Zen: The Art of Nothing

Want Love? Be Useless!

July 26, 2015 Ashwita Comments 12 comments

Straight, useful trees are the first to be cut. Twisted, useful trees get to live long, long lives. — Straight, useful trees are the first to be cut. Twisted, useless trees get to live long, long lives.

When I was in school, we had a lesson in English, where the author shared the story of a cousin who was utterly useless, but managed to have a better life than others. Being hailed as a good-for-nothing by family members, it turned out that women always wanted this useless man, giving him access to a lifestyle he hadn’t earned. Eventually, he married a rich old woman, who left him an insanely big inheritance. I think including a yacht.

I don’t know why this story stuck with me. Maybe because everything else we heard those days told us that hard work was the key to success and that life was fair, punishing bad people and rewarding good ones. This story told a different tale. Life was unfair. Unpredictable. It was a hard lesson to forget.

Osho Agrees…

The lesson that people could fall for useless people repeated itself in front of my eyes in real life every once in a while, and I’d remember the story every time, silently shaking my head.

And now, as I read ‘Intimacy’ by Osho, I found something that left my head reeling. ‘Be useless’, he says. (Click here to read an excerpt) The more useful you are, the less love you will have and the more you will be used. How on earth could that possibly make sense?

But when I dwell upon it, it starts to make sense. I’ve said many times before, that love and need are mutually exclusive. And a useful person is needed by many. He is so useful that he attracts people that have use for him. He will eventually get manipulated, used, abused. A useless person, on the other hand, can only mingle with people who have no use for him at all. Indeed. the only reason they would want to be with such a person is because they love him.

And then of course, there are the deeper aspects. Those who become useful, expect returns for their efforts, either materially, physically or emotionally. They help because they want to feel important in other people’s lives. And the compulsion to make this person feel important can be very tiring, very stifling for those receiving the favors. Even more reasons for a lack of love. This relationship is a burden, not a gift. Deep inside the subconscious, this person knows that people are with him because he is useful. It leads to a very unsettling feeling of a constant lack of love.

A useless person on the other hand, expects nothing. There is space and openness for the other person to feel whatever they are feeling.

How Useless is Useless?

So does this mean that we must all drop whatever we are doing, quit our jobs, and sit in wait for someone to put morsels in our mouths? No. We do need to drop our desire to be useful to other people so that they can value us in some way. Stop doing anything because others want you to, need you to. Do it because YOU want to.

We might sometimes be useful in love – but those are actions stemming from a deep love, not from an expectation of gratitude or anything more. These actions don’t commoditize us, but they just might add an extra spring in our step.

Ultimately…

So if you merely want to reinforce your ego and your false sense of security by being surrounded by people you can control because you have something to offer, then by all means, be useful. But, if you want to eliminate egoic, need-based relationships from your life, if you really want to be surrounded by people who just love you, be useless.

Six Ways Spiritual Guidance May Be Misleading You

June 28, 2015 Ashwita Comments 5 comments

One of the biggest obstacles in one’s spiritual growth, is conditioning. This conditioning is a set of beliefs we have formed as a result of hearing something repeatedly from parents and other family members, teachers, friends, the media and the like.

And one important aspect of this conditioning, is that life is meant to be problem-free. In pursuit of a problem free life, people try a variety of things. First they seek ‘security’, then they want to ‘start a family’, then they seek success, money and when they realise that none of this brought them a problem-free life, they turn to God. Some give up on that too and turn to something else, but mostly people are dead by the time they realise that that didn’t work either.

It is this pursuit of God, this wonderful chase, that has created a probably multi-billion dollar industry catering to religious and spiritual seekers. There are, of course, people that are fake outright, meaning to con people. But I believe that for most part, people are genuine. However genuine is not the same as never misguided, and even the best can have a few misguided moments some times.

Here are a few signs that the guidance you are receiving is taking you down the wrong road.

1. It takes you to the future (gives you hope)

One very popular tool in this regard, is the tool of prediction and divination. It could be tarot, clairvoyance, communicating with angels, tea-cup readings, and many more things. People turn to these when there is confusion or too much pain in their lives, seeking some respite through a happy prediction of the future.

If the guidance you receive – either through someone else or through your own sources, maybe through the angels or in dreams, talks about the future – it is not spiritual guidance. Even if you are being given hope that a desired situation will come true. Such information encourages you to take away all the energy from the present and invest it in an imaginary future. This prevents you from learning the lessons you are meant to learn through this ordeal, and postpones and retards your journey.

