Your Inner State Is Your Fate

Your Inner State Is Your Fate
by Deana Tareshawty

Sat Chit Ananda Guru Ki Jay

Someone I care about deeply was struggling, lost, caught up in the maze of worldliness and chasing all the things society tells us will bring happiness, such as love, partnership, career, security. And the deeper he moved into chasing those things, the deeper into the maze he went. Poor sleep, poor eating habits, the slow creep of depression and the constant feeling of not being enough, were the fruits of a life organized entirely around the pursuit of the material world. I had a front row seat to witness all of this. I worked hard to stay present and to remember to reach for emotional resilience.

But at times I got caught up in feeling sad because he had been touched by Grace. He had experienced Shaktipat, knew what peace felt like, and still had chosen a different path. There was nothing I could do but love them. The rest was his journey.

When the weight of his pain reached a breaking point, he succumbed to [delete: their] depression and emotionality. He blew up and then alienated the people closest to him. It was hard to sit back and watch him suffer. After a week of distance on both sides, I decided to reach out, not to fix anything, but simply to make sure he was okay. I was worried.

When he unleashed his wrath on me and laid blame on me for all his life’s trouble, I succumbed to the emotional intensity, and I lost awareness of my mantra and my Guru’s form.  The cascade of ego identification came flooding in. I went down that rabbit hole with him. Flooded with emotions and understandings I knew to be false; I allowed them to rule me completely.

As we continued to talk, the emotional tone calmed down. Even though we got to a good place where he was feeling better, heard, and loved, I was not. I was still inwardly reeling, continuing to hold onto thoughts that I had failed him somehow, that I was not enough, that his pain was mine to own and fix. Those thoughts stayed in my mind and disturbed my peace. Now I was stuck and driven by my restless mind.

Lost in the Maze

So, as a result, over the next few weeks, I was engaging in doership and trying to control and manipulate outcomes to make him happy again. I couldn’t let go of the idea that I was being blamed and slipped into anger. I was engaging in the understandings of others around me and sliding back into a worldly lifestyle. This situation was stressing me out, making my mind restless, and putting my emotions on full throttle. This restlessness disturbed my sleep. The stress from all of this began to impact my body. I started to get sick and feel run down.

This is how easy it is to get stuck in the maze and shift my inner state. It happened instantly and I know it happened the moment I took my awareness from my mantra and my Guru’s form and identified as a person living this situation, rather than seeing it as a play of the Shakti and a kriya.

The Blessing of Grace

As I sat for meditation one morning, my mind went swirling with thoughts. I started to replay all the recent situations and circumstances causing me to feel upset in the past 2 weeks.  Once again, I found myself going down a rabbit hole. Then, by Grace, I heard inwardly, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be blessed?”

Hearing this immediately pulled my awareness away from ruminating on the thoughts into the blessing of saying YES. Yes, I want to be blessed. All I had been doing up until now was looking for ways to validate my point of view and “rightness.” Even if I was right, my being right was not the way to resolve the conflict. Most importantly it was not the way to resolve the conflict within me that was arising from making this situation and the needs and wants of others more important than my Sadhana. I needed the blessing of Grace.

And then my awareness recalled Kedarji’s instruction to us, that we are to use all objects of sense, all people, places and things to experience the indescribable Joy of the Self, moment to moment. That shifted me to understand that these recent situations were kriyas and they held a message for me. Here was my blessing.

Your Inner State Is Your Fate

Again, by Grace, I was drawn to Kedarji’s book, Your Inner State is Your Fate, and in it I found more instruction to follow to help me navigate my current life challenges.

As Kedarji shares, “Your inner state is your fate. It is how your life is created. Your inner state determines what you will experience and how you will experience it. It determines your life lessons and how easy or difficult those lessons will be. It regulates the number of impressions that are created in your subtle body, impressions that not only dictate the course of your life but how many more lifetimes you will have to lead before you attain the happiness and freedom that is your birthright.”

This reminded me of all the ways to improve my inner state, from engaging the spiritual power, improving my mental state, strengthening my emotional resilience, and taking care of my physical body with attention to vibrant health. It is all connected, and it all impacts the quality of my inner state.

This recent situation brought me face to face with this truth of the quality of my inner state. The question became: was I meeting this circumstance with the highest understanding, seeing God in all the people involved and seeing God in the situation itself, or was I getting lost in the maze of worldliness and shifting my inner state away from peace by neglecting the 4 Pillars of Joy in Daily Living?

In response to that question, I was aware that my physical health was most obviously out of balance due to the high levels of stress this situation brought. When I began to observe why, it became clear that my inner state needed to be addressed. From there, I could see that the other pillars of Joy in daily living were being neglected as well. I was not consistently seeing others or the situation itself as God, or as a blessing of Grace. That allowed my mind to become restless with overthinking, which at times caused me to lose control of my emotional responses rather than using my emotions as a tool to experience God in my feelings.

When I applied Kedarji’s wisdom to this current situation, my understanding of the situation shifted and so did my experience of it. Kedarji teaches that to improve our inner state. We must observe all the places our mind likes to wander so that we can reign it in. In my own contemplation, it became clear I had been allowing my mind to drift back into old ways of thinking and believing, and this was keeping me locked into victim thinking and behavior. This thinking was being reinforced by where I was allowing my mind to wander, what I was meditating on, and what I was allowing myself to obey, as in the thoughts that were dictating my actions. When I realized this pattern and habit from observing where my mind was going, I made the effort to stop allowing my mind to focus there. That shift made all the difference.

The Way Back

From this experience I was reminded again how important Grace is in my mundane life and Sadhana. Without the Guru’s Grace of hearing those words in meditation – “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be blessed?” I would still be stuck. When Grace intervened and I heard those words it was like a light bulb went off in my mind…Ah yes, that’s right. That turned on the remembrance for me, shifted me and reminded me that these are kriyas and not something happening to me. They are happening for me. Grace triggered my remembrance of the Guru and the practice when I had lost my way. I then needed to reach for my Grace in my self-effort and follow where the Guru’s Grace and instruction was leading me.

In contemplating this situation, another thing that made me want to shift was asking myself if I wanted to keep feeling sad, sick and upset or if I wanted to have my peace and calm back. Did I want to let this situation drive me or did I want to choose a different way to exist, to exist in peace and let this go. I remembered that I had a choice in how I was thinking and feeling. When I thought of it that way it was easier to move toward following where Grace was leading me.

And that is what your inner state is your fate truly means. The situation did not change. The people did not change. What changed was my inner state, my understanding, and the direction of my mind,  and with it everything I was experiencing. That is the blessing of this path and the blessing of Grace.

Deana Tareshawty performs her selfless service as Vice President of our public charity, The Bhakta School, in addition to serving as a program leader and harmonium player. She also serves on our Board of Directors. Additionally, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and a double minor in Biology and Chemistry. She is a certified Ecology of Well-Being practitioner and the owner of Inspired Wholeness. She is also a trained Reiki Master in Usui Reiki.