Worry, a legacy we pass down!

WE ARE trained from birth to worry. Worry is an unwanted legacy we pass down from grandparents to parents to children. When parents express constant worry, children grow up thinking that life goes on only because of worry. Understand that life goes on not because of us, but in spite of us!

One man had just moved in to a remote part of a village. One day, he was seen throwing handfuls of breadcrumbs around his house. His neighbour who was watching him asked him: “What are you doing?” The man replied, “I am keeping the tigers away.” The neighbour was surprised. He said: “But there are no tigers in these parts!” The man replied: “That’s right. Very effective, isn’t it?”

Children are like sponges. They simply absorb the body language and attitude of the parents. If a child hears his parent repeating a certain worry, he internalises it, carries it through out his life, and passes it in turn to his children. The problem is that parents expect their children to worry! If they don’t worry, they brand them as uncaring. It is possible to care without worrying. Care is doing, worry is chattering. There is no use chattering. Chattering is like trying to cross a bridge before we come to it.

A young man was driving his mother to the neighbouring village. They were nearing the village when they remembered a particular bridge that used to be very old and unusable. The mother got very anxious and said: “I will never cross that bridge by car.” The son said: “Let’s see how it looks when we come to it.”

The mother said: “I’m sure the bridge will break if we attempt to cross it.” The son replied: “Let’s see how strong it is. We won’t cross it without checking it carefully.” The mother said: “If something happens to you or me, your father will never forgive me.” She kept going on like this, becoming more and more upset. Soon they reached the spot where the bridge stood. The bridge had been replaced with a new one!

It is not that the son does not care. He just cares without worry. So much energy is spent worrying. Why contemplate over the bridge even before we come to it? By constant worrying, we make negative thoughts a habit within us.

We need to look at our worries with awareness. Understand that we are a part of the grand plan of Existence. If we tune in to it, our actions will be fluid and spontaneous like the happenings of Existence.

Let us surrender to the Existence. Let us release ourselves from our worries. Be blissful!

Leadership is a state, not a status

LEADERSHIP is not a quality. It is an experience that an individual who has undergone personal growth and transformation radiates.

This is the simple truth. There are so many books these days about leadership and how it is an important part of making an organisation successful.
There are so many leadership gurus who teach and train people in organisations to ‘develop’ leadership. Yet when we look at all organisations, be it businesses, government services or in the area of social services, true leaders are rare. A true leader is a person who is ready to take responsibility consciously. He is ready to handle life consciously and he is not constantly dependent on the past. A true leader is a person who is able to respond spontaneously to situations. He is fresh in his ideas and continuously keeps himself alive.

A small story:

There was once a great war between two countries. On a hot afternoon, a man in civilian clothes was riding past a small group of tired soldiers digging a huge pit, doing a seemingly impossible task. The group leader was shouting orders and threatening punishment if the work was not completed within the hour.

The man riding the horse stopped and asked, ‘Sir, why can’t you help them yourself?’ The group leader replied, ’I am the leader. The men do as I tell them. If you feel so strongly, go help them!’ The man worked with the soldiers till the job was finished! Before leaving, he congratulated the soldiers for their work, and approaching the group leader said, ‘The next time your status prevents you from supporting your people, inform your higher authorities and I will provide a more permanent solution.’

The group leader was completely surprised. Only now he realised that the man was in fact the army general!

Most of us achieve the status of a leader, but not the state. State is totally different from status. Status comes from society. When I use the word ‘state’ I mean our inner space. Our inner space should be mature enough to handle the responsibility, which we assume.

Each one of us is a potential leader. The quality of leadership arises from one’s ability to take responsibility for a particular organisation, a situation or a particular group with tremendous awareness and maturity.

Leadership is simply a conscious choice made by an individual to act out of deep sensitivity and awareness to one’s situation and surrounding. Then automatically, the inner space will start transforming and send out the right words and actions.

Make all pain disappear!

PICK anyone around us at random. Ask them how they feel. They will immediately report some pain or another. Doctors say that more than 70% of people suffer from lower back pain. This when they do not complain about headaches, stomach aches and other aches.

Do you know that pain has no positive existence? Pain, like darkness, has only negative existence. If we shine light onto darkness, it has to disappear. Same way, pain is caused by low energy darkness. It is low attentiveness. When we bring our attention to the pain, our energy to it, we will see that pain simply disappears.

Our concept of body pain is something new. It is the gap between our physical body and our mental body. It actually exists as the pain body between the physical body and the mind. If we live out of our body for a long time, as our mind wanders in fantasies and speculations, the gap increases. If the gap increases the strength of the pain body will also increase. If the gap is less we will see that the strength of the pain body also becomes less.This seems so simple. How then to reduce this gap?

If we continuously live in the ‘now’, the present moment, accept whatever that moment brings to us without resistance, we can reduce this gap. All we need to do is to bring the mind to where the body is, to the here and now. We need to live with awareness throughout the day, all the 24 hours. When we live in the present we will see two miraculous things happening to us. We will see that not only we don’t have pain, but we continuously experience bliss inside our being.

We get continuous bliss inside our system. Whatever pleasure we feel, whatever joy we feel in the form of pleasure, in the form of enjoyment is nothing but the reduction of the gap between the physical body and the mind. When the gap between our body and the mind is reduced, when we come to the present moment, we feel that pleasure. Whenever we do not live in the present moment we feel the pain.

There is a beautiful Zen saying, ‘bring your awareness to your body and to your pain, you will see that pain disappears’. Any pain will disappear. Not merely the physical pain but the emotional pain also. Physical pain and psychological pain are both nothing but unawareness. If we don’t live here and now, we will see that our pain body will be growing. The thickness of pain body will be growing.

Slow down. Take time to be in the present. This is the simplest meditation that can bring great rewards.

Respect food, waste it!

OVEREATING is a modern disease. People think that it is better to eat more vegetarian food. Let us be clear here. Overeating any food is bad. Be it vegetarian or meat. It creates a lot of problems for us. We have never learnt to eat only what we need. We should be firm on eating only what we require and how much we need. Overeating is an expression of greed. We overeat as a substitute to fulfil other unattainable wants.

Often, we have no idea of what we eat. When we eat we talk, we read, we watch TV and we do many other things. We do everything except focus on the food we eat. We have little respect for the food we eat. Then we wonder why we accumulate fat. Vegetarian food is the best for people interested in spiritual practices. It digests easily and promotes good energy in our body. It helps in gentle energy flow connecting all the chakras or energy points in our body. The compassion of Buddha led to the wide acceptance of vegetarian food.

A further refinement of vegetarian food is dining on what is called as satvic food. People on satvic vegetarian diet avoid jalapeno peppers, onion and garlic. These vegetables contain steroids. They are all right as medicines and ingested in small quantities once in a while. Regular intake of these vegetables interferes with the energy flow in the chakras. Overeating has the same effect as eating jalapeno peppers, onion, and garlic. When we overeat, we stuff food and make our body a trash bin. Added to it, we will waste a lot of our body’s resources in processing it.

My devotees consider it a privilege to feed me. They pile my plate with many varieties of food. They expect me to eat it up! They advice me not to waste it! They expect me to clean up the plate!

Be clear: wasting food outside is better. It is better to leave the food outside our body than getting the food inside our body and wasting us from with in.

When we decline the food on the plate or in the dish, food remains outside. We are only wasting excess food. It can be fed to others. But, if we stuff ourselves with food, we are serving ourselves a double harm. The excess food is wasted in the body. Our body has no use of it even as it sits in our body. We are exhausting our body’s resources in processing it. If we overeat, food becomes a waste. Food can become a poison.

It is better to decline excess food than to consume it. Be aware of what and how much you eat! If you respect food, your body will respond by being respectful to you!

Fulfilment in relationships

WE CANNOT differentiate between love and lust today. Our lives are completely taken over by the fantasy and mental picture that lust creates in us. Our love, or the emotion that we call love, is tainted by greed and fear. All our love is conditional. We can only love someone as long as that person does what we say and obeys us. Control is a precondition to love.

In ancient days, people had the capacity to enjoy their marital pleasures completely without fantasies. They lived out their desires and were ready to give up the life of householders by the age of 40. Vedic scriptures prescribe four stages of life to attain the ultimate spiritual goal of enlightenment. These four stages of life are appropriate for each phase of one’s life. The four stages in life are: Brahmacharya, a student; Grihastha, a householder; Vanaprastha, a householder spending his time in reflection, after having fulfilled his duties as a husband and father; and finally Sanyasi, the ascetic, when the householder retires to be alone, in search of enlightenment.

Man and wife lived their lives fully till they were about forty. They then disengaged from physical relationship and focused on their spiritual development. In this stage, called Vanaprastha, they moved away from day-to-day life. They could either continue as such the rest of their lives or they could move to the next and final stage of renouncing all worldly possessions as sanyasi, ascetics.

