Earlier this week, someone called me to market life coaching services. I’m a big believer in learning and the use of coaching, and not knowing what coaching this involved, I decided to lead them on, showing a lot of interest.

“This coaching will transform your beliefs, actions and ultimately your life,” the rep said. Then he spent about an hour collecting some information from me and trying to carve out inferences out of the information I gave to him.

He gave some references from an earlier coaching program I had attended and someone who I respect a lot. And the conversation continued until I discovered a valuable lesson about Life Coaching and how to get the best out of it.

The truth is that there is no definitive answer yet about whether we can change our personality. At least not as proven by scientific evidence. Despite offering one of the most powerful forms of meditation there is to practice, we at Sahaja, still will stop short of making any such claims that it can help change your personality traits.

We human beings are incredibly complex creations, and we were made that way by nature and God. And we are also the ultimate sophistication of awareness within living beings. Perhaps, God created us to establish an ironical truth that the personality and character traits of human beings cannot be predicted or influenced with a high degree of certainty by science or technique or human beings themselves. The fact that the divine itself cannot cross free human will is a testimony to this. In a way, we were built as the ultimate version of living beings – with maximum subtlety, complexity and free will.

Let’s examine, however, the extent to which meditation can influence personality and how we can take advantage of it.

Wouldn’t it be great to know the truth about ourselves? Not just an opinion or a belief, nor a result of wishful thinking or of insecurity or self-doubt, but the truth as it is. Wouldn’t it be great to know one’s strengths and weaknesses and to be able to rectify them proactively before they land us in trouble? Sahaja makes knowing the absolute truth about yourself possible through vibratory awareness, which is a sense of perception of our inner subtle energy system.

We live in a world where we’re constrained by all sorts of identities and associations that limit our potential and freedom. While our job titles, political dispositions, club, and group affiliations may provide a way of organizing our lives and establishing order in it, these end up defining who we are, shaping our views and how we lead our lives. Instead, shouldn’t we have that control of molding ourselves and our lifestyle the way we want?

And then a time comes when we are subject to polarized alignments and statuses of our existence because of our choices and for our convenience. Someone is an Online shopper, a “power user” or something. Another is a Republican but centrist and not liberal. Yet another is a “yogi” and even a “meditator”. The problem is that we collect all these labels all the time based on what we do, what we believe in or even what others think we do. Yet, none of these can really define the outcomes we want to achieve in our lives.

What we’ve all been missing is that the only way to enjoy life to the fullest extent is to de-identify and dissociate ourselves from all these bindings by finding a superior form of existence. Knowing, feeling and living by the guidance of our innermost being helps realize the full potential and meaning of our lives.

We still retain our other affiliations or associations, but we control them to the extent they contribute to the outcomes we want in life.

Earlier today, I was reading an exciting article on superfast space travel that is predicted to become an alternative for flight travel greater than 10 hours. According to this rocket can be used for commuting between two destinations on the earth, like New York and Shanghai. And the trip can be made in 39 minutes! Apparently, this type of travel is going to become a $20B market by 2030. Here’s the interesting article.

And so, while all the news was exciting, the key question that always comes up in my mind is: with so much saving of time in the mundane activities in our lives, what do we really do with the freed up time? Where does one redirect the attention that is now at our disposal?