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