Each stage of life was taken seriously and fulfilled. These days everything is half-hearted. Very few couples today understand the sacred verses chanted during their marriage rites. Only the purohits, the officiating priests, get married these days! The couples are disengaged from the beauty of the entire process of the ritual that leads to a meaningful relationship.

The beautiful rite performed in front of the fire in traditional Hindu weddings is called saptapati, the seven steps. There is deep significance when a married couple take the steps together. The couple vows to each other seven times, with fire as their witness, that they will be intimate and develop a deep love for each other.

The Vedic culture did not have the concept of divorce. In Sanskrit no words exist to describe marital separation. Marriage was a wonderful relationship that couples shared without fear and greed, with unconditional acceptance of one another. This relationship extended to all other aspects of their lives.

Upcoming Event: Yogam 2009

Experience the Change: The Truth & Science of Yoga Come Alive in YOGAM

Enlightened Master Paramahamsa Nithyananda to Reveal The Original Essence Of Yoga & The Key to Living Enlightenment

Yoga is the fastest growing fitness regimen in the country - with numbers reaching 11 million in the US this year. Seasoned and new practitioners of Yoga cite its benefits for a strong, healthy body and a balanced and peaceful mind. Lesser known, however, is the fact that Yoga is a 5,000-year-old science of Living Enlightenment.

"Living Enlightenment is being intense in every moment and responding intuitively to achieve your limitless potential for creativity and joy," says Paramahamsa Nithyananda, Enlightened Master from India.

Starting in March 2009, Paramahamsa Nithyananda will reveal Yoga in its truest and intended form as created by Patanjali, the Father of Yoga. Following the mantra, "Experience the Change," Nithyananda's YOGAM is a new movement to understand, experience and radiate Yoga, uniting your intentions and actions to allow you to achieve excellence in performance - whether you're an athlete, executive, parent, student, teacher, professional or employee.

Speaking on the Yoga Sutras, the original text on Yoga as expounded by Patanjali, Nithyananda will share the authentic science of Yoga - not as just a posture or practice, but as a tool for Living Enlightenment.

Contact your local Life Bliss Center for satsang details which are being organized to play discourse videos for free.

More Information: http://www.yogam4you.org

Miracles can even happen rationally

PRECOGNITION is a common experience for most of us. Let us say for example that we feel that some one, a particular person, is about to call us. Sure enough, when the phone rings, that person will be on line.

Suppose we are watching a TV show. We know what the character will say next. Sure enough, that character mouths the words as if to oblige us. Another experience. let us assume that we’re ready for dinner. Precisely then the doorbell chimes. Even before we open the door, we know who is at the door. We expect a friend we haven’t seen for years. Sure enough the friend is at our doorstep.

In my discourses, I often ask the audience if they’ve experienced something similar at some point in their life. Over 70% of the audience confirms this experience.

When it happens, we ignore it. In fact, most of the times, we brush it aside as a coincidence. When this happens repetitively with a person, we attach the tag ‘gifted.’ We also attach ‘gifted’ label to those who see auras and sense the vibrational energy of people and places. We call these incidents miracles.

For experiences to be termed as miracles or as extraordinary, the frequency of the experience should be low and rare. It should be far lower than the 50% probability that one finds in reality.

In real life we come across people making many predictions and forecasts. Some can accurately predict disasters time and again, and others give exact forecasts of deaths. Many can heal people, who have been given up by doctors. Some can produce substances out of thin air. We have a single word for all of them. We call them miracles.

What we call a miracle instead of a normal happening is based on the degree of unexpectedness of the incident. We do not understand the causal relationship in these incidents. Because science can’t explain these incidents they are simply labelled as miraculous or quite often as trickery.

There are no miracles in life. It is just that we don’t yet understand the laws that govern occurrences of such incidents, which seem to defy ‘scientific’ laws.

First, we need to accept and understand the universe supports laws that go beyond the ‘scientific’ laws discovered by humans. This basic acceptance will lead us to the next level, to understand the cause and effect linkages behind many of these inexplicable happenings. It is possible. We then can make these miracles happen as a matter of course.

Moving beyond our wants

WHY are you running after one thing or another? Let me tell you that you are running away from yourself, your inner being, when you do that. Running after desires, pursuing possessions and acquisitions, and the relentless chase of things that you do not even know why you are chasing, all these move you from your centre to your periphery. You will say, Master, I have no desires. I only have needs that I need to fulfill. I have commitments that I cannot ignore.

Let me be clear. There is a big difference between desire and need. How to differentiate between the two? Listen to what various spiritual masters have said about needs.

Mahavira, the founder of the Jainism religion, said that each being that takes birth in this world comes into this world with whatever is needed for its living already provided by the Universe. The Universe never denies a basic need.

Ramana Maharishi, an enlightened master of the 20th century says: This universe has enough to fulfill the needs of every single being who occupies it; however it can not fulfill the wants of even one being. Yet, we want. Not only do we want, we are also in a hurry to get it. We are always comparing ourselves with our neighbours, colleagues, siblings, and friends. We grab everything in our path attention, time, energy, and still we aren't satisfied. We grab all the time. It has become a deeply ingrained habit that we are no longer conscious of doing it. It's not because we need it but because we want, out of greed, jealousy, and lust. We grab, horde, acquire, possess, out of our fear.

Believe that the universe will provide for you. Trust the energy and intelligence of the universe. All that the world gives has to go. That is the fate of everyone. Nobody is spared of this.

A small story:

Towards the end of his life Albert Einstein was very depressed. He had turned to spirituality after his discoveries were put to destructive uses. One of his assistants asked him what he would do if he were to live his life all over again.

Einstein said: I would like to become a plumber.

Shocked, the assistant asked, why, you have been so very successful as a scientist, why would you want to be a plumber?

Einstein said, all my life I have worked for what ever I thought I wanted, but at the end I understand that my life is a big lie. It was wasted. From childhood I have always wanted to be a plumber, and I have been denied the joy of doing what I wanted. That's why I want to be a plumber, when I am reborn to be what my Being wants to be.

Our body begs for attention

WE SHOULD understand one secret: attention is energy. That is why we feel so good when somebody attends to us. When we are attended to; when somebody takes time to attend to us; when somebody serves, we feel so good. We even feel elated.

We can see that politicians seem to be always, continuously energetic. Do you know why? Everywhere they are attended to. Thousands and thousands of people listen to their speech. We can see that if the crowd is more, the volume of their voice will go up. It goes up because the attention creates energy.

If we are attended to well, we feel energetic. We feel alive. Attention is energy. When we don’t live inside our body, when we don’t attend to our body, we will feel our body has shrunk. Our body really contracts, it shrinks. It just begs you, ‘please give me your attention.’ This begging of our body is called pain. Pain is nothing but the begging of our own body asking for our attention; asking for our presence. Our body wants us to attend to it.

Why does our body do that? We continuously live outside our body. Our body is here; but we are somewhere else. Our body is in the house; but in our mind, we are already in the office. When we are in the office our body is in the house. If we continuously live outside the body, our body will go without any attention.

I tell people that when they are in the beachside resort thinking about what they should be doing at work, they call it vacation. When they are at work fantasising about a cruise, they call it work. Both cause suffering. This suffering is the way our body creates attention to itself. This pain of suffering is the way our body calls for attention when we don’t attend to it properly. We need to understand one thing: pain is nothing but the unawareness.

If we don’t live now, here, our body will not be attended to. Our body will not have the attention of our being. When we give our attention, we will see that the suffering simply disappears. When we do not live the real life, we will be only living with the reasons. Our mind will be one way; our body will be in another way. And if we don’t live truthfully, we create a new energy field around us called pain body.

Understand that if we continuously live in the past or live in the future, we are not present inside our system. When we are not present, the energy flow inside our system never happens totally and properly. Be in the present, be pain free and blissful. This is enlightened state.

Words from the Master

The Chaandoghya Upanishad describes beautifully:

The Master repeats to the disciple nine times: tat tvam asi - you are That. Just by listening, just by listening to the Master from his Being, the disciple actually attains the spiritual experience! When both the Master and disciple act with totality, this is possible.

When you are around a Master, words are totally irrelevant. Just being around a Master in silence and absorbing Him is what brings about actual transformation in you. But what to do? You are so caught up with your inner chatter that it becomes impossible for me to penetrate you. So I speak. I use words and silence you.

Why do you think I am talking to you now? Because if I don’t talk, you will talk continuously inside yourself - dissecting and analyzing the past, worrying about the future, concluding, judging and what not. If I talk, you will be intently absorbed in my words for fear of losing track of me and I can take advantage of that time to enter you!

