I’ve been thinking about connections the last few days.
When growing up, we knew everyone and everyone knew us. We always got discounts at the grocery store because he knew us. We always got discounts at the bakery – in fact my dad would walk in, still does, and act like one of the owners sometimes, giving customers what they were asking. The pav bhaji wala till date does not take money from us. The clothes stores, same thing. The principal/ teachers, the doctors, the house help, the taxi drivers, everyone. We knew their stories, their names, often their children’s names and much more.
What do you know today? Do you care? We have a bunch of ‘friends’ on social media, all projecting a great false life to each other and that’s about it. The society has become more and more about money, and less and less about connections. And it isn’t just because people are changing cities and jobs on a yearly basis. It is because we’re terrified of connecting deeply, of baring our souls to another.
A 70 year long Harvard study showed that the secret to happiness is not money or success – not even remotely, but