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- Spiritual Development
- Four Simple Steps for Every Sinner to Attain Divinity - By Awdhesh Singh
Four Simple Steps for Every Sinner to Attain Divinity - By Awdhesh Singh
- By Wan Ibrahim
- Published 05/2/2008
- Spiritual Development
- Unrated
Wan Ibrahim
Wan Ibrahim is the owner of MySpiritualSelfHelp.com, a website that was created to share the wisdom for spiritual living. He also shares his insights, tips and stories about happiness, relationship and success from a different point of view at his Blog - Detached, and in the context of spirituality at Personal Blog Section.
I was overweight by few Kgs a few years back. One of my friends used to weigh bit lesser and always used to call me fatty whenever he met me or called me on phone. Once he called me and teased, "What is your weight Fatty?" "I have lost five Kgs in last few months. Now I weigh lesser than you. Stop calling me Fatty Now." I said gleefully. My friend got bit disappointed and asked, "How did you do it. Man" I said enthusiastically, "Well, I am reading a book". "That is wonderful. Why don't you give me the name of the book? I would like to read that book and reduce the weight." He asked jokingly. I said, "You don't lose weight by reading the book but only by following what is written in the book."
This is the reality of life. You can never lose any weight by reading any book on this earth unless you practice what is written in the book. Once of relative of mine, who was 20 Kgs overweight told me happily, "Next time when you will see me, you will find me 10 Kgs lighter." "How can you be so sure?" I asked. "I have just joined the most reputed Health Club of my town which has a guaranteed program for reduction of weight. If I don't lose 10 Kgs in 3 months, they will refund me my entire amount." he replied with optimism. I never believed such guaranteed weight reduction program. So I asked him, "Is there any condition? Where is the catch?" He said, "Their only condition is that I have to follow their dieting and exercising program." Recently when I met him after almost a year, I found him not any lighter but heavier by another 10 Kgs. "What happened to the guaranteed scheme? Did you get the refund?" He felt a bit ashamed and replied, "No. I could not follow their program. It did not work for me."
This is the essence of life. We want to achieve things in life without doing any thing. Knowledge, however great it may be, can never substitute the importance of action. Knowledge is merely a means to the end and not the end itself.
There is no dearth of knowledge for the modern man. Internet and books have made the best knowledge available to all people in the world. The modern generation is far more informed, educated and knowledgeable than a their ancestors. Yet the miseries of the man have not reduced. Every overweight person knows, why he is overweight? He is also fully aware how the weights can be reduced. The only problem is that he does not want to work and only discover excuses for not following the dieting and exercising program. The youths are very much aware of the ill effect of drugs, addictions, alcoholism and crime yet these incidents are rising every years and has already taken epidemic proportion in most of the world. The reason is the lack of action.
Crimes and sins are rising in the world every day despite of the awareness campaigns launched by governments and non-governmental organizations. However, some people instead of looking the fault within blames God for everything. What is God doing? Has He abandoned this world? Does He exist? Is He alive?
Scriptures are Not to be Read
One of the consoling facts of the world is that even in the age of science and materialism more than 95% people still believe in God and call themselves religious. Yet they are religious only for the namesake. Most are religious only due to their birth. Some of them are religious to the extent that they go to their temples, churches or mosque once in while and prey to God. Many know what is written in their scriptures. Some of them remember their scriptures, word by word. People can also present wonderful argument to prove or disapprove the existence of God. Yet they do not follow a single word of the scripture in their life as if the scriptures meant to be read and not followed.
Let us just have a look of some of the commandments or rules that are prescribed in the scriptures for its followers The most important rules of human behaviors are provided in the Ten Commandment which is believed in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These Commandments are
1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, wife, servants or property
When Jesus was asked which the greatest commandment is, He replied,
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandments. And the second is like it, "Love your neighbours as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Other religions too have similar commandments or code of conduct for their followers. Most people know these commandments too well, yet they hardly follow them and still call them religious. Perhaps you find them too difficult. No doubt, following these commandments is not easy. Yet the effort in following them in nothing compared to the effort required to get a simple degree or diploma in a university. When we are willing to spend almost two decades of our life in getting these degrees, it is surely a good preposition to spend at least few years in the pursuit of spiritual awakening, which is the only means to attain divine nature which alone is the source of lasting peace and happiness in our life. What are these simple steps for divinity?
