Book Review: Living with the Himalayan masters by Swami Rama

Many years back, I came across an interview by Superstar Rajnikanth in a Tamil magazine. He had recommended a couple of his favorite spiritual books - Autobiography of a Yogi (I'm yet to read it) and Living with the Himalayan masters. Being an ardent fan of Superstar, especially for his spiritual angle, I promptly bought these books and added them to my bookshelf.

A book comes to you at the right time when you need it. Since this year, I have been picking up more books from the spiritual genre and Swami Rama's "Living with the Himalayan masters" caught my attention. 

It is an interesting collection of anecdotes and life stories that Swami Rama experienced in his spiritual life in the Himalayas. A fascinating read, that covers a wide range of topics ranging from Karma, spiritual path, enlightenment, power of the mind, Yoga, universal connections, etc. Each chapter is dealt with independently and this helped me to read and absorb the book slowly. Though the underlying messages are profound, Swami Rama has explained them in simple terms using his experiences, stories, and relatable characters.

I loved the chapters that emphasize how fear, attachment, ego, and desire come in the way of our spiritual journey. The examples were just brilliant.

A few of my favorite passages below

"Learn to perform your duties skillfully without aversion or attachment, and do not believe that anything can wash off your bad karma"

"It is important to make one's life creative and helpful, but before doing so one should make contact with own potentials deep within by disciplining himself and gaining control over his mind, speech and action"

"The whole search for enlightenment is to seek within, to become aware that you are complete in yourself. You are perfect. You don't need any externals"

"When we are inadequate ourselves but our ego is strong, we tend to blame others"

"The shortest cut to self-enlightenment is to cut through the ego; surrender before the Highest One"

"Meditation will become your very nature when you give up attachment, anger, and pride"

"Death is not painful but fear of death is very painful.......Death is a habit of the body, a necessary change"

I found answers to many questions that were lingering on my mind. I'm sure this book would appeal to people who are on the quest to understand the meaning of life, death, and our experiences. And the takeaways are completely dependent on the reader's search.

P.S. This book is available on Kindle Unlimited.

Habits for Life

The lifestyle choices we make in our 30s and 40s not only impact our health in our 60s and 70s but also the quality of lives of our children and grandchildren. Not only do we pay a price but our children and grandchildren pay a hefty price too. 

Let's think about those lifestyle habits we practice for days, months and years.
Smoking, drinking alcohol, chewing tobacco, excessive intake of processed/junk foods, excess intake of sugar, more caffeine, sedentary lifestyle, erratic sleep cycles, excess screen times etc etc.

If you believe there are habits you need to quit/ reduce/manage, take action now before it is too late. 

The intention of this post is not to scare anyone but only to give a gentle nudge.

Appa is only able to take liquid foods these days. Except for coffee, tea, milk, buttermilk and packaged fruit juices, he has never had any other liquid foods earlier. Now at 72 years, it is hard for him to accept new foods like sathumaavu kanji, ragi kanji, rice kanji etc. The moment I say this is a cup of kanji, his expression changes to complete resistance.

Trying home made fruit juices, milkshakes, soups etc, but all these are new to him as well. 

The biggest lesson/observation for me in the last few weeks is that the older we get, the higher the resistance to change. Sticking to same old habits and expecting a health improvement isn't gonna happen. Habits get hard-wired - especially our food preferences.

I know I keep repeating this often. If you are in your 20s, 30s or 40s, please do take charge of your food habits now.

Foods that you would like to introduce in your diet - be it millets, traditional rice varieties, vegetables especially native and gourds, fruits etc, start including them now and not wait until a certain age or wait until a lifestyle ailment strikes.

Foods that you would like to cut back or stop - be it processed and junk foods, deep fried snacks, sugar, sweets, caffeine etc, make the change right away and don't postpone for a later date.

How to increase attention span?

In my previous post, we discussed the need to measure our attention span instead of relying on averages concluded by popular media. Do try out the proposed exercise in that post for a week and gather your observations.

In this post, let me share with you 5 strategies by which you can increase your attention span. Tried and tested by yours truly🙂

(1) Avoid multitasking - yes. Stop doing more than one task at once. Going for a walk? Enjoy the walk. Don't try to optimize that time by listening to an audiobook/podcast. When we stop multitasking, we are focused on that single task we are engaged in. This increases our ability to stay mindful for a longer duration.

(2) Avoid frequent context switching - this is an extension to the first strategy, but deserves a separate point, given the amount of information we consume across multiple sources. Reduce the number of people whom you follow on social media. Identify 2-3 topics you are interested in and follow people who share content on these categories. For eg, I have fixed the max number of people whom I follow on Instagram to be 60. The topics I focus on are food/nutrition, Ayurveda and lifestyle that inspires me.

(3) Invest time in activities that put you in a state of FLOW - a state where you are so engaged in an activity that you don't feel the need to reach for distractions. For me, reading, writing, cooking, and public speaking are activities that give me the experience of being in FLOW. I make sure that I invest enough time every week in these activities.

