ATMA SHAKTICIRD (North America) Volume V - Issue 1 Jan 2010

Dear Readers,

The Center for Inner Resources Development – North America has many activities planned in 2010 to help us all go deeper into our personal quest for harmony, peace, and wisdom. As you may have just read, Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha along with Nutan Swamiji and Ma Gurupriya will be coming to the US in the Spring of this year to conduct a retreat, classes, and satsangs. Our new website to be released shortly will provide details and regular updates about our activities.

In this issue, we present to you Swamiji’s fundamental teachings from various perspectives in the feature article, Q&A section, and the audio clip accessible on page 3. To access the previous version of the newsletter, please click here. We wish all of you a wonderful year ahead! We look forward to hearing from you and meeting you in the coming months.

Spiritual and Professional Excellence

[Poojya Swamiji was invited by a Management Association to address its members. The association felt the need of expert advice on achieving professional excellence and sought Poojya Swamiji’s guidance. Here is an extract from the talk, which had been titled - ‘Spirituality – The Missing Dimension in Professional Excellence’]

Today my purpose is to present before you the relevance of spirituality as far as professional excellence is concerned. Any professional person wanting to gain professional excellence must have a fairly good mastery of the branch of knowledge he deals with. And I am sure that you professionals are performing well in this level. I compliment all of you for the object knowledge (professional knowledge) that you have. Mark my words – object knowledge.

But mind you, a professional is primarily a spiritual person. In as much as you are a spiritual person, you must have spiritual knowledge also, i.e., the knowledge of the ‘Subject’ the ‘Knower’ in you. Do you know the difference between the object and the subject? Whenever I look at a wall, it is the object of perception for me.

The perceiver is the subject. In all the interactions that you have, at the sensory, mental, intellectual, personal or professional level, are you the interacting subject, or are you the interacted object? Have you ever undertaken an examination of this nature? If you want to achieve professional excellence you must know the Subject in you.

In all your talks, you are the talker; in all the thoughts, you are the thinker; you are the subject personality

and whenever we refer to any quality like excellence, honesty, integrity, etc, they refer to the subject part of man, not the object.

A technically skilled engineer can be a failure in practical terms. What is the reason for his failure? Why is it that he is not able to bring forth efficiency from within him? Wherefrom will it come? Certainly not from the merely inert biological body! It has to come from the deeper levels – the Subject – of his personality.

Until you are able to understand yourself as a subject personality, as a spiritual personality, and then reflect upon the spiritual part, your excellence will not bloom forth. You will always be obsessed by failure. Ambition will overrule your mind, and fear will suppress you.

cont...

contd from pg. 1...

Any ambition, fear, doubt, or an undue fascination for something or the other will be acting as a constriction in your mind.

The mind must be able to work without constric-tions. If ambition is the constriction, it has to be dispensed with. If fear is subduing, we must be able to say good-bye to it. The mind, the spiritual factor, has to be made free, flexible, light and ever enthusiastic. How do we accomplish this feat?

My Dear Souls, all growth takes place from in-side to outside. Even in a plant or seed, there is no growth that ever takes place from outside to inside. Any kind of interaction, including profes-sional interaction, proceeds from the subject, the interacting spirit, and the consequence and out-come of the interaction also falls on the mind- on the interacting subject. Everything whatsoever has its origin in the subject spirit, it has its termi-nus and destination also in the subject spirit. The moment you understand it, your view would be widened, deepened, and elevated.

“ T h e pleasure should

be in rightly striving, not in getting. Shift the joy from the

fruition level of your work, to the very beginning of your rightful work:

‘striving’. Then see what happens!”

- Swamiji

Ask Swamiji

This is verily how anything grows in an individual. Generally, people hear or read something and feel little about it. May be some wish for or desire it. There it stops. How can a quality grow then?

The missing part is the inner association with what you desire. Think of a girl loving a boy. Won’t she think about him day in and day out? That even leads to her marrying that person, often despite all the obstacles she faces! If an individual can be possessed thus by a lifelong relationship, what pre-vents the same mind from acquiring enriching vir-tues and qualities?

Start this inner process of fondness for and assimi-lation of these virtues straightaway. What is the first quality you want to focus on now?

The earth is suspended or supported by nothing physical in space. Yet it revolves and preserves its trajectory unshakably for ages. What sustains this? The same is the truth with every other heavenly body.

Rely fully on the same Supreme Power from now on.

cont...

Q: What is Self Realization?

A: Self-realization is something very broad and comprehensive. People make the common mistake of regarding it as a mere point- a one-time event. This confusion should be first cleared. In its comprehensiveness, a number of virtues and excellences reign. As a seeker, try to know about these, one after another. To the extent you ensure that these have an important place in your mind, you will begin to feel ‘quietitude’ and joy.

To practice or pursue a virtue, one should spend as much time as possible mentally on it. That will then instill the virtue into your inner system. Once this is accomplished, it will begin to express in your thoughts, words, and deeds.

“Results of work should be

renounced or surrendered. It is not the objective outcome of

work that should be renounced by the worker. No work be designed or

taken up without the result objective. Surrender, dedication or renouncement is not for object results. They are for the

mind’s inner reactions or results.”- Swamiji

For our next edition,

we invite you to submit any questions you may

have for Swamiji, to clarify any of

your queries, doubts, or concerns. Email us at

askswamiji@cirdna.org

contd from pg. 2...

This reliance has nothing to do with That. But it has everything to do with your mind, yourself. Can you with heartiness and zeal raise yourself to this level of full-fledged reliance? In reality, it means imbibing a certain psychological dimension. If you are able to muster it, it will readily enrich and empower your mind ineffably. If the mind with reliance is greatly powerful, the one devoid of such reliance is a trifle. Gauge their difference and determine your choice. Try to remove one constriction after another from the mind: desire, hatred, fear, intolerance, irritation, ego, possessiveness and the like.

Try to delve into your mind, looking at its subtle working. Explore the vista that it is. What is thought? What is thinking? Who is the thinker? How are the three related? Mind you, all these are just within your body, felt and experienced by you every time. Such enquiry will take you to the mental vastness that hosts all these.

In this audio clip, Swamiji discusses the transformative effect of increasing Sattvic guna in our lives. The three gunas are Sattvic, Rajasic, and Tamasic which are associated with Essence/Purity, Activity, and Inertia respectively. This is a classical Vedantic model to track the progress of the mind. The term ‘sukha’ used in the audio clip denotes ‘happiness’. Please click here to listen to the audio clip.

Published & Copyrighted by CIRD (NA) To learn more, contact us at: C.I.R.D. North America, 8611 McHenry St., Vienna, VA - 22180.

Email: info@cirdna.org Website: http://www.cirdna.org

Swamiji Speaks Since it was first founded in 1998, near Delhi, India, Center for Inner Resources Development’s aim has been to help people discover and harness the unlimited resources they have within themselves.

CIRD (North America), a branch of the parent organization, has been setup for the explicit purpose of catering to the needs of people in this part of the world.

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“You see the world with senses.

But think deeply what supports and envelopes this

world. The answer will be the Supreme Reality. If the world is enveloped by the Supreme Reality,

is it the Reality-laden world, or world-laden Reality?”

- Swamiji