Step1: Realization of Misery
You always thought that money and power will give you all happiness in life. Yet happiness has always deluded you despite of increase of wealth and power. Yet you are not a loser as you have gained a valuable knowledge in the process. Prof. Anon said,
"Every experiment proves something. If it doesn't prove what you wanted it to prove, it proves something else."
So if materialism is not the source of happiness, what is the source? The answer is only one. The source of all happiness and peace is spiritualism which is nothing but lack of materialism. Therefore, the first requirement to shun the path of materialism and sensual pleasure, which is the source of all the sins, crimes and pains. It is a fact that you can never get happiness from these accomplishments.
Yet the realization has to come from within. Unless a fat person realize that he is fat and feel unhappy about it, no power on earth can persuade him to lose weight. In the same way, unless you have realized that materialism can only provide you instant gratification and not lasting peace and happiness, you can never follow the path of spiritualism, which is the path opposite to material.
It is necessary to realize that man is not like any other animal, which can be happy simply by feeding itself. Jesus said (Mathew 3:4), "It is written. Man does not live on bread alone. But on every word that comes from the mouth of God."
He
further said, "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can not serve both God and Money." (Mathew 6: 24)
Once a religious leader asked Jesus this question: "Good Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus asked him to follow the ten commencements. He said that he followed these commandments since his youth. When Jesus heard his answer, he said, "There is still one thing you haven't done. Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." But when the man heard this he became very sad, for he was very rich. When Jesus saw this, he said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God" (Luke 18:18-27)
You cannot have cake and eat it too. You can not be spiritual and materialistic at the same time. Yet the body and soul has to coexist for the survival of man. If you want lasting happiness and peace, you have to get out of the slavery of money and use it only to feed your body, which is the temple of the soul.
Buddha realized this truth and left his kingdom and family to achieve salvation. Christ too did not had any wealth. Gandhi donated all his wealth and lived his life like poor in a single cloth. He was ridiculed by many and Churchill even refused to meet him and called him "half-naked fakir". In the modern time, Bill Gates donated billions of his wealth for the charitable purposes. The very sign of spiritualism is the detachment from wealth. A spiritual man does not live to eat but eat only to live.
Step 2: Knowledge
Once you are convinced that you are not an animal and your happiness does not lies in sensual gratification, the next step to have is the proper knowledge for spiritual evolution. Knowledge can be attained from Spiritual Teachers who have followed these paths to achieve happiness and peace. However, if good teachers are not found, scriptures are the next best method to understand the right knowledge for the spiritual growth.
Step 3: Faith
Every piece of knowledge learned by a person, affects all the existing knowledge of him as knowledge exists in the mind of the person like a living organism. Hence every new knowledge has to face the wrath of the existing knowledge which is contrary to the existing faith. Let the conflict be resolved by having small faith of the size of the mustard. If you sow faith as small as a mustard seed, it can move a mountain years later.
Faith in spiritual knowledge is absolutely necessary to follow this path. The best test of any knowledge is the test of time. While the scientific theories do not last even few decades, the scriptures like Bible, Gita and Koran have survived for thousands of years. They can't be fake. If 95% of the humanity still believes in God, they can't be fools. When you look around, you can yourself notice that peace and happiness is mostly present only in the people who are religious, spiritual or faithful. Even if all that does not convince you, you can still try spirituality like an experiment. If the actions required in the scriptures bring you peace and happiness, you follow it else you discard them later.
Step 4: Action
This is the most important step without which the faith and knowledge can not be tested. The Truth can only be discovered by experiments and not by arguments, whether in science or in spirituality. It is for this reason that Gandhi named his autobiography "My Experiments with Truth." Roger Bacon, English philosopher and scientist has wisely said,
"The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation."
So be ready to experiment and learn the truth yourself. No one can start following all the commandments from the day one. Even the path of the PhD degree starts from the learning of the alphabets. Therefore, one has to have the patience to learn from the experiments.
