By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s New Year’s message encourages us to serve and uplift others and go beyond the challenging times of 2020 to embrace 2021!
2020 has brought so many challenges for people all over the world. Nobody expected to be in lockdown. Nobody expected to be just confined to their own homes and working from home. Schools were shut all over the world. It has posed many challenges and made our lives richer in experience. It has made us wiser in our outlook towards life.
A resolute mind and the treasure within
With this as background, let’s welcome the new year 2021 with a resolute mind. To take the human race forward towards a peaceful and much happier society. With this as a background, now it’s time to welcome the new year 2021 with zeal and enthusiasm, with courage and confidence, a resolute mind to work for the cause of upliftment of mankind!
It’s a time when we need to really think about the mental health of the planet. We have to think about the safety and security of senior citizens. It’s a time to innovate new methods and ways to make life more comfortable both inside and outside. This is an opportunity for young people to be more innovative. No point in sitting and sulking about the year gone by.
We have to come up with more enthusiasm. Meditation and spiritual wisdom will get us there. Let’s spend a little more time this year going within, finding the peace within, finding the treasure that we all have within. Let’s balance our life with the right amount of activity and service to society, service to people around us. We should do this now.
Are you stuck in time?
Let’s resolve to spend a little bit more time for meditation, for developing the wisdom within us, and to share the lovingkindness that we all have within us. If you see among us that there are those who are stuck in time, they only keep thinking about the past. They’re bothered about the past and the future.
They’re stuck in time and there are those who move with the time and there are those who move the time. Now, figure out, where are you? Are you stuck in time? Are you flowing with the time, or are you those fortunate ones who change the time?
Wherever we are, we need to keep moving. And then, among those who change the time, you should know that there’s a state which is beyond time. Let’s reach that state where beyond time we realize the whole universe, the whole world, is nothing but one big life, one eternal life, one undivided life force.
Meditation is the way to move from one step to another.
Challenges, resilience, and human values
So, on this last day of 2020, it’s good to reflect how time swept you through different events and has now brought you to a New Year. Look at the year that has passed and the experiences it has brought you. Like every year, 2020, too, offered you gifts, while the challenging times made you more resilient.
While the lockdowns and social distancing kept people apart, technology brought nations together. Millions across the globe came together, virtually, to meditate twice each day. With the help of technology, we reached out to hundreds and thousands of distressed and anxious minds, and helped them regain the strength to carry on!
Across all nations, the year 2020 brought home the most important lesson that human values cannot be compromised. Love, compassion, a sense of belongingness, gratefulness for what you have, and a vision for the whole world have to dawn in every life!
Celebration as service
The pandemic forced millions of people globally to face the reality of illness and death, experience anxiety and fear. Now at this time of the New Year, many wonder, “So many people lost their lives, how can we celebrate?” If you arrange a party just to satisfy yourself, when your celebration is aimed merely to gratify yourself, to draw pleasure from it, then you will definitely feel guilty.
But if your intention is to uplift those around you, your friends, family, loved ones, neighbors, then don't delay it! In such a scenario, the celebration itself, even if it is virtual, becomes an act of service.
When your celebration becomes your service, you’ll find there’s no guilt.
Time is the gift of life
From the ashes of 2020 and the ushering of 2021, we have a great responsibility to uplift the collective consciousness of the world. A new creation has come in and, with it, a new hope for everyone on the planet. And I am certain that all of us here have the capacity to not only uplift ourselves but also those around us.
So in the coming year, let’s celebrate with the intention of bringing knowledge and happiness to everyone, to awaken everyone to the fact that everything is impermanent. What’s eternal? It’s the spirit of our consciousness: it doesn’t change, it has no life nor death.
Remind everyone that life on a higher plane is eternal. Let’s celebrate every moment and be grateful, for time is a gift to us.
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