Last evening over dinner, my friend and I were discussing a topic close to both our hearts – travelling. I used to travel a lot as a child, thanks to my father’s transferable job. However, as an adult, opportunities to travel have been few and far in between. Of course, you never stop planning. After the first few illusory foreign trips, you settle for more realistic local destinations with your wallet rather than your wish calling the shots.
You know, realization and sense dawn on you soon enough once you start earning. You might just end up being the grandpa or grandma in those Kodak pics you see splashed all over screens…rather than the young adult you imagined before you started working on your dream! C’est la vie…
This got me thinking. If time is falling short for my material goals’ calendar, it must be running out for the spiritual calendar too. Somehow, I didn’t want to fall short of achieving my spiritual goals even more. Perhaps because I know they are the base for realizing any other goal I have in life.
What are spiritual goals?
By spiritual goals, I don’t mean to point to any faith. I mean goals that help us stay close to who we are. The ones that we want to define ourselves by. That connect us to our inner, more profound selves. So, I drew up a plan to achieve my spiritual goals - through my spiritual calendar. Some goals might be short term (within a year) and some long term (longer than a year). See if some of these coincide with the ones you have for your life.
1. Appreciate rather than depreciate
We all know that a good life is made up of positives rather than negatives. Still, we don’t think twice about complaining, griping, bad-mouthing and doubting – daily, hourly, and even, momentarily. So, my daily goals include
- Every morning, make a list of three good things in my life that make it worth living.
- Say one positive (and true!) thing to any three people in the day.
- Allow negative thoughts to pass me without analyzing or justifying them, as and when they come up within me.
2. Cleanse my physical and mental self
The motivation to follow a healthy diet has not been strong in me over the years. However, today, I feel that both my physical and mental make-up have contributed to lower levels of energy in me. I have become less patient and tolerant, and more irascible. Naturally, not desirable or endearing traits.
You are what you eat!
Is that a scary thought for you: the food you are eating is affecting your body and mind? Are you a junk food addict like most of us? What the trans fat and saturated fats present in junk food do is they form a covering around your organs that is invisible to the naked eye. So, you might be thin but still unhealthy, because of your diet. To make matters worse, fast food also adversely affects your mental health, increasing the risk of depression, and proclivity to violence.
Sugar and oil are, by nature, addictive. So, I think a clean break is required, rather than a slow and gradual one. So, the immediate goal is to stop eating sweets – cakes, ice creams, chocolates, marshmallows, and sundry sweets completely: for a month.
(Perhaps jaggery and honey can satiate that inborn, sweet tooth.)
Have you tried this before? I have and continued it for about two months. I felt cleaner and lighter in those two months. My body needed the ‘detox’. The strange thing was that I had to teach my tongue to like sweets at the end of those two months! I know what you’re thinking. I still did break my diet, right? Perhaps because I didn’t complement the physical exercise with some mental ones.
To be more in control of my mind, my goal is to meditate – daily twice a day for 20 minutes each. I believe it will help me deal with the good and bad stuff of life with equanimity.
3. Tie my tongue
The tongue is a potent organ: its powers of gluttony and verbosity are legendary! Becoming detached from it can, perhaps, help control it. I have, already, set out to control the gluttonous aspect of my tongue by following appropriate diets. My aim, here, is to also control its other use – talking.
I know I am unhappier after an argument even when I have the last say. So, my effort will be to try to present my views minimally, and with moderation. I will attempt to walk away from arguments without judgement, surrendering my opinionated self to the higher power. Just allowing silence to do the talking…a dignified, introspective silence (not a cold or bitter one).
The key word is surrender, I think. Like someone once said, “Allow no one to stoke the fire in you to burn yourself, use it to warm someone’s heart.”
4. Make a marked difference in the world I live in
I have been meaning to volunteer at a blind school, old age home, a terminally-ill hospital or orphanage for the last decade.
Now, it is not all just a romantic pipedream. I have, actually, volunteered to teach slum children: for a day. I have also gone to a spastic society and worked: for a week. Recently, I joined residents on our street to protest the dumping of garbage at a railway track nearby – for an hour.
Somehow, my good intentions were cut short by distance, stench, lack of cleanliness, and a lack of vision as to why I was there. However, I must admit that I really did like myself more when I volunteered. It made me feel like I was doing real work that mattered and making a small difference in the lives of the people I served.
So, I now have a target goal to volunteer at an orphanage/blind school near my place once a week for six months. To feel more in touch with the world I live in and contribute to it. This is a goal I have set for myself to begin within the next two months.
5. Go to a spiritual retreat
This might be a slightly longer term goal I set myself, say in the next three to five years.
What comes to my mind when I hear spiritual retreats or healing retreats is a Himalayan retreat! To reach those mind-boggling and mesmerizing heights is a goal for almost anyone who dares to dream!
Imagine the vast and winding green pastures to saunter in, under the blue sky, in pristine surroundings like you have never experienced before. More priceless than the most extravagant perfumes of the world!
Meditating in nature’s backyard, doing prananyamas in immaculately fresh air. And, truly feeling the strength of being with my very own, inner self.
Does this appeal to you?
If it does, closer home, you can also try a healing program or a silence retreat at The Art of Living Center.
6. Enjoying the journey rather than the destination
Do you run long distances daily to ensure that your status quo spot in life is still intact? This is the irony of our lives…that to stay in the same spot, we need to run long and hard.
Like most people, I also try to keep stead with life’s lightning pace reaching for those tall ambitions, trying to satiate endless pleasures (a commonly misspelt word that should, really, read ‘pressures’!) by incessantly running: physically or mentally. Of course, the goal of getting somewhere buoys us all.
Unfortunately, while looking over its shoulders at the ‘destination’, I don’t really see or enjoy the path I am traversing. And miss the fun of getting ‘there’. So, my goal is to live in and appreciate the present moment without worrying about the future or ruing the past.
Joy is never tomorrow. It is always now.
– Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
I have partly accomplished this one goal – as I enjoyed thinking about and writing this article, as I hope you did reading it!
Written by: ANUSHA CHELLAPPA
Based on inputs from Dr. PREMA SESHADRI, Faculty, ART OF LIVING
