Our emotions tell us secrets about ourselves

Everybody says, ‘Don’t procrastinate, don’t procrastinate.’ Yet, procrastination does exist as a concept, so it must serve some useful purpose, isn’t it? It reminds me of an anecdote: When Gurdjieff’s father fell ill, he knew his life was drawing to an end. So, he called Gurdjieff to his bedside and said, ‘I want to tell you something which you should keep in mind throughout your life.’ Young Gurdjieff nodded and waited. ‘I want you to promise… that whenever an occasion arises where you would commit an evil deed, you will wait for 24 hours before you do it. Give me this promise. If you want to be angry, be fully angry… but after 24 hours. If you want to murder someone, do it with all your heart, but after 24 hours.’  

 Gurdjieff writes in his memoirs: ‘This advice changed the course of my life, because no one can do an evil deed even if he waits only 24 seconds, let alone 24 hours.’ 

 As I read this, I’m thinking, ‘Wow! Imagine procrastinating on anger, on saying something nasty, or even blurting out something unsavory that could adversely affect another person’s mood or motivation. Moreover, by taking this principle to heart, we’d gain reasonable control over our mind and tongue.’

 Such postponement also gives us the space to ponder – what is it in me that drives me to anger? We broaden the possibility of self-growth too. I was listening to a wise nurse. She did a course in counseling when she saw how people ignorantly postponed getting well or fell ill in the first place because of their repressed emotions which sank and settled into their body-tissue – their muscles, joints, heart, digestive system… I learnt that our emotions are our internal email system. They tell us secrets about our self. Not dark secrets, but wise little ones like: When I’m hungry, I lose it, so I must have regular meals… I get myself into silly situations , I need to learn to say No… Emotions basically keep repeating ‘Let the light in, let the light in.’ 

 Yes, dear ones, let the light in. The light of…? Of awareness.How emotionally comfortable am I in life? It’s a question to be sensitively and non-judgmentally explored. The mind is essential a good apparatus for exploring. See how its memory explores the past, its imagination the future… it’s a good search engine. And we have to use it in the right way to feel fully alive and all-together. It’s not good at speculating, resisting, reacting… but it’s great at finding new way, new opportunities, new ideas… When used for such purposes, it does such a good job that we feel inspired, enthusiastic, interested, we feel our aliveness, the blessing of being alive.  

 The best question we can ask the mind instead of allowing it to complain and groan and sigh and blame is to point it in another direction with: ‘Is there a fresh, new way to look at this person or this situation?’ Check out what sages say in books, on Youtube… Speak to somebody non-judgmental. You find a new perspective. 

 Focusing it on other people’s imperfections is turning the apparatus of mind into an apparatus of misery. Importantly, the mind prefers the pain or pleasure of the past and the vague mistiness of the future. If we refuse to go there and insist on staying in the present, it tries very hard to wriggle out and finally becomes so quiet that you wonder if it’s still there!  

 A lovely productive way to engage it is to keep exploring topics of your interest, to keep it in a state of wonder (wonder has no past, no future), to keep sharing your love and joy through happy anecdotes with others so that it gets hooked to these states. Soon, you’ll feel a cool, calm sense of smiling peace and contentment in you. And the muscles and joints and heart and digestive system are in a much better condition than they were. And… well… it’s great to be alive and singing and moving around and sitting in the stillness of a Buddha, full of wonder… full of wonder… 

Until tomorrow… 

Though born in body, we are born of Spirit

Have you heard about an unhappy sky? It is not the whole sky, just a small portion of it, so let’s call it a skylet. Well, skylet was always gloomy, cloudy, glowering. Everybody said, ‘It’s because of the clouds.’ But, to their surprise, even when the clouds drifted away, the skylet remained dark, almost ominous, and it refused to allow the sun’s rays to penetrate its pall of gloom and bring light to it. 

 That’s what happens to us when our mind is thick with cloudy judgments and scornful labels about people. It is being against people, really. Then we behave in a peculiar way. And we become unnaturally unbending, sulk when we are crossed and our vibrations become rather hostile. 

 It is unhealthy to be this way. 

 What we need is the light of awareness. What we need is the sound of music. What we need is a distance between our thoughts and our self. A distance between the thoughts of the skylet and our self, the sky.

 How do we become aware? Start thinking in terms of: Love. Joy. Wisdom. Harmony. Strength. Silence. Acceptance. Eternal.Know that these are the sparkles from a perennial spring in you. Let these be your personal passwords to your mind daily.  

