The Art of Living

Yogashiromani Pandit Ravi Shankarji, a well-known spiritual teacher, says that the 'art of living' is to be free from fears and tears. It is a technique to be happy 24 hours of the day by remaining equanimous.

We keep reacting from morning till night because we have not learnt to accept people and situations as they are. We keep brooding over the past, which does not exist anymore and are anxious of the future, which is not yet born. As a result we let go of the present which is a gift given by the Lord.

There is nothing wrong in drawing lessons from our actions or experiences in the past or in planning, but brooding and anxiety can at best only result in accumulation of a lot of toxins in the body resulting in psychosomatic ailments.

Simple principles such as enlightened consciousness, taking absolute responsibility for one's actions and inactions, accepting people and situations as they are, and not being a foot ball of others’ opinion bring a dramatic shift in the way we experience life.

Right now 'life' is a misnomer. The Art of Living brings back liveliness into life by making us see the divinity and goodness in others and helps us to become conscious of the way life is to be lived. By heightening the 'awareness', life becomes very meaningful, interesting and blissful.

The emphasis in The Art of Living is not stress management but stress elimination. One learns to act and not to react. AGY meditators find that more often than not, they are in a meditative state rather than the agitative state. Generally we say that, You have an option - either to Agitate or to Meditate.

The seven effective habits prescribed by Stephen Covey for highly effective executives are:

• To be pro-active
• To prioritize things
• To begin the day with the end in view
• To adopt a win-win policy
• To unconditionally understand, love and console others
• To inculcate synergy or team spirit
• To meditate

By learning to live moment to moment, the participant realizes that love for "what is" is Swarga or Paradise and love for "what is not" is Naraka or Hell.

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