Saurabh Sanganee - Dubai, UAE

 

My Experience with MRA

I attended the first conference in June 2011. I have been associated with MRA for a time not that long but what has happened in this short time is something that I will retain for an eternity.When I look back in my time in silence, and observe, I realize that the change in me came in steps.

First step - Realization

When I came to MRA, it was the first time it hit me what I was. The most shocking fact was, no one told it to me. I told it to myself. It was like looking at myself in a mirror, not anyone else whom I wanted to resemble but the true MYSELF, naked, stripped of all my cover ups, all those excuses, all those lies, just ME.The true ME. After the 8 days at MRA, I continued with all my wrong habits. I continued to be rude with people. I continued to talk in a taunting way with my family, I continued to get angry, lie, and do all sorts of things, but I also continued to keep doing my Quite Time because of the sole purpose that I BELIEVED in those moments that I had experienced at MRA and there was one little thing inside me that was constantly saying "What you are doing is wrong". It continuously kept pricking me in the inside. My huge ego overpowered it in the starting for a few days but then this tiny thing started becoming a burden inside my heart. Each time I did something wrong, it called out to me and said 'YOU ARE NOT RIGHT' and increased to that burden. Daily I did my quiet time and I realised that what I was doing was indeed wrong. How could I be so rude with people? How could I talk so badly with my own family? Just for my satisfaction? Am I soo bad? There were various wrongs that I would do. I used to be extremely lazy and even getting up for a glass of water was like an uphill task. But then it was all in the head. Eventually I realized that the core reason for that burden in my heart was laziness, nothing else. My weight issues, study issues, fights with parents and siblings, and various other reasons, they all narrowed down to MY laziness. Daily during my quiet time I realized this, and I felt a rage toward myself and wanted soo much to change, but laziness had seeped down soo much that it would not let me. Some more days passed and the burden kept increasing. Gradually, I started feeling uneasy, became more irritated because constantly there was a good self inside me telling that I am doing wrong.

Second Step - Acting

This was when I started realizing that all I am doing is giving in to my ego. And this is when I remembered the Jar Excercise at MRA. It frankly gave me an inspiration to gradually reduce the size of my ego. I decided to take it one at a time.

Primarily, I decided to work on the laziness. I decided that I will do all my work on my own. No asking for favors. I became stubborn with myself in this process. Yes, I did start doing my stuff on my own but something else also happened. I automatically became more active. I started attending college regularly, worked out regularly. In my Quiet Time, I would constantly remind myself of my achievements to encourage me and inspire myself.

Then I decided to work on my anger. I was an extremely short tempered person, but again I did not like it. I decided to just skip the moment of anger. Just move politely when I am angry or just remain quiet. Because when I looked back, I had said some of the worst things, things that I had not even thought of, when I was angry to everyone, my friends, family. But just eradicating that anger was not the solution. The guilt inside and that the desire to overpower that ego made me apologize to all the people to whom I had said things in anger. I revived my relationships with them and today we share the best of bonds. Relationships that are unbreakable. I did not allow that ego to come in play in this process. This indeed was one great achievement and helped greatly to increase my will power as I no longer carried that burden of guilt in my heart and had room enough to move ahead. Daily quiet time, daily inspiration and the desire to do the right thing helped me get through it. To the people whom I had lied I went and told them about it and eventually that burden was getting lighter. But then this was just getting a derailed train back on track. Eventually, I realized that life was not just about this. I had to achieve more. Reach the mark of perfection. There were some people connected to me who had done things that were wrong from my perspective, thus me breaking all communication with them. But then I started seeing things from a neutral point of view and realized it was done keeping my best interests in mind. Again sitting quiet and doing the right thing, got me to mend my relationship with them and overpower that ego. These incidents were some which increased my level of confidence and formed the foundation for a firm will power. Those who are fat can maybe relate to me on this. Because of my weight and my looks I had this inferiority complex and often concluded on the way the other people would judge me even without knowing who he is. I thus stopped talking and often considered it the best way to any situation. I ran away or hid if I met an old friend, again thinking what he would think about me. I had extremely low confidence and self esteem levels. After a lot of thought process, I realized that what I was doing was wrong and I must accept who I am. If I have an issue with it, then I must just work hard for it and achieve the goals that I have set forth. I must have a single personality as the other person can or cannot like me for who I am and not for who I am pretending to be. I learnt that having multiple personalities just to convince the other person made me more defensive and occupied a lot of my thinking space just for the various personalities that I had developed. Also, it contradicted the principle of honesty. I realized that I am what I am and I am making an effort for becoming a better human and I must leave it to the other person to judge me at that. I started making an effort to have a single face and my true self at all places. This is where I also realized a lot of mistakes I made and gave me room to rectify them. This gave great inner peace and great confidence levels as I was free and the same at all places. I stopped wearing the defensive armor and stopped being someone else just to convince others. When all these things were let off, when these burdens were let go, it paved way for development, for long thoughts inclined not on these issues but on something more productive and more useful. It was during these times of silence that I felt the need to have a more focused mind, a more just one and not one that would easily get carried away by the surroundings. A mind that would have the courage to to the right thing, a calm and peaceful mind that would allow me to focus on more important and valuable things in life that get entangled in daily petty issues, a mind that has the power to prioritize what is more important at the moment and work on it, not giving in to laziness. I would often think about the past and cry about it, cry about things that I could have done instead of wasting it in unproductive things. In this little time with myself brought a realization that there is no point crying about the past wasting even more time. Best is to utilize each moment from now on and let bygones be bygones.With all this in my time with myself,it has given me a realization that I am getting just one life and each moment, each second is going to come once and then just going to go away. It wont come again. I aim to utilize each moment of this life on the basis of the basic 4 principles. This feeling is there constantly in my head but yet I give in to unproductive means like TV and Facebook and other similar elements which I know I must not and have not achieved that level of perfection. At many places I more than often come across the need to have a clean language and clean speech. I never actually took that seriously until I sat quiet with myself in my little space and felt it. Each time my mouth turnes foul and dirty there is a little bad feeling that comes in the inside and i feel the need to just gargle and clean up. This has indeed purified my conversations to a great extent but it must go out completely. The journey till here has given me an inspiration that I will not lose hope and I will never give up, always keep trying to be a better person each day and use each moment of the one life that I have to the fullest. Not to be distracted by any kind of unwanted and irrelevant elements, have the will power and the courage to strive and work hard to do the right thing for this society. Not losing hope due to failures but rather using them as a learning lesson and keep moving ahed to achieve that level of perfection and to always keep pushing myself to the limit.

Not mentioning the person because of whom all this has happened will be a huge mistake. Viralbhai has been and will always be an inspiration to me. An always available helping hand which I can catch and move ahead. Thanks to MRA and specially Viralbhai who inspired the change in me and a change to make this world a better place to live in.

Thank You,
Saurabh Sanganee