 Know yourself as Eternal. Dwell upon this thought: ‘I am Eternal.’ Out of this practice comes peace… unbroken peace. Feel the presence of the Eternal as you breathe. Watch your stomach rise and fall with every breath. Forget the personality, feel your quiet breathing presence. How serene is your presence…how vast… far beyond this finite personality, this finite world, how majestic the Eternal…

 Your trueness is the presence, the Eternal. Ah, how it shines! 

 Yes, you and I are born in body, but know: we are born of Spirit. Behind the body is the spirit of presence. Behind the mind is the spirit of Eternal. We are born of raptures of consciousness inspired, as is music born in the heart of the poet and the throat of a singer. 

 It is to be understood deeply that we are not here to compete because we are all sourced from the complete. We arise from the great Consciousness as radiance, as does a movie stream from a projector. And as the cinema hall is filled with light and sound and music, so is the world enhanced by our radiance our words of love, our melodious movements. 

 Allow your whole nature to be awash in this great light of pure understanding… and relax in this sweet tranquility. Allow all gloom to be transformed into brightness. 

 Our awakened sages have experienced being one with all… In the light of the Eternal there is no scope for darkness. The higher presence, higher than the personality is the sweet quality of the Eternal. Stay in it… stay in it… Bathe in it… Feel its silent Grace.

 That is why, in silence, pure, beautiful silence we feel the sweetness of Grace and draw our personality into harmony with our presence.  

 I have learnt from the Mother how just a change, a small shift in attitude – of acceptance and love and harmony – fills the body with bliss – ‘It becomes… the other thing, it becomes this extraordinary thing, the Divine everywhere,’ she says. And the mind becomes oh-so luminous… so luminous…

 Thus, our body and mind can live on a kind of simultaneous perception – person and presence, temporal and eternal – and this greatly broadens our reality… we become a bit like the frog who on leaving his pond, discovers the ocean. The difference is: we are the frog, we are the pond, we are the ocean… and it’s amazing how there is Light everywhere… so bright, so beautiful, so benign…

 Until tomorrow…

Persevering possibilities on the path of patience

Patience is not about ‘If I wait, I’ll get what I want.’ Patience is… it’s like reading a long chapter in a book. You start reading… you continue at a certain pace where you understand what you are reading… you have no clue of how the chapter will end… and you read it until the end. If the book belongs to you, you may underline certain sentences that are eye-opening…After reading the chapter, you know a little more about the topic or plot. You close the book knowing that you will read the next chapter tomorrow. And you get on with your day without really thinking of the book. 

 This is what patience is about. It is knowing that there is the next page… and the next page… that there is an end or outcome to the chapter, but you don’t know what it is and you don’t worry about it because it is what the Author has thought and written. As there is information to be picked while reading, there are insights to enlighten us as we wait. 

 And what are those insights? That we are being quietly made to understand or discover… That we do have a lovely inner strength, a fortitude that helps us to not get upset easily… That in patience, we gather experience; in impatience, we gather stress. That for deep inner relaxation and good health, patience, not passion to get on at all costs, is more important… That every step on the path of patience is a small incremental inch up towards a sweet equilibrium so that we do not lose our footing or our shirt if the end is a surprise… And by and by, we learn to let go wanting things exactly our way… let go… and the external world loses its grip on us… and as it slackens… weakens… we take that one wonderful step onto the soft, yielding grass of peace and freedom… Aha! 

 In this entire learning process, our own chapters get beautifully writ. Can we imagine the power, the skill of our calm patience to disarm misfortune where it feels like a relatively minor inconvenience? It may not always be a smooth journey, but as Phil Van Treuren puts it with almost poetic eloquence: ‘Eagles weren’t given wings just to walk everywhere… and you weren’t born with resilience and a beautiful mind just to have an easy life.’ 

 It is true, we are given many gifts, so many, that we may not even need to use them in a lifetime. Demi Lovato says, ‘Nothing is more beautiful than the smile that has struggled through tears.’ That’s resilience, brave and beautiful resilience. When we fall, resilience hauls us up and helps us stand so that we don’t feel reduced. That’s the strength of the smile of resilience – it gains us the grace to persevere and discover possibilities on the path of patience. 

 According to Gautam Sachdeva and Nikhil Advani, ‘A deeper realm of patience is faith.’ It is important to understand there are two kinds of patience. The first and most common one is where we hope ‘to get what I want.’ The second is the way of the bhaktor devotee. Infused with faith, it goes: ‘As Thou Wills.’ From my personal experience, I know that the moment I think or am reminded by another devotee, ‘It is as Baba wills,’ my turmoil and tension and heaviness just fall away… fall away… and I breathe easy. Gautam says, ‘Unconditional surrender is faith. Faith with an unthinkingness.’

