Rudra - Cosmos of Healing

31/08/2025

Rudra Musings

Developing Empathy

The greatest gift you can give someone is your time because that is a portion of your life that you will never get back - ‘Unknown’

It is important to understand that everyone is going through some challenge or the other; in that light, we need to learn how to be empathetic.

The different types of suffering are split into three categories: suffering as a result of our own actions, suffering as a result of another’s actions and suffering imposed by nature.

As a collective, we are called humankind. Therefore, the core, the essence, of being human, is being kind. Empathy is learning how to be kind without judgement.

The first principle of empathy is to understand the issue. To do this, we need to learn how to listen to understand and not to reply.

The second principle of empathy is to try and intentionally feel the emotions of another. It is one thing to understand an issue, but we need to develop an emotional connection to display empathy.

The third principle of empathy is acting. Although being there for someone in their time of difficulty is acting, we must understand that love is a verb. Is there anything in our capability we can do to eliminate or minimize their pain?

Understand, feel and act.

from the book ‘Energize Your Mind’ by Gaur Gopal Das

24/08/2025

Rudra Musings

Relationships

Relationships are necessary for you to exist in this world. Whether you keep them beautiful or ugly is all the choice that you have. There is no choice. Maybe you do not get married or maybe you do not build a family. But you still have relationships with anything and everything around you. So the choice is just this: either you make the relationship beautiful or ugly; that is all the choice you have.

If you had a choice between pleasantness and unpleasantness, between joy and misery, between beauty and ugliness, what would you choose? Definitely joy, definitely pleasantness. But why does unpleasantness happen? Why is misery happening? Simply because nothing about you is in control; everything is happening accidentally.

Your body, your mind, your emotions and the energy that makes all these three happen is you. These are what you call ‘myself’.

If you closely examine and see; how much of your body, how much of your mind, how much of your emotions and how much of your energy is happening the way you want it? Very little. Most of it is happening the way external situations demand, not the way you want it. You are deeply enslaved to the situations in which you exist.

A relationship is possible only when there is some sense of freedom within you as to who you are. Otherwise it is just slavery, compulsiveness. When you exist as a compulsive being, you cannot operate as a conscious being, and what you want will not happen. Whichever way situations ensues, that is the way your life will happen; you become accidental. Once you exist as an accident, you are a potential calamity.

For most people, initially relationships bring joy, after that they bring only anxiety. Your enemies do not come and kill you. It is your loved ones, with whom you created relationships with lots of care and which you always wanted - they are taking your life away. This is not okay. Somewhere we have not gotten the fundamentals right. This is because relationships have come out of compulsiveness and not out of choice or out of consciousness.

If one wants to have absolutely fantastic relationships, first you need to establish yourself as a joyful human being, somebody whose joy is on ‘self start’ and not on ‘push start’. If you are fine by yourself, wherever you go you will have wonderful relationships with people.

from the book “Don’t Polish Your Ignorance.. It May Shine” by Sadhguru

10/08/2025

Rudra Musings

Who Am I?

”When I discover who I am, I will be free.”

Am I the senses?
The physical body has senses—sight, touch, smell, taste, sound—which interact with sense objects. We see through our eyes, we smell through our nose, we taste using our tongue. As matter cannot experience other matter, this implies that we are something beyond the senses. We are simply utilizing the body and the senses as a tool to interact with things and people in this world. We may interact with sense objects using our senses, but we are not our senses.

Am I the Mind?
When the mind gets disconnected from the particular sense, even though the sense is in contact with the sense object, we don’t perceive that sense object. That is why there
is the concept of being absent-minded, that is, the mind is elsewhere. The mind interacts with the senses and is responsible for thinking, feeling and willing, but we are not the mind either.

Am I the Intelligence?
Even the intelligence is an instrument that is used and can get shut off. Whether we are watching a film or are madly in love, the intelligence can also stop working and is therefore not the essence of our identity. The intelligence is another subtle part of our being which is used to discriminate how to act; it analyses a situation. Nevertheless, the essence of our being is not the intelligence.

Am I the Ego?
The words ‘I am’ represent the ego. ‘I am a human, I am a man or woman, I am Indian, Russian or American, I am Hindu, Christian or Muslim.’ ‘I am’ encompasses a whole range of identities, but one has to question if ‘I am’ is the ego, who is that ‘I’? The ego represents the multiple roles and identity labels that we have. It is even more subtle than the mind and intelligence, and something that we deeply identify with. However, we’re not the ego either.

I am the Self!
The real self is called the atma or spiritual consciousness. It is the final layer within the Russian doll, which is the essence of our being.

from the book “Energize Your Mind” by Gaur Gopal Das

13/07/2025

Rudra Musings

Personalities of Man

The core of our personality is the Self - the real you, expressed through our personality layers also known as Vasanas (वासना).

Vasanas are our individual tendencies or personality layers we have adopted over our lifetime and through many lifetimes before. Vasanas are the impressions left in our minds by our actions and experiences. This in turn mould our thought processes and actions.

The three aspects to our physical and psychological makeup are Body, Mind and Intellect.