When I talk, I am actually silent inside. You see, when a Master talks, he is actually silent within himself. That is why he is a Master! But in your case, even if you are silent, you will be talking inside yourself! The inner chatter will be there. That is the difference. Your silence invariably is just inaudible scrambling going on inside you. Inside you, you jump like a monkey from one subject to another without any relevance between them. This madhouse will be happening inside you and you will appear silent outside, that’s all.

So just know how to listen. Don’t listen with your head. Open your Being to me. Listen with deep trust, with total surrender. Don’t scramble to carry my words; carry me in your Being. That is more than enough. My presence in you will make the alchemy happen.

Yes…Now let us enter into a meditation technique called the Manipuraka Shuddhi Kriya* that will totally cleanse the Manipuraka chakra.

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

* To learn and experience Manipuraka Shuddhi Kriya under a qualified instructor, kindly enroll for Ananda Spurana Program (ASP) at a center close to you.

Words from the Master

People tell me, “Swamiji, it is very inspiring to listen to you talking. Now we have to apply it in our day-to-day life and see if it will work.”

See, be very clear: I always tell only practical things. Never think that I tell things that can’t be done in day-to-day life.

Actually all I am doing is, repeating the same Vedanta – but in different words, in the modern context, so that you feel comfortable listening to it; so that you feel that it is relevant to you, so that you can follow it. And there is another thing: If you read these ideas in a book, they will simply be moving from the head of the writer, to your own head. There is no scope for any experience. But when you listen to these words from a Master, from someone who speaks to you from the experience of his soul – they will enter deep into you, whether you are aware of it or not.

Be very clear: I am not sharing my knowledge with you. I am sharing my experience, my life, with you. When I speak from my Being, it has to touch your Being. It will transform your life. There is no other way.

Vivekananda spoke in Chicago, “My dear American brothers and sisters…” The auditorium thundered with applause. A lady wrote, “It was not just the applause. He had won an entire nation. We felt as if a current of Love was passing through us, through our Being…!” She later asked Vivekananda how it happened and he simply replied, “Because it came from within me.”

Vivekananda spoke from his Being. When words emanate from the brain, it will touch the brain of the other person and this is called ‘communication’. When words emanate from the heart of one person, it touches the heart of the other person and this is called ‘communion.’ Communication is not enough; we need to know how to commune. Now I tell you: I talk from the bottom of my heart, so you will listen whole-heartedly.

When the speaker speaks with totality, the listener is bound to listen with totality. His life is bound to be transformed. If your life has not been touched by my words, be very clear: I have no authority to speak. You are free to doubt the truth of my experience. If you feel that my words have not been able to transform your life, there is no need to feel guilty. Come out with it. But I tell you: there is no way you will not be touched by me!

If you listen with your heart, you will see my teachings working out in your life automatically, when the time comes. Only a teacher who is unsure of himself needs to urge his disciples to go back and practice his words. When a true Master speaks, simply listening will do. Listen totally; the transformation will happen automatically.

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

Words from the Master

Yes…
Swamiji, earlier you mentioned about drinking. My husband drinks ever so often claiming that he drinks to forget his worries. What do I do?

As I told you, this is a common problem. Anyhow, if your husband was here it would have been helpful. If you analyze the habit of drinking, you will understand how self-contradictory you are. Let me try to explain:

You drink to feel joyful, but you end up becoming miserably miserable.
You drink so that you can be called sociable, so that society will accept you, but you land up becoming argumentative!
You drink so that you will look sophisticated but you end up looking insufferable.
You drink so that you can sleep forgetting all your worries but you wake up feeling…? more exhausted than ever!
You drink to experience ecstasy and end up feeling depressed!
You drink to feel confident but end up becoming afraid of yourself.
You drink to maintain the conversation but end up becoming incoherent.
You drink to see your problems dissolve but end up seeing them multiply!

All these are the truth and you know it better than I do! Now tell me honestly, is it really worth drinking? This is how self-contradictory you are in not only this matter but in all matters in life. If you clearly knew what you want to do and spent every ounce of your energy in that direction, you will grow steadily and experience joy. You will then never be self-contradictory.

Every time you drink, drink with complete awareness. Let me explain: Every time you drink, drink consciously, slowly, watching every movement of yours, tasting every drop of the drink, watching the reaction of your body to it. Make it a process filled with acute awareness. I assure you, if you do this every time you decide to drink, you do not have to drop the habit, the habit will leave you forever.

Addiction to anything is an unconscious or mechanical process. It is not just addiction to drinks or tobacco. It is addiction to even religion. People who pray unconsciously and mechanically, following a routine, will find it very hard if they miss even one day’s prayer. For them, it is an addiction and so it causes anxiety when missed. Just like when an alcoholic misses his evening drink, he starts trembling in insecurity, the mechanically religious person will feel a big void if he misses his routine prayer.

The key is to understand the difference between doing things with awareness and doing things mechanically and out of fear. Doing things in the former fashion will never bring you under any sort of binding. It will not bind you in space and time. You will be a master. Doing things in the latter way will bind you and cause misery to you. You will be a slave.

To drop an addiction, flood it with awareness; it will transform in the right way. Remember: Never think that you need to drop an addiction. Anything that you resist will persist. You simply need to transform it by deep awareness, that’s all. When you understand the language of transformation, you are on the right track; you are on the path of openness.

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

Words from the Master

See, understand, that you have given a lot of power to your worries by simply talking about them more and more. For example, when a housewife picks up the telephone, she will start by telling her friend that the house maid did not turn up for the day. That is her depression for the day. If you are really depressed about the maid not coming and you are really interested in coming out of it, then you should simply drop it and finish doing the work yourself! Doesn’t this sound more logical?

But what do you do? You keep on talking about it and expect your friend to feed your depression as well. If she doesn’t sympathize with you or if she tells you that is how life is and you have to move on, you will make a call to another friend and tell that friend about how inconsiderate this friend was! Just think: If you really wanted to move on with your life, you would appreciate the words of the friend, is it not?

If you really wanted to come out of the depression and move on with life, you would definitely spend your intelligence on doing that. But why are you reacting differently? The reason is, you are so comfortable just talking about your worries and not finding a way out of it.

If you start doing the small exercise I just gave, you will see that all your worries simply disappear and you acquire a new mental set-up altogether. You will find a surge of energy within you because all the energy that you previously spent on harboring your worries is suddenly available to you!

Do an honest check for yourself and find out if you are secretly nurturing your worries and whether you are ready to take on the transformation.

When you stop going behind your worries, you will be able to see how others are helplessly caught up in that cycle. You will be able to see how they magnify their worries by endlessly talking about them to people. This ‘talking about worry’ is what I call ‘worrying about the worry’! Only when you are able to watch this, will it stop. Until such time you become the watcher, you are caught up in the emotions, giving so much of power and control to them.

Again I tell you: I am not asking you to run away from your worries. I am saying, don’t magnify them by talking about them. Don’t expend your energy on them. Instead, address them for what needs to be done so that they stop worrying you. Address them without loss of time, that’s all.

Check yourself to find out if you are starting to feel comfortable with your worries. This is the scale to see if worries are controlling you or you are controlling your worries. If you are feeling comfortable talking about them repeatedly without taking any action, then worries are controlling you. If you don’t linger on them and address them correctly, then you are controlling them!

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

Words from the Master

Yes…?

Swamiji, there are books that say ‘don’t sweat for small stuff’. But small things do matter, is it not Swamiji?

When you function with intelligence, you will not fall into the category of sweating for small stuff.

A small story:

A young man went to visit his friend.
He found him scraping the wallpaper off the wall.
He asked him, “Are you repainting?”
The friend replied, “I am moving house.”

You see, you cannot ignore the small things. But you should be intelligent enough to pay only the amount of attention it warrants, else you are starting to sweat. Never listen to people when they say not to pay attention to small things. Remember: Small holes can sink a great ship. Just understand that you need to operate with your intelligence and awareness when you are at it.

First of all, you need to be absolutely convinced about the so-called small things that you are concerned about. If this is there, then there is no self-contradiction and automatically you will find the energy to do those things. When you are not fully convinced, you will not have enough conviction and energy to go behind it and get it done your way. It means that your intelligence is not fully behind you, because intelligence is energy and energy is intelligence.

If you are sweating about them, then there is something wrong somewhere. Be very clear: All miseries arise because of self-contradictions. You yourself are not fully clear about what you want to do and so you are unable to do it. For that clarity to happen, you need to nurture your own intelligence.

When intelligence surfaces, self-contradictions will disappear and you will start becoming integrated. When you start becoming integrated, your intelligence will further grow. This is the cycle you need to get into. This is the cycle that can clear your worries also.

Intelligence is the only way to get freedom from anything that bothers you.

If you are really interested in dropping your inner chatter and worries, you could try a small exercise:
Think of all the things that give you joy. Make up your mind that you will allow your mind to linger on only these things and nothing else. Anything else, you will give it just enough energy to get it done and then forget about it. Try this exercise and you will see that you conserve a lot of energy.

