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!