Increase first the Capacity to Enjoy
The ways of enjoyment in this world can be categorised into two segments.
1 Physical in this real world
2 Ego centric
First Segment of Enjoyment
We are accustomed to accumulating the means of enjoyment. Our sensory enjoyment gets naturally restricted to what we can perceive through our sense organs. This can be good music, good food, good fragrances, good clothes, good scenery etc. We can’t enjoy something if it is not perceivable through our senses. The common denominator of this power is money. If we have enough money power, we can ‘buy’ these objects of enjoyment.
There is another realm of our enjoyment. It is the satisfaction of our intellectual mind and rational thinking faculty. We enjoy hearty discussions on various subjects.
We also enjoy giving creative expression to our various faculties like painting, singing, sculpting, writing poetry, acting etc.
Second Segment of Enjoyment
Above all these objects and ways of enjoyment, we enjoy the satisfaction of our Ego. We enjoy when people appreciate us, clap for us, give us more likes on facebook and twitter and instagram, when we get high respect in Socieyt, when we get special privileges, when we are given high ‘Status’ in our Society.
In the case of the First Segment, our physical realm, Sri Anand Yoga substantially increases our CAPACITY to Enjoy. SAY sharpens and enhances the power of our sense organs. These sense organs are eyes (for seeing), nose (for smelling), ears (for hearing), tongue (for tasting), and skin (for touching or feeling). Then there is a very important sixth sense organ of our Mind. This is done through various yogic practices of SAY.
Throughout our early part of life we struggle to accumulate wealth. When the time comes to enjoy this wealth, we are severely limited by our health condition in later part of our life. We get various ailments like senility, diabetes, hypertension and reduced capacity of all of our bodily functions. We can’t carry our wealth to our after life. We have to abruptly leave everything behind when the final call comes.
SAY believes in ENJOYING life HERE AND NOW and not at some future date. We should enjoy life in all its facets, and not just restrict ourselves to a few items. Enjoyment of life is the primary reason for our birth on this planet. This is the core philosophy of Sri Ananda Yoga. It is also the core principle of this manifested universe. We should live a life which is rich in our enjoyments of various bounties nature has to offer to us. And for this purpose we need to increase the capacity of our sense organs, including mind, to enjoy.
A natural question will arise as to how can we enjoy life when we don’t have enough of financial resources? There is a secret law of universal abundance. As per this law, universal abundance is ever ready to shower on us its bounties in direct proportion to our ‘readiness’ to accept them. Increasing the capacity of our sense organs is one of the factors to make us ‘ready’ for accepting universal abundance. There are other parts of the sadhana of SAY which makes this ‘readiness’ complete. This will be discussed separately.
Second Segment of Enjoyment
Let us come to the second segment of enjoyment - satisfaction of our inflated Ego. Here SAY makes a radical shift in our focus. We live in a ‘self centric’ manner but not in a ‘selfish’ manner. Let us understand how.
Self Centric implies keeping focus on satisfaction of our ‘Self’ and acting out from the central point of our ‘Self’. This life is our ‘Self in Action’. This does not mean we live to the exclusion of others. We live in a ‘Self Centric’ manner while including the whole universe in our realm of life. This concept may sound rather difficult to digest. This is because we are all along taught about the religious, ethical and moral concepts of ‘self-less’ service. SAY firmly believes that there is no living without our Self in it. All service is ‘self-full’ rather than ‘self-less’. Even the concept of doing Charity involves the satisfaction of our Ego. It assumes the other does not possess things which we are giving it to him out of a sense of pity for him. The donor expects at least an expression of ‘Thank You’ from the recipient. This becomes ‘egocentric’. If the recipient does not say ‘Thank You’ to us or receives our things and then ignores us, we feel hurt. This is a clear sign of ‘egocentric’ action.
In SAY, we do not do any ‘Charity’. We do not feel any ‘pity’ for others. We have a sense of ‘oneness’ with this whole world - which is but an extension of our larger Self. Instead of feeling ‘pity’ for another person, we feel ‘compassion’ for him. Feeling pity involves a sense of separation from me and him. Feeling ‘compassion’ involves a sense of ‘oneness’ with the other person. Compassion means my heart beats in passion with him. Compassion originates in the heart. Sense of ‘pity’ originates in the ‘mind’ which is the seat of our Ego. In SAY we do ‘share’ with others rather than give them donations out of pity. This sharing is for mutual enjoyment. It is like a mother sharing sweets with her child. Mother is not doing any charity for the child. She is not doing any donation of sweets to the child. She does not expect a ‘Thank You’ note from the child, and therefore there is no question of having her ego getting hurt. She just shares the good things with her child and immensely enjoys watching the child enjoy. This feeling of ‘sharing’ comes from her compassionate heart and not from her ego-mind. In a similar way, SAY sadhak enjoys ‘sharing’ his bounties of nature with the whole universe and in the process enjoys it also. There is no concept of ‘sacrifice’ in SAY. There is only ‘sharing’ in SAY.
In this way we give our Ego a secondary role. There are specific practices in SAY to keep our Ego subdued to our SELF. Therefore rather than increasing our capacity to satisfy our Ego (unlike we do in the case of the first segment when we increase our capacity of our sense organs), we ELIMINATE the concept itself. This is a major breakthrough in living a harmonious and inherently happy life without all the complications brought about with the involvement of our Ego. We wish to reiterate, we do not achieve this with ‘self-less’ service but rather with ‘self-full’ service as explained above.
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