Letting go my cross of Samskaras: Two decades with an Enlightened Master

Continuing the diary of a psychologist series

This biography is an honest account of my life. Me, a life energy, bundled perhaps amidst a zillion ‘samskaras’ (impressions), embedded and entangled amongst a myriad of mind and life situations.

Yet I have the fortune of taking a human form. Hopefully, at an opportune time, will finally  be able to realize my way out from the repeated traps of birth and death.

This article is an ode to the artistry of an enlightened master, walking the planet concurrent to this aggrieved soul. All I can say is: anew - moulting a stratum of psychological imprints, the seer in me is now a beautiful witness of its soul’s total dissociation with her bygones.

Initiation to spirituality

Born in a family where both my parents are very spiritually inclined, I was initiated at the young age of 17 years from the Rama Krishna Mission. Oblivious to the significance of a spiritual initiation, I would more or less follow the daily regime; not based on my inner understanding but more so, as a diligent daughter.

It was a common affair to have many monks from the order visiting our home round the year accruing the richness of knowledge. Even though my eyes and ears would ever see and hear the loftiest, nothing would pierce through the inert sheath of samskaras within me. There was neither any understanding of my seemingly real thoughts and feelings, disjunct from my true self. Nor perhaps my pseudo pained so much so to the extent that would want me to shrug off my sheath.

Life was more thorns than roses and as any ordinary mortal, I was vacillating sometimes between blaming others and more - often holding myself as no good. I was reacting to whatever was thrown at me! Life for me merely was just a feed from my five senses and the nourishment this feed would provide, building my inner world. Nothing beyond!

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An illumined journey begins

It was in May 2001 when I first heard of Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. It was the last day of The Art of Living Happiness Program (called the basic course then). I was choice-lessly pushed into it. This last day of the program felt very different from all the other days of my life. There was no correlation of ‘this feeling’ with any of my life’s earlier events. Yet, it was a state I wanted to be in for the rest of my life.

I was completely oblivious to the mystical ways of enlightened masters who pave forth a seeker’s gateway, beholding and chiseling their samskaras. And more ignorant to the fact that deeper the spiritual scrape, it would call for a proportionate pain.

Not finding any solace in my world within or around, the only ‘home’ I naturally would snuggle into would be the environs of positivity and peace that were being presented to me, through my regular engagement with the local humanitarian activities of the organization.  In addition, association with beings, facilitating the Masters’ Knowledge, time and again through higher level knowledge programs, satsangs (Singing in praise/remembrance of the Divine) and so on also served as a soothing coolant.

My burgeoning samskaras

I was a sincere volunteer and as any other mortal had varying inbuilt intensities of aspirations, desires, concepts, percepts, lacks, follies, talents, effronteries...

The gift of singing was natural to me since childhood but had been lying unmanifest amidst life’s vicissitudes.  With the beginning of an altogether new journey, at every opportunity, I would feverishly find my way to a satsang and sit through in an unanchored state until I eventually could get to sing - not so much for the Divine but more as a satisfaction of ‘my ego’ in a state of beggar-ship! This painful samskara continued to raise its hood, sneaking onto other situations for years ever after having become an Art of Living Teacher way back in 2003.

In 2004, having left a hi-end job, I relocated with my little daughter to The Art of Living International Center. I was prepared to face every kind of external hurdle. My yearning to be cocooned within the uplifting spiritual arena of the ashram was so intense.

I was young, attractive and already out of a marriage even before I realized what it meant to truly be wanted, loved and respected. I was being gifted with ideas cosmically that perhaps had no earlier precedence at the organizational level. Nothing but the picture of the final manifest was all that I would ever see. I was working a lot! My work, looks and a few little talents had started inviting appreciable attention. And it meant all the more to me when it came from the people whom I deeply idolized or was getting attached to. There were also times when I could not skillfully get my intent or thoughts across people with whom I had to work with - causing invisible and impenetrable walls of energies all around.

This is the point I was starting to struggle with the burgeoning of a few notable and deeply embedded impressions – seeking of love and approval, impatience, obsession, un-empathy and fear of letting go.

Unrealistic waves of expectations and imaginations would torment my mind. The mind would persistently cook and make ways for the ego to go on a trip of either holding someone a culprit or assuming the state of being victimized. And sometimes onto the mode of exorbitant material appeasement. It all differed with each association.

Hitting new lows

The other people, many a times, would either be oblivious to the entire happening within me or sometimes having to bear the brunt of my words and acts; taking our association to seemingly a point of no return. And this pattern would repeat often, to the extent that I had started anticipating the pain of this samskara even before it would next return.