The first step in the path of action is to realize that you are the child of God and God loves you. The very fact that you have not found happiness in the sensual pleasure is a sure sign that God is present in you and guiding you in the path of spirituality and divinity.
The nest step is to start seeing God in others. You can start this by seeing God in your dearest person. He can be your parents, teacher or any one, you find good and worth respecting.
It is to be understood that God is nothing but the sum total of all the living and nonliving being in this universe. If God can be compared with a body, then all of us are like a cell of the body, which are all different since all of us to function together in harmony for the welfare of all other cells of the body. All cells of the body are different from each other and perform different but complementary functions to each other. The function of the skin cells is not less important than that of the brain cell or the liver cell. In the same way, each person is designed to perform different roles in the world. Therefore, instead of looking the world from the paradigm of your values, start looking it from the view point of the world.
The world needs every type of person. It needs, teachers, scientist, businessman, politicians, criminals, thieves and cops. Why you need thieves? Because the laws of the world are very unfair. Here one person can inherit billions just being born in the family of billionaire, while billions in this world can't get even two meals a day. Remember, every saint and prophet was a law breaker. Christ was crucified for breaking the law. Gandhi and Mandela were imprisoned for decades and called criminals, anti-nationals and even terrorists by the governments. It is only these law breakers who changed the course of history and made the world more civilized and humane.
Everything exists in this world for a purpose. It is human limitation of mind that it cannot grasp this truth and accuse the people to be evil. Once you start considering the whole world as your family, you would find God in every one and all your hatred would automatically vanish.
All the commandments prescribed in any religion, flows fro this basic source which is love. Once you start following it step by step, you would be able to see the world in a new light and would follow the commandments automatically.
Follow the Path of Divinity
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Action is the true source of all knowledge and faith. Only by following the teachings of the scriptures, one can call himself religious. However, these have to be practiced long enough to get internalized and become part of your natural behaviour. Then the light of spirituality shall automatically illuminate your heart and soul. A famous philosopher Swami Vivekananda has wisely summed up his truth in the following words.
"Religion is not in books and temples. It is an actual perception. Only the man who has actually perceived God and Soul has a religion."
Mr. Awdhesh K Singh is an Engineer by education and philosopher by passion. He has published several papers in International Journals and Conferences on the subject of E-governance, Artificial Intelligence, Fuzzy Logic and Expert Systems.
He is the founding member of The Aatmic Science Foundation, (The Science of Soul Foundation). His interest is in creating synthesis between all religions and sciences for the benefit of the mankind.
He can be contacted at his email address [mailto:aksinghirs@yahoo.com]aksinghirs@yahoo.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
This is the reality of life. You can never lose any weight by reading any book on this earth unless you practice what is written in the book. Once of relative of mine, who was 20 Kgs overweight told me happily, "Next time when you will see me, you will find me 10 Kgs lighter." "How can you be so sure?" I asked. "I have just joined the most reputed Health Club of my town which has a guaranteed program for reduction of weight. If I don't lose 10 Kgs in 3 months, they will refund me my entire amount." he replied with optimism. I never believed such guaranteed weight reduction program. So I asked him, "Is there any condition? Where is the catch?" He said, "Their only condition is that I have to follow their dieting and exercising program." Recently when I met him after almost a year, I found him not any lighter but heavier by another 10 Kgs. "What happened to the guaranteed scheme? Did you get the refund?" He felt a bit ashamed and replied, "No. I could not follow their program. It did not work for me."
This is the essence of life. We want to achieve things in life without doing any thing. Knowledge, however great it may be, can never substitute the importance of action. Knowledge is merely a means to the end and not the end itself.
There is no dearth of knowledge for the modern man. Internet and books have made the best knowledge available to all people in the world. The modern generation is far more informed, educated and knowledgeable than a their ancestors. Yet the miseries of the man have not reduced. Every overweight person knows, why he is overweight? He is also fully aware how the weights can be reduced. The only problem is that he does not want to work and only discover excuses for not following the dieting and exercising program. The youths are very much aware of the ill effect of drugs, addictions, alcoholism and crime yet these incidents are rising every years and has already taken epidemic proportion in most of the world. The reason is the lack of action.
