to. Actually someone always witness what we do and how we do it and besides all this what is the intention that we are having in our mind while doing anything. That being is known to us as the god almighty.

 

No matter what we do, or if we do it for someone else or ourselves, or we do it in seclusion or in front of thousands of people; someone always keeps a close watch on us and witness all our deeds and that being is god. Here some can argue that what about those who do not believe in god? The answer is that god always doesn’t mean that a superpower being is looking at you; this god has a deeper meaning. That god sometimes is our conscience-our mind’s power to tell what is right and what is wrong. No matter how secluded we are, this self conscience always keeps a close watch on us and not only does it tells us what is right or wrong but it also enables us to feel extremely powerful while getting involved in philanthropy. Similarly if we are taking any action to make someone happy or just to impress someone or to portray ourselves in a particular manner, this self conscience tells us that it is wrong no matter how desperately we want to do it. But all this realization happens with us only when we are self aware and know how to demarcate wrong from right. The gist is that our actions should not be based on our desire to portray ourselves in specific way or to take it just to impress others for their happiness and blessing or favors by them in return. It also should not be just for getting the desired result from the god. It solely should be based after analytic scrutiny that whatever we are doing is justified and good and in case of charity or philanthropy, whatever we are doing is for other person’s welfare who is concerned and not for “our” benefit. If the inner self tells us that yes this is right then do it and if no, then don’t do it. There is no need to show or prove it to someone all this while because our god always watches us and our conscience knows whether our actions are right or wrong and it is our god who blesses us for our deeds and not the people concerned or other spectators.

 

By-Shekhar Srivastava

What is inner life actually?

“The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surrounding”, this quote by Swiss philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel is very relevant to people in today’s world.

Every man has two lives that he lives in this one life. Thinking about our success, what we want to achieve in life, what material wealth we want to possess etc are all a part of our outer life which we live very actively. We feel joy, sorrow, agony, frustration and experience many emotions as a result of our surroundings. But, deep inside we all have one life which remains intact of all these worldly affairs. That is the inner part which doesn’t become week with our growing old age but becomes younger and nourished with each passing day once we realize about its existence. This inner part is our inner life.

Inner life is not a religious or spiritual term. It is ones connection with himself. If the person is not connected with himself, he is like without soul. Living for earning money and fame, not thinking what he actually wants in life, what makes him peaceful, or what makes him satiated with life and himself means that his inner life is not active and he is not in the connection with himself.

Being a social animal, attending parties and having hundreds of friends also cannot make us feel satisfied in life if we are not satisfied with what we do. “What would people think about us if we do this?” , “I should do that because my friend has done that” ,”that job is lucrative.” “ I should do this because others feel good while doing this”… all these statements coming in our minds imply that we are doing things in life not because we want it but because we see our surroundings and feel like doing them. This means that we are slave of our surroundings.

A person with no inner life basically is one who lives life by seeing others around him, wants to do what others are doing, and tries adapting his surroundings. In these circumstances, when he is not surrounded by people, he feels that he doesn’t have anything to do for himself out of interest or wish and he feels all alone because he has no inner life.

Inner life makes us feel the emotions which are not germane to the repercussions of the actions that we take in worldly affairs to gain wealth or success. It, on the other hand, makes us feel the divine or peaceful happiness and satisfaction from either worldly affairs or from inside. In today’s world, every individual from waking up in the morning till going to sleep at night thinks about the affairs cause affect from outer side. But inner life deals with what we realize from inside. It totally depends on an individual as to what are the matters that he or she wants to think upon. For example, if a person is going through a phase in which he has been betrayed, it totally depends upon him if he wants to continue it to disturb him for life or he wants to make it a past and move ahead. A person with an inner life will not think about it for a long time and would move ahead with taking it as a learning experience. But the fact is that most of us are not even aware of what an inner life is and how does it make us happy and satiated in life.

A person without inner life is like the one devoid of an arm or a leg; this is indeed true but with an inevitable fact that even a person without an arm or leg can have an inner life which can make him much more satiated and happy in life than a person with leg and arm and that too with all the material possession of life because despite of having all the wealth and possessions and having realized all the dreams seen by him, if he does not know how to be happy and satisfied with his life, all the wealth possessed by him would be like the piece of pebbles and stones. If we won’t be able to realize the blissful joy and our conscience is dormant, then no matter what we do, achieve, and possess, we will always be unhappy in professional life as well as our personal relationships with only few transitory happy events.

Man has always been in dilemma about his existence on earth and has been trying to know it. But as the time passed, man stopped living in caves all alone and started living in communities. He developed many traits which vanished the thought that he had in mind regarding the prime goal of existence of its race on planet but as we say no one can go outside the cycle of the nature, man, after six millions of years of its existence on earth is again moving forward towards the fact that without an inner life, he is nothing more than an animal. The ways to realize inner life has changed though today for humans all over the globe. Some try to find it with their religious texts, some with the help of preachers, some by living solitude on mountains and travelling and some by not believing in any of these mediums but with the notion that humans are about humanity and no one is above it and if we really want to live life with an ultimate joy and bliss, we will have to understand that living only for one’s own inner peace, happiness and satisfaction won’t let us realize and live our inner life. And having the feeling of compassion and empathy with self motivation and dedication with forgetting the barriers that man has made on the basis of country, color, caste and creed would make it the easiest way to achieve the ultimate bliss and joy with an active inner life.

 

By-Shekhar Srivastava