2. It takes you to the past (brings you guilt)

It is of course, very important to learn from one’s lessons. However, guilt and learning lessons are mutually exclusive. Guilt is a trick that the mind uses to avoid learning lessons, so any guidance received to that effect, whether from a teacher or from some other source, is not beneficial to you in any way.

3. It makes you feel small

In a path where the very essence of the teachings is oneness, there is no place for big or small. The ego however, loves to trick itself and create separation. With gurus, people often put them up on a pedestal and make them big, even if they don’t encourage it themselves – and some do. Then there are those who communicate with beings from other realms or dimensions, and convince themselves that they are higher, purer and better.

Take a rain-check if you feel like you’re so small that you have a million lessons to learn and a long journey to make. Again, it takes your energy away from the present and places your hope in a distant future where you might be happy. While happiness comes when we give up the chase, this path makes you chase harder.

path

4. Or big

This one’s a no-brainer, but it is a mistake that most spiritual aspirants make anyway. Of course, the obvious trap is when a sect makes you feel special simply because you are a part of it, but there are subtler ways.

You can sometimes receive guidance that you are special. You’re here for a purpose, to improve people’s lives, to change the world, etc. Then there are ‘spiritual’ paths that award titles, or articles that help you attach yourself to a label, like light-worker, empath, earth angel, etc. Anything to make you special, to give you an identity. These are tricks the ego usually conjures up to avoid coming face to face with its own insignificance.

5. It is confusing or vague

This is more relevant to information received through inner guidance or dreams. It is easy to mistake them for spiritual guidance when they come from this source, but if the information you receive is unclear, vague or confusing, without an option for you to ask for clarification, then it is definitely not meant to take you in the right direction.

6. It takes your power away

Any system that gives an object, a place, an institution or a person greater importance than your daily practice and personal conduct, is clearly more a marketing gimmick than a spiritual pathway. We see this everywhere – religious people skipping their daily practice and feeling redeemed by visiting places of worship, energy healers cutting corners and trying to substitute practice with crystals and symbols, even yoga practitioners thinking that getting into a complicated asana is somehow better than learning to say, follow the yama and niyama.

Spiritual guidance can be very powerful, and life-changing when it comes at the right time and in the right way. But be careful, and assess it well before embracing it and making it a part of your life.

Transcendental Meditation: A Review

June 9, 2015 Ashwita Comments 0 Comment

Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a simplistic mantra meditation which was popularized in the early 1960s by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It involves mentally chanting a beeja mantra with every breath. This, I was told, tricks the mind, helping us bypass it and making meditation much easier than usual.

I had been hearing about TM for a very long time, but I didn’t feel drawn to it up until a month ago. Usually, I practice mindfulness and it has brought a fair bit of balance into my life. I must mention before I proceed with my views on TM, that these are my personal views, and it might be different for different people.

The Initial Reaction

Now, for most part, mindfulness can be quite torturous. The mind bombards you with thoughts, and you try desperately to keep your head above water. There are moments of stillness of course, but it can be quite hard to grapple with the mind sometimes.

TM, I realized, did trick the mind. It was such a joy to be able to just bypass it. It was almost like a relief, after practicing mindfulness for so long. It was actually so easy, that I should have been suspicious.

… And then…

Time flies much faster when you do TM. This was my experience, and I’ve been told this by others as well. I enjoyed the practice in itself, but I found myself becoming increasingly un-grounded everyday, at quite an alarming rate by my standards. I found my mind much more active the whole day, and I don’t mean this in a nice way. I’d drift off in my thoughts, losing touch with the present. It was as if I lost touch with presence. I was also sleeping more, and not feeling completely rested when I woke up.

One month later, it just became too much for me to handle, and I stopped. I switched back to my mindfulness practice. Before I tried TM, I was meditating easily for an hour without problems. After a month of TM, I could do just 20 minutes, after which I got up, feeling completely frustrated and unable to continue. 2 days of the mindfulness practice and my mind is already calming down during the day. The meditation practice of course, is back to being a difficult period.

The Conclusion

TM is a very effective tool. But like all tools, it must be used at the right time for it to be useful. I think if people are spending a lot of time doing physical work – gardening, farming, construction, etc., then this is a wonderful technique to lift them up and bring them into balance. For a person who travels a lot and spends a lot of time on electronic devices, I’m not sure this is going to be helpful.

