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The Art of Being You
SRI SRI PUBLICATIONS
All of us are looking for happiness, love and moments of peace in our lives. In this positive and life-altering book, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar reminds us that we carry within ourselves what we are seeking in the world. With gentleness and humor,Sri Sri describes the habits and patterns of behavior that cause us to lose our joy and tells us how we can find that joy again. Ultimately, this is a deeply practical book that can uplift and heal—not only each of us as individuals, but potentially the entire planet. —CAROL KLINE, co-author of the New York Times bestsellers Happy for No Reason, and Love for No Reason A magnificent, heartfelt rendition of the early teachings of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on the art of being one’s self, living up to one’s potential and embracing and loving life. Tools are provided to help make this happen. Those of you who first meet Sri Sri through Judith will understand why millions around the world respect his wisdom. — MYRON S. SCHOLES, Nobel Laureate in Economics An insightful guide to the practice of being contemplative—to being fully present in the present moment. This book is simple and readable and yet profound. Because I believe the art of contemplative living is the key to our personal and collective futures, I see this as a very important book. —SISTER DONALD CORCORAN, OSB cam, Writer, Lecturer, Prioress of Transfiguration Monastery
Praise For The Art of Being You
Judith Clark has patiently gathered the teachings of the living master, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and lovingly organized, amplified, and celebrated them. The result is a treasure of uplifting insight and inspiration, filled with practical answers to the questions of life and spirit. Her gift is that she has made his wisdom so accessible to us, so able to soothe, reassure, and enliven us. This is a book to be kept close at hand and dipped in regularly, a book as refreshing as a spring breeze.
—PETER STRANGER, Communications Executive and Environmental Activist
This surprisingly practical book reminds us that peace and strength are found within. It calms the mind and refreshes the soul. Pick it up, put it down and return to it often—it is a wellspring of helpful hints for living in our modern-day world.
—SCOTT SQUILLACE, Founder, Squillace & Associates, P.C.
This is not the kind of book I usually read, but when, by chance, I did pick it up, I read it straight through. There is something wonderful on every page.
—ALAN HEBEL, Founder, the Book Designers
Judith Clark has created a wonderfully accessible book presenting the life teachings of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. These teachings move beyond the boundaries of our separate faith traditions into a deep understanding that even as we all belong to God, so are we all in the process of journeying more deeply into God. This book is a gift which will help the reader do just that—simply, joyfully and peacefully.
—ALICE MINDRUM, Episcopal Priest
Illuminating and inspiring. The Art Of Being You is a profound yet accessible discourse on consciousness, and an invaluable guide on how to live the best life.
—EILEEN GREGORY, Co-Founder of Innergy, Documentary Filmmaker
Don’t miss this book—it will make every day a better day.
—AUSTIN MYERS, Motion Picture Costume Designer
THE ART OF BEING YOU
COMING HOME TO THE LOVE, JOY AND PEACE THAT YOU ARE
A PRESENTATION OF THE WORDS AND WISDOM OF
His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi ShankarBy Judith Clark
SRI SRI PUBLICATIONS TRUST
The Art of Being You
1
Edition: October 2011
Copyright 2011 © All rights reserved.
ePub Converted by Verse Innovation Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage orretrieval system without prior permission in written form from the publisher.
eISBN: 978 9 351 06639 2
Sri Sri Publications Trust,
The Art of Living International Centre,
21
km, Kanakapura Road, Udayapura, Bangalore - 560 082 Phone: 080-32722473 Email: info@srisripublications.com (mailto:info@srisripublications.com) Website: store.artofliving.org
For Addison, Jared and Nathaniel, and all the children of the world.
Acknowledgments
My deep appreciation to those who have supported the creation of this book from its beginning: Katherine, John and Chandler Clark; Peter and Camille Stranger; John Osborne; my friends and spiritual companions at St. Mary’s of the Harbor; and Birjoo Vaishnav. My appreciation also goes to Mary Gates and Janet Reinhart for their contributions to the text, to Terry Hiller and Hal Zina Bennett for their editorial counsel, and to Rejean FaFard and Patrick Milot, who recorded many of the words in this book. And lastly, my unbounded gratitude goes to His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who has graced my life with his presence, wisdom and love.
Judith Clark
The object of spiritual life is to be amazed, to say, “Wow!” and wake up to the fullness of life here and now.
—SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR
Foreword
by Judith Clark
Some twenty years ago, at a time when few people in the United States or in the world knew who Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was, he offered to come to my home in Connecticut and gave a talk. I gathered some friends in my living room that evening to listen to him. When he had spoken for a while, he asked if anyone had a question. I did.
He had been explaining the importance of being with your feelings and that greatly troubled me. I was in psychotherapy at the time, where the guiding principle was ‘Be With Your Feelings’, but I had found that some feelings were too big and too overwhelming to allow in. I could not sit with them (I had tried!) and I did not want to. Now His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was sitting on my living room sofa and saying, “Be with your feelings.” When he asked if there were any questions, I raised my hand.
“What if that is hard to do?” I asked—putting it mildly. He responded by explaining—how to sit with feelings and go fully through them—exactly what I did not want to hear.
I was reluctant to press my point, but inside my question was still burning.
Sri Sri talked some more and then asked, “Are there any other questions?” Without a pause, he added, “Judy has a question.” He knew! Emboldened, I restated my question. “What if the feelings are so powerful— frightening actually— that you cannot let them in?”
He countered my question with another question: “How did you feel at that time?”
As I thought about that, the feeling itself came back and, to my own surprise, I heard myself say, “Helpless.”
“The feeling of helplessness is the beginning of true prayer,” he replied with a gentle smile.
The unexpected words brought a rush of relief. Helplessness was not the dead end as I had seen it to be, but a beginning place, a place where, I came to find, I had little to fear.
This book is based on the surprising wisdom offered by a man who walked into my life, without a context for me to put him in. His very figure—flowing white robes banded with gold trim, sandals, long black hair and beard—made him appear different from me and from anyone else I knew. Yet he reflected back to me a sense of myself that had been missing for a very long time.
As the time passed I found myself being led, through his words and his presence, to look at a great heart and find there the possibilities for my own. “All that you see in me, you will find in yourself also,” he would say.
What began with words had expanded in experience. The breathing practices and meditation that he taught led me to a growing sense of wonder and the familiarity of inner quietness, even to moments of transcending name, time and place, and to feel happy for no reason.
HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE
Sri Sri (as he is known) speaks somewhere in the world almost every day. It was my good fortune to hear many of his first talks, and, because he asked me to edit some of them, I had a reason to go over his words again and again. Those are words that have transformed the way I see myself and others, words that offer the possibility of peace to each one of us and to this troubled world. Because they have opened my heart and changed me, and because Sri Sri has asked me to, I have gathered his words together and created this book. I have provided transitions and examples where needed, but the words are basically his; an offering of wisdom that joins a long line of ancient sages who came before him.
This ultimately practical book calls you to fully experience who you are. It is Sri Sri’s gift to you. Enjoy unwrapping it.
SUGGESTIONS FOR READING THIS BOOK
This book is for you…where you are and as you are in your life right now. You may be feeling something is missing. Consider the possibility that nothing is missing, that there is nothing you lack.
This is a book to wonder upon. If you read Chapter One first, it will ground you in the amazing reality of who you are. Then you can either read it in sequence or be led by what interests you or by questions you may have. Keep the book nearby—on top of the TV, in your gym bag, by your bed—where you can easily pick it up and thumb through it. Your eyes may fall on words that seem to speak directly to you. If you find places that offer you comfort, you may want to rest there awhile. You may choose to revisit pages you have already read and perhaps find something you missed the first time around. You may also want to interrupt your reading and allow time for some new understanding to be absorbed.
From time to time, consider choosing one suggested action among the many that you will find here and incorporate it into your day. Forgive yourself for any mistake that you have made, stop blaming and complaining, let go of a past event that you have been regretting. As you do this, the words you read here will drop down from your head to your heart and you will more easily experience the love, joy, happiness, beauty and truth that you are.
What you know is of the greatest value when you apply it to your life. You may be amazed by what then happens.
As our tiny eyes can capture the vast sky, this body can reflect infinite being. This is possible here and now for everyone.
—SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR
Chapter One
An Introduction to Your Self
You are searching the world, looking for what you carry within.
One day you may experience an unfamiliar restlessness, a stirring within you. You may start to wonder about yourself and about your life. You push the feeling away, but it comes back again. Questions arise up in your mind: What am I doing here? What do I want out of life? Am I missing something? Who am I, really? These are important questions. They mark an awakening, the beginning of a quest—the quest to know yourself and your place in this universe. Count yourself fortunate if you are growing in the awareness of this dimension of life, or deepening your experience of it.