 It’s true. Marcus Aurelius points out: ‘If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now. That’s what the thought of faith ‘As Baba wills’ does. It’s faith and trust in the divine grace. It wipes out our paltry, limited judgment. We know the Author is in charge and is unfolding the plot…

 The Mother helps us understand our inner workings. ‘The greatest difficulty, as always, is the mind,’ she says and then pronounces with strong emphasis: ‘because it wants to understand its own way.’ She adds, ‘There are some who would go (progress) much more quickly if they did not have that (attitude). They have the feeling that if they do not understand mentally they have not understood.’ We forget that the mind is not all. The All is always with the Author. 

 Often, our mind with its inferences and interpretations and, yes, impatience, leads us into a labyrinth of anxiety, anger, frustration, helplessness, despair… Faith infused in patience calms the wayward mind and leads us into still waters… Then, as we grow in experience, in wisdom, our inner darkness lifts and is flooded with words from say, Thomas A. Edison, ‘When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You haven’t.’ And yet, we shouldn’t let this drive us back to our old thinking ways and doings, but see what the Grace has us think and do. We wait…patiently…

 Swami Paramananda explains, ‘There are moments in our life when we like to be led; but there are others when we are rebellious.’ He focusses us with a lovely teaching: ‘A wise person always wants to be led and this desire does not spring from defeat. In our lack of wisdom and in our lack of a sense of proportion, we resist the great Power behind the universe and are broken by it. When we are ready to be led, what a solace it is…!’   We feel like an infant held safely in its Mother’s arms. 

 On the path of patience, as we stop asking the FAQs, ‘Why?Why am I being made to wait? Why am I being tested?’ Or when these questions fade, it means we get out of our own way! We surrender to the point where we feel whatever happens, we are okay with it. We choose peace, we choose harmony, wechoose stability as our abode. We choose deliverance over delivery. It’s a beautiful state to be in. 

 And things do work out… maybe in a different way from what we’d imagined, maybe exactly as we’d envisioned… The beautiful part is: we are transformed in the process of patience. We understand now that Grace never fails to fill and fulfill us with joy, we just have to open ourselves to her, we just have to wait to read the next chapter…

Until tomorrow…   

Where wishes unfulfilled feel like blessings

 ‘Break your personality barrier,’ urges Mohanji. What a beautiful way of teaching us to move beyond our usual patterns of thinking of ourselves as this personality, this body, this gender, this professional, this relative, this…this…this… Why should we do this? For liberation.

 It’s a wonderful feeling even if you feel it only for a day. It’s a delicious sip of what can come when we persevere patiently with awareness on this wonderful path. You can displace all the above-mentioned earth-identities by simply and sincerely being grateful to your Guru, your Baba, your Ma for every blessing that has been bestowed on you, whether it be health, finance, loving people around you, peaceful, joyful moments, recovery from an illness, even the release from pain of somebody who has departed… 

 Why gratitude? Because it’s like light. As light displaces darkness, gratitude displaces anger, depression, jealousy, insecurity, everything negative. And when all the negativity has been pushed out of us, ah! the wonderful emptiness you experience is beyond description. Your body feels hollow and light, your mind revels in sweetness, your spirit is flying without wings, your head feels empty… you laugh and it’s a different kind of laugh because it’s not a physical laugh…

 What deep gratitude does is: it liberates us from the force of tamas – inertia, laziness, procrastination, dullness; from rajas – working only for gain, glory and greed; and lifts us on to the plane of the pure – the sattva where you are in utter peace, in deep joy, working without any expectations burdening your spirit, you want nothing, you just enjoy the process, you perform with love and nothing but love… 

 When I say deep gratitude, I mean the kind of gratitude where you just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you… no other words come to your mind… just thank you springing up from somewhere in you… It’s a thank you that has displaced all desires where wishes unfulfilled feel like blessings, where rejections, refusals, rudeness feel like cosmic armors tossed around as protection from something you cannot see…

 In fact, there was a disciple, Deepaka, who served his ill, rude, impossible-to-please Guru unstintingly. And with very rejection, Deepak felt lighter- as if some old, heavy karmic luggage was leaving him… Only an amazing mind, a loving, devoted mind can think like that! It happens when we allow spirit to completely saturate matter. Spirit soaks matter like an ocean submerging the sands, and matter surrenders completely without any resistance to spirit. This is bhakti – a beautiful combination of love and gratitude.  

 It is a very, very sweet way of living. Mohanji describes it as ‘an experience of being energy, it is the end of karma.’ How so? ‘Karma is unfulfilled desires,’ he explains, ‘and they start fading.’ It doesn’t mean, we don’t encounter rejections, rudeness, conflicts, difficulties… We do. At such times, we need to keep our thoughts at bay and nestle in the loving words, the gentle reassurances of our Babas and Mas. Like a dog’s tail losing its wag, our spirit has temporarily lost the flap of its wings. But we shouldn’t let this get us down. Just learn from Deepaka: some karmic negativity has just been released from our system. The pain whether it is emotional or physical is a rap on our knuckles. And we need to pay heed humbly without any self-castigating or blame. Just pay heed…just pay heed…

 What is wonderful about humility… genuine humility which is devoid of martyrdom… is the absence of judgment and labels against people. It keeps us pliable… and our inner as well as outer energy vibrations do not get disturbed. When sustained, it means we have made a beginning of breaking through ourpersonality barrier. And we vibrate with Buddha’s teaching: ‘To understand everything is to forgive everything.’ Or, maybe, withour humility forgiving everything, we’ve understood something deeply, deeply precious.. What it is to be free in the Eternal.

Until tomorrow…  

Your mind is not built to resist and suffer

Everybody wants to be happy, right? What’s beautiful is that there are some who are already happy. Their mind is serene and heart joyous as they go about their day. What is their secret? They direct their attention to positive things, and they are contented with what they have. I read about a maid who worked for a rich household. She owned one sari. When it tore, she stitched it. When she washed the dishes and clothes, she sang to them. It is as simple as that. From serenity comes contentment. From contentment comes serenity. 

 How do we, who are reasonably well off, have a cupboard full of clothes, cultivate this serenity, this joy? J.Krishnamurti gives us an entry-point to contentment: ‘To be free comes not from changing or fixing this world, but from seeing this world as it is and opening the heart in the midst of it.’ When we banish the thought ‘If only…’ from our mind, stuff like ‘If only I had more money… If only I had a better job… If only my spouse/child was a kinder person… If only the wars would stop… If only it wouldn’t rain…’ The ‘If onlys’ spew out only discontentment in our system. Discontentment is suffering. Suffering is unhappiness. And Mohanji says, ‘Suffering is non-understanding.’   

 What have we not understood? That to constantly, or even almost constantly resist is to live as if you are pushing a heavy boulder. Resist, resist, resist is push, push, push… but the boulder doesn’t budge. Please understand, dear ones, the mind is not built to resist and suffer. It is only a holder of thoughts. If you pour boiling water into a paper cup, what happens? That is how the mind is. 

 Now, when we move beyond the mind, where do we reach? We touch our trueness – the Eternal Consciousness. The Eternal has no suffering, it witnesses our ease and our suffering. It calmly witnesses the happiness and sadness of the mind as an experience. It doesn’t encourage or prevent us – it allows, just allows us to feel what we feel. 

 So, the secret is to understand who you truly are – the Eternal who does not resist but allows… The mind is only a curtain which entertains itself with the drama of resistance which drives it to discomfort, suffering, anger, anguish, frustration, jealousy and all kinds of trivial stuff. And then it suffers – just like a person who smokes cigarettes and then the lungs have issues and you cough, cough… Similarly, the mind smokes a whole lot of unhealthy stuff and coughs and you feel miserable. 

 When you understand this deeply, you give yourself this wonderful, wonderful gift – to operate from this understanding. And this understanding is: ‘I am Eternal. When the mind resists, I’m not affected.  I only witness.’ This is a thought… and as you keep thinking it daily, the quality of the bundle of thoughts which the mind holds changes, transforms, clears, purifies.

 And… when the smokescreen of resistance vanishes… ah! howbeautiful the sight, how wondrous the perception! Brightness.Sweetness. Luminosity. Beauty. Quiet Love. Peaceful Love.Everything is as breathtaking as the sunrise and sunset. Nothing needs to change. Nobody needs to change. Ah, Glorious Life! Rumi was right, oh-so right! He’d said that when we are pure consciousness, we feel great love for creation itself. Love breaks through the ego… The Eternal watches the waxing and waning of thoughts and emotions… some lovely, some turbulent… ‘Connected to Consciousness (Eternal), you have everything,’ says Mohanji. 

 Wisely, very wisely, spend time with yourself every day. To spend time quietly with yourself is to spend time with the Eternal. Allow the mind to rest in this great luminous stillness where there is no suffering… no suffering…

 Until tomorrow…

Welcoming the world with open-armed joy

 It is a beautiful teaching story: Pu was like many of us. He thought he was clever merely because he could pose several questions. He took it for granted that he was very intelligent and it was with this cocky attitude, shall we say, that he met Confucius. 

 As you know, Confucius was such a respected sage that people said he was nine-and-a-half feet tall. So, now Pu meets Confucius and questions him. Pu says provocatively, ‘What kind of sage are you that you can say that your students are superior to you and, yet you are their teacher?’   

