With the advent of spirituality into our lifestyle, especially from the past 10 years, our innate nature is being brought out from deep within us.
Spirituality is now becoming an integral part of our lifestyle in various walks of our life, right from the culture of offering prayers in the puja room as early as in the morning to offering prayers before retiring to the bed in the night. We have made prayers at different levels and in different situations.
Of late, we notice that prayers have been predominantly evident in the sports arena, especially during cricket matches. They have become an essential part of us. These prayers offered with intense devotion make us focus on our hearts.
We have started feeling an intense yearning to see and feel the God within ourselves as well as elsewhere too.
Our prayers are mostly wishing for better health, successful accomplishment of our work or wishing
well for our near and dear ones. When our prayers are answered we feel good, if not, we still don’t lose hope. Whatever may be the result, we continue to offer our prayers to the God.
How does the God work? The God works in the manner that every prayer from us offered to him is like a clarion call.
All our seers and sages from the past to the present, based on their own mystical experiences,
say that the God responds instantly.
Sages from the Upanishadic tradition, through their spiritual way of living or soul style and through their teachings, teach us to increase our subtlety so as to be able to hear the inner voice of our own consciousness loud and clear.
For this they prescribe us to do selfless service every weekend for about four hours continuously at a charity hospital or any charity organisation such as an old-age home or orphanage. When you do this kind of a selfless seva, you learn to become true to yourselves looking at the lives of the destitute.
Our bhakti or devotion along with humility increases by leaps and bounds. Then, we will be able to feel that our prayers to the God are being answered and then go further inwards touching the subtle levels of our consciousness.
Saints call it the antarvani or ‘the inner voice of your soul’. This voice is mellifluous, very sweet and soothing. It makes us reach the bottom of our soul to give us subtlety and ananda (bliss).
In this state, the vibrations of our mind and heart become clear and the flow of grace in the form of vibrations that were hitherto only intermittent now becomes perennial like a river. We become subtler.
Through shabda—the voice and naada—the melody, the sound of reverberating Om is heard by us from deep within. In spiritual terms this is naada brahman and shabda brahman. So go ahead and feel the subtlety and the supreme sense of awareness of your blooming consciousness.
This is what all the enlightened beings have felt and realised.
ashram-india@shrinimishamba.org