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

Words from the Master

People ask me, “Swamiji, I am afraid when I think that the world might suddenly come to an end.”

So what if the world comes to an end? If the world comes to an end everyone is going to be ending along with it. There will be nothing remaining with anyone for anyone to be worried about. You were earlier worried only because there was something in the world to worry about. If the world itself is coming to an end, then there should be nothing to be worried about, is it not? But you worry about that also!

See how self-contradictory the mind is. It worries if there is something to worry about and it worries if there is nothing to worry about also. If you look into all your worries with awareness, you will understand how cunningly they are playing on you in your unconscious state. You will see that your worries are so elusive and baseless. You will never be able to pin them down because they are baseless. They are not solid.

Actually, all of your emotions are nothing but the play of the unconscious in you. When you live with total awareness, you can never be under the sway of emotions. That is why again and again I tell you to flood yourself with awareness.

You see, your worries, your words, really make or break your life. They have got that much power - to influence you and others. For eg., when I utter the word ‘cow’, immediately what happens? A figure with 4 legs, 2 horns and 1 tail appears in your mind, is it not? A simple 3-letter word can bring to your mind a whole image. Words are that powerful. When we don’t respect words and use them wrongly, we are asking for trouble.

A small story:

Birbal, an Enlightened Master, and Akbar his King were walking together on the streets.
They saw a sandalwood dealer and Akbar said to Birbal, “I don’t know why but I feel like hanging this man.”
A month later, they walked past the same sandalwood dealer and Akbar this time said, “It’s strange but I feel like giving this man some endowment now!”
Birbal replied after a long pause, “A month back, the sandalwood dealer’s business was suffering and when he saw you walking past, he thought to himself that if you die, the courtiers would come to buy a lot of sandalwood from him for your funeral pyre. He sent out these negative vibrations, which prompted you to feel hatred towards him. I immediately purchased a lot of sandalwood from him to make tables and chairs for our kingdom. Today, he feels very grateful towards you and you have been struck by these positive vibrations from him and therefore you feel like giving him some endowment!”

Understand that your thoughts have a lot of power in themselves. It is therefore very important that you have a worry-free and clear mental set-up.

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

Words from the Master

When you move on with complete trust, you cannot worry. This is real prayer. Prayer is not pouring out all your worries and asking for a solution. Prayer is placing complete trust upon Existence and feeling it work for you.

So don’t listen with your intellect. Learn to listen with deep meditation. Whatever may be your emotion or path at that point in time, just go deep into it and listen to me. That is enough. You will automatically be filled with energy and made stronger. These are all the basic secrets that I am giving you.

When you cling to my words, you will be worried that you might forget them. You will start jotting them down. I tell you, the moment you start jotting down, you will miss the whole thing. You will neither have absorbed the energy behind my words nor would you have completely taken down my words. You will go home with the scribbled notes and a few days later, even that will be lying in some corner of your house. Sometime later, even if you find them, you will not be able to make head or tail out of them.

It is something like this: Let us say you read a book and retained only the last two pages of it in your hand. With just those two pages, can you recompile the whole book? No! In the same way, don’t try to jot down a few of my words and try to recollect the whole thing. Just be present completely when I am talking. That is enough.

Stop worrying about forgetting my words. My words will penetrate you and do their work if you give me your whole presence. The transformation is what is important, not my words. Listen with your Being, not with your mind. When you understand and the transformation happens, you will never forget. If you have forgotten, it means that you have not understood.

Not just my words, don’t cling on to anything. Every moment is going past; then what is there to cling? Clinging will bring misery upon misery. There is no point in thinking about the future also. It is yet to come. What are you thinking about? The future will also come in the form of present only. So focus on the present.

You see, when you are in the present, you don’t choose at all. Worry basically arises because you are choosing all the time. When you decide not to choose at all and just totally accept and drink in the whole experience, all worries will simply disappear. You choose because you identify yourself as something solid. You feel compelled to choose all the time. It is nothing but a play of your ego. Understand that.

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

Words from the Master

But Swamiji, we don’t intentionally worry. How do you then say that we bring worries upon ourselves?

Worry has become the unconscious state of your mind. You don’t have to put any intention into it. It simply IS, that’s all! You don’t have to make a conscious effort, it is there in you all the time.

A small story:

A woman called up the reception desk of a hotel and screamed for help.
The receptionist came to her room.
The lady screamed to her, “I can see a man naked, across the window in the other room.”
The receptionist saw through the window and saw a man standing with his upper body bare.
She said, “Ma’am, only his upper body is bare. How can you conclude that he is naked?”
The lady screamed, “Get on top of the wardrobe and see!”

(Loud laughter!)

Even if everything is alright, we search with a torchlight for worries! We don’t do this intentionally at all. We do it in the most natural fashion ever - that is the problem! Our state of mind has to undergo a 180 degree change.

Another small story:

A policeman was going on his night rounds when he saw a cow dead in the middle of a lane.
He started dragging the animal towards the adjacent street.
A passerby asked him why he was dragging the dead animal all the way.
The policeman replied, “When I report this tomorrow, it will be easier because I know the name of that street.”

(Laughter!)

Because we don’t know how to be spontaneous, we are worried all the time. We complicate things in our lives in order to fit it into our framework. We don’t live in a fluid way. When you live in a fluid way, you don’t have to work unnecessarily. You can simply enjoy and move on.

For example, if I now tell you that you should be blissful always, you will start worrying about how to be blissful! You know to start anything only with worry; that is the problem. That is why most of the time when you ask me something, I never tell you anything directly or in many words. I simply tell you a few abstract statements so that your mind cannot be put into any track of worrying but at the same time I give you the energy to penetrate it with understanding.

Yes...

Swamiji, then how do we start following what you are saying if we don’t start worrying about it?

Just absorb the energy and inspiration behind my words without applying your mind to it and start living in the present, that’s all. When you apply your mind to it, logic will come in and once logic comes in, the trouble starts.

Just feel the energy behind my words, what I call the silence - the silence with which I am trying to penetrate you all the time. This silence will ultimately take you where it has to take you. Never try to get into the meaning of my words.

Never collect words. Only intellectual nuts collect words and more words. They collect words and get more and more confused. They collect words thinking that they will get clarity at some point in time, but it is never going to happen.

You see, whatever I talk, even if it seems contradictory when connected and analysed, it is the complete truth for the moment that it is spoken. Whatever I talk is the complete truth for that moment that I am speaking it. But you cannot infer from my words alone. So for that moment, simply take them in without a question. It will give you the energy and intelligence to follow through.

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

Words from the Master

A small story:

A man was known to have a very weak heart.
His family was always careful in telling him any drastic news.
One day, they came to know that his wealthy uncle had died leaving one million dollars to him.
They were very excited and at the same time did not know how to break this news to him. They were afraid that he might collapse under it.
One of them suggested, “I think we’d better call the family doctor and tell him to handle this.”
They all agreed.
They called up the family doctor and told him the matter.
The doctor said, “Don’t worry, I will handle it. It is not so hard as you think.”
He soon arrived at their house and went into the room and started talking to the man. He casually asked him, “If you were suddenly told that you were given one million dollars as cash, what would you do?”
The man replied, “I would give half of it to you doctor.”
The doctor collapsed and died.

(Laughter!)

We are ready to see life as a drama when it comes to others but when it comes to us, it becomes hard to digest! We are always ready to give advice to others. I read in a book: Advice is something which everyone loves to give but no one is ready to take!

When you can be like a lotus – untouched by the waters although deep inside it, you have learnt to play the game of life. Understand one thing: Existence is expressing itself continuously in various ways. Our role is to understand and flow with it with deep awareness.

Understand that the whole of creation is flowing in accordance with Existence. Then you will automatically drop your worries and anxieties. You have to reach a stage where your core is untouched by what is happening around you. This will happen if you have experientially understood that Existence is continuously changing.

Outwardly, you may express different emotions, but in your innermost core, you must be able to continuously see that all the incidents outside are like beads that are strung on the common thread that is Existence. The thread is what holds them together. Yes?

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

Words from the Master

Swamiji, do you always feel blissful? Don’t you ever feel the sway of emotions?

(Swamiji laughs…) Yes! I am blissful always – 24x7 in your language! This is because plurality has disappeared from my Being. When there is bliss, there cannot be plurality. Only when plurality disappears, bliss can happen.

In my Being, there is no lust or fear, attachment or hatred or any of the opposing emotions. The only emotion is Bliss! It would be difficult for you to relate to what I am saying. Unless it becomes an experiential understanding for you, it will be difficult for you to understand this. You might understand it at the intellectual level. As of now, understand that I am always blissful, that is enough!