Body
In the realm of the physical personality, the body and the senses are paramount. The senses always seek pleasure. The body seeks comfort and fulfillment of its needs. The body may feel content but the senses are never satisfied.

Mind
This reflects your emotional self. You are identified by your emotions, feelings and sentiments.

Intellect
Identification with the intellect is the thinking self. The intellect is the rational thinker and is full of ideals and principles.

Self
At the core of these is your spiritual Self, your real Self. The spiritual personality demands truth and perfection and holds the highest values of life.

So in every field of life we actually have four personalities acting together.

from “Storm To Perform” by Swami Swaroopananda

Healing to Happiness

06/07/2025

Rudra Musings

Inner Strength

Life constantly presents us with all kinds of challenges. Our capacity to meet them depends largely on the strength or weakness of our inner state.

There is this beautiful prayer that says: “God grant me the serenity to accept things that I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Often, the difficulties we face are a reflection of an inner weakness. External problems mirror inner disturbances, which in turn are due to our internal limitations. That is why we need to gather strength inwardly; so we can fulfill our potential and attain success regardless of circumstances.

Our inner strength consists of (i) memory patterns (ii) the mind and (iii) the intellect. Of these three mind is the most complex and difficult one. Although it is difficult to restrain the mind, it is not impossible. And do it we must both to seek peace and contentment within and success and accomplishment in the world without.

from “Storm To Perform” by Swami Swaroopananda

Healing to Happiness

08/06/2025

Rudra Musings

Anger and Karma

What is the difference between actually hurting someone and wanting to hurt someone. Is being angry a very bad karma?

The question of being angry with somebody does not arise. You are not angry with anybody, you are just angry. Your anger has nothing to do with somebody else. It’s about you. Anger is simply anger. Your anger has nothing to do with anybody except yourself, only yourself. If you realize this your anger will not last long.

Anger comes from strong sense of like and dislike. This in turn comes from a very deep identification with a certain way of thinking, a certain way of feeling, a certain way of life - which you think is the best way to live, which you think is the best way to think and feel. If somebody is not in line with that, you get angry at those things.

If your likes, dislikes, your identifications become stronger, all you are doing is excluding existence. If you say “I like this very much”, in a way you are excluding the rest of existence. The very process of liberation is to include, not to exclude. In exclusion, you become trapped. In inclusion, you become liberated.

Keep saying “I am not this, I am not this, I am not this”. Once you have dis-identified with everything that is not you, you become all inclusive. Anger itself is not karma, exclusion is the big karma.

Essential Wisdom from a Spiritual Master - Sadhguru

Healing to Happiness

01/06/2025

Rudra Musings

Digestion - Key to Health

Digestion plays a very key role in understanding of human health and illness. Though Ayurveda contends that all diseases originate first in the mind, on a physical level this invariably manifests as a breakdown in metabolic function. Because of this, it gives great importance to the process of digestion, whereas modern medicine places much less emphasis on the body’s metabolic processes as the source of either health or disease.

Only vayu, agni and jala, acting as vat , pitta and kapha doshas in the body, possess the specific intelligence sufficient to conduct these metabolism processes. Ultimately, everything to do with metabolic function and its relationship to health and disease boils down to the coordinated actions of the three doshas.

Each dosha displays a twice-daily cycle of predominance. However, when a dosha's dominance continues outside the normal time period, it becomes "aggravated." An aggravated dosha no longer interacts in a balanced manner with the other two. It overwhelms them and inhibits their ability to perform their respective operations. Whether it's kapha's ability to liquefy and bind, pitta's capacity to transform, or vata's ability to separate and transport, their activity becomes weak or sluggish. The precise coordination of all three of these functions is critical to healthy digestion.

Understanding foundations of Ayurveda becomes critical to understand how a single system of health can be both comprehensive enough to include all of life and specific enough to address the uniqueness of very individual human being.

from the book “Ayurveda & Panchakarma - the science of healing and rejuvenation” by Sunil V Joshi M.D. (Ayurveda)

24/05/2025

Rudra Musings

Toxins and Chakras
There is a chakra connection that can serve as a guide in the healing process. As long as the body is full of the अम (toxins) that we continually add into our body, its filters are increasingly unavailable. Think about your windows that are dirty through the winter, and then in the spring they are cleaned. Every time, you will notice how much more you can see and how much light comes in now that the “windows” of the cells are clean. Truth, as the soul sees it, comes forth with little effort.
PanchKarma is a form of window cleaning that impacts our chakras. Once we are physically cleansed of the toxins to at least a minimum threshold, we can connect to the chakras more easily. And this would start with the foundational first chakra known as the muladhara. This is the most important chakra, as truly one needs to be grounded in this life, because it is from this place of groundedness that decisions are made for the support of you and those around you. And once the first chakra is sufficiently cleansed, each subsequent cleanse can assist you with each sequential chakra. More than one chakra may be cleansed each time, as there are variables that probably impact that possibility.