It may even be a decent place to start meditation at. When a person is totally trapped by the mind and has lost all control, then probably it is easier to start with TM. There are several studies that show TM to help with reducing blood pressure and several other stress induced health problems. But for the long term, I don’t see this as a complete path in itself – for a generation which has lost touch with the earth, it needs a method that is more grounding in reality, than something with takes them further away from it.

Let Your Baby Cry

June 4, 2015 Ashwita Comments 6 comments

The first time I saw a woman distract a child when he fell and was crying, I was confused. Why would a mother want to do that? My mother explained that when distracted, a child stops crying because it forgets its pain. It still didn’t make sense to me. Why would you want a baby to forget its pain? Took me a lot of years to realize that I really was onto something.

Needs Vs Wants

Until a baby is three months old or so, it can only cry every time it has a need. It is either hungry or has wet itself, or there is some other problem. For these three months, a child needs the complete attention of the parent, and mothers often see an (almost) inhuman increase in endurance and capacity during this time.

After this though, the ‘drama’ begins. The child starts to learn that crying has its own merits. The easiest way to manipulate its parent is to scream its lungs out. It drives most parents crazy, and most of them relent, thinking oh come on, how much damage can it do if he gets this one extra toy, or plays that one extra game?

How Much Damage Can it Do?

Children are learning rapidly at this age, and this learning is geared to teach them how to survive in the world. Parents represent the world at this age. Therefore, when we fulfill their needs every time they cry, we teach them that the world is a safe, nourishing and loving place. Every time we give in when they cry for the wrong reasons, we teach them that crying is a fruitful exercise. If you want something from life, just cry.

We can see this in play already. Our own generation was mostly raised by working parents in nuclear families. Depression today is at an all time high, and the numbers are only rising. What did our parents do wrong?

They taught us that it is profitable to cry.

When you really delve deep into depression, you find that it is essentially your fight against life. Life hasn’t given you what you wanted. And now you want to be miserable, because maybe if you are miserable long enough, life will feel guilty enough to give you what you want. When you’re deeply connected with yourself, you realize that you don’t really want to get out of your depression or anxiety or anger, because then you fear that things might remain the same. So you hold on to the misery. Is it worth it?

What are we doing to our kids in the name of love?

Every time we distract a child, we teach it that the best way to deal with pain is to pretend it doesn’t exist, and to focus our attention on something new. Over time, the child has no idea how to handle his/ her emotions and will end up having physical or mental disease when things reach a breaking point.

Every time you give in to your child’s unreasonable cries, you are teaching your baby that whenever it cries, life will fulfill it’s demands. It will grow up to be a miserable, depressed person, because there are many times life doesn’t work out our way, and this child was taught that it is not through hard work but through crying that you get what you want. And the child wasn’t taught that sometimes you never get what you want, and you’ve just got to deal with that.

So what do we do?

Well, the title says it all. Let your baby cry. Not the sort of crying where you look the other way and pretend nothing is happening. Look at your child. Let him/ her cry. Watch. Just don’t reach out and hug or try to comfort in any way. Remain at a distance, and feel your own pain. Let your heart scream. Of course it will, that is natural.

And when you settle into your own pain, without trying to run away from it, you teach your child by example, that sometimes bad things happen, bad feelings come. But if you just sit through it, it will go away. Then you just get up, wipe your tears, and move on.

The Valuable Time of Maturity

May 30, 2015 Ashwita Comments 1 comment

Here’s a wonderful piece I found, written by a renowned Brazilian poet Mário De Andrade.

I counted my years and discovered that I have fewer years left to live compared to the time I have lived until now.

I feel like a boy who won a package of treats. The first he eats with pleasure, but when he realizes that there are a few left, he then starts to contemplate upon them.

I no longer have time for endless meetings that achieve nothing as statuses, rules, procedures and regulations are discussed. Neither do I have time to give encouragement to absurd people who, despite their age, have not grown up.

I don’t have time to deal with mediocrity. I don’t want to be in meetings where egos parade. I won’t tolerate manipulators and opportunists. I am bothered by envious people, seeking to discredit the able ones, to usurp their places, talents and accomplishments. I hate to witness the ill effects, generated by the struggle for a better job, among ambitious people.

I detest people who do not argue about content but titles. My time is too precious to discuss titles. I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry. Not many treats are left in the packet.

I want to live among human people, very human. People, who can laugh at their mistakes. Who do not become full of themselves because of their triumphs. Who do not consider themselves elite, before they have really become one. Who do not run away from their responsibilities. Who defend human dignity. Who do not want anything else but to walk along with truth, righteousness, honesty and integrity.