Understand: The first step to bliss is to become a watcher. Simply watch life as if it were a drama. When you watch, your mind will become still. When it becomes still, you have caught the thread. When you experience that stillness at least once, you have caught the thread.

That thread will guide you into periods of longer stillness. This stillness is your Master. The outer Master helps to find your inner Master, that’s all. When you have found the stillness, you will understand that all emotions are a mere play of the mind.

Understand, you can never drop any emotion by consciously trying to drop it. The more you try to drop it the more attached you will become to it and it will become a torture for you. The emotion will haunt you. The only way is to watch your emotions. As you watch your emotions, the distance between your emotions and you will start increasing.

Right now, you are so entangled with your emotions that you simply cannot see yourself apart from them. When you start watching, you will start creating a distance between you and your emotions. Slowly, the distance will increase and one day, the watcher will disappear from the scene.

Then, you need not put any effort to drop your emotions. They will simply drop of their own accord and you will feel disconnected from them. You will no more be able to relate with them. They will simply disappear from your Being. A shift in Consciousness happens in you. You then become a new person.

When you become a watcher, there will be no room for worries or pain. There will be only love in you. You will then understand the love of Existence, the infinite love that Existence showers on you every minute.

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

Words from the Master

It is very easy to go by another’s decision and blame them at the end of it. Don’t ever do this. It is the most foolish and cowardly thing to do. Never blame anyone for anything. Remember, only when you are unable to handle something, you will blame others for it.

Yes…

Swamiji… how should we be relaxed always?

When your Consciousness is alert all the time, you will be relaxed all the time. Meditation is the key to achieving this state. At least at the intellectual level, understand this first. You will then start experiencing it for short intervals of time. These time periods can then be extended and finally become your permanent state.

I always tell people: To find out if a Master is a true Master, watch him when he is asleep. A real Master will appear like a flower when he is asleep. He will be totally relaxed and beautiful to look at when he is asleep. He will radiate a child-like innocence when he is asleep. An ordinary man on the other hand will appear tensed and tight when he is asleep.

A Master is always in a state of Super Consciousness and he sleeps only to relax his body. When you are continuously in a state of Consciousness or awareness, you can never be tense. Only when you allow yourself to fall into unconsciousness, into a state of delusion, you will create tension for yourself. The only way to be relaxed always is to be aware all the time of every single thing happening inside and outside yourself.

Learn to relax with awareness. When you are with a Master, if you allow yourself to relax, he will enter you; his state will penetrate you. If you are close and tense, he will not be able to enter you.

The word Upanishad itself means, ‘Sitting at the feet of the Master.’ If you are able to sit at the feet of the Master with an open and relaxed mind, he will enter you and work on you with all his compassion. No words will then be needed. He uses words only to keep you engaged while he tries to penetrate you. A Master can teach you how to relax.

When you relax in a Master’s presence, you are actually settling down in your own body, you are settling down in your own individuality, you feel relaxed in your own personality. Then there is no wedge inside yourself and you become integrated. So practice relaxing in the presence of the Master. That is the shortcut and ultimate way to relaxation. Yes…

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

Words from the Master

Yes... any questions?

Swamiji… what would you say is the root cause for so much of worry and tension in our lives?

The fact that you have come out with this question shows that you want to look deeply into it.

You see, we are continuously having some imagination about everything – about the people around us, the places where we live, the situations that arise, and the lifestyle that we follow. We are continuously fantasizing or expecting things to happen in a particular fashion. But reality is always different from this imagination. The gap between reality and our imagination gives rise to tension in our lives.

We have created a virtual world inside us and are continuously looking to realize it in reality. The more we have imagined, the more will be the gap between reality and our imagination and the more will be the tension.

We always think that we are getting to the point of realizing our imagination but when we get to it, our imagination would have grown further and so we never really get to it. This creates disappointment, tension and worry for us.

The fact is, we are not even aware that we are working with imagination. Our imagination has become such a solid thing for us that we can’t even see it as imagination. We are caught up in it. Be very clear: If working towards something is causing tension in you, then you are not working in reality, you are working in your zone of imagination.

Every moment, we are trying to realize our expectation in the world outside. If people don’t react or respond in the way we imagined, we feel let down. From minor to major things, we are always looking for a match for our imagination. This has become an unconscious process inside us, which is why we don’t understand the cause for tension. The cause is so subtly woven into the whole thing that it cannot be made out.

If you bring your awareness acutely to this point and watch yourself for just a few hours, you will understand how your whole mind works. Just decide to be a watcher of your mind and the people around you. You will see how subtly, your mind is continuously creating expectations in every small thing you see and do, and how reality sometimes matches and sometimes misses your expectations and how feelings of tension and worry arise within you when this happens.

Just by flooding awareness into this whole thing, you can see how your mind plays and creates tension for you. Once you learn to become the watcher, your worries will drop and you will also not internalize any of the outer world incidents. When you internalize the outer world incidents, you are just creating a larger database of words inside you, out of which new worries will arise.

And one thing: When you plan chronologically and work towards realizing your chronological plan without loss of time, you are on the path of reality. If you find yourself worrying more than working and not getting anywhere, then you are on a path where there is a gap between reality and yourself. It is then time to look into yourself and straighten out your thoughts.

Thinking to plan chronologically is alright, but thinking about how you are going to execute your plan is what is not alright. This is what is called psychological planning and this is what creates tension and worry.

If it takes just 2 hours to plan for yourself, the remaining 22 hours are available to you to execute the plan. Why then is the plan not getting executed? Because, you waste more than 80% of the remaining time on worrying about how you are going to execute the plan.

When you keep repeating the plan to yourself, you are in effect draining your own energy into it. Instead of using the energy to execute the plan, you simply waste it. How will the job get done?

One more thing: If you really want the job to get done, you will get down to doing it without worrying. Let me tell you: Tension and worry are mere excuses for running away from reality. Under the pretext of worry and tension, you escape from responsibility.

Every problem is pregnant with the solution. If you really want to solve it, you will do it. All you need to do is look at the problem with deep awareness and the solution will stand out automatically. When you don’t want to solve it but feel comfortable talking about it, you will continue to talk about it and come around it in circles and feel great that you have so much to worry about.

The best way to shrug responsibility is to get into a deluded state of mind – a state of worry and tension. Most often, people suffering from depression feel comfortable in that state because they don’t have to take up any responsibility. They can simply be free from all responsibility.

A small story:

A man who was known to be a great healer, visited a village.
Very soon, a crowd gathered around him.
He touched a man on his neck and the man who was suffering from chronic spondolosis felt he was relieved of the pain instantly.
He then touched another man on his head and the man’s headache simply disappeared that very moment.
He moved towards a man on crutches.
But the man on crutches moved away and said, “Don’t touch me!”
The healer was puzzled and asked why.
The man said, “I have just applied for my Disability Benefit claim.”

(Laughter!)

We talk endlessly about our problems, but when we are offered an instant solution, we find it hard to accept! When we are offered an instant solution, we immediately feel a big void in us. We feel that there is nothing more for us to do in Life. We feel too relieved! We find that we are not able to think properly when our problems suddenly vanish, because we have never thought beyond our problems!

All your tensions and worries are actually comfort zones wherein you hide from reality. If you really want to get something done, what is preventing you from doing it? Why would you immerse yourself in unproductive tension and worry? You do this either because you have too much time on hand or because you want to escape reality or because you feel great in harboring so much of tension and worry, that’s all.

So drop all your imagination about your lifestyle, people etc and start living in the present moment and things will automatically happen. Remember: You can’t live in this comfort zone for long. Some time or the other, reality will find you. So start living consciously, make conscious decisions and take up responsibility for every decision made.

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

Words from the Master

Our thoughts are different from our words and hence we lose the life that we are living. Ramakrishna says, “Uniting our thoughts and words is like doing a penance.” But what do we do? We edit our thoughts and bring them out as words. There is so much of calculation that goes on inside before the words come out. We see ‘profit and loss’ and go into the future to analyze before we start talking. Our personality never gets integrated because of this and we remain fragmented.

People ask me how I am able to talk for hours together without any preparation. You see, I talk the Truth as it is - spontaneously, that’s all. I am not worried about exposing the Truth! I never edit my words. For me, thinking is talking. For you, first thinking happens; then editing is done on it and only then comes talking. The innocence is lost in the whole process and you are caught with so many words also.

You are able to listen for hours together to me only because I am talking spontaneously. Else, you will get restless. The fact that you are here without being bothered about the time passing by is enough proof for what I am trying to tell you.
When spontaneity happens, you just flow without thinking. Else, you stagnate in your own mental make up. You become a one-track mind.

A small story:

A man was trying hard to sleep but could not, because his neighbor’s dogs were barking persistently.
This scene remained unchanged for a few nights.
He finally decided to talk to the owner about it.
He went to his house the next day and complained to him about it.
The neighbor was unmoved and said, “Nothing I can do about it. What do you plan to do?”
The man replied, “Well, tonight I will tie the dogs in my backyard and then you will know what it is!”

