Sharanagati

If our soul, if ourselves as spiritual sparks we come from the original great fire, then we have similar qualities like our source. Like father like son. That means our origin is divine. In religious context we can say that God Father is the creator and we are all creations of the Supreme Lord. Like father like son. And like father like daughter also. Because we are not the bodies, right; we are not women, we are not men, but we have a spiritual identity beyond bodies. So then what is our real quality?

According to this ancient wisdom we have three qualities. The first one is eternity. You are an eternal soul, right now sitting here, speaking the Bulgarian language – except me – and having the certain conditions that you have right now in this lifetime. But in a different lifetime it will be a different setup. Because the eternal soul is moving from one place to another, from one lifetime to another, from one environment to another. Same spark is moving and according to the desires, according to action and reaction, the soul will perceive different environments, different conditions.

So the first quality that we all have – this is eternity. Just try to deeply understand what does it mean: “I am an eternal soul.” We are not the perishable body. It brings such a beautiful chance in our life to overcome all the difficulties that we have. Because fortunately enough not only our body is limited by time, but also our sufferings are limited by time. They will also end.

This is our first quality – eternity. The second quality is consciousness, or knowledge if you like, intelligence… We should use our intelligence. Everybody is searching for more knowledge. And we are all searching for some real, pure essence. So the best use of our intelligence is to search for our benefit.

And the third quality is bliss. Do you feel like that? Do you feel the bliss? I see on many of your faces, everybody is smiling. This is very close to our eternal identity. But we have some authorities who have analyzed human bliss. Sigmund Freud, for example. He said that happiness is when you don’t suffer too much. Are you satisfied with such a definition? Not so much. So better we use our intelligence to search for our real happiness that is permanent. Our spiritual qualities like eternity, knowledge and bliss they are limited by the bodily conception – if we are realistic, if we are pessimistic or optimistic – all are different understandings, different relation.

But in order to realize more and more our original position, we have to work on ourselves. This is not very popular, because we want easy solutions. “Click this button and perfection will come” or “Weekend training and eternal life is guaranteed”. Even now they have trainings of becoming avatar, or divine incarnation. So we want the cheap solutions. But in order to come to real achievements we have to work on ourselves. What is this progress – spiritual work? This is when you reject the impermanent and replace it with permanent. Or if we want to put it in a more simple way: from the bodily consciousness you come to the spiritual consciousness.

Bodily consciousness – what is this? You just go to any shop and you will find twenty different types of body lotions. How many spirit lotions you will find in the shop? Not so much, right. Not a big market for spiritual lotions. We devote so much time and energy to our impermanent side and we say: “For spiritual practice I have no time. Because I am engaged, I am searching for my body lotions.”

Yoga helps us in that respect. Because yoga means connection. Yoga means to connect back to your original source. And yoga as a spiritual path will lead us from the bodily consciousness to the spiritual consciousness. Yoga may provide a very healthy lifestyle also, but this is not the only good result of yoga. It will also bring your inner peace. It will also help you to become enlightened. And also it will help you to become blissful. That means from the bodily conception we come closer to the spiritual. And the more energy we give to our system, the higher resonance we shall achieve. Therefore we have to provide spiritual foodstuff for our soul. If we do our spiritual practices, then we nourish our soul. That is eternity, that is knowledge, that is bliss. If we are connected, that means we are very close to our real identity.