Crimes and sins are rising in the world every day despite of the awareness campaigns launched by governments and non-governmental organizations. However, some people instead of looking the fault within blames God for everything. What is God doing? Has He abandoned this world? Does He exist? Is He alive?
Scriptures are Not to be Read
One of the consoling facts of the world is that even in the age of science and materialism more than 95% people still believe in God and call themselves religious. Yet they are religious only for the namesake. Most are religious only due to their birth. Some of them are religious to the extent that they go to their temples, churches or mosque once in while and prey to God. Many know what is written in their scriptures. Some of them remember their scriptures, word by word. People can also present wonderful argument to prove or disapprove the existence of God. Yet they do not follow a single word of the scripture in their life as if the scriptures meant to be read and not followed.
Let us just have a look of some of the commandments or rules that are prescribed in the scriptures for its followers The most important rules of human behaviors are provided in the Ten Commandment which is believed in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These Commandments are
1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, wife, servants or property
When Jesus was asked which the greatest commandment is, He replied,
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandments. And the second is like it, "Love your neighbours as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Other religions too have similar commandments or code of conduct for their followers. Most people know these commandments too well, yet they hardly follow them and still call them religious. Perhaps you find them too difficult. No doubt, following these commandments is not easy. Yet the effort in following them in nothing compared to the effort required to get a simple degree or diploma in a university. When we are willing to spend almost two decades of our life in getting these degrees, it is surely a good preposition to spend at least few years in the pursuit of spiritual awakening, which is the only means to attain divine nature which alone is the source of lasting peace and happiness in our life. What are these simple steps for divinity?
Step1: Realization of Misery
You always thought that money and power will give you all happiness in life. Yet happiness has always deluded you despite of increase of wealth and power. Yet you are not a loser as you have gained a valuable knowledge in the process. Prof. Anon said,
"Every experiment proves something. If it doesn't prove what you wanted it to prove, it proves something else."
So if materialism is not the source of happiness, what is the source? The answer is only one. The source of all happiness and peace is spiritualism which is nothing but lack of materialism. Therefore, the first requirement to shun the path of materialism and sensual pleasure, which is the source of all the sins, crimes and pains. It is a fact that you can never get happiness from these accomplishments.
Yet the realization has to come from within. Unless a fat person realize that he is fat and feel unhappy about it, no power on earth can persuade him to lose weight. In the same way, unless you have realized that materialism can only provide you instant gratification and not lasting peace and happiness, you can never follow the path of spiritualism, which is the path opposite to material.
It is necessary to realize that man is not like any other animal, which can be happy simply by feeding itself. Jesus said (Mathew 3:4), "It is written. Man does not live on bread alone. But on every word that comes from the mouth of God."
He
Once a religious leader asked Jesus this question: "Good Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus asked him to follow the ten commencements. He said that he followed these commandments since his youth. When Jesus heard his answer, he said, "There is still one thing you haven't done. Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." But when the man heard this he became very sad, for he was very rich. When Jesus saw this, he said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God" (Luke 18:18-27)
You cannot have cake and eat it too. You can not be spiritual and materialistic at the same time. Yet the body and soul has to coexist for the survival of man. If you want lasting happiness and peace, you have to get out of the slavery of money and use it only to feed your body, which is the temple of the soul.
Buddha realized this truth and left his kingdom and family to achieve salvation. Christ too did not had any wealth. Gandhi donated all his wealth and lived his life like poor in a single cloth. He was ridiculed by many and Churchill even refused to meet him and called him "half-naked fakir". In the modern time, Bill Gates donated billions of his wealth for the charitable purposes. The very sign of spiritualism is the detachment from wealth. A spiritual man does not live to eat but eat only to live.
Step 2: Knowledge
Once you are convinced that you are not an animal and your happiness does not lies in sensual gratification, the next step to have is the proper knowledge for spiritual evolution. Knowledge can be attained from Spiritual Teachers who have followed these paths to achieve happiness and peace. However, if good teachers are not found, scriptures are the next best method to understand the right knowledge for the spiritual growth.