Just think what foolishness it is to do what the man suggested! He is again and again going into the matter with a one-track mind. How will he find a solution? When you are spontaneous, you will never be challenged for even a moment. You will come back with a solution instantly. When you are spontaneous, you will simply jump off any cliff and build your wings on the way down!

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

Words from the Master

Yes…

Swamiji, so you feel that simply by witnessing our breath, we can achieve Bliss?

Yes. It is a very powerful technique. You see, when you watch your breath, your awareness is intense and no thought can escape you unconsciously. When every thought starts passing through your awareness, you will automatically not create negative thoughts for yourself.

You don’t have to spend any time in correcting your thoughts; the awareness will do it for you. Your thinking system will automatically get restructured. The power of awareness is such that it transforms your thinking system to positive Energy.

Actually if you see, we have been trained to think that only if we work and experience pain in some form, we are worthy of happiness. So we run till we get pain; we run till we hit the fence. We are so used to the concept of a fence that even if we are told that there is no fence, no boundary, we are not ready to believe it. We run and somehow hit a fence and feel pain; then we stop, satisfied in having felt pain. We then feel our desires can be worked out. We always feel that we have to go through anxiety and worry in order to be worthy of being showered. We are in eternal preparation for worry and pain.

And then there are some people: They create worries for themselves and then drink to forget the worries! A very common thing today. It is something like this: A pig is not able to bear the smell and slush of its own habitat and so plunges its nose inside it. You think you have beaten all your worries by drinking, when in reality you have actually plunged headlong into more of it.

We want something but we create self-contradictory results for ourselves and then cause more worry for ourselves. This is the main problem, although we are not aware of it.

A small story:

An unwelcome visitor came to a man’s house.
The man screamed to his wife who was inside the kitchen to bring coffee for the visitor.
The wife screamed back that there was no coffee in the house and that there was no money to buy it either.
The husband got angry and started scolding his wife and finally gave her a slap for not being able to serve coffee.
The wife started crying.
The visitor saw what was happening and slowly got up and went away.
The wife wiped her tears and triumphantly told the husband, “Did you see that? I pretended to cry and sent him away!”
The husband replied, “Well! I pretended to be angry with you and made you cry!”
The visitor joined them, “I pretended to walk away and I have now come back!”

(Laughter!)

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

Words from the Master

Meditation is nothing but a shift in your consciousness. It is an ‘Energy shift’ in your Being. It is not sitting in a corner, cross-legged and straight-backed and trying to control the mind. If you try doing all this, you will only land up with neck pain and back pain! You will have one more worry that you are not able to sit and do meditation.

All you need to do is, try to live in the present, in the now and here. When you are in the present, you will feel and enjoy Existence. When you are in the present, you will move in tune with Existence. When you are in the present, Existence itself will teach you.

Existence is the greatest Master. This is what they mean when they say that Life is a great teacher. When you miss it, you take your own sweet time to learn. When you take your own sweet time to learn, Life gives some shocks so that you wake up and learn quicker! Else, you will learn for lives together.

See now, you are running behind the past with regret or behind the future with anxiety. You completely destroy the present because of this pattern. What happens is, you never act properly, you simply react based on your past memories or anxiety of the future. When you only react, you are not using your whole potential. You are simply behaving like a programmed robot; you follow blind logic, not awareness and intelligence.

80% of your Energy is locked in the past or future and only 20% is available to you in the present. That is why you feel dull and sapped of your Energy. With increased awareness, this situation can be turned around and your life can be lived on a higher plane, which is more blissful, joyful and exciting!

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

Words from the Master

A Master is someone who can give you a new mental set-up, a rebirth. It is something which can be got by simply absorbing the presence of the Master. When the Master’s Energy floods you, your mental set-up changes, and you are reborn. You enter into a space that you never even knew existed.

When you are reborn in this fashion, you will be free from the grips of all worries, illnesses and other emotions. Even if any of these happen to you, you will be able to handle them with ease that you never knew before. You will be able to become an observer of everything that is happening to you and around you.

I was watching the television the other day in a hotel where our meditation program took place. On one Indian channel there was a duet going on from an old movie. On another Indian channel, there was another duet going on, from a new movie. I was telling my secretary that these two channels only showed that there has been no growth in man’s consciousness. He was shocked at my observation and agreed with me.

The same patterns get repeated again and again like five people kicking a ball around in a closed room. At least in the West, they go to extremes and explore things and come back. There is at least social intelligence in the West if not a growing consciousness. Familiar patterns can make our intelligence totally dead. Worries are nothing but familiar patterns stored in our minds, ready to impose themselves upon us again and again.

When I tell people these things, they tell me, “Swamiji, I understand what you are saying but I am not able to overcome it.” I tell you: Just allow my words to penetrate you and create a space in you; that is enough. This is where meditation can help. What I do in my meditation camps is, I give you the outer understanding and then work on it penetrating you through meditation.

But people tell me, “Swamiji, we have our work to do, bills to pay, deadlines to meet; how do we meditate then?” I answer them with a simple meditation technique: Whether you have time to pay your bills or to meet your deadlines or not, you surely have time to breathe? Else, you will not be alive! Now, you simply add awareness to your breathing, that’s all. Just watch your breath. That is the simplest and most powerful meditation you can do.

Every time you remember this technique, practice it. Soon, it will become a habit. When you infuse awareness into your breath, you will be in the present moment. Living in the present takes you to Bliss. The power of NOW is the straight way to Bliss. Simply add awareness to every inhalation and exhalation.

So to attain bliss, you don’t need any separate time. You need not take time off and go to any retreat or meditation camp. You can continue with your daily activity. With the increased awareness that you will be creating, your deadlines and other targets will get done much more efficiently.

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

How the mind works

Following Nithyananda article first appeared in Common Ground, a Canadian online publication. [external link]

IN LIFE, we constantly create either shafts of pain or joy. Once you create a shaft of pain, you try to break it. In the same way, if you create a shaft of joy, you try to elongate it. But you don’t understand that you can neither elongate the joy shaft nor break the pain shaft – simply because the shaft itself doesn’t exist.

I would like to share with you an interesting learning from my days of spiritual wandering. In the forests of Northern India, the hunters use a trap to catch birds. They tie a rope between two trees. In the middle of the rope, they secure a wooden stick. This is actually a hunter’s trap for birds.

You may think, “How can a bird be trapped with a small stick? How is it possible?” Actually, all they do is just hang the stick between two trees using a rope; that’s all. When a bird comes and sits on the stick, the bird’s own weight turns the whole stick upside down; it turns topsy-turvy. The moment it turns upside down and loses its sense of balance, it feels totally shaken and tightens its grip on the stick. It simply holds on to the stick as if its life depends on it. Because it is hanging upside down, it thinks, “If I unclutch from this stick, what will happen? I will fall and die.”

There is no record that any bird has ever fallen and broken its head. But the bird does not have the intelligence to realize this. It keeps hanging on. By not letting go, not only does it lose its freedom, it loses its life too because ultimately the hunter traps it.

Just like the bird, you don’t realize that if you just drop your mind, that very moment you can be liberated. You can simply start flying.

The same fear that the bird clinging to the stick had, you have now. Your fear and the bird’s fear are one and the same. The bird believes that it can’t let go; if it does, it will die. Similarly, you hold on to your mind and feel, “I can’t let go. If I start trusting that I am unconnected, unclutched, independent… I might be lost.”

After four or five hours, the hunter comes leisurely, takes the bird, puts it in the cage and leaves. Now the bird neither has the freedom to fly nor the stick to balance. The foolish bird doesn’t know that if it had just let go of the stick, it could have simply flown away.

In the same way, you hold on to whatever you think is your identity and security – your education, your mind, your life, your relationships or your bank balance. Death ultimately comes to remove the stick – your identity. Then you are neither a liberated soul, nor are you able to hold on to your identity. You will neither have the freedom, nor will you have the stick of your identity that you are clutching because the stick itself is an illusion.

If the bird lets go and relaxes, it may take one or two moments to balance itself, but it will never fall and die. When it leaves the stick, maybe for a few seconds it will fall, but then it will adjust itself and start flying. Just let go and you will never fall and die. You will only become liberated to your full potential. All you need to do is trust that you are unclutched even if you don’t trust that it is still the truth.

When we unclutch, the first thing that will happen to us will be an inner healing effect – a deep silence and peace in us. Second, that inner healing will start radiating as physical well-being, which is our health. Third, naturally it will start radiating in our relationships also. Fourth, because these three are going beautifully, we will be creative and productive.

