| PAIN - Pain is a great teacher - All pain is self created - Pain.....physical.....emotional..... being humiliated.....pain in pleasure.....painfully low self-image.....pain of being a martyr.....of breaking away.....attachment to pain..... conflicting emotions .....insecurity.....guilt.....being unforgiving.....death.....birth.....etc. - In the case of physical pain, wait before you take a painkiller so that you can know the limits of your endurance. Do not enjoy pain, You do not want to become a martyr or masochist. (These deviations have no place on the spiritual path.) - In the case of emotional pain, try to enter the pain, as you would enter delight. - Experience the pain as deeply as possible. Then let it go - Keep on asking yourself questions : - Did someone really hurt me ?.....want to hurt me. - Why do I feel so hurt ? - What are the repercussions of being let down ? - Are my plan upset ? - Do I have a strong attachment to my plan ? - Do I dislike having to change any type of plans ? - May be I am only inconvenienced . Am I ? - If this is the case, where is the hurt ? - May be I am not hurt, but angry about being inconvenienced ? - Can I hold my emotions back in the future, Just long enough to recognize the difference between being really hurt and just being inconvenienced ? - Can I learn from my mistakes, let them fade into the past ? - Will they fade If I keep My emotional response alive ? - Does this mean to discriminate ? .....Yes, it does ! - How much imagined pain do you carry around with you ? Recall. - How much of your energy is locked up in it ? - Can you forget and forgive if you keep old (may be imagined) hurts alive ? That energy could be used more beneficially.
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HAPPINESS "If a man thinks that his happiness is due to external causes and his possession, it is reasonable to conclude that his happiness must increase with the increase of possessions and diminish in proportion to their diminution. therefore if he is devoid of possessions, his happiness should be nil.
In deep sleep the man is devoid of possession, including his own body. Instead of being unhappy he is quite happy. Every one desires to sleep soundly. The conclusion is that happiness is inherent in man and is not due to external causes. One must realize his Self in order to open the store of unalloyed happiness."
Instead of wanting to know this and that, seek to know the self. Ask ‘Who am I ?’ But it seems to be the most difficult because we have become stranger to our self. What one has to do is simple - to abide as the self. This is the ultimate truth. This is one’s eternal, natural, inherent state. On account of ignorance we identify ourselves with the Not-I. The most subtle of all these identifications is with the ego. Let us search for the root of the ego. Where from does this pseudo-I arise ? At the end of this quest we shall find that the ego disappears letting the eternal self shine. So the best discipline is the inquiry : ‘Who am I ?’ This is the greatest japa. This is the true pranayama. The thought ‘I am not the body.’ (Naham) is exhalation (rechaka) ; The inquiry ‘Who am I ?’ (Koham) is the inhalation (puraka) ; The realization ‘I am He’ (soham) is the retention of breath ( kumbhaka). The fruit of Self-inquiry is the realization that the self is all, and that nothing else there is. "You see the object on forgetting your own self. If you keep hold of your Self, you will not see the objective world."  |
