Resistance without the violence, verbal, emotional or physical is more potent than all the nuclear weapons on the planet. In a similar way, competing without competing is far more powerful than overt, aggressive, “in your face” competition that is so prevalent today.

Our attention, all too often, is fixed on the external world. We are transfixed by stimuli from the Net, news sources, peers, competitors, friends, family… the list is endless. We are forever busy answering phone calls and emails, attending meetings and reviews, travelling mentally and physically, by car, train and aircraft.

We are hurtling like asteroids through space trailing a cloud of cosmic dust in our wake. Debris of all kinds follows us: hurt feelings, broken relationships, oversized CO{-2} footprints….In all this frenetic action the real person inside is forgotten.

So much so that we don’t even know who we really are. Only a superficial concept of ourselves as a bundle of specific skills and attitudes, position and personality remains. We operate out of that superficial concept and understanding and so get snagged even more on the outcroppings of the external world.

Since we have not mastered the art of introspection and contemplation we are unfamiliar with the internal mindscape. It’s unfamiliar and scary territory so we revert to the familiar hurly burly of the external world. In the process we perpetuate our engagement outside, with all its attendant misery.

When we spend more time and effort on understanding our internal mindscape the territory becomes more familiar; we then discover capabilities that have remained unnoticed and dormant.

Every one of us possesses infinite endowments; however we have to dive deep down and expend effort to identify, understand and use them. This is something that our spiritual heritage has enjoined us to do.

Practitioners of the ancient Sidha Yoga tradition of Tamil Nadu, notably Boganathar, were, for example, said to have mastered the art of immortality through a combination of meditation, bhakti, yoga, kaya kalpa and alchemy. In fact, their detailed writings serve as a self-development manual for any aspirant wiling to invest the effort.

Every one of us lives on what I call the Scale of Life; scales vary from person to person and therefore are not comparable.

So benchmarking ourselves against others is not really a productive exercise simply because the combination and interaction of tangible and intangible parameters in every individual’s life is qualitatively different.

On the surface level many people may seem to be “successful” but there are so many facets of their lives that are unknown to us that may be beset with innumerable sorrows.

Complete data can never be available to validate an accurate or comprehensive comparison of our respective lives. We can and must, however, learn from the lives of others.

Competing without competing is all about focusing energy and attention inwards to discover and utilise our true capabilities. We must learn to identify our own scale and constantly move up on it. Let me explain. All of us have some dim and hazy idea of our own Ideal Self, the perfect person we’d like to become.

This Ideal Self encompasses the physical, emotional, intellectual, behavioural, and financial aspects of ourselves.

We can visualise this Ideal Self by iterative practice. Suppose we allocate a score of 10 (perfect) on a 10 point scale to that Ideal Self. If 10 is our Ideal, what score are we at now? Suppose we are at four currently; our task and indeed the focal point of our life is to move from four towards 10 on our own Scale of Life.

Moving up the scale entails inward focus. That means we look at ourselves continuously and identify our strengths and weakness, a kind of deep and profound SWOT. By watching and observing ourselves and our behaviour we learn to balance ourselves.

By listing and then eliminating negative thoughts and emotions we detox ourselves from within. Meditation and chanting the mahamantra are tools designed specifically for this purpose. We then discover patience and draw new insights. Our sixth sense develops. We transform into positive and productive beings. That’s when our interface with the external world becomes positive and fruitful. In high pressure confrontations we are calm and able to respond effectively. We become capable of nurturing long-term relationships. We become teachable and so learn every minute from every experience instead of being bogged down by emotion and pain.

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