Words from the Master

Try to remember this joke whenever something is bothering you. Immediately try to connect with the joke and see with awareness what is bothering you. Go deep down and see whether you are really having a problem or you are simply allowing your mind to play. You may just laugh at the end of it.

One lady was traveling on a long-distance flight.
The airhostess came serving food for everyone. She found the lady fast asleep and so she moved on to the next person.
The lady woke up after a while and asked for her food.
The airhostess brought her food for her.
The lady touched the food and flared up, “What sort of an airline are you running? The food is not warm. I have paid through my nose to take this flight and I can’t even get warm food!”
The airhostess apologized saying, “Ma’am, please excuse us. The warmer is not working. The rest of the people also had their food this way.”
The lady said, “Is that so? Then it is alright.”

(Laughter!)

See, the food remains cold even now, but the lady is no more unhappy because she knows that everyone else also had the food that way! This is what I mean when I say that everything is a play of the mind, everything is an adjustment of the mind. The mind keeps switching its stance and playing on you, because you have allowed it to take over. You have not centered yourself on contentment and so you sway according to your mind.

So as I was saying, if you are not able to laugh at the end of the day, it means that you are still serious about the whole thing; you still feel that you are shouldering the whole world and that it is because of you the whole show is running.

You see, deep down, the Truth is, we belong to Existence, which is the ultimate and all pervading Energy which is controlling the whole show. Our inherent nature is also to find that connection back with Existence so that we flow without a problem. But somewhere, we miss this understanding and disconnect ourselves from Existence and start running behind material things thinking that that is what we are searching for.

If you have visited the zoo at least once in your lifetime, you might have noticed that the longest queues are in front of the cages of the lions and the tigers. Always, you will find people standing for a long time in front of the lions and tigers and admiring them with awe and respect.

We do this because, without even realizing it, we are strangely reassured by seeing things that are bigger or stronger than us. It gives us the comforting feeling that we are not the ultimate power. We know that we are not the ultimate power. Our Being is actually searching for an encounter with any such grandeur that reminds us of our real role in this macrocosmic universe.

People go to the temples only for this assurance that they get, when they see the idols. Those who don’t find this kind of assurance in the temples find it elsewhere. But somehow, deep within we know that we are not the ultimate power. This feeling should become an experiential reality for us. Then we will know for sure.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.

Words from the Master

When you enter into a space where gratitude becomes your meditation, contentment automatically happens. The normal contentment that we all know always comes with a reason. It is related to something that has happened in the outer world that has temporarily put your busy mind to rest, that’s all. When your mind is restful, you say you are contented. Real contentment is not this.

Real contentment is when you feel permanent gratitude towards the benevolence of Existence. Real contentment asks for nothing more. It simply enjoys everything without a reason; it needs no reason. When you reach this state, you will not know what discontentment is all about.

A small story:

A man once went to a doctor and complained of insomnia.
The doctor asked him, “So, you are unable to sleep at all at night?”
The man replied, “I sleep well at night doctor.”
The doctor asked, “Then what is the problem?”
The man said, “I am unable to sleep in the afternoons and evenings.”

(Loud laughter!)

We are all asking for more and more without any scale of measure. Even if we have a scale, it is infinite; that is the problem. We are completely blinded by our attitude of asking for more. We don’t even know where we stand, because of this. We haven’t looked inwards at all in a long time. We are just deluded by our minds. We are living such an ignorant life. We create suffering for ourselves inside and go in search of relief outside.

You are able to laugh for this joke because you know you are only watching it; you know that you are not a part of it. In life, many times, you are in this same situation and you don’t know it. At those times, you are not the watcher. You are so involved in the whole thing that it becomes such a serious thing for you. It becomes such a solid reality to you.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.

Words from the Master

A small story:

One man went to the market to buy vegetables for his wife.
He bought ladies’ fingers, came home and showed it to his wife.
The wife saw the ladies’ fingers and said, “Oh! These are so over grown. I will not be able to cook them.”

The man went the next day and bought some more ladies’ fingers, choosing carefully this time, and came home and showed them to this wife.
The wife said, “What have you bought? They are too tender to make the dish I had in mind.”

The next day, the man went to the market, prayed to the shopkeeper and said, “Please give me some good ladies’ fingers that are neither too ripe nor too tender.”
The shopkeeper picked the best ladies’ fingers himself and the man took them home and showed them to his wife.
The wife saw them and said, “What? You’ve bought ladies’ finger today also!”

(Loud laughter!)

Appreciation never comes spontaneously for many of us. When we cannot appreciate spontaneously, it means that we are having a complaining or discontented nature in us. Actually, discontentment is food for our mind.

To be discontented is like giving some food for the mind to chew. The mind will feed on it and keep itself busy. What happens when we feel too contented? The mind becomes starved. It doesn’t know what to do. It starts searching for its food!

One lady went to a shoe store.
She asked for shoes to fit her feet and the salesman patiently showed her many pairs of shoes.
She tried on one after another and felt that none of them fitted her perfectly.
Finally, the salesman showed her one pair and asked her to try them on.
She tried them on and said, “It fits too well, I wonder if this is the right size.”

(Laughter!)

When you are determined not to feel contented, then no one can help you. It is a state of your mind, which only you can help. Most of us feel a certain comfort zone in talking and feeling discontented, because there is always something to talk about; the mind is occupied all the time.

To feel contented always is like losing the mind. This is also why, although we claim that we want to feel contented always, we are not ready when it happens. Our mind plays cunningly because it needs something to chew on.

We feel secure when we run behind the horizon. The horizon is only an imaginary line, but we feel secure running behind it because there is something to run behind! The mind has been trained to run always!

When you are like this, you are actually fooling yourself, that’s all. You are creating self-contradictory results for yourself. For example, you want to feel contented at the bottom of your heart, but you keep deluding yourself of contentment by constantly complaining and refusing to see what has been given to you! You want something but bring upon something else on yourself. And you feel comfortable in keeping on trying to achieve contentment as a lifelong process!

Understand one thing: The moment you create self-contradictory results for yourself, your misery starts. Try to be clear on how you would like your life to be and direct every ounce of energy towards making it that way. When you function with this clarity, you will never delude yourself and you will see that you soon become what you want to be!

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.

Words from the Master

Another beautiful small story:

God and all the scientists of the world had a meeting and a competition.
Whatever item that God made, the scientists reproduced it identically out of some material. The scientists were able to reproduce things with no problem.

Finally, God made man out of dust and challenged the scientists.
The scientists started to pick up dust…
God said, “Wait! Make it out of your dust, not mine!”

Man has to understand that Existence is the creator, the created and the creation. Only then can he simply start enjoying things without a care. Only then can he relinquish possession and doer-ship.

So understand: When you change your attitude from seeking discontentment, worries and depression, to seeking the present with gratitude, you will automatically be able to harness the energy of Existence better. You will then be able to appreciate Existence better and gratitude will then become your attitude.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.