An instant meditation

You can try this technique of unclutching at any time, whenever you remember. The moment you see a thought coming, do not give meaning to it. You give it meaning only if you connect it with your past. Without giving meaning to it, just remember to unclutch and see what happens.

The moment you remember, “Let me unclutch from this thought; let me not give meaning to it,” for a few seconds there will be a small, silent gap. The moment you are aware that there is a silence, it will become one more thought. Then unclutch from that thought also. Then again there will be a gap of a few seconds. Then one more thought will come: “I am in silence” or “I am unclutching.” Unclutch from that thought also. Just the gap or the silence should become longer and longer. That is the whole idea.

Paramahamsa Nithyananda visits Vancouver March 10-16. For a schedule of his free talks and to register for his workshops, visit www.LIfeBlissCanada.org or call 604-628-4479. Nithyananda is recognized in India as one of the great spiritual teachers. His meditations, yoga and life solutions techniques are popular with more than two million people. (See www.youtube.com)

Words from the Master

A man was asked what the difference between his past and present was.

He replied, “Earlier I used to sit on the floor on a mat and eat. Now I sit at a table.”

You see, in the past and the present, his mouth is the same. If there is no radical change in you, your life will seem only this much different. Like how beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, the taste lies in the tongue that experiences it. Your mental setup defines the quality of your life.

Most often, we know that we need to change but somehow we fall back comfortably in the present set-up of ours. We get caught in the same wheel again. One side of us tells us that we need to change and the other side unconsciously slips into the familiar patterns again. Even if you are presented with many opportunities to change, you feel cozy in your present state and miss them.

This mental set-up becomes such a solid reality in you. You simply radiate it.
Try to change it. Let me tell you: If you live with such a solid mental set-up, there is one more danger in it. There is every possibility that your children will imbibe it from you.

I am reminded of a joke:

A husband and wife were both pick-pockets by profession.
They would often discuss that if they had a child, it would be very prosperous!
Soon, they had a baby.
The newborn baby however had its right hand closed very tightly. They could not get it to open it.
The doctor attending to it tried all sorts of things and finally took out his gold chain and dangled it in front of the baby’s eyes.
The baby slowly opened its hand and inside it was the mid-wife’s gold ring!

(Loud laughter!)

This is only a joke, but understand that as parents, you have every possibility of passing on your mental set-up to your children. So, be aware every moment and work upon your consciousness and awareness; work on cleaning the inner chatter and framework inside you.

We always try to control children and make them into puppets. Children are wild energy. We try to box that energy so that it becomes convenient for us to handle them.

A small story:

Two dogs were walking down the road.
The first one said, “My name is Sandy, what is yours?”
The second one paused a while and said, “I think mine is No No Roger.”

(Laughter!)

The dog’s owner must have kept telling the dog ‘No no Roger’ when the dog did something mischievous. The dog has started thinking that its name is No no Roger! Like this dog, children also start absorbing and learning from our words and body language. When children are very young and they start wondering about something, they immediately refer to our past words or actions related to that particular matter and form their conclusions based on that. So when you are with children, be even more aware and try to keep their intelligence alive instead of simply trying to curb them all the time.

Mothers are continuously trying to do this. For example, if it rains, the mother will tell them to get in immediately saying that they will catch a cold. A few repetitions of this incident will automatically tune the child’s mind towards cold when it sees rain! Even if it drizzles next, the child will start sniffling.

Actually I tell you: Man’s body is the most intelligent, self-correcting, auto-immune system. But somehow, we trust our mind rather than the inherent intelligence of our body. There starts the problem and all our worries.

A small story:

A father camel was explaining to the son camel the body structure of their species.
He said, “You know, we have humps so that we can store water in it for days together when we are in the desert.”
The son asked, “Why are our eye lashes so long?”
The father replied, “To protect our eyes from sand storms.”
The son then asked, “Why do we have such bulbous feet?”
The father replied, “So that we can travel fast in the desert.”
Dad, asked the son, “What are we then doing in this zoo?”

(Loud laughter!)

You see, our body has been designed so beautifully. If we just allow it to run on its natural intelligence, it will function well. The moment you bring in your conditionings and impose them upon your body, you start experiencing difficulties.

In the Himalayas, the sadhus - wandering mendicants - live inside caves. They are the healthiest people ever. Come sun or rain or snow, they continue to live; their body adjusts itself automatically. We just have to trust nature and the immune system associated with it. But somehow, we keep imposing our worries, our mental makeup on our body functioning. This is the root cause for all our dieases.

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

Words from the Master

Just think of a river: When you put your leg in the river the first time and take it out and put it in the second time, is it the same river? No! The river has changed faces, the same water is not there anymore; fresh water has flowed, is it not?

So don’t strive to identify yourself with anything; life is ever changing. Because of your narrow scope of beliefs, your spiritual growth gets stalled and curbed. You become like a horse that has only a limited view of the road ahead of it. A broad perspective is essential in life.

Our forefathers gave us a lot of food, but not the tongue to taste it. It is up to us to experience this world with joy. The joy is in the way you experience it, not in the outer world objects themselves. This has to be very clearly understood. Your mental setup is what makes your life joyful or miserable.

If you are happy with your current mental setup, it is absolutely alright. But if you feel that you need to prune it a little, then somewhere there’s a problem. You often try to prune your mental setup like pruning a plant. A plant that is pruned grows faster!

Either you live with your current mental setup or uproot it and create a new one. You cannot dye your mental setup like you dye clothing to make it look different. You cannot chisel your mental setup to correct it. A complete transformation has to take place, else there is always a danger of slipping into the old ways again.

When you have a clean mental setup, you will never worry. Only when you are confused with complex thought patterns and words, you will be worried always. I always tell people: When you are not sure of yourself, you will be worried about where the planets are! You will start analyzing which planet is centered where and how it is influencing you. The actual problem is you are not centered.

Work on your mind when you have time. Look in and house-keep it. After all, you are with your mind 24 hours of the day, is it not? Why not then keep it clean?

I have seen these ‘house-proud’ people who maintain their houses so beautifully. They use the vacuum cleaner and keep it absolutely dust-free. They cannot tolerate any speck of dust. They will clean the carpet till it gets a hole in it! What about cleaning the house in which you are living 24 hours? Your mind? You are with it 24 hours; every single thought or action of yours involves it.

You bring in Vaastu Shastra, Feng Shui etc. which are all sciences to keep the space inside your house in a pure and energized condition. But you fail to understand one thing: You need to continuously energize your home only because you are contaminating it with your negativity. This is the truth.

When you contaminate the space in your house with collective negative thoughts, with your worries, the space starts radiating the negative thoughts back to you and you get caught in a vicious circle of negativity the moment you enter your house.

How many times have you felt that you are perfectly alright until you entered your house?! The moment you enter, you feel gripped by a force of familiar negative thought patterns. This is nothing but your own thoughts that you have managed to fill your house with. What do you then do? You call an expert in vaastu shastra to change the layout of the house, or call a temple priest to perform some fire ritual and cleanse the house or you apply Feng Shui ideas to your house.

When these things are done with sincerity, they will no doubt do the needful to your house. But you have to understand one thing: These are only supplementary methods. The actual thing is, to clean your own self and radiate a blissful mental set-up so that automatically, the space in which you live radiates that.

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

Words from the Master

If you are open, Existence showers. Existence is continuously showering, only we don’t know how to be receptive to it. We are looking elsewhere all the time. We are so immersed in our Manipuraka chakra! We are so busy collecting words!

When you learn to be with yourself, you can commune with Existence. But we are never with ourselves. We are all the time with people, with noise. We identify ourselves with others, not with ourselves. We are so afraid of being with ourselves. We feel alone and scared if we are with ourselves. We feel depressed if we are with ourselves.

You were alone in your mother’s womb and that is your true nature. But what happened after that? You started thinking that you need people to make you happy. You laugh with people, you cry with people, you talk to people, you suffer because of people and what not. You don’t know how to celebrate with just yourself.

The moment you find yourself alone, you start scrambling inside, your inner chatter takes over, your worries take over; you start thinking of how to create noise or whom to call up and talk to or whom to chat with on your computer and all sorts of nonsensical things.

If you all the time need to be with people and noise, you are clearly afraid of being with yourself. You are afraid of looking inwards and so you look outwards. When you become a meditator, you will slowly understand that you don’t need to depend on relationships to make you happy. You are enough unto yourself. When you cannot be in peace with yourself, you will remain at the periphery of your Being, caught in the so-called relationships.

You need to have a relationship with yourself first. When this is strong and steady, relating to others will become just incidental. Right now, what needs to be at the periphery is seen as the core and what should be the core is treated like the periphery. You have to reverse the situation, for which you have to turn your gaze inwards. You need to establish peace inside yourself.