The essential thing is what makes life worthwhile.

I want to surround myself with people who can touch the hearts of others. People who, despite the hard knockouts of life, grew up with a soft touch in their soul.

Yes, I am in a hurry. So that I can live with the intensity, which only maturity can give me.

I intend not to waste any of the treats I have left. I am sure they will be more exquisite compared to the ones I have eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

I hope yours is the same, because the end will come anyway…

Mário De Andrade (October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945)

Attitude of a Disciple

May 25, 2015 Ashwita Comments 2 comments

Question: What attitude should I have as a disciple?

Jacqueline: Put your sadhana, your spiritual practice first, above everything else and be sincere. Be who you are. You know, at this point in time, you are playing the role of a seeker, let’s say.. a traveler on the spiritual pathway. You just play that role as well as you can, and with awareness.

The Triangle

I think you’ve all heard me say this before, let me say this again. I often recommend, that people practice their sadhana as a triangle. There’s three points in a triangle. And I would say that one point of the triangle, is meditation.

Meditation

Meditation is a wonderful way to get deeper into the witnessing and not to get too pulled into the drama. We still get pulled in, it happens. But the deeper you go with the meditation, the easier it is to step back in life also. If you really meditate sincerely, and witnessing, and just leaving everything alone, that arises in your thoughts, in your feelings, if you are practicing your sadhana in this way, you will become more detached. You will be able to take a step back in your meditation and also in your life.

Teachings

The second point in the triangle, I call the teachings. The teachings are needed for most people. And I would say meditation is needed for most people. There are no rules. You know, somebody can wake up suddenly, if they’re ripe, if they’re ready, in a totally different way. But for most people, teachings are needed.

We have minds. We are not our thoughts, we are not our minds but we have a mind! And the mind also, for many people, most people, needs to be satisfied. So the real truth teachings will help an understanding that then will make it easier.

The ordinary thinking mind cannot grasp – cannot understand the truth of who we are. So the teachings prepare the way. When this awakening happens, the teachings are not needed, but they’re very useful on the way.

Karma Yoga

The third point on the triangle, is what I call living the teachings. Karma yoga. Being in the world, but not of it, perhaps. But it really means sincerely living what you know, or what you think you know, and understand – living it. And then, life will give you feedback. You will know what issues you need to look at, where more detachment is needed.

If you sit on a mountain top, or in a room with the door closed all the time, just meditating… well, that might feel very fine and it can be a way for some people, but then you don’t get the feedback from the world – not so powerfully, as you do when you’re living your life and you’re amongst people.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to remove yourself from life sometimes. This is why we have ashrams, so that people can remove themselves from life sometimes and be in a place which supports the awakening.

So the triangle is what I would suggest for your spiritual pathway.

But really, the attitude NOT to have, is that something in life, is against your spiritual growth, because it isn’t. Life on this planet, at this point in time can be very very tough. Hmm? Very tough. But life is never against your spiritual growth, and the more you bring awareness onto your pathway, into your life, the easier it is to see this.

So, this is what I could say to you today. Just feel that inside for a moment, see how that feels.

Put your Feet on the Path

Just remember the story of the prodigal son. You might know this story from the Bible – the son who left his father’s house went into the world and got totally lost in the world. It would be like a young person today. Going off and getting stuck in you know, drugs, alcohol, wasting money, etc. And then he realized how he was wasting his life and destroying himself. So he dropped everything, and he began the journey back to his father’s home. And he hadn’t gone far, when the father came rushing to meet him. And this story is symbolic.

When you really turn around and put your feet on the spiritual pathway, on the way home to the Divine Father as some would call it; some would say God, some would just say source, it’s all fine. But when you really consciously and sincerely put your feet on that pathway, the Divine also comes rushing to meet you.

So just to repeat, to finish off with, the attitude not to have as a disciple is that something in life, is against your spiritual growth. Namaste.

Is the World an Illusion?

May 20, 2015 Ashwita Comments 0 Comment

I’ve said this before. The right questions are more important than the right answers. And every once in a while, you come across these priceless questions. A friend at the ashram asked Jacqueline two questions – the second one will come in the next post. Her replies were so special, I couldn’t resist sharing.

If you want to hear it all in Jacqueline’s voice, click here (14 min).