 Confucius didn’t rush to answer (as many of us do!), but listened with close attention to what Pu had to say. Listening deeply is said to be the hallmark of the wise. 

 Delighted that he’d cornered Confucius, Pu continues, ‘You say Yen exceeds you in straight-forwardness. That in clarifying things, Tuan-mu is superior to you. That Chung is more courageous than you. And that Chuan-sun is more dignified than you.’ 

 In his excitement, Pu moved to the edge of his seat and nearly fell off it. ‘If these things are true, then why are these four men your disciples?’ We tend to lose our balance when we get carried away by our cleverness, don’t we? 

 In contrast, Confucius stayed calm and unruffled. Wisdom always stays humble. He nodded and after giving it some thought, he answered, ‘Stay where you are and I shall tell you.’ Immediately, Pu settled back and waited. Sometimes, we need these simple instructions to stay balanced!

 Then Confucius explained simply. ‘Yes, Yen knows how to be straight-forward, but he wants to learn how to be flexible.’ 

 ‘Yuan-mu knows how to clarify things, but he also needs to learn how to give a simple Yes or No  answer when the occasion demands it.’ 

 ‘’Chung is very courageous, but he also needs to learn how to be cautious.’ 

 ‘And Chuan-sun has a great dignity about him, but he does not know how to be unassuming.’ 

 Confucius did not go into any elaborate explanations, but summed it up simply, ‘That is why these four men are glad to study under me.’ 

 Pu slipped away quietly. 

 There is something so transformative in listening deeply to the wise, isn’t there? It is not just hearing the words but comprehending the essence behind them. And the essence… the essence… ah! it brings such light, such meaning that we embark on a whole new life each time a dewdrop of wisdom sinks into us. Stress loosens its grip on our emotions. We loosen our uptightness and relax in the sudden lightening, the freedom. It is the subtle, the sensitive that give us little hinges. It’s lovely to be a bird soaring in the skies. But there’s added delight to it because the bird can also land on a branch and feel its solid support. And then, it’s delightful to take off and fly again…

 When we keep listening and learning, our mind becomes like a gently flowing stream, its quality always fresh, always alive, like the open skies where old clouds drift away and new ones form different shapes. It’s a journey of empathy and comprehension, connecting with attitudes, emotions, thoughts in a new way. There’s a hither-to unknown open-armed joy in us. We welcome the world, we welcome life as we begin to click into its intricacies and ironies, its subtleties and surprises, its twists and turns that seem to govern our existence. 

 Understanding and comprehending whisk away our resistance and lessen our suffering. When we can bend as a supple tree bends to a strong wind, we cannot break. And thus, there is exhilaration in being in the great Universal Rhythm. To think and move with simplicity and freedom is to live and dance in beauty. It gets into the organization of the body itself – the beauty as health, the dance as aliveness, the exhilaration as energy. 

 I’ve often heard and read how to be willing to accept change and to change oneself with it. The mind tends to get fixed into a fist-like posture. Willingness is a tiny shiny key that loosens its fingers and, ultimately, it is experience that opens out the fist. And willingness gets fostered and oiled by learning…constant learning…  

 We may not know it, but there is almost always a conflict going on in us. Something new tries to enter and the mind and body feel a little disoriented and uncomfortable respectively. But, when we say a simple, ‘It’s okay,’ suddenly a sense of relaxing, a sense of peace takes over… What follows is relief… then delight… and in the delight – if we don’t spoil it with doubts like ‘Will it last?’ – there’s acceptance…acceptance… it’s like getting into cold water… shivering a bit… then acclimatizing, becoming more comfortable… and then swimming around as if we’ve always done it. 

 The student-disciples were absolutely right. We need flexibility, a simpler outlook, a bit of caution, a touch of humility and, above all, a willingness to learn… to proceed on the path of wisdom, on to a better life an easier life, a healthier life, a greater life… And, yes, endurance too. Endurance is a natural outcome of letting go old set beliefs and attitudes… suddenly, there’s a rush of optimism, of strength… it’s a lovely combination of the enhanced stamina of the spirit, mind and body. The learning and imbibing effect.

 It’s pretty fascinating really… To learn and willingly go along with the learning is making friends with everything. And knowing that behind this entire picture and play is the peace… the Eternal Consciousness… the I beyond the me…

Until tomorrow… 

Let bitterness turn to bliss

There’s natural goodness in all of us which we need to acknowledge and recognize daily. How do you do that? Watch yourself. Notice the little things you do. Pulling out a chair for someone. Sharing something. Holding the door open. Offering your pen to somebody at the bank. Thoughtful little gestures that you do instinctively. That’s the real you. 

 When you watch yourself quietly, you will notice that on our own, without any external provocation, your inclination is naturally well-meaning, good, sweet, kind, at best, neutral. It is only when you are reacting that your mind turns instantly negative and your tongue lashes out. Know this: it doesn’t make you a bad or evil person, it merely means you need to be more disciplined, more watchful about your reactions. And wherever not required, don’t react inwardly at all. 

 Take a decision to let love be your way. Because love is your natural base. Kids in their innocence point to this truth about human beings with their own spontaneous responses in certain situations. A sweet anecdote goes: The Iraq war was on. Peggy’s kids were playing outside. Just then, some low-flying airplanes passed over their heads. Since the planes made a terrific noise, the kids got intimidated and ran inside. They asked their mom about these planes. What were they? Peggy explained that they carried weapons and dropped bombs. The kids asked her, ‘Are there kids like us in Iraq?’ ‘Yes,’ said Peggy. And the kids told her, ‘They (the pilots) don’t know there are kids in Iraq. We should tell them.’ They ran out and wrote in big letters on the ground: THERE ARE KIDS IN IRAQ. And they were confidentthat once the pilots read their message, they would know they shouldn’t bomb Iraq. 

 What we need to do is allow, yes, allow our love to keep risingout of our depths… keep rising…keep rising…. Sri Chinmoydescribes our interaction with the world beautifully, ‘The outer life is like a beautiful flower… inner life is its fragrance. If there is no fragrance, we cannot appreciate the flower… if there is no flower, how can there be any fragrance? So the inner life and the outer life must go together.’ 

 Love is fragrant. Loving silence is fragrant. Loving words are fragrant. Loving acts are fragrant. So, it’s sufficient, if in a day, you feel a tug of love, you hold your tongue in loving silence, you speak loving words, you perform loving acts. Such a day is complete. 

 Compassion is where love meets provocation. Not allowing yourself to be provoked is self-love, self-kindness. Why carry thorns in you when you can hold silken petals? Be two petals or four petals or 10 petals living together or working together. Share the softness, the fragrance… sharing love is a privilege, please don’t stamp on it for a few minutes of gloating… it’s not worth it, it’s never worth it. 

 Be self-transformative. If you harbor any bitterness, please, please overcome it. How? Understand that you were not upto the magnitude of pain, so bitterness became a cloak, a self-defensive mechanism. Oh dear ones,  do know that bitterness does not protect you, it only makes you react defensively over and over again. The petals in you are not protected, they are hemmed in by the bristling of tall thorns. 

 I know an endearing senior gentleman who holds his peace in blissful silence whatever his kids say. We often feel, ‘It’s not easy.’ This gentleman has changed it to ‘It is possible.’ The truth is: to live lovingly is to live simply, very simply. Love creates no complications. When others fight, accuse, criticize, love keeps quiet amidst these complications. Silence is golden sweetness, it is nectar to the spirit. Our love gives us the capacity to meet accusations and criticisms with the great heart of Buddha. Love is a lullaby to our own spirit. I learnt from a wise person that the circle of love is only complete when it includes you. He said: the one seated right here in your body needs love… please give it, don’t withhold it. How? Until you find your own strength, your affection for yourself, turn to your Guru’s words – they are easily available on Youtube. Baptize your mind and spirit in them. Bring peace and order and silence back to your being. Think only when required.. Speak only from the silence of the mind. When we rely only on the subtle conceit of our intellect, we are often led astray. When we open ourselves continually to the words of our wise ones, we start cultivating expansive feelings, inclusive feelings, an intuitive compassionate understanding. We don’t become sentimental and foolish as many fear, we simply draw nearer to the divine in us, the Eternal. We value peace over empty victories. We naturally drop our inadequacies and live in the fullness of our faith in the divine, our fortune of blessings, our fort of self-sufficiency, our bed of gratitude… it’s here that bitterness turns to bliss. 

Until tomorrow…  

Encourage flow rather than freeze

Recently, when our three-year-old washing machine packed up and the company which manufactured it maintained a radio silence to our calls, it made me accept something… a piece that had been missing from the puzzle of life fell into place. And what is that piece? That, 80 per cent of the time, things work out smoothly in life, 20 per cent of the time, they don’t or may not. Such acceptance of this floating fraction frees you. You are grateful when things support you. And you give the world that slack when things don’t support you. And you move on…

 You get to keep your equanimity, your peace, your sense of humor and comfort… and those qualities are important. You get to hold your life with gentleness and optimism in your spirit. You give your mind different ways of thinking rather than getting set in a mold of perfection or even idealism. While both these qualities are vital in their place, we need not freeze ourselves in them at inappropriate times. Freezing the spirit is neither perfect nor ideal.  

 In fact, I’m thankful to Dr. Soumitra Basu for re-defining perfectionism beautifully: ‘…Perfection per se is not a static entity but a relative term. Even God doesn’t fashion a sustainable perfectly finished entity in the world… This is logical as the world represents diversity, multiplicity ,divisibility…’ He observes thoughtfully, ‘Metaphysically speaking, the world of multiplicity and divisibility prevents the manifestation of that which is eternally perfect.’ 

 The truth is: acceptance is a more livable and practical quality because it has a spirit of large-heartedness and pragmatism. It encourages flow rather than freeze. And it never decreases our joy. In fact, there’s a gentleman called David Roche who says if you can be 80 per cent wise and compassionate, it’s okay. Since he has a disfigured face, he was rejected even by the church when he wanted to study to be a priest. That’s what happens in a so-called perfect set-up. He found his church in a greater universe by becoming a motivational speaker. He makes people laugh at their foibles just as he laughs at his own. When he walks onstage, at first, it is said, people are unable to look at his face. By the end of the session filled with laughter, self-acceptance, inspirational humor, loving anecdotes and insights, people look at him admiringly and see the joyful spirit shining from his face. Everyone is beautiful in an imperfect world. 

 ‘We can choose the spirit to live in no matter what the circumstances are,’ says Jack Konrad, the spiritual teacher with the heart of a Buddha. The thing is, when we accept that things work smoothly 80 per cent of the time, we can choose to live in trust and deal with the 20 per cent with a wise heart. And how does a wise heart conduct itself? With ‘the abolition of preference and desire. Even the preference for not suffering,’ says the Mother. 

 Lest I forget… the 20 per cent also keeps us from behaving arrogantly or feeling frustrated. Why, even devotion, the Mother insists, must be accompanied by a sense of gratitude to buffer us against frustration if our prayers are not answered. 

 Alongside, it’s good to empathize with people. For example, I’ve seen how hard the engineers or technicians work to honor their company’s amc (annual maintenance contract) with the customer. They even ring the doorbell at 7 p.m. (when most of us are unwinding) and toil over the errant gadget until it spring backs to life again. 

 Ramana Maharshi often pointed out that ‘The mind is nothing but a bundle of thoughts. These thoughts depend upon the I-thought alone. Hence the reason is nothing but this I-thought.’ It jolts and awakens us, doesn’t it? What is the I-thought but egotism? Sadhguru, too, like Sri Ramana, steers us on the right thought-track with his observation, ‘When the well-being of others is above your own, a different kind of strength, a strength that will carry you through life and beyond, will become available.’ 

 And somewhere, we get a glimmering that in the 80:20 ratio, it is possible to live 100 per cent. Mohanji exhorts us not to forget that ‘Reality is: you can eat, drink, sleep. Be happy, be grateful. Create a happy pattern.’ 

P.S.: Thanks to dear sis, Deepi, we got a local engineer to repair our washing machine. She taught me that even in that fuzzy 20 per cent, there are alternatives.

Until tomorrow…   

When you listen from stillness, you don’t get hurt

Say, somebody is bad-mouthing you or making sly, mean innuendos or anything that is meant to hurt you, do you know what is the best response you can give, according to wise minds like J.Krishnamurti? Give your full attention! The reason: when you give a hundred per cent attention, your ego cannot intervene. Really? Yes. The ego is all about reacting – returning insult for insult, jeering, disbelieving, ready with its own volley of word-missiles…

 But, when you give our full attention… the very act of giving full attention is the act of a master. A master lives by a higher will. Parthi Baba gives us an insight into inner divine spaciousness: ‘Turn to me when your mind drags you into grief or pride or envy.’ This means: turn to the higher will far beyond the ego.

 ‘Bring me the depths of your minds, no matter how grotesque, how cruelly ravaged by doubts or disappointments.’ The divine spaciousness does not view them as arrows of humiliation shot at it. How can it? It has no ego, only a lovely calm Consciousness. All it sees with compassion is the hurt or inadequacy behind the hurtful words. 

 ‘My sufficiency is unconditional, independent of everything,’ says Baba. It is who we are, what we are too – this is the truth that Baba has been repeating over and over again at different times to get through to us. Telling us about divinity, our sufficiency, our beauty…

 Why listen to our ego when we can listen to Baba and be ever uplifted?  