There is something else that happens in this process which is quite interesting. The cleanse allows the body to return to a level of equilibrium, homeostasis, with the innate intelligence resuming control. When this happens, all the layers of the body are nourished,
with the doshic balance (combination of three main bodily substances) aiding in the flow of nutrients. There is harmony and
coordination present in the four areas of our life: soul, senses, mind, and body. Health and happiness are possible. When this shift happens, the senses, our mind, and our soul are able to be nourished as well. And the biochemical substance responsible for this process is referred to as Ojas. It is responsible for nourishing these nonphysical parts of ourselves. This process allows us to connect with a part of ourselves that can connect with the Divine. This is known as Atman or Universal Consciousness.

Stress, as we know, is expressed in our bodies and brains in ways that we are all too familiar with. In Ayurveda, this imbalance is known as a vata imbalance. The interventions to support the reduction of the symptoms and return to balance are ones best done daily.

from “Cleanse Your Body, Reveal Your Soul - The Ancient Power of Ayurveda Panchakarma Therapy” by Judith E. Pentz.

18/05/2025

Rudra Musings

Selfless Sacrifice

You can be completely selfish, completely selfless or any of the
combinations in between. Life is a journey from being selfish to becoming selfless.

The ideology behind the ice cream is: enjoy your life before it melts. It symbolizes hedonism; to savour every moment of your life through personal enjoyment. On the other hand, the candle is symbolic of another ideology: to give light to others before it melts. Both ice creams and candles melt, but their
reasons for doing so are completely different. The candle is formed from
wax. Its very essence is burnt just to give light for other people to see. This is the selfless nature of a candle.

We do not think of ourselves as completely selfish. Nor can we put ourselves down as completely selfless. We are all somewhere in
between. Just because we cannot be candles fully, it does not mean we should simply remain selfish at the ice-cream end. The journey of life is moving from being an ice cream to being a candle. That is the purpose of everyone’s life at the core: to share, give and contribute to others.

In summary,

- The philosophy of an ice cream is: Enjoy it before it melts.
- The philosophy of a candle is: Give light to others before it melts.
- In order to be happy, we should shift our attitude from being an ice cream to a candle, from being selfish to selfless. This is shown through service.
- We must be wary of compassion fatigue. This means we must have a mindset of having a balanced approach as we try to help others - This is the principle of being selfishly selfless.

from “The Way Of The Monk” by Gaur Gopal Das

Healing to Happiness

WhatsApp Group Invite

04/05/2025

Rudra Musings

Self - Consciousness

Just as cloth, when analysed, becomes nothing but thread, same is so with even this universe, when examined carefully is found to be nothing but the Self.

This is the intuitive apprehension of the Reality, when it transcends intellect. But we are rooted in our body consciousness and trying to comprehend the Reality with our intellect. Necessarily the intellectual faculties of logic and reason does not stand this mystic apprehension.

Ordinarily, in our day-to-day transactions, we use cloth and view it from its utility standpoint. But a little thoughtful examination can easily reveal that what we consider as cloth is nothing but threads woven together. In the vision of the cloth, the existence of
the thread is not generally recognised. To see the thread, a little discriminative thinking is necessary. In our day-to-day life, we are jostled about by the moment-to-moment happenings around us and in the laughter and tears of living through them, we take the world of plurality for its face value. With a little discrimination, world can be discovered as nothing but the Consciousness, the Self. A continuous stream of thoughts provides us with a delusory expression of the mighty and
the powerful mind. Through the mind we see the world of names and forms projected upon the Consciousness. Thus the perceived objects and the perceiving equipments are all
‘stresses’ in Consciousness. When these illusion creating, delusion breeding 'stresses' are relinquished, through deep meditation, the thoughts cease; the mind is lifted; and the
hallucination of the universe rolls away. With a little scientific thought the essential reality of the universe can be detected as the pure Consciousness only.

from the “Ashtavakra Gita” by Swami Chinmayananda

Healing to Happiness

27/04/2025

Rudra Musings

Dealing with Mental Chatter

“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to let them stop controlling you.”

• There are no breaks or time-outs with our own mind.
• It is constantly on when we are awake, and sometimes stops us from falling asleep. Even when
we are asleep, it is wandering in different directions that are beyond our control. It’s the subtle organ
that never rests, chattering away like a child.
• It’s the person that we spend the most time with. Therefore, it is critical that we like that voice and
make sure we can befriend it to work with us.
• We have to learn when to ignore the mind and when to give it attention. This is also an active process that, at first, requires conscious competence. But over time, as we get used to ignoring the mind’s childish requests, it becomes less of a struggle and
becomes unconscious competence.
• When the mind throws a tantrum shift it to:
o Something enjoyable
o Something engaging
o Something energizing
• Just as we can turn our phone from loud to silent, there are ways to put our mind from loud to silent.
• The key to negotiating with the mind is remembering the end goal that we want to achieve. There has to be some sort of compromise.
• There should be a time in the day when we are aloof even from our thoughts. This could be our space of nothingness, just observing our mind. No analysis, no judgements, no reactions.

From “Energize Your Mind” by Gaur Gopal Das

Healing to Happiness