Question: When I look at people in world, also many of my friends, I just don’t understand why they are doing what they are doing. I find ordinary pursuits meaningless and the teachers tell us that it is all an illusion. Can you please say something about this?

Jacqueline: First of all, what I would like to say is you have to be very careful with this – that everything is an illusion, the world is an illusion. People who haven’t realized the truth of who they are, haven’t realized what reality really is, can end up becoming very confused by this idea that the world is an illusion, everything is an illusion, nothing matters.

When someone hasn’t had that realization, it can be just be a way of turning their back on the world. It can be a form of escapism. The illusion is, it’s not the world, but it is what the mind projects on the world. The stories that the mind projects onto the leela, God’s divine play, the happening that we call life. It’s the mind’s projection onto this that we could call the illusion.

Now, finding ordinary pursuits meaningless – first of all, very important, don’t become a spiritual snob. And, I’m not only speaking to this young man now, but just generally speaking, beware of that. Judging other people’s lives because they are not on a spiritual pathway, you create actually, a new kind identity. The identity that I often call ‘the holy personality’.

Your spiritual pathway is about recognizing that you are a spiritual being. Recognizing your true nature. A spiritual pathway is moving beyond the mistaken identities of who we think we are. You know, I’m fantastic, I’m not good enough, I’m this, I’m that. This is the illusion, this is the mind’s projection. But it can be very easy on a spiritual pathway, to start building up a new identity, that of being holy. And any identity you build up, you will get stuck in it.

So the pursuits you might call meaningless, the lives some people are living, are the lives that are required for people until they are ready to awaken. Anybody coming to this planet has some kind of karma to work out. And it’s not meaningless. So, the things you meet in life, how you deal with these things, how you relate to people, all of this, is karma working itself out.

The conflicts we have, it’s like when you are making a diamond- I don’t remember the English word for this, but sometimes it says, you know, they say you need a diamond to cut a diamond, to rub against it. And the tensions and irritations we can meet in life, can be a fine way of polishing our inner diamond, our inner truth.

So if everyone coming on this planet, read a book on spirituality or found a teaching that everything is an illusion, and then they just sat down and didn’t do anything. I mean, first of all, it wouldn’t be possible, but it would be a total waste of an incarnation. I think you understand what I mean by this.

So, don’t label other people’s lives meaningless. Stay centered in yourself and walk your own pathway. That will give you plenty to do. No need to get lost in other people’s drama, in that way. And if you are using a lot of energy to judge and think about why other people’s lives are so meaningless, you are getting lost, stuck. Use your energy instead in your sadhana, in your spiritual pathway, in your practice.

Lonely and Abandoned?

May 15, 2015 Ashwita Comments 2 comments

One morning this week, I woke up to find a special text message on my phone.

“Hi Ashwita,
Why the soul does so feel abandoned,
Why, again and again, taunted by lonely despair
Why do the tears dry into a shriveling, deep within
Heal the soul, hear the call
Help the beauty emerge,… oh please do!”

And as I was still groggily trying to make sense of what I was reading, the answer automatically flowed. Of course, here’s a slightly edited version, there were a few rough edges in the original.

Why does the drop,
Far away from the ocean,
Feel so miserable, incomplete?

Why, as it quivers
In the light of the sun,
Does it weep alone in the heat?

If only it knew,
It was only a matter of time
If only it knew,
That every time the sun shines
The heat has it vaporize,
Sending it closer to the skies.

May you remember,
When you feel like you are fading
That you are only just
Evaporating.

No body comes to help,
Because it is your destiny to disappear
Lose yourself completely,
Although it may be exactly what you fear.

You are meant to rise, meet the skies,
Only to then fall back down,
Plunge into the ocean, once again,
Until all of you has drowned.

You’re going back home, little one,
Yes, you’re just going back home,
And only when you’re there, will you realise
There was never, ever such a thing as ‘alone’.

Can Movies Heal You?

May 10, 2015 Ashwita Comments 0 Comment

A few years ago, we had spent a few days staying with a sadhu (ascetic). Amidst our long discussions on spirituality, he’d rave about his guru, still clearly enchanted by him. One of the things he mentioned, was that his guru would spend hours meditating on movies. He especially liked the ones with a lot of fighting.

I couldn’t believe it. While I had some indications that the guru was quite genuine, this fact had me perplexed. Meditating on a movie? The whole idea seemed ridiculous.

Not anymore.

I’ve mentioned before that meditation shouldn’t be limited to a small practice as part of a daily routine. It has to become your moment to moment state. And when this starts happening, movies can bring about so much healing.