I, until my early forties, could never see through the world, beyond the jurisdiction of my senses.  I was disabled to penetrate into someone else’s being or intent. Whatever I experienced through the limited sight and sound, was my only reality. I always believed in the transparency of ‘my own self and that of others’. In this space of faith and zeal, once, through a new assignment that was given to me, I ran up the whole blueprint of the road-map ahead with the higher ups. Only to find a few days later that it was executed without me anywhere in the picture.

Such incidences in other forms repeated many a times. What was stated would end up being something else. It took me quite a while to reconcile with the dualities of this world. To accept what seemed could perhaps be otherwise was not easy.

There were days I was so consumed with all my mind-stuff that it would become difficult to even get out of my bed. I would just weep or be in the grip of fear and hurt. And any unpleasant act or word from the outer would sink my subtle life energy (prana) further rock bottom.

The ways of an Enlightened Master ~ elements of grace

Once in such a pitiable state, I walked up to Gurudev seeking a life jacket to relieve me. Looking at me, he said, “Even donkeys can get enlightened after repeatedly being whipped, you are after all a human.”

And there were occasions when Gurudev would call out my name amidst a crowd or stop by me, making a positive mention. And this would change the context of all that was going on in my mind.

Once it so happened that the mind being totally doomed in states of inertia, Gurudev took on to the extreme of not wanting to see me again - rebuking my irresponsible act of not applying the given knowledge.

Even after having an enlightened master, the mind sometimes foolishly takes us places that assures quick fix solutions. There was this healer who saw me and said that I was in a state of victim consciousness. Innocently, I came back and shared it all with Gurudev. His immediate response was, “I have given you the highest of being a teacher’s training teacher, you can never be in such a state.”

The ways of the master is beyond human comprehension. By my own standards or world percepts, wherever I was judged misfit against norms, values, skills – I exactly found myself being pushed into those unknown zones and figured my way out.

If I look back in retrospect, Gurudev in the most exalted ways, needling gently through the samskaras has pinned the soul to its state of self-effulgence.

Taking responsibility through purushartha

Being on the path and constantly feeling that I was being whipped and whisked by the world around, somewhere feebly and innately also started to provoke a thought that it was not about the world but the way I was looking at it. And this needed serious spiritual intervention.

One samskara that holds its grip strong is food. I was a hard core non-vegetarian and a junk eater. I did have cravings for non-vegetarian food even after having become a teacher. To work through my other excruciatingly painful samskaras, I consciously took to dropping my wrong food indulgences - using this as a lever to loosen the grip of my other samskaras. What we eat shapes our mind.

Way back early, almost from the time I stepped into the ashram, I had made a promise of plunging into 54 sets of sun salutations, every single day to challenge and shape up my samskara of commitment. It has continued each day, day after day even after 13 years!

Prayers are heard! Have prayed relentlessly not for the pursuit of any material or power but for seeding beautiful samskaras of unconditional love and expansiveness, purity of vision and peace within. The days my samskaras would defeat me, I would just surrender my state through sincere prayers to change my life state within. Prayers are now a part of my daily regime.

Swadhyaya (self-study) has been the constant guard of my mind. The seeking of re-establishing a beautiful world within happens with the practice of knowledge and the master’s grace. The journey to undo one’s tendencies, embedded through lifetimes can be changed. It may take a thousand failures yet it happens.

I have been extremely fortunate to have satsanga (the company of the raised in knowledge) all through with me who could skillfully insulate the outer world through knowledge and wade me out from the loops of my own mind - connecting me again and again back to my source.

Am blessed to have a living master- having pushed me in a real world, amidst situations that have been triggers for all my impressions to stand affront face to face. And has ever been illuminating the pathway, empowering me to navigate through the cross of my own samskara – remaining untouched.

The negative karmic chords created with associates on my life’s journey are slowly being re-established.

I do not know what other samskaras yet lay dormant and which situations await to catalyze their manifestation. The path is akin to walking on a razor’s edge. I have tested throwing myself in situations that may trigger old patterns and noting my world within. Yet as I pen this today, can dispassionately witness the gradual evolution of a spiritual aspirant, two decades after being with an enlightened master.

Apart from being a child developmental psychologist and an international Art of Living faculty, Dr. Richa Chopra is currently the chief counselor at Vivechana -The Counselling Space: Enriching Consciousness through Vedic & Modern Perspectives at Sri Sri University, Cuttack, India.

This is the third article in the ‘diary of a psychologist series.’

You could read the previous two articles from The Diary of a Psychologist Series here.