Don’t be in a hurry to find answers to your questions. One who is wise will not answer them for you. If anyone offers an answer, you would be wise to choose to stay with your question and wait for the answer to come on its own. Your questions are for you and you alone. Just be with them. They are sufficient to take you deep into yourself. They are the vehicle that will take you into that center core of your Being called ‘the Self’.
Every soul, every growing soul, knowingly or unknowingly, longs to make the journey back to the Self.
You may have experiences of this Self—a few seconds, a few minutes that seem to exist outside of time; a moment when the ordinary glows with beauty; the feeling of flowing out, perhaps, of having no boundaries. When these experiences come—believe in them. They are a reflection of your Self.
The Self is spirit in its purest form—eternal and unlimited spirit as it dwells in every individual. “Resting in the Self” refers to the experience of being centered in the spirit within. There you are aware of your oneness with the whole—with God and all of God’s creation.
An experience of Self is more likely to happen when stress, tensions, worries and anxieties are lifted from the mind. Prayer and meditation are helpful in coming to that experience. Until this realization happens, until you have the experience of the pure, vast, blissful Self within you, you are moving through life holding a beautiful gift without unwrapping it. All the charm and joy you see in the world is just wrapping paper—colorful and glittery. Inside you is the real gift-divinity itself.
When you begin to wonder about yourself, about your life, when you begin to look for something bigger, something more, the journey has begun. With patience and perseverance, it will lead you to experience life in its fullest and richest form. Count yourself fortunate if you are awakening to this dimension of life, or are desiring to deepen your experience of it.
In the center core of you, you are only bliss and love— nothing else.
WHO ARE YOU?
When you meet someone for the first time, how do you introduce yourself? Do you talk about the work you do or who you are, in relation to someone else—I am so and so’s spouse or friend or brother? Do you mention where you live, where you went to school, what organizations or what church you belong to?
All these things are subject to change. Today you are a teacher. Tomorrow you could be a cook! You have played many roles in life—you have been a student, an employee, a son or a daughter, a caretaker, a patient in bed—but you are much more than the sum total of all these roles. When you identify yourself with a role you are playing, you are fragmented, your life is compartmentalized and you are unaware of your full potential.
You need a right vision of who you are. You are not your relationships or the roles you play. You are not the sum of your thoughts and opinions; your changing moods; the feelings that rise and fall. These things come on their own and go on their own. It is your very nature to be joyful, peaceful and loving, and that remains the same for all eternity. That is who you are.
We think of love and joy and peace as emotions, but they are not emotions. They are states of being and they are always available. When you understand how to handle your negative emotions and thoughts (Chapter Three), you have taken a big steps toward being able to restore and maintain the love, joy and peace that you are. When you see that these qualities are the very essence of who you are—your heart will open more fully.
Everything is changing, isn’t it? Moods come on their own, stay for a while and go on their own. Different feelings rise and fall. Your opinions change, your body changes. In that moment, when you recognize that things are changing, you can be sure - there is something that is not changing. If you can observe change, then something opposite to it—something that can be called ‘non-change’—must also exist.
Could you recognize love if you had not known hate? Or plenty if you had not known lack? In the same way, if you can observe change, there has to be something that is not changing. That something, that is not changing is the essence of who you are—it is your nature to be joyful, peaceful and loving, and that remains the same for all eternity.
This unchanging aspect of you may be called the Self. This book, The Art of Being You, is an exploration of ways to come back to your Self, your true home, and experience the love, joy and peace that you are.
When you identify yourself by your nationality or your religion, it serves some purpose, but this is not the final truth. In divine creation the whole world is united. The search for this unity is the real spiritual journey.
Today wars and conflicts are happening all over the world in the name of religion. When people take a position: I am a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew; I am a Hindu or a Sikh or a Buddhist; and those who are not what I am, are not mine—division and conflict arise. It is fine to be proud to be an American or Mexican, Indian or Pakistani. With right understanding, these identities need not create division and separation.
