While I on a social networking site, I saw my friend’s status as “Evolution is the Divine’s Way of Issuing Software Upgrades.” My reply to her was, “What about bugs?” She said very aptly, “We have Meditation.”
Her reply ignited the thought in me that so many people work in IT (Information Technology), but how many of us feel responsible for our IT (Inner Transformation). Both ITs have parallels. I reflected on them relative to the symbols of Navaratri.
Our mind may have so many impressions– strong, mild, not so strong – and the nature of our mind is that it clings to negative. If we really look at it, suffering or peace is all our state of mind.
Negative impressions include: mahishasura (inertia), shumbha-nishumbha (pride and shame) and madhu-kaitabh (extreme forms of craving and aversion). Inertia, deeply ingrained negativity and obsessions (raktabeejasura), unreasonable logic (chanda-munda) and blurred vision (dhoomralochan). All these negative impressions have been mentioned in Aarti (worship) sung in front of the symbolic deity.
All the years I was growing up and singing the hymns every Navaratri, I used to think of all the impressions as real demons in physical forms. When they are hidden, or if we are oblivious to their existence in our system, they are even more dangerous. Our seers were so intelligent, they gave us knowledge in form of stories, symbols, idols, so it is easily remembered.
What does Navaratri really mean?
Navratri is an inward journey that nullifies negative impressions. It’s a journey back to the Source. What does going back to Source mean, especially to an IT professional? It simple means doing your Inner Transformation.
As I am both in Art of Living and IT , I can definitely testify that tools and techniques learned in Art of Living have been supporting my work in IT. I urge people working in stressful conditions in IT, to go deep within and look at their own Inner Transformation first. It’s like a bow and arrow. The more we pull the arrow inwards, farther it goes.
Day in and day out, being in IT, we deal with new requirements, product owners, application developers, deployments, bug fixes at UI, Services and Database level, Managers and directors.
To all folks who work in IT and have not yet attended the Art of Living Happiness Program, it is similar to a big Production Release that brings big Inner Transformations. These are followed by daily maintenance of Sudarshan Kriya and meditation.
Meditation is like finding the bug ( self reflection) and Sudarshan Kriya is like cleaning the bug from the database level.
In the IT world, if new requirements arise, project managers, directions, developers and testing team work together for another major release. In the Inner Transformation world, if “something is going on”, teachers and volunteers work together for the next course. In IT, after so many iterations, the product is released with minimal bugs, or none at all. For Inner Transformation, we start to live life more fully and deeply as we learn to drop more and more negative impressions from our system.
Our life is not just this present lifetime. Life is a continuum of years of lives to come and thousands of birth that we have already been through. In order to be absolutely bug free ( Enlightenment ), one has to do this Inner Transformation again and again. It’s an iterative process.
We have best deployment tools available to us in the form of precious Sudarshan Kriya and meditation.
Are you just an IT person or IT person? It’s time to upgrade!!