Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Q:
When we do seva (service), especially us youth, how do we balance seva, studies and family?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
How do you ride a bicycle? Do you allow yourself to fall on one side? When you are more towards one side, you just balance. But one strong conviction should be there – I will do seva, I will do studies, I will take care of my family and respect the elders as well. These are not opposites but complementary. When you do seva, you get power and achieve merit, and that gives you good fortune. So,spirituality brings strength. Through meditation, you will progress in the world.This conviction, ‘I will be able to do all’, works miracles.
If you find any doubt, just know that it is temporary. The most important thing is to develop a strong personality. Going to college, stuffing your head with information and just passing the exam, no! How much strength and humility have you gained? Are you blossoming into a complete person? It is important to check this. Enthusiasm with awareness!Seva brings out the skill in you that will again make a difference in how you relate to all types of people.Softness and depth will come to you.With enthusiasm, there will be awareness. All can be threaded on a string.
Q:
If everything is as God wants it and if everything is written then why do we need to put effort for anything?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Even that is written. Your asking this question is written too, got it? But me giving an answer for it is not written!Come on! Animals are governed by instincts. They have no choice, they are programmed. But the human system is programmed with a possibility of either / or. Human system has the choice also programmed. But animals have no program of choice. Do you get what I am saying? In the program it is fixed that human beings can have the choice. Intellect is present in the human system which can make the choices. That means there is freedom also. Got it?
Q:
When I do something good, even then my parents sometimes don’t let me do that. How to go ahead in such a situation?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Take this as an opportunity to bring out that skillfulness in you. It is like if cloth has been tangled in a bush, you need certain skill to gradually remove it from there. You don’t run, but patiently deal with them with your skill. Have such a skillful conversation that they get agree to whatever right you say.Q:
The more and more my love blossoms for the Divine, the harder I find it to give away my pains and worries. How can we give garbage to the most precious ones?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Never mind. Divine will take it.He will snatch it from you if you don’t want to give it to him.
As long as there is a connection, there is always give and take. You will always receive blessings. You will always receive bliss and unwanted things will just drop off.
It is nice of you to think that way. It also shows your level of consciousness. In this level of consciousness, drop this identity of garbage as part of you.
You find something pricking in the mind, just see it as garbage. Not as your garbage or garbage of someone else.
Q:
Are we all part of the Divine Light Source?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Of course. But until it becomes your experience, keep it at the back of your mind.Q:
Who is Radha?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Radha is one who is going towards the source. Dhara is flow, and read other way it becomes Radha. So, one who goes towards the Self!Q:
sometimes lots of visions come in meditation. What should one do?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Take it as a thought and leave it. Sometimes hallucinations may come as imaginations.Q:
Dear Guruji, my son is now two years old, he feels insecure with other people. Do kids at that age feel that? How do I handle this?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
It may not be insecurity in the child. A 2-year old child would not be so insecure, it may be your own projection. Sometimes you project yourself too much on what the child is feeling or saying. Especially grand parents have a lot of projection on the children. Grandpa will say my 6-month old baby looked at me and said, “Grandpa you don’t go for walking today, you stay with me,” and all that he was saying with his own eyes. The baby doesn’t even speak but grandpa feels that he says everything. A lot of it will be your own projection.If you feel your child is a little jealous, sibling jealousy will be there, if you feel that, then you pat them and give them a little more attention.
Q:
We worry about future and cry about the past. How can wechange the pattern?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Take past as a lesson, and see what you can do in the future. That iswhy we should take past as destiny and future as free will, that isintelligence.Q:
Dearest Guruji, is it true that every chapter of the Bhagavad Gita has influence on a particular plane? Kindly explain.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Planets are far away, they have an influence on your mind, on your Self. Every chapter has an influence on you.