.: Discover the path to spirituality

Monday 1 April 2013

Discover the path to spirituality

Posted: 31 Mar 2013 08:00 PM PDT

For the last 25 years, he has travelled around the world trying to bring about a change in people's lives. Spiritual guru Michael Fishman, the author of the book Stumbling Into Infinity and a disciple of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, thinks spirituality is a way to make one's life better by putting your thought process in the right order.

He, too, discovered this change after meeting Sri Sri in his younger days, more than 30 years ago in 1979. "He looked in to my eyes and I had a catharsis. I couldn't understand what happened to me," says Michael on a recent trip to India to promote his book, which is a spiritual memoir. His experiences with Sri Sri changed him completely as a person. He became much more conscious of life.

Ask him if it's important to follow a guru in order to tread the path of spirituality and he believes it is. "It is important to follow a particular path as you need a way to keep your mind quiet. For most people, the mind is fluctuating between the past and the future — angry about the past, anxious about the future — you are never present. You can control your mind with some vehicle, technique, or guidance," he says.

The book, too, is about what happens behind closed doors with a live master. It brings the reader closer to the idea of having a guru in one's life.

Michael says that "ego" is the biggest challenge on the road to spirituality, or even otherwise in dealing with various issues of life and the role of the guru is to help dissolve the ego.

But spirituality is not just dissolving the ego. It is more about being natural — carefree, present in the moment and unworried about being judged by anybody. Michael says this is the new concept of spirituality. "We have shun the old concept where one needed to wear certain kind of clothes, abstain from certain kind of food, or was not allowed to indulge in certain activities. Now, it's about freedom and personal development. Now, spirituality helps you become who you want to be," he remarks and also says that more youngsters are taking the road to spiritual wisdom because the definition of spirituality has transformed.

But mistaking religion with spirituality is wrong. Quoting Sri Sri, Michael says, "Spirituallity is the banana and religion is the banana peel. Most people hold on to the banana peel and think spirituality is all about that." But the fact, Michael says, is that spirituality is all about the fruit. "It's not about a particular ideology or dogma. Spirituality is an opportunity to experience yourself through the process of quieting your mind, getting rid of all the unnecessary mental chatter that is going on unnecessarily," he says.

Source: Deccan Chronicle