(4) Consciously engage in activities that require more time and focus. A few examples 

• Read long-form articles - Do you easily get put off when an article is lengthy? Do you bookmark it for later reference but don't come back to it? If yes, then I'd highly recommend you invest time every week in reading articles that require at least 10 minutes of dedicated time.
• Watch videos at normal speed - This might be a counter-intuitive idea, but hear me out. Many of us like to watch videos at 1.5x speed to grab more information in less time. Some even watch at 2X speed where one could hardly hear the words being spoken, let alone understand the content. Our attention becomes jittery to the point where we might even experience anxiety. By watching at normal speed, we end up seeing fewer videos. We also signal to our mind that the information is important and it requires focus.
• Practice active listening - When someone is having a conversation with you, give your complete attention and listen without interrupting or fidgeting with your phone. I had written a detailed article a few years back on the benefits of listening. 

(5) Incorporate "Do Nothing" moments - Our attention gets fragmented when we are busy throughout the day. Consciously taking the time to do nothing, even if it is just for a few minutes in a day is so helpful to realign and focus on fewer priorities. A few minutes of stillness can give us momentum for the rest of the day.

A bonus strategy from the point of distractions - remove apps from your phone that give variable rewards. I had written about this earlier. This strategy converts distraction-inducing smartphones to just another tool we use to get things done. 

I hope you found these pointers helpful. As I had mentioned earlier, attention is our MOST VALUABLE asset. Let's protect it with utmost care.

Measure your attention span

 We often keep hearing about how the attention span of humans is dwindling. Popular research articles declare that the average attention span of humans is now 8 seconds and we are lagging behind the goldfish (9 seconds apparently). 

Instead of arguing over whether such studies and conclusions are valid and accurate, let's do a personal exercise.

On a normal day, how long are you able to sit with a task at hand? 

Let's say, you are reading a book. How long can you read without getting distracted by your phone or other temptations?

You are cooking lunch. How long can you focus on this task without picking up your phone?

When you are engaged at work, putting together a presentation/document, how long can you focus on this task without checking email/Slack/instant messaging/social media, etc?

I'd highly encourage you to do this experiment for a week and note down the times you have been able to focus on various tasks. 

You could refer to this sample template to track:

Let's not judge or criticize ourselves if the results aren't what we wanted them to be. The first step to change is becoming aware. 

All of us have experienced a state of distractions and an inability to focus from time to time. But is this becoming a norm rather than an exception? The above exercise will help us understand our patterns.

It is also interesting that once we start becoming conscious and self-aware, we tend to focus better.

In my next post, I'll be sharing 5 strategies that have helped me increase my attention span.

Related articles:

Win back your attention and focus

How to navigate the content maze?

 Thanks to the Information age we are currently living in, we consume humongous amounts of content every single day through multiple sources - books, social media posts, podcasts, videos, webinars, conferences, workshops, courses, and much more.

Irrespective of the source, we can group the content (across various topics/genres) into 3 broad categories. Since I create a lot of food-related content, let me elaborate on these 3 categories using examples from food.

1. Information - Mostly facts, either verified or unverified. For eg, nutrition profile of millets, recipes using millets, where to procure them => a few examples of content that fall under this category
2. Perspectives - An individual's analysis / understanding / experience / interpretation of a concept / topic. For eg, I write about how consuming millets have helped me in reversing my PCOD. This is my perspective and may / may not apply to everyone. 
3. Implementation - An individual's approach / action / next steps towards a particular problem / objective / challenge. For eg, I share about how I have incorporated millets in my weekly meal plan - I plan and consume millets 3-4 times a week in the form of idli, dosa, pongal, etc. This may or may not apply to everyone.

My general observation is that Information focused content doesn't motivate us to take action as we don't connect to such content at a deeper level. We might save or bookmark them for future reference.

More than Information, we tend to connect with content that belongs to either Perspectives or Implementation. 

Perspectives help us learn from other's experiences and interpretations. Some perspectives can be inspiring and elevating. Sometimes, they help us see a situation through a different lens. When our perspectives match with that of the content creator, we feel a good vibe and we want to hear more from him/her. But let's also keep the caveat in mind - perspectives are influenced by multiple factors, sometimes these could be biased by his/her past experiences and conditioning. A perspective may be the TRUTH for him/her, but it isn't the TRUTH for everyone else. 

Implementation-focused content gives us nice little tips, tricks, and ideas to work on an idea. They can motivate us to take action and proceed in a certain direction. It also gives us the confidence that a certain way of implementation works for this person and so it should work for us as well. But, there is a caveat here as well. The implementation approach is completely dependent on the individual's situation - family, environment, context, his/her strengths, support system, etc. What works for someone may or may not work for everyone else. 

The next time when you consume a piece of content (from any source), ask yourself - "Which of the 3 categories does this content belong to?"

If it belongs to either Perspectives or Implementation, do your due diligence, analyze if it makes sense for you, your family, and your current situation before adopting it right away.

Many times, we take someone's perspectives and implementation as the ultimate truth, try to incorporate it into our lives, fail miserably, and feel disappointed. 

Perspectives are abundant in the content maze we live in today. What will change your life is YOUR perspective of looking at life. 

P.S. Take a guess which category this particular post belongs to :-)