Step 3: Faith
Every piece of knowledge learned by a person, affects all the existing knowledge of him as knowledge exists in the mind of the person like a living organism. Hence every new knowledge has to face the wrath of the existing knowledge which is contrary to the existing faith. Let the conflict be resolved by having small faith of the size of the mustard. If you sow faith as small as a mustard seed, it can move a mountain years later.
Faith in spiritual knowledge is absolutely necessary to follow this path. The best test of any knowledge is the test of time. While the scientific theories do not last even few decades, the scriptures like Bible, Gita and Koran have survived for thousands of years. They can't be fake. If 95% of the humanity still believes in God, they can't be fools. When you look around, you can yourself notice that peace and happiness is mostly present only in the people who are religious, spiritual or faithful. Even if all that does not convince you, you can still try spirituality like an experiment. If the actions required in the scriptures bring you peace and happiness, you follow it else you discard them later.
Step 4: Action
This is the most important step without which the faith and knowledge can not be tested. The Truth can only be discovered by experiments and not by arguments, whether in science or in spirituality. It is for this reason that Gandhi named his autobiography "My Experiments with Truth." Roger Bacon, English philosopher and scientist has wisely said,
"The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation."
So be ready to experiment and learn the truth yourself. No one can start following all the commandments from the day one. Even the path of the PhD degree starts from the learning of the alphabets. Therefore, one has to have the patience to learn from the experiments.
The first step in the path of action is to realize that you are the child of God and God loves you. The very fact that you have not found happiness in the sensual pleasure is a sure sign that God is present in you and guiding you in the path of spirituality and divinity.
The nest step is to start seeing God in others. You can start this by seeing God in your dearest person. He can be your parents, teacher or any one, you find good and worth respecting.
It is to be understood that God is nothing but the sum total of all the living and nonliving being in this universe. If God can be compared with a body, then all of us are like a cell of the body, which are all different since all of us to function together in harmony for the welfare of all other cells of the body. All cells of the body are different from each other and perform different but complementary functions to each other. The function of the skin cells is not less important than that of the brain cell or the liver cell. In the same way, each person is designed to perform different roles in the world. Therefore, instead of looking the world from the paradigm of your values, start looking it from the view point of the world.
The world needs every type of person. It needs, teachers, scientist, businessman, politicians, criminals, thieves and cops. Why you need thieves? Because the laws of the world are very unfair. Here one person can inherit billions just being born in the family of billionaire, while billions in this world can't get even two meals a day. Remember, every saint and prophet was a law breaker. Christ was crucified for breaking the law. Gandhi and Mandela were imprisoned for decades and called criminals, anti-nationals and even terrorists by the governments. It is only these law breakers who changed the course of history and made the world more civilized and humane.
Everything exists in this world for a purpose. It is human limitation of mind that it cannot grasp this truth and accuse the people to be evil. Once you start considering the whole world as your family, you would find God in every one and all your hatred would automatically vanish.
All the commandments prescribed in any religion, flows fro this basic source which is love. Once you start following it step by step, you would be able to see the world in a new light and would follow the commandments automatically.
Follow the Path of Divinity
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Action is the true source of all knowledge and faith. Only by following the teachings of the scriptures, one can call himself religious. However, these have to be practiced long enough to get internalized and become part of your natural behaviour. Then the light of spirituality shall automatically illuminate your heart and soul. A famous philosopher Swami Vivekananda has wisely summed up his truth in the following words.
"Religion is not in books and temples. It is an actual perception. Only the man who has actually perceived God and Soul has a religion."
Mr. Awdhesh K Singh is an Engineer by education and philosopher by passion. He has published several papers in International Journals and Conferences on the subject of E-governance, Artificial Intelligence, Fuzzy Logic and Expert Systems.
He is the founding member of The Aatmic Science Foundation, (The Science of Soul Foundation). His interest is in creating synthesis between all religions and sciences for the benefit of the mankind.
He can be contacted at his email address [mailto:aksinghirs@yahoo.com]aksinghirs@yahoo.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
Wan Ibrahim
Wan Ibrahim is the owner of MySpiritualSelfHelp.com, a website that was created to share the wisdom for spiritual living. He also shares his insights, tips and stories about happiness, relationship and success from a different point of view at his Blog - Detached, and in the context of spirituality at Personal Blog Section.
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