Movie Therapy?

What does any real therapy do? It involves remembering painful incidents, surrendering to the pain and releasing it. What could be better to do this than a movie? One is far more hypnotized in a theater than in a therapy room.

When you have been meditating for a while, you start to slowly detach from the drama of life, while still participating in it. This changes the way you do everything – including watching movies.

I keep saying movies and not soap operas, because so far, I’ve found that soap operas and other programs on TV are too short and inconsistent to allow one to delve deep. Also, serials almost always put the focus on the future and not the present itself, which is a temptation the mind rarely resists.

Movies, more so the Indian ones, have so much drama in them, and drama always triggers strong reactions. Intense movies, especially those covering war or similar painful incidents, present us with an opportunity to witness and transcend trauma that humanity has experienced as a collective – provided you are able to remain in meditation without getting pulled into the drama.

If we can allow ourselves to surrender to the joy and the pain the movie brings, we can relax a bit more when we experience these things in life. When we are in sync with life, we often find ourselves watching a movie which brings up deep, repressed emotions.

Not that we need movies for healing though, there really is enough drama in our own minds to keep us occupied for an entire lifetime.

Signs You’re Stuck in a Belief

May 5, 2015 Ashwita Comments 3 comments

True freedom is the freedom from your beliefs. Credits: 'feeling free' by bwaworga@deviantart — True freedom is the freedom from your beliefs.
Pic Credits: ‘feeling free’ by bwaworga@deviantart

It is common to confuse belief with faith, and with knowledge. There are big differences. Knowledge comes from experience. Belief comes from the lack of it, or in denial of it. If you believe something, then you don’t know it. You know that something is a belief when you are compelled to defend it, prove it.

Beliefs always exist in opposite pairs. A belief exists to counter an underlying, much subtler, usually hidden opposite belief.

If you believe deep inside that you are weak, then you spend a lot of time trying to prove to yourself and others that you are strong. You think that by creating this new belief, by feeling strong, you will become strong. But the underlying opposite belief eats away at and crumbles it’s foundation, which sooner or later brings you face to face with your weakness.

It could be the opposite too. You might believe deep within that you are too strong for your own good. So you spend years trying to prove to yourself and others that you are weak and dependent, getting yourself into all sorts of situations, needing to be rescued. Sooner or later, you get yourself into trouble so deep that no body except you can save you. And that day you will come face to face with the underlying belief.

You might even end up switching between these two states. Maybe over lifetimes, maybe over decades.

When you heal yourself, there is no belief left. The whole topic becomes a non-issue. If it is strength, you’re not going to worry if you are strong enough. You’re not going to talk, or even think about it. You know your own strength. When you really know, there is no need for belief, no need for thoughts or analysis.

If you really are powerful, you have no need to chase power, or shun those more or less powerful than you.

If you are truly happy, you don’t need to repeatedly keep doing things that make you ‘feel alive’.

If you truly feel special, you don’t need proof that you are, or that others are not. You simply never think about it. There is no doubt. So there are no thoughts.

If you really feel beautiful, you’re not going to spend hours trying to look beautiful, applying layers of make up or spending hours in the gym to get rid of that one last inch of fat, or taking selfies everyday, trying to look hotter than you really do. You have no need to hide the fact that you feel ugly inside, by trying to harvest compliments so you forget your own opinion.

If you truly don’t care what others think, you have no use of declaring it all the time, or posting it on Facebook. Because if you really don’t care, you don’t care about posting it either. You don’t need to mask the fact that you feel like a lesser person when someone dislikes you for ‘not caring’.

If you’re truly proud of being a mother (or a father for that matter), you don’t feel the need to declare to yourself or on Facebook that motherhood or childbirth was the best thing that ever happened to you, you’re proud of being a mother and you’ve got the best child in the world. You don’t need to do it, because you don’t need to negate a nagging fear that this whole thing might have been a mistake, and your child might be nothing more than ordinary.

If you really trust your spiritual path or teacher, you have no need to justify and convince others that your path is better. You don’t need to mask the fear that you might be on a slower path than you’d like, or on the wrong path altogether.

Of course, the tragedy is that most people have no idea about the underlying belief. If you found yourself reacting violently to any sentence you read above, mark that as a belief and work on it. The only way to uncover (and transcend) the underlying belief, is through meditation, but acknowledgement and acceptance will also take you quite far. Be free. Beliefs are not worth it.