For this, you need to have the courage to go behind your mind. You are ready to give appointments to everyone but not to yourself. You give appointments to others because it is ego-fulfilling. You don’t give an appointment to yourself because you are afraid that the truth might surface and you might not be able to take it. You are comfortable searching for bliss in all the wrong places and complaining that it is eluding you. If you really want to find bliss, you will find it. But you need courage.

Actually, we are all searching for the same thing - that is bliss. But we are continuously searching for it in the wrong places. If I ask a youngster what it is that gives him happiness, he will readily say ‘drugs’. He is also searching for bliss, for everlasting peace, but in the wrong direction!

We have moved so drastically away from our path, that our original thinking system has been completely replaced by our negative thought patterns. Our life is drastically different from what it is supposed to be. By consuming drugs, can you find bliss? By consuming drugs, you are escaping from yourself and also worsening the situation because sooner or later, your health will be in trouble. Look at the foolishness in the whole thing.

This sounds foolish to you because it is something drastic. This hits the morality scale and so it hits you. But your other subtle activities aimed at finding happiness, are also similar attempts but on a different scale, on a not-so immoral scale, so you don’t think they are foolish. Whenever you get time, do housekeeping of your mind and you will know what I am trying to say.

Just look into yourself with awareness and observe how your mind works, how your worries take root. We all keep collecting words, creating opinions and going over them in a repeated fashion. This is how worry takes root and reinforces itself.
When your son comes home late on just one day, you assume that he has probably been with some bad company and that is why he is late. This becomes a recording inside you. The next time, even if he comes home late after attending classes, this recording in you will surface and you will react accordingly.

This not only causes your son to get frustrated but also forces him to resort to truly wayward ways simply to defy you. You need to understand that everyone is evolving and fluid and that it is not going to help if you are in your own frame of imagination.

It is easy to live with imagination. But I tell you: 98% of what you believe is wrong. You will realize that there is a big screen between yourself and the other person. If you wear spectacles tinted green, you will see the whole world as green, that’s all.

Mohammed Nabi says, “When you see the world as something, that something is You.” When you talk or complain to me about someone, you may claim that you are worried and so you are telling me these things, but actually you are clearly showing your own mind because you see things only as you want to see them, never as they are. When you see only what you want to see, you miss so much.

Let me tell you something that actually happened:

A few years back, I used to travel everyday with the same driver from the ashram to the city center.
One day, I wanted to go to a particular street and recalled the street to the driver by referring to a mosque that was near the street.
He claimed that there was no mosque in that place.
I tried recalling to him a famous hotel near the mosque, but that also he failed to acknowledge.
I finally told him that there was a Hanuman temple in that place.
His face immediately lit up with recognition.
He then went to that street and I showed him the mosque that was right there next to the temple and five times as big.
He was shocked!
He was such a staunch Hindu that he had not even seen the mosque in all those months.

I tell you: Don’t be fanatic or cling to anything in life.

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

Words from the Master

In our yearly trip to the Himalayas, some of them complain about the hardships and unhygienic conditions. I have told people time and again that just being in the Himalayas is a blessing that not many people get and that they just have to enjoy that and leave the rest as trivia. Somehow, people immediately get perturbed and talk about these things.

On one such occasion, two of the younger devotees were telling me, “Swamiji these people are talking about the hardships and trying not to bother about it, but we can’t even see the hardships! We are just enjoying ourselves all the time!” This is what I mean when I say that when you are so happy unto yourselves, there is no such thing such as ‘my peace’ and ‘your peace’. Whatever it is, Is, that’s all. You are there, it is there and nothing is related. You simply move on in the same state of peace and bliss.

Complaining is worry-related because you are uneasy and caught up with words. If you just see the wandering mendicants in the Himalayas, with just a small water jug and two sets of clothing, you will know that you don’t really need anything more than what you have and therefore there is nothing to complain about.

Why do you complain? Actually, the people who complain are the ones who have been blessed with too many things; they don’t know what to do and so they complain! When you have enough and don’t have any major fight for survival, you will have the time to complain. When your survival is at stake, you will concentrate on your work and not complain, because if you start complaining, who will do your work?!

In the Himalayas, it is the survival of the fittest. You have to be alert and aware all the time. There will be landslides that may descend upon you at any time; suddenly snow will fall and cover up the familiar trails; food and other ration will be suddenly restricted due to non-availability, and what not.

Under such circumstances, you should watch the people there. They are such innocent, welcoming and warm people with not a care or complaint. There is a lot to learn from them. They don’t see anything amiss; they just live happily that’s all. They just re-arrange their activities in accordance with what’s happening around them. They don’t worry, they don’t complain.

Why don’t you just carry on with whatever is available and keep moving? People who have been born and brought up in India, when they go to America and come back, they complain about the conditions in India starting from the bathrooms to the roads to what not. It only shows that all your exposure has made you more finicky and complaining, instead of giving you more vastness and making you blossom the way you should.

When you understand deeply, you stop complaining. When you understand that you are not showered because you are worthy of it but because Existence simply showers on anyone and anything, you will stop complaining. You complain because you feel you are worthy of something and have not been given that.

Be very clear: No one is worthy or unworthy; no one is a saint or sinner. It is all in the understanding and moving in tune with nature that makes you a receiver of Existence and its gifts. It is always a deep understanding that gives you a shift in consciousness.

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

Words from the Master

Again and again, scan your mind and see what it is that gives you joy. Then, start following it. Once something inside you tells you that you are moving towards a sense of permanent joy in you, once you find conviction in yourself, re-position and adjust the matters concerning your life, orienting them towards this bliss. Every action or thought of yours should be towards feeling this bliss. Energy spent will then be energy gained. You will be always energetic.

Some people say that they want to be left peaceful without worries. The peace they are talking about is not a living peace; it is a dead peace. It is a lifeless and dormant peace as a result of not knowing how to handle the various emotions in life. It is a peace that they crave for because life is too much for them to handle. It is like saying ‘sour grapes’ and moving away.

Real peace is something that is in you all the time irrespective of what is going on outside; you are simply happy unto yourself; you simply look at anyone and anything like a passing breeze that kisses you and goes by. Whatever may be the person or thing, your peace remains with you. People or circumstances do not alter it in any fashion.

Peace is nothing but the bliss that is felt inside yourself. When peace is born out of bliss, it keeps you and others in a peaceful state. Once you have found this peace within yourself, you will never say things like, “Leave me in peace, I want to be in peace” etc. The moment you say these things, it means that you are trying to be peaceful at others’ mercy, which is not peace at all.

Peace is a solid center that develops within you that keeps you happy unto yourself always. Anything that happens outside will be just another incident that’s all. You will not even relate it with your peace. The moment you relate an incident with your peace be very clear, real peace has not happened in you.

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

Words from the Master

Of course, there is no proof that Existence is taking care of us. Certain things cannot be proved. Can you prove that this direction is East? No! Can you prove the phenomenon of sunrise and sunset? No! You can only experience it. Because you cannot prove it, can you disprove it? Can you prevent the sun through science from setting and rising everyday?

Understand: Existence is the only thing beyond logic. If you can prove Existence with logic, it means logic is greater than Existence, and this can never be!

One man asked me, “Swamiji, should I become a Hindu to become spiritual?” I was shocked at the question! I told him that he does not have to become a Hindu. See, be very clear: Anything that curbs your field of perception is clearly not related to spirituality. Spirituality is always all encompassing.

Drop all your notions of ‘I am this’ and ‘I am that’. Keep your life open. This is the basis for spirituality. It is like this: A person who stays continuously in a locked room will not know about the open air and breeze. He will be having such clannish thoughts. The moment you impose these kind of restrictions upon yourself, you will not know about the infinite love and compassion that lies within you. You will only worry and complain. You will not blossom.

Buddha was once asked what kind of hell is given to people who are not compassionate. He replied, “You cannot put them in hell because they are already in hell!” Only when you are in hell, you will create hell for others, because only what you have, you can give.

A small story:

A mother and a son were having a heated argument and she asked him, “Do you have any brains?”
The son laughed.
The mother asked him why he was laughing.
The boy replied, “Only when you don’t have something, you ask others for it!”

(Laughter!)

When we are not peaceful ourselves, we disturb the peace of others.

We should work with our mind again and again to see what it is that gives us joy or bliss. Be very clear, happiness is different from bliss. Bliss is a beautiful and intense feeling inside you that makes you feel that you are in a different plane of existence. Happiness or just pleasure are most often related to outer world objects and create pain continuously for us.

Happiness is relative while bliss is absolute. Bliss is something that has no opposite. When you are in happiness, sadness is just around the corner. When there is a lot of pleasure, you are on the anvil of pain. But when you are in bliss, you simply are and there is no opposite to it. Happiness and pleasure are like pendulums that are bound to sway and reach the other end before coming back. But Bliss is not a pendulum; it is beyond duality; it never sways. It just IS.

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