Unfortunately, misunderstanding has divided human beings and torn apart society. In these circumstances, the values of unity, love and peace are lost. It is important to see that the identity we all share is that we are part of divinity and part of the whole human family. When the things that
All human beings have within themselves the ability to experience God.
distinguish us from one another—race, gender, nationality, religious tradition— are seen as subordinate to these two. When we have this understanding of who we are first, before our ethnic, religious, economic, or national identifications— separation does not happen and violence does not come up. Instead, when we see who we really are, compassion and generosity spring up. Then we can celebrate and enjoy all that we are; including that which makes us different from one another.
WHO IS GOD?
We are talking about the greatest of mysteries when we attempt to speak of God; mystery that which is partly revealed and partly veiled—is an affair of the heart.
We come to know God the same way, we come to know love. Though we have never seen love, we know with certainty that love exists, because we have experienced it. God can best be known through experience—perhaps a moment of deep silence, an unexpected feeling of peace, a sense of an unseen presence...
The limitations of language become very evident when we talk about our relationship to God. The word relationship implies—two separate entities have become linked in some way. Instead if we say that we are always connected to God, again there is a problem with regard to language. Connection also implies that two entities, which were once separate and now have been brought together. This is not so. There is no possibility of existing separately from God.
What happens when we perceive separation from God or from other people— we fall into an us-them mentality? First, division comes. When there is division, fear comes. In Sanskrit, perhaps the oldest language of the world, the word used for fear means ‘two’. In reality, there is no ‘two’. Separation does not exist. You cannot separate God from any of God’s creation. Separation is an illusion created in the mind. When you recognize that you and God are one; all of God’s creation is one whole—fear vanishes.
WHAT IS SPIRIT?
When you feel very happy, have you noticed that something in you expands? When you are upset or angry or sad, have you noticed a feeling of contraction? Something in you shrinks? What is this something that feels as if it is expanding or contracting? It is the spirit. When you feel expansive and happy, when you feel energetic, that is the spirit. When you feel down and your energy drops, you are not experiencing the spirit.
There are certain qualities that are associated with spirit. We can call them spiritual values. Here is a short list:
We all carry these qualities within us. They only need to be skillfully kindled. Just by paying your attention on them with sincerity and without being hard on yourself, you will enhance them in your life and in the lives of others. There is no lack of love, no lack of anything, whatsoever in you.
According to an ancient story, there was a beggar who sat every day on a particular spot. When he died, the people in his village said that he had spoiled the piece of land where he sat every day. “Let us dig out the mud from here and throw it away,” they said. When they broke down his small hut and started digging where he used to sit, they found a box full of treasure. The poor beggar spent his whole life in poverty, if he had dug down just a little bit, he could have been a wealthy man.
Each one of us has come into this world to contribute, to express love, joy and peace, that we are, but we can remain unaware of our wealth for whole lifetime. Count yourself fortunate if you have awakened to the reality of who you are.
WHAT YOU CAN DO How to get back to your Self? Wanting to get back— having a passion to get back—is the first step, the first qualification. When you close your outside door, an inner door opens. When you keep thinking about people, situations and the circumstances of your life, you will be completely lost in that. Just for a little while, shut that outside door. Don’t think, “This person is bad, that person said something unkind.” In this you are lost. When you shut the door to these things, an inner door opens and one day there will be only love. That’s all. Innocence, goodness and love.
WHAT MORE YOU CAN DO Which of the spiritual values that were listed earlier are important to you? Is there any value on the list that surprises you—something that you wouldn’t have thought of as spiritual? Would you add anything? Make your own list by circling qualities that you would like to increase in your life and in the world. Add qualities that you observe in others and yourself, which you value. You might want to choose one quality from your personal list and focus on expressing that in your life for sometime. Be sincere. Let what you do or say come from your heart. Then take note of how you feel when you have expressed yourself in this way. Also notice—how the people around you respond.
These spiritual values are common to all major cultures and religious traditions, and to all people. Spirituality is a way of life based on these common values. To see the distinction between religion and spirituality, we can think of a banana. Religion is the banana skin; it gives us outer rituals and codes of conduct—a way of life. Spirituality is the banana, the quest for the source of life—going back to the source and knowing deep within us we are part of Divinity. Sometimes people mistakenly hold on to the skin and throw away the banana.
When this distinction between religion and spirituality becomes clear, the journey to the source begins. Then we become united to that principle that has enormous intelligence and orderliness, and lies beneath all existence, beneath every happening. All wealth lies within. Remember, there is no lack of love in you, no lack of anything whatsoever.
