When my Spiritual Journey Started

I found a note I wrote to my friends during the time I spent in the Ashram in March-April 2009. This is just an excerpt but can give you a pretty good idea on how I started developing spiritually. Learning about my mind was just a start... what God has done in me during the last 16 months is even better...

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Controlling My Mind

I read that the emotions are the result of your thoughts; hence, we can control how situations impact us IF we can control our mind.

There is so much philosophy and even science on how the mind works, but I don’t want to get into those details. I just want to share the practices and/or beliefs that I have integrated to my life, so I can bring a positive change into the way I am living and reacting to life:

- What I’m going through is not my life; it’s my life situation at the moment. Ups and downs are important in life to be able to grow spiritually. You need the down moments to appreciate the up’s. So we should embrace both. All that happen during my last 5-7 months in my job was just a situation that helped me being today in this place where I’m gaining so much inner awareness. I have learn that it’s not where I am or what I am doing but HOW I’m doing it. It’s on how I respond to situations, thoughts, challenges, etc.

- I am not my thoughts: We believe that the mind is us (I), but consciousness or self is above our mind. We need to separate our self from the mind in order to control the mind and find liberation. I have learn not to reach immediately to my thoughts, but to use “intellect” – not impulse – to make calls.

- Ego is my biggest obstacle to liberation and we are very attached to it. Everything is about us, on us, against us, for us, with us, etc… so I have encountered some situations in the Ashram with certain people and have decided to set my ego aside and move on or surrender. It hurt me so much to the point of crying, because I can and actually a lot of pride. The ego is what gives us the sense of “separateness,” making us feel like we were different or special versus the others.

- Watching my Mind instead of Reacting to It. Through meditation, I have gained “some” calmness of mind, developing better abilities to think about any situation and discriminate appropriately. I have used a journal to track my mind, and you would be amazed on the tricks it plays on me. One day I would be glad to be here, and immediately the next day I would feel that this was the worst decision ever. So watching those thoughts have been an interesting process. Now, after I got to be a witness of those thoughts, they have given up. And I am totally pleased for being here, meeting the people here, helping in their marketing work, and of course I love my asanas and meditation.