Learning from Master – Dr.Suman K

Life is a School of Learning. Every moment, an opportunity to become better.
We learn and master various skills/subjects in life from our childhood, similarly we need to master Life. Mastering Life is to create thoughts and actions that are pure & selfless. This Mastery begins first with the understanding who we really are and strengthen that “Real Entity” within us.

The mastery of how to talk, how to eat, what to eat, when to eat, how to take bath, how to treat others are mostly taught by teachers at school and parents.

But the Art of Living is a different ball game.
Life encompasses our Thoughts & Actions, that emanate from Mind & Body and the Purity and Integrity of these. This Art is rarely taught in schools and families these days.
This education of Mind and Body is infact the most important of all the educations that we receive. Perfection of our thought and action needs to be the essence of the journey of life.

We all know from our childhood, when we go to a Master/Teacher, we learn, do home work, fix any mistakes and again go back to the Master with better skill.
Master verifies what we learnt, and slowly progresses us to next levels. This applies to any area of knowledge. Similarly Parents at home nurture an infant by providing opportunity to learn and upgrading the child to different levels of complexities.
A child learns, falls, learns and grows.

In a similar manner, when we go to a Master who guides us in Life, who helps us lead life with Pure thoughts and actions, we need to get better in our outlook towards life every time.
As mentioned in previous articles, a Few are Masters/Yogis like Sunita Bapooji who can teach by cleansing us, By cleansing she is not only absorbing and eliminating our sub conscious dirt in form of clutters of thought and illness of body, but also teaching us pure ways of living life.
We cannot just go to such Masters to get rid of the impurities that we accumulated in Mind and Body and come back to the world and keep resorting the same old habits of impure thoughts and actions.
Master cannot be a “garbage can” to dump all the stress/sub conscious baggage that we carry. Healing masters like Sunita naturally absorb the clutters that we carry in life.
Sunita does not make any special effort or use any technique to absorb our Mental agitations/fluctuations. She is born with the healing pure energy.
So it becomes our responsibility to grow better, become purer and aware of our own thoughts, behavior and actions every time we go to such Masters with healing power.
Our mission should be to purify ourselves rather than using Master to unload all our stress.

For sure, We all go to Masters like Sunita to heal from simple daily stress to complex diseases, But what is healing?
Healing is cleansing of all the dirt and impurities in our Mind and Body. It is refinement of our Mind and Body. Infact the process of healing is more difficult than teaching a 4 yr old.
Because a 4 yr old has very little conditioned behaviour and attitudes, whereas we adults have accumulated tons of dirt in form of judgements, attitudes and Ego.
A 4yr old works with Innocence and we grown ups work with Ignorance.
So when we go to a Master like Sunita, she is doing double the work. First get rid off all the dirt from our sub-conscious system and also teaching us better ways of life so that we do not get dirty again.
Healing is a process of elimination of Ignorance and allowing us to revisit the Innocence in us.
I remember a line that Sunita often says “I am making you into a pure white cloth. Do not add stains to that again”. But most of us again repeat the old behaviour and make our cloth of life dirty.

Learning happens only when we surrender, Without surrender to the teacher there is no knowledge transfer. Learning is a continuous process of Listening, Practise and Assimilation.
In this evolutionary process, we need to get better every day, learn from mistakes, and eventually Master the craft.
The student needs to always come to Master with a conviction that he is presenting the best to the teacher from what was taught in every visit and ready to become better by showing constant and consistent progress.
The most common hurdle that comes along the way in learning is “Ego”, the delusive entity in us that does not want to learn, that believes that it already knows everything.
This Ego is the biggest blockage for learning, let it be learning Violin, Piano or Computers. This Ego comes into play even more with the matters of Mind, because it involves a total shift in the thought process.
As adults we do not like to take this U turn, we want to feel that we already know everything and keep sticking to old habits.
I remember my Acting school teacher, Mr.Coburn used to say
“Before entering the class room, drop your Mind in the bucket I left outside the class and then enter the room”. By that he meant to drop the feeling of “I” because that is a greatest impediment to learning.

Many students speak externally the words of praises and adulations, but a Master expects none of these or any gifts.
A Master’s focus is Purification of a Student’s Mind and Body and preparing the student to elegantly handle the challenges of Life.
Master’s goal is to see constant positive progress in a student.
Master gets gratified only when the student succeeds in the mission they have begun with.

When I went back to my teachers who taught me in the Primary school after 30 years I have seen their eyes filled with joy and fulfillment.
Their expectation from me was not great gifts or words of flattery, but just to see me succeed in education, career, character building and Life.

An ideal student to a Master is one who surrenders the Soul/Spirit/Atman. Without this everything else is a mere drama and the results are equally fake.
“Atman Samarpan” is the greatest gift a student can give a Master. And the greatest Masters like Sunita Bapooji are the ones who expect nothing.