The excitement of ten days of Ganesha festival is over and so are the nine days of Navaratri with filled with devotion and social celebration. Until Diwali people may face a lull in their lives.
Festivals are a great way of uplifting your religious and spiritual feelings. The power of like-minded people gathering together to celebrate and worship gives a great boost. But what happens when it's all over? This is where the true test of a spiritual person comes in. when your life is back to normal.
Can you maintain not the exuberant, spiritual fervour of a festival, but the quiet presence of religiosity and spiritual presence in your life? Can you appreciate the role of Bhagavan in your life? It is not a question of letting God into your life as God is already there. Can you recognise in your quiet moments that there is a role of Bhagavan in your life?
This would be one of the main learnings from religion and spirituality - to live a life of acceptance, of gratitude, of proactivity with the appreciation of the presence of Bhagavan, so that your decisions can be spiritual, born out of courage and not out of fear. The boost given by the festivals help to make the presence of Bhagavan more palpable at other times, when things are going very normally in your life.
It is easy to think of the Lord with gratitude when you are blessed with a lot of things you have or it is easy to cry out to the Lord when things are not going well or when you want things. But to have this appreciation of the role of the Lord in your day to day life, is what true spirituality is about. Of course, it may be very difficult to discover that on your own, you will need a teacher or a guru to guide you so that you can discover the role of Bhagavan in your day to day life. Then your spiritual journey takes off into total fulfilment.
The writer is the founder of Aarsha Vidya Foundation. You can write to him at aarshavidyaf@gmail.com
