By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar| Posted on : January 21, 2021
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar shares how we can practice bliss (Santosha- the second yoga niyama) to come out of sadness. Read on to feel better now.
Seeing your life and the whole universe as one unit of energy takes you out of the chatter of separateness, which is just an illusion we create.
Energy is like a rainbow
Vedanta, the highest knowledge, is about letting go and letting be. What are you letting go of? The smallness. And let be. You say “let be” but it’s not correct, because whether you let be or not, it will be there. The energy is always there.
So energy, form, is like the rainbow. Whatever color is there, it is still light. It doesn’t matter whether it’s blue, green, yellow, orange, or violet. It’s one light! In the same way, all different emotions, all different feelings are also part of one light, one energy.
How wisdom or ignorance shapes your emotions
When there is ignorance, you call that the energy of anger or sadness. Sadness is also energy, I tell you! Energy with ignorance is sadness. Energy with wisdom is bliss! The same energy becomes bliss!
You have a long face and that’s also energy. But that energy is what? With ignorance, with all the mental gymnastics that you go through, it becomes negative energy. We call those negative feelings because they restrict you. But still, it’s energy. The same energy becomes positive with wisdom.
That one field of consciousness from where everything has come, in which everything is, and which is everything, is called Brahman. That’s what the Brahma Sutra or Vedanta is all about. It's life, it’s sustenance, and it’s dissolution. It’s all from that which is conscious: Brahman.
The Brahman is all around us. It’s always there. This energy is wisdom, knowledge, and when it’s practiced, it’s bliss. It manifests as bliss. With ignorance, the same energy manifests as sadness, anger, rage, jealousy, all of those feelings.
Practicing bliss is like practicing cleanliness
So, if you can be sad, you can be blissful, too. If you’re sad, that means you have the ability to be blissful. And to be blissful, you need to practice it. Contentment (santosha) is also a practice.
In the same way cleanliness, or saucha is also a practice. You can’t say cleanliness will happen all by itself. You need to brush your teeth. You need to take a shower. You need to keep things clean.
Similarly, when dust comes and sits on you, you need to shake it off. Even dogs do it. If water or dust sits on them, they just shake it, shake it, and get rid of it. Any animal does. It’s in nature, so we need to practice it.
Cleanliness (saucha) needs to be practiced. Similarly, santosha (contentment), and happiness also need to be practiced. But if we’ve practiced, or conditioned our mind to be miserable, to be unhappy, then we remain in that energy only. It’s the same energy, and we have to decondition it and make our energy radiate bliss and happiness.
It’s not a very difficult thing. It’s not a big thing. Just a little wisdom, a little practice, is all it takes. Practice being happy, make it a habit to be content and happy, that’s what it is.
You can shift your energy
With practice, the Brahman, the infinite energy, appears to be bliss. It manifests as bliss. Otherwise, in ignorance you are attached to small things here and there, and then you remain miserable.
So, if you’re miserable it’s really because of your habit. You’re habituated to be miserable. I tell you, you have the ability to shift that. You can habituate yourself to be happy, to be content, to be blissful. You need to know that. This is the essence of practice.
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