This is what JK means when he says, ‘When you give full attention… you don’t feel hurt.’ You get a wider picture beyond the narrow one your ego thrusts on you. Since you listen from a wonderful space of stillness that needs no defense, you pick up,behind the streams of words, subtle things such as sadness, envy, helpless rage, unhappiness, the need to show a superiority where none exists… and your heart goes out and listens. This is not an abstract description, this is how it works. For, as Baba teaches, ‘Thoughts do not flow through the mind. The mind goes out and grasps and gets engaged with thoughts.’ It means: we really, really need to discipline our mind. Hold it back… hold it back… do not let it go out and grasp those negative thoughts being hurled by somebody else…

 Further, Baba points us in the right direction. We need it because most of us tend to focus only on our worldly needs and comforts which are the mind and ego’s domain. He asks us to look beyond because then, ‘The entire mechanisms of body, mind and intelligence will work in a coordinated manner for the benefit of the higher goal.’ And what is the higher goal? The Atma. The Eternal. He gives a lovely example, ‘The earth turns on its own axis but at the same time it is revolving around the sun. The very faculties of man should do their own work, but the Atma is the center of their universe.’  

 When we consider the Eternal Atma as the center of our personal living universe, ah! everything becomes peaceful… we give full attention from our worldly mechanisms of body, mind and intelligence to everybody and everything… We turn on our personal axis, but we revolve around the Eternal. There is no space for the ego in this intention, in this sweet spaciousness. The mind does not go out and get engaged in a useless verbal duel. Hurtful words become like word-pictures in toons – finding no taker, they remain suspended in the air and then…fizzzz!… they fizzle out.  

Until tomorrow…  

Live by the sweet honey of knowledge

When you eat a neem leaf, your face contorts. The neem leaf is bitter. And then, you hear that it has rich medicinal properties. And… it’s not so bitter, after all. How did that happen? It happened because the neem leaf got coated with the sweet honey of knowledge.  

 Similarly, the Mother gives us the sweetest honey of knowledge when she states in no uncertain terms, in a tone that brooks no argument, ‘There is only one way, the ego must go, that is all.’  When there is no me, there is only God, only the Eternal. How does that feel? She says there is a concrete sensation that the body does not exist, it is only used. And there’s a feeling of stability… Ramana Maharshi describes it as ‘a state of void, free from thought.’ 

 It is said that when the me thought disappears, all feelings of illness and weakness disappear. And such knowledge is honey, isn’t it? No me, no illness… it’s beautiful. For most of us, it’s a process where we acquire such knowledge from the wise that there are subtle yet strong vibrations in us. For example, that our DNA is carbon, hydrogen, oxygen held together by very subtle vibrations. And nature holds them in a lovely harmony. We experience it as good health or a feeling of well-being. 

 Over the years, it is possible that our negative attitude and negative thoughts upset this fine and sweet, subtle balance. It’s something that happens to all of us. The negativity thus can affect the body. Science shows that the brain sends specific kind of signals that constrict the arteries of the heart. It’s obviously adisruptive message, that’s why the constriction. Prescribed beta-blockers help because they inhibit the brain’s chemical messengers and the negative message never gets delivered. Alongside, if we work on our thinking – have only kind and good thoughts – the brain would send these beautiful signals and we will certainly become healthier, our arteries will work peacefully and sweetly and, yes, we will be happy and contented all round. When there are no negative thoughts, the mind is practically empty with very, very few thoughts. And those few thoughts are kind to neutral.  

 Getting rid of negative thoughts is mental disarmament. The ego cannot use them or generate them when you have no interest in them. Our ancient doctors found that when we intone or listen to ‘Om’ in a  satsang (there was no technology those days) the sound acts as a cast (as used on a fractured bone) to hold the disturbed cells in the correct harmonious series of vibrations and, thus, gradually heal themselves. 

 So, essentially, we need to be consistently loving and hold our ego in the harmony of sweet acceptance. If the mind slips into anger, judgment, criticism, jealousy, become aware and understand that it simply means your mind needs to re-think, needs to change its direction towards purity. It is a great self-service and it would also boost our relationships. It is, to re-phrase Mother’s words: letting one’s ego ‘lie prostrate till it disappears. It’s not easy,’ she says, but ‘we shall get there!’ 

 We can make it easier on ourselves by simply being mentally silent about other people. When we understand that judging and criticizing do nothing constructive but only massage our ego… well… we certainly don’t want an empty victory, do we? That too, a victory that turns on us eventually! Parthi Baba says, ‘Be equal-minded.’ This means, not being bothered about anybody’s “doing’” or “not doing”, anybody’s success or failure, anybody’s negative or positive ways… We watch, sometimes we may have to listen(!), but as Baba says, ‘Be willing to be nothing.’ 

 Be willing to be nothing. Ah, that’s a beautiful state. When I am nothing, there is no you, there is no other. The vibrations in us gentle down and become sweet and smooth and quiet. Oh dear ones, be thus sweetly concerned in being loving and caring, and patiently accepting when required, each day, every day. Stay true to our nothingness, stay true to our peace. It is our trueness. 

Until tomorrow…