Thirty years ago, there was so much prejudice towards spirituality and wisdom. People would want to keep it at arm’s length and believed that it was not for them. Today, there is acceptance. People are willing to try it and once they see that it benefits them, they are less prejudiced.
Life comes to us like a gift, a very charming gift, but we seldom open it. It’s all about opening ourselves and being open. Life is a gift wrapped in golden paper, which is waiting for each one of us to unwrap. Many of us are too formal, but such an atmosphere is not conducive to knowledge.
We need to be in an informal atmosphere to know something about ourselves and gain deep wisdom. When you meet somebody, you ask, “How are you?” Now I have a question for you. Did you really greet the person or did you do it as a formality? Most of the time we exchange pleasantries, we really don’t mean it.
But, if the same words come to you from your grandmother, they carry some energy, some vibrations, and some presence. Life becomes so dry and the world becomes charmless when we relate at a superficial level. In the coming decades, the biggest challenge in the world will be mental depression. Belongingness can create a better atmosphere and environment around us. It is for us to create that environment.
Can you feel at home with everyone? Then you can truly say you have evolved. For that, we need to go within. A baby smiles 400 times a day, a teenager only smiles 17 times, and an adult hardly smiles. We don’t smile from our hearts.
Why is that? It is the stress and the tension that we carry. Meditation can help you get back to your nature, which is pure innocence. Then a smile comes from deep within, that nobody can snatch from you. We should all dream of a stress-free and violence-free world, one where there is total belongingness.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji
