The Shadow And The Light

Pulkit Sharma offers four techniques with which to combat the onslaught of negativity upon our being, and rest secure in the positive.

- Pulkit Sharma

It is not easy to live in today's times because negativity presses upon us from all sides. The relentless speed of modern times coupled with the rapid rate of obsolescence is a huge source of stress as we struggle and strive to stay abreast of trends. The spiralling rise of consumerism has brought with it envy, heart-ache, greed, competitiveness and environmental degradation. Terrorism is on the rise, mindless violence against women and children have increased alarmingly, and the politics of hate seems to have spread across the planet.

But none of this is cause for despair, for each of us is equipped with a psychic armoury that can help us to combat the darkness and let in the light. According to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, the founders of Integral Yoga, the adverse forces confronting humanity are nothing but a shadow that augur the presence of a powerful light _ our own inner divinity.

In the epic poem, Savitri, Sri Aurobindo explains that adverse forces and pain are also a creation of the Divine. If there was no pain, we would be comfortably caught up in inertia. Only pain forces us to question various illusions and seek truth. Instead of being perturbed by adverse forces we need to align all our energy to invoke and manifest the Divine light at an individual and collective level. This may seem a daunting task but Integral Yoga offers us four simple and powerful self-transforming techniques to accomplish this:

1. Allow the ‘psychic being’ to lead