Vedantic Wednesday: Get the Machine up!

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend TiECON Chennai 2012.

Talks by insanely successful yet humble giants of business. Interesting debate around whether entrepreneurship should be run as a marathon or a sprint. Inspiring thoughts from champions in sports. Insightful and thought provoking interview of Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev.  The silent revolution in remote villages of Tamil Nadu fueled by passion of a lone individual.

It was an extravagant spread of events, where there was something for everyone!

But I found one underlying message getting reiterated across the sessions.  Almost everyone who went up on stage emphasized one thing: the need to be spiritual as you speed towards success. Spirituality offers the anchor, firmly rooting us onto the ground when everything around us is in a break-speed churn. As you become the centre of change that you are creating, you try desperately to control both speed and direction. Very often we lose ourselves prematurely to this battle of conflicting demands and changes. Spirituality, as per all the speakers in one way or the other, at one point or the other, had enabled them to get their bearings. They understood the only thing that is available to them over which they had any control was their own mind, body and intellect. Only when they could direct these, could they gain equanimity. And it is this equanimity, that many hinted (though in various forms) that made them gain ground. So before you set yourself into a mad frenzy to achieve anything, get your machine(Self) up and running the right way!

And for me personally it was very invigorating and inspiring.  Every speaker echoed the sentiment:  evolving spiritually is the only way to a complete and peaceful existence, amidst the chaos of the ever-changing world!