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It was not until I had the privilege of being introduced to Jain philosophy and its living proponent, Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu, that I began to integrate meditation into living. Slowly, gradually, painstakingly, began to turn my focus around from death to life, from oblivion to awareness, from frustration to peace and from limited perception to universal outlook. He said, "Meditation teaches you to just be. Be in order to know what you are. There is nothing to be afraid of. You are life, presence, nothing but peace and bliss. Once you know what you are, you can be that which you know."
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I started to feel a new calmness in my heart. After hearing Gurudev give hundreds of talks on the nature of the Self and the nature of the mind, human potential, the law of vibrations, how to live beyond fear and disease, the art of meditation and a myriad of other topics, I really began to 'hear' him. The moment I said to myself, "I am here to heal my own mind", from that day I began to close the gap between the daily me and the greater I. I moved toward real wholistic health, living life with prosperity consciousness. I saw how I had lived so much of my life trying to be in control of people, outer circumstances, my death. Now I knew if I mastered my own mind. I did not have to try and control other nor did I have to look for a utopia or an escape. All I had to do Was watch myself live.
The watching process, called upayoga, made me more and more selective of my thoughts. I began to weed out the unhelpful self-defeating thoughts and replace them with inspirational ones. "Turn your consciousness into a garden", Gurudev used to say, "adorn yourself with beautiful thoughts." The secret to a happy life, I understood from his life, was to share those thoughts in one's life, through a smile, a helping hand, a prayer, a gift. Nothing grandiose and ego-inflating. Nothing self-deprecating either. Through my own interest in writing, editing Gurudev's talks and teaching, I looked for a dynamic balance between contemplation and action, between utopia and reality. I now realize that utopia does exist right here under our noses, not as a stagnant kind of spiritual oblivion which takes us on a superiority trip, far from mundane living, but as a flow of friendly feeling, a quiet inner bliss, as an acceptance of what is in the now of every moment. Actually, it is increasing the feeling of connectedness with all of existence, within oneself and throughout the universe. To the extent that I extend myself, to that extent I am in utopia.
More and more, I am finding that at the heart of upayoga, in the core of the Jain teachings, there is one main key to living in awareness,
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