kriyayogamalaysia

The Last Days Now?

By Rudra Shivananda

A few days ago, I watched a movie about the “end of days,” a popular theme that has been frequently done in the last thirty years, most famously with the “Omen” series. In this genre of Christian movies, the agency is some sort of “Anti-Christ” who needs to come to fulfill some sort of gruesome prophecy involving the death of millions. In the more secular versions, we have the disaster movies which involve meteors, asteroids, comets, earthquakes or aliens.

What’s the attraction to imagining an end of the world scenario? There is a deep down acknowledgement that the world is messed up and no amount of human effort is going to fix things and so why not put an end to it and start over again? This may have something to do with our basic dissatisfaction with ourselves and what we have done – it is the deep desire to push the “reset button” on life, to start over again. There may also be a primal fear from the subconscious layer of the mind which has traces of ancient mega-disasters on earth. Whatever the reasons, besides making money for Hollywood, we can also take advantage of these thoughts.

Let us imagine that the world is going to end in one day, or a week and we are going to die.

What would you do different from what you are doing now? Would you still go to work tomorrow? Would you contact your family and friends and say goodbye? Would you do more meditation or would you rent more videos and have a movie marathon? Would you stay in bed and feel sorry for yourself or contact your former best friend whom you haven’t talked to in ten years because of a trivial argument? Or would you keep doing what you are doing now?

Try writing out a 24 hour plan and a week-long plan.

The world may not end in the foreseeable future but it could end for us personally anytime. No one knows when that day will come. When we wake up in the morning, we should thank the Divine for another day of life and make the most of it. Normally, people live like their life will last forever and never give a thought to death. However, for some people there is a rude awakening when some life-threatening situation such as a serious disease occurs or some serious accident – a brush with death often motivates people into a spiritual perspective. Why wait for something to happen?

Make a daily plan for yourself that you would stick to even if you only had one day to live! Maximise the opportunity of this uncertain life-span and never regret.