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Behind today's rituals
This is how all the rituals of today emerged, and their real spiritual meanings are worth understanding. However, we kept doing them only because we observed others around us doing them, or our ancestors or parents asked us (or forced us) to do them.
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects,performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence.
Fasting
Fasting is primarily an act of willing abstinence or reduction from certain or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time. An absolute fast is normally defined as abstinence from all food and liquid for a defined period, usually a single day (24 hours), or several days. Other fasts may be only partially restrictive, limiting particular foods or substances. The fast may also be intermittent in nature. Fasting practices may preclude sexual intercourse and other activities as well as food. So that AT LEAST for one day one may focus on CREATION and not live life 'by default'.
💡 CORRECT UNDERSTANDING:
All that one needs to abstain from is negative thinking. Eating what you like, wearing what you want, looking good, or having sex - none of these are wrong. Overdoing them or being dependent upon them for feeling good may be detrimental to your well-being, but doing them as part of your normal life course was, is, and will never be wrong. Fast from Shopping, if you can 😂
#ganeshfestival.
Ganesh Festival
As we humans started facing obstacles and problems in life, we started worshiping various deities, mostly in symbolic form - at a personal level.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
(endeared as Lokmanya) reinstated the celebration of the Ganesh festival to bring unity, fun, and happiness among communities. Today, although everyone celebrates the Ganesh festival with lots of love, the focus is more on loudness, drinking, dancing, making REELS, YouTube videos and less on rituals, purity, and godliness.
Rituals emerged with the intention of bringing discipline and focus into our lives, so that we could sit at one place and not generate negativity at least during those few moments. We were given positive words in various languages (e.g. Sanskrit), and due to the mere Belief that saying / pronouncing those words would bring goodness (or well-being) into our lives, goodness (or well-being) actually came into our lives. That's what the Law of Attraction essentially is. It works at the level of our faith. It's all about Faith, Trust, and Belief, you see.
💡 CORRECT UNDERSTANDING:
We all believe that it is Lord Ganesha who comes and removes obstacles and brings peace into our lives, but let's understand this more deeply. We are the CREATORS of our own Obstacles and Problems. We bring ourselves in capricious places due to our own wrong thinking, wrong decision-making, wrong choices, or, what we often call, wrongdoings.
Therefore, we have to work on ourselves, clear our own obstacles, and bring peace, happiness, health, wealth, love, righteousness, and prosperity into our lives. That happens through a Quiet Mind, and the only way to quieten your Mind is to LET GO. LET it GO towards that which we consider GOD.
As we all know, Lord Ganesha has the head of an elephant, which is one of the most sane, stable, intelligent, and strong animals on the planet, and has some features that can remind us of our inner virtues, and help us inculcate that stability, intelligence and strength within us. Humans always consider it reliable to rely on an external entity (especially a deity), who acts as our guardian, our guide and someone whom we can consider responsible for ourselves, and we lovingly devote ourselves to such a deity.
So, the Ganesh Festival is a great festival, and I personally believe it is a more spiritual festival than a religious festival, and if celebrated with the right understanding, it can truly bring all that we desire into our lives. Let us celebrate it with even more external joy and enthusiasm. Let us dance, play music, share eatables, and do all the rituals, but at the same time, let us also continuously work on correcting ourselves wherever required. That is what will bring good luck into our lives.
#halloween.
Halloween
HALLOWEEN means 'Holy Evening', a day celebrated in the remembrance of the dead, to remember them, to learn from them. That is how it originated.
However, as we humans moved ahead on our timelines of life, we wanted more fun and less seriousness on such occasions, moreover, to not scare the children, we converted this day into a more fun-filled occasion. Actually, Halloween has got nothing to do with vampires and zombies or anything scary. Definitely nothing to do with drinking alcohol.
It's just that if you live your life in the past, you will always remain a SCARED or FEARFUL person. It's about letting the PAST be the past, and an opportunity to move ahead in life from this point on. Today is when many people (esp. who follow Christianity) abstain from meat (non-vegetarian food). Have we ever wondered why?
#eid.
Ramadan / Ramazan Eid
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, in which it is believed that the Quran was revealed. Our Muslim brothers and sisters observe Fasting (i.e. no consumption of food / liquids) during this period of 29-30 days. Celibacy (refraining from sexual relations with one's spouse) is practised. Charity, Worship, Pilgrimage are also practiced during this important period. Our Muslim brothers and sisters refrain from smoking, alcohol, sinful behavior, such as false speech, insulting, backbiting, cursing, telling lies, fighting, etc.
The Quran is the central religious text of Islam, which is believed to be the verbatim word of God, hence this period is considered to be highly important. Quran mentions about God, His messengers like Jesus Christ, and considers Muhammad as restorer of an unaltered original monotheistic faith of all other prophets. These were those delicate times when they all wanted to say that GOD IS ONE. Muhammad also strongly spread the message of monotheism (i.e. Oneness of God), however, we humans forgot it over hundreds and thousands of years, and today, in fact, we fight with each other over religions and religious beliefs that were actually established to unite us.
Let's try to understand and learn from the gist of Ramdan. Eating tasty food is not wrong. Watching entertaining movies is not wrong. Going on luxury vacations is not wrong. Having sex is not wrong. It's the dependency - on anything for one's happiness - that's wrong. I use the word "wrong", because it ends up backfiring. When you are dependent on something for your happiness, you are always negatively focused on it. You fear its loss, and that's exactly what ends up taking it away from you. That's the Law of Attraction in action, you see. That's where the strict practice of positivity, love towards one another, honesty, and discipline (over a period of 30 days) highly benefits our lives. It has now been scientifically proven that 30 days are necessary and sufficient to change one's Thoughts and Habits, but it's so wonderful to see that this practice is going on for thousands of years now. Science was known then as well, you see.
Today, in life, we are so engrossed and running in our lives that it has become very easy and natural for us to get angry over small-small things, tell lies, go shopping at least once a week to feel good, watch a movie at least once a week to relieve ourselves of that stressful week at work, and, while doing none of it is wrong, we are only taking all these external conditions and using them to feel happy. That's the reverse of how the actual CREATION process works. This is a Universe based on energy and vibrations. Everything that is happening in this world is happenng by the virtue of the energy that we all are emitting out into the Universe. Everything that we are receiving back in life is the result of the energy that we are emitting out into the Universe individually.
On the first page of this website itself I've mentioned that we are CREATORS, not mere CONSUMERS. So, if we get habituated or addicted to consuming something from outside instead of creating it from within (after feeling good first), we are trapping ourselves into the vicious cycle of dependency... and you'll read this many times on the website that dependency has a high factor of uncertainty involved in it. That is the cause of pain, because NOTHING outside is in our control. The only thing that is in our control is what we Think, how we Feel, what we Believe in, and how we Respond to the world outside. And yes, once we bring all of this under control, everything in life starts coming under our control.
Do you now understand why my Activities are 30 days long? 😊
#ugadi.
Ugadi / Gudi Padwa
Ugadi means Yug + Aadi i.e. the beginning of a new age.
Ugadi is when we all start living the same lives with the same people and circumstances, but with new Thoughts, Beliefs, Behavior, Perceptions, Ideas, Words, and Actions.
Besides sending bulk WhatsApp messages and bathing in water with neem leaves, on this Gudi Padwa, let us also try to curb the negativity inside, and emerge the purity and power that is hidden within. Only then, we can radiate those true wishes to those around.
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