How to Create Harmony in Life [Audio]

I've started doing some lectures in the Sikh temples. Here is an audio of the second lecture I've done - unfortunately the first one I did didn't record. I shall be doing such lectures now on a regular basis and I'll post the audio as soon as I've done them, all thanks to my shiny new portable digital dictaphone :). I hope these lectures will serve you in some way:

Duration: 28:33
Title: How to Create Harmony in Life
Download Link: http://media.newlifeawakening.com/audio/Creating-Harmony_29-May-2011_RamghariaGurdwara.mp3
File Size: 13 MB





Transcription of Audio:

Akhan Jor Chupeh Na Jor, Jor Na Mangan Dehn Na Jor Jor Na Jeevan Marn Na Jor, Jor Na Raj Mal Man Sor, Jor Na Surtee Gian Vichar, Jor Na Jugtee Chutey Sansar, Jis Hath Jor Kar Vekeh Soi, Nanak Utam Nich Na Koi.

Vaheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Vaheguru Ji Ke Fateh.

So, today I wanted to speak in English about a certain topic. The topic is how to create harmony in life. So, just as a little introduction to who I am, my name is Jasdeep and I full-time do personal development seminars. Now my seminars are orientated around how to achieve balance, how to achieve personal enlightenment, if you could say, in other words. And it is with great joy that Uncle has given me this opportunity to speak with you today. So, let's see how far we get.

How to create harmony in life. Now, interestingly enough, the very word itself ‘harmony’, contains within it the answer. It contains within it the secret about how to create harmony. Harmony is actually made up of two different words. The two words are Har and Mani -and it's no surprise that this word contains within it these two words from Sanskrit, Har-Mani.

Har is not God, but it is the totality of the universe. It is all the birds, all the trees, all the rivers, all the flowers, all the human beings, all our thoughts, all our ideas, all our desires, all the planets, the stars, space, black holes. It is the entire expanse of existence. That is Har. Har means all, it means all. It means the whole expanse of existence, which some people do all God.

Mani means mind, but also it means all our thoughts, our ideas, our desires, our ambitions. So within this beautiful word called Harmony is an incredible secret, that if we can access the secret, we can live a profound life, because it's not enough anymore, life does not have enough life to it anymore. We need some more life, more zeal in our lives, and that zeal we can get from understanding this one simple word, harmony. So, when you take Har, which is the expanse of the entire existence, and you put it on your mind. So your mind, becomes not limited by just our individuality, our emotions, our own desires our own needs, it expands to include the whole universe. When the mind is expanded to include the whole universe, then you have harmony. Otherwise life is limited and there is no taste to life, there’s no zeal to life, life is about zeal. How we can bring some aliveness to it. Some life to it.

So there's another thing, which is contained within this word. Harmony means taking the universe and putting into your mind. Now most people would say that this is an impossibility, it’s not possible to include the whole of the universe in your mind, because our mind is limited in what it can perceive. Then comes into the picture, meditation and at the same time, exploration. So there’s two parts to the mind. There’s two parts that need to be mastered in the mind. First is that outwardly, we need to learn to create action. Outwardly, we need to learn to create action. So what does that mean? It means there's so many things in life yet to be discovered, yet to be explored. Like for example, different foods, different countries, different colours, different environments, different animals, different birds,  different forms of art, different forms of science, different forms of philosophy, different forms of people, cultures. There's so much to be discovered, there’s so much to be explored, that the more we explore in the outer world actively, the more it refines our mind, and the more our mind  turns towards this infinite, Har, the expanse of existence. The more we explore, the outer world in terms of visiting different countries, eating different foods, I mean we're so limited in what we eat. Only have Punjabi food, which is very tasty, but there's so many other types of food: Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, Persian, so many interesting foods to taste, that by tasting these foods it expands our mind. So many different countries, historical landmarks, by visiting which, it expands our mind. So when we’ve explored, and it requires one to become quite active, we can’t just stay still to explore, we have to be really active, actively going and exploring all the wondrous things in the world. And especially when you're younger! Especially when you're younger you should explore different languages, different countries, different art forms, different poetry forms, you should explore everything and it's all there to be explored. Especially when you're younger, especially! Because when you get older, you have hardly enough time to explore as much. Life is about exploring the outer world, actively. That is 50% of the mind. So when you've explored everything you can explore in the outer world and I’m not saying you have to do everything. But you have to have a broad view of all different topics, all different sciences, all different ways of life, ways of thinking. Once you've explored, then that is 50% towards mastering your mind.

The rest of the 50%. The rest of the 50% comes from the inner exploration. So 50% is outwardly in the world and 50% is inwardly, not through action, but through inaction. Outwardly is always with action, but inwardly is always without action, it is just silence. And just as much there is this to explore in the outer world, there’s also just as much to explore in the inner world. In fact, they’re both in a way complementary. The more we explore outwardly, the more we explore inwardly. But also, when you're visiting a country you're not really focused too much on the inside, so you don't do an in-depth exploration of what’s happening in the inner world. Now, the inner world is full with emotions, is full with desires, is full with ideas, it’s full with so many thoughts, that each of these thoughts can be explored, can be observed. And when we have explored all thoughts, all the desires, everything that makes us who we are today. We have explored the reason why have ended up like we are today, for example, when we grow up, society puts upon us some pressure. There is some pressure to conform to society. There is some pressure. Then, when we grow up, parents put some more pressure. They add some more ideas to and when we’re younger we accept a lot of these ideas. So we grow up, and then school, and the education system puts on more pressure, more ideas, and shapes us. And then our friends, our colleagues at work they shape us. So we are just a product of other people shaping who we are. We are simply a product of other people shaping who we are and deciding for us, who we are, we hardly had any decision in the process. Funnily enough, somehow, we have arrived here. Somehow. But we have hardly had any decision in the process. We have hardly decided anything, really, it's amazing! It’s absolutely amazing how we’ve even ended up here.

So, what exploration of the inner world does is find out which part of me is actually just my parents, or which part of me is just an idea given to me by my colleagues, which part of me was decided by my friends. Which part of me, was decided by my family. Which part of me was something that I did not decide for myself. So its always a two-way process, to become more conscious of the inner world, and to become more conscious of the outer world. Its always a two-way process of consciousness. The more conscious we are about what's going on inside and how we have arrived here, this present moment, and the more conscious we are about how the world works and how beautiful variety the world has, and we can enjoy the variety of the outside, and then we can enjoy the variety of the inside. Ultimately, that is going to create harmony.

So when we’ve explored the outer world and we’ve explored the inner world, then our mind is no longer limited by society, by our parents, by our friends, by our colleagues, in fact, everything begins to dissolve. Everything that we thought we were, we think we are begins to slowly dissolve. Everything! Every single thing that we think we are begins to dissolve. This is the path of Dharma, it’s a very reverse path, because the more the world continues to increase in its technology, and its science, the more we need the reverse to balance it out. The more the world develops in technology and science at a very fast rate, the more we need to slow down, in order to balance technology out. Because technology is very fast. The modern world is very fast, with fast food, fast cars, everything is very very quick, instant. So the more technology begins to increase in its acceleration, the more we need to decrease in our inward acceleration. We need to decelerate our minds, in order for there to be balance. Now we have a very interesting situation in the modern world, 21^st Century, in that technology has given us more than we could ever have imagined. It's given us everything at the tip of our fingers. However, this comes with a price, the price is that we need to be able to deal with the information. There’s information coming from everywhere. You have a pop-up that, you know on your computer, you got live MSN Messenger coming on, you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got all these other things that just keep popping up, giving us information. You’ve got like 100 e-mails a day, in the future there’ll probably be 1000 e-mails a day. How can we cope with so much information? How? There's no way that anything outwardly can help us cope with the level of stress on our bodies and our minds. There’s no way! And in fact I’ve tried all the techniques. There's nothing out there that can help us, except one thing, and this is genuinely something that I’ve found works for me. Maybe it doesn’t work for everybody, but certainly it works for me I can say. That the path of the Guru, of meditation. The path of the Guru can’t be misunderstood, all the Guru is saying is just as Uncle said in the beginning, Naam Japna is the root of the faith, Naam Japna. Because, we need to expand our minds to take account of it all. You see, when you're in a stressful situation, there's only one thing you can do.When you're in a situation where you can’t do anything else, there’s only one thing that really helps. That thing that helps is called context. The context, the wider context. When we think about it, all of our problems in our lives are not really that big, really, they are not really that big. I mean we think they're big because the emotions are very wild and we think that the world is going to end, but really the world will carry on. Our problems are not very big when we take into account the entire universe. When we expand our minds to the whole universe, when we can see what’s going on in the whole universe, then our problems become not even a speck. Because our mind is focused on something so much greater. That is Naam Simran! When your mind is focused on something so much greater that all our individual problems and situations and personality clashes will just fade away. Because our mind is tuned to the higher frequency of the entire existence, and we can just enjoy existence, because there's nothing to not be enjoyed in life. It’s all just to enjoy. We enjoy the Saadh Sangat’s company reading your way of file under company. We enjoy different foods, different language in different, we enjoy different languages, different people, different cultures, different religions. It’s all to be enjoyed, it’s all to be experienced, it’s all to be explored, and that is harmony.

Harmony is always individualistic, it’s never the same, which is why I mentioned about society and friends and colleagues and everything else, because all these influences actually just homogenise us, they make us the same everybody else, but each of us is not the same as anybody else. We are individuals absolutely unique, 100% unique. And the evidence for this is actually, by the way, in the universe itself. And in time, because in time, no moment has ever been the same, exactly the same, every moment is unique. Every single moment that we live in our lives is unique, there’s never any moment in history that has ever been exactly the same, maybe similar, but never exactly the same. And then the other evidence comes from just looking at nature itself. Every single snowflake that has ever dropped from the sky has a unique pattern. Every single snowflake that has ever dropped from the sky, has a unique pattern, it’s unique. It will never, that snowflake will never occur again, it happens once. So do our lives really just happen once, because we are each unique individuals, and there is a beauty in our uniqueness, there's is something to be enjoyed in our uniqueness, there is something to be expressed in our uniqueness. We can't be the same as anybody, because we naturally inside, once we have taken away the layers that society did to us and that our parents did to us, we are perfectly, perfectly an individual, absolutely unique, an individual that will never ever happen again. And that anything which is unique, is of immense value, anything which is unique has immense value. Which is why time has immense value because time never occurs again. Just as individuals, never occur again. So it’s really important that in our own lives we try and create harmony, and we try and find our true individuality, which can be expressed, which can be shared with other people. So that other people can enjoy what we really are, they can enjoy every human being, they can enjoy you as a human being, as a unique soul that has come into the world. A unique soul that has come into the world that has something to contribute to the rest of the world. Just through one’s uniqueness, just through one’s uniqueness.

So with this, I will close and it really has been a great joy to express and share the few things that I’ve learnt along the way, I really hope that you’ve enjoyed it. If you do have any questions about what I’ve explained or said, then do come see me and I’ll be very, very happy to answer.

Vaheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Vaheguru Ji Ke Fateh.