In this article, Hardik signifies the importance of Guru Purnima and explains how this day is a fundamental reminder about keep seeking consciously.
The word ‘Gu Ru’
The Sanskrit word GuRu is made of two words. ‘Gu’ means Darkness, ‘Ru’ means Dispeller. Guru means, one who helps to remove Darkness and can help see what is a Darkness for you.
The Significance of having Guru
From the womb of the mother, the process of learning starts. The goal for the human is always to keep evolving, and let the human race forward.
Whether it is your school teacher or a spiritual Guru, the intent of sharing the learning is always that the next generation shall improvise on the current situation.
Once you start seeking, and If you can keep the ego a little bit down, you would easily know that you don’t know a bit in existence. Forget about humans, If you start doing research on the ‘small ant’, it would take years to figure out the true nature of it. So, If someone has already done research on ‘the ant’, certainly you don’t want to ignore it and start from ‘zero’. That’s a duplicate of efforts. You don’t have to 100% believe in someone’s research, but having that knowledge can certainly save time and make it easy.
The only need is to put a little bit of the ego down and listen to what someone has already experienced. However, for a lot of people, it’s too much effort to believe someone as a Guru. You can bow down to everything in creation, and make them Guru. What’s the problem?
We exist in Time, and Time matters for everyone. Once you know it can save time, Devotion is no more an issue.
The Smartness of Devotion
If you don’t choose the Guru(the one who dispels the darkness), you would anyway seek something else.
The Goals that you have, you searching on Google, your family, and loved ones, etc… all are the means of “reference of information” that you chose to seek and move further. It is just about making a choice – which references you want to follow to seek further and evolve.
Certainly, there are many Guru exists, whom people may not fully be able to trust. But, what’s the deal in seeking multiple? If it works, that’s fine. If not, it is OK. The goal is to Learn and dispel the darkness only. That also is growing further.
Choosing a God as Guru
Many people choose God as Guru, who shows the path. When you Devote to God, essentially it’s one-way communication.
You speak to God, you only asking and, then when God responds, you only respond on behalf of God. So, you only hear, what you want to. And, the beauty of it is, what you hear as your response changes from time to time, based on the current Context of yours.
There’s nothing wrong with it, it is just that information reference is limited to you. It is good for linear and limited growth.
Choosing a Live Guru
Choosing a Live Guru in other hand, is a two-way communication. You get feedback, and there’s a learning from previous their experiences that you can leverage, which saves lot of time actually.
I would like to share some of the stories of my Gurus, who had helped me through my Life in such exponential growth.
Until I was in my 10th, I didn’t ask or pay attention to Guru. I was always a very obedient student but never had interaction. But then, I started to open up. Being a Science and then Engineering student, whatever doesn’t fit in my mind, I could not consider them as God. Be it, Living or Dead Gods.
It is when in the 12th standard, I joined my first personal development class. The primary intent was to learn advanced English, however, it turned out to be the journey of ‘self-improvement’. I started exploring questions like, ‘why do we exist?’ , ‘what is the purpose of our Lives?’, ‘why two people study the same but produce different results?’. I devote myself to the teacher and kept thorough discussions with the teacher. It was very eye-opening, and based on discussions I realized that we don’t know a bit, and kept experimenting.
The second Guru, Bhavin, came across my Life when I was doing my engineering studies. One day, I got a pamphlet at my home, to study ‘C programming’, and my father thought it would be great to take programming classes, so I can be better at studies. I was in college, it’s the time where you want to explore everything. Being an Electronics engineer, He chose to be a teacher and was teaching to top organizations in Ahmedabad, and had so many industries contacts.
While we were learning engineering with him, I not only grasped the Life fundamentals that stayed with me this day also, there are people from the industry who used to visit.
By the time I was in the 6th semester of engineering, I got select at campus interviews to work with leaders at eInfochips, I had a girl whom I later married, well before my engineering completed. I was pretty much knowing all growth stories about all leaders of eInfochips in the 5th semester, that I was exactly knowing what Leaders in Ahmedabad I wanted to work for. By the final year, I was already earning money by teaching electronics to junior students and had written software for multiple industries, including software that was printing mark-sheet for the technical board.
Being a Computer Engineer, all my friends were selecting an application software industry, but I was very clear to leave what I knew very well and selected to be Electronics and embedded programmer. After 10 years, when mobile and cloud came back as industry dominated technologies, knowing all three pieces of device, cloud, and mobile help me in a very good position building a Smarter world.
Similar Experiences kept happening during my Job. Devoting and Learning from so many industry leaders put me into position, where I not only seen 8 people to 500 people team growth but learned to take responsibilities of more and more people. These people already built a 1000+ people team and had built a multi-million organizations. I learned so many things, and there are so many people who had seen my growth.
Taking responsibility for people is one of the most challenging and inspiring things. And, here I am, these things prepared me to take responsibility for all kinds of people. On a spiritual side, my Guru, Manan, inspired me to explore the path of various personal development programs and even religious ultimates, many times paid for it as well. During my job, I explored a lot of industry leaders, Fortune 500 company Leaders, and organizations in Silicon Valley, and learned all growth models.
One thing is clear, the journey to take responsibility for 4 people in the family to increase to 10 people team in the office is different. Then thoughts, tools, and processes that work for 10 people team don’t work for 30 people team. The same is true from 30 to 100 people, 100 people to 500 people, and so forth… By devoting to Gurus who has seen it, helped me to do it in 4 years, while others take 10 years to achieve the same results.
You don’t repeat efforts on what others have followed and experienced, and there’s always a scope of innovating the template as market changes. During this journey, I explored Buddhism, Pranic Healing, Muslim, Christianity, Sadhguru, Yogic philosophy, Swami Vivekananda, and connected with Industry experience and market Leader’s thought process.
Every religion or Guru in the world talks and invested on Devotion, simply because the more you open up and ready to explore, you can not miss a bit in the existence. You simply need the skill to be Devotee, which everyone has if they can keep their Ego down.
Choosing ‘Shiva’ to Devote
‘Shi-va’ means, that does not exist. As we looked above, You constantly need something to devote. Be it your goal, work, money, family, loved ones… You walk for some distance in one direction, and then think, no-no-no… the other direction is better for me. Then you walk that way for some time, and after sometime chose another path.
It keeps happening from one thing to another thing. When you Chose Shiva to devote, you essentially chose to devote to ‘nothing’. Once you chose to devote to nothing, there’s nothing in the world that influences you. That comes with a risk, of not attaching with everything. You would see Yogi’s walk alone, so while it comes with a lot of power, you better be careful when choosing him.
What Guru can do to Disciples
Everyone with a substantial position is a Guru to someone. One thing you can ensure no to do is to throw any ‘ideology’ to the disciples. Following any ideology means, making a pre-determined cricket shot, not knowing the ball. Neither, disciples shall be attached to you or a single philosophy.
While there are basic principles and human fundamentals that don’t change, letting disciples experience is the best teaching that we can give. Let them Go, and Explore. They would evolve as ‘The Next Generation’ as the need for a better world would change.
May this night of Guru Purnima come to you with at-most devotion, and you know everything worth knowing, and rise up to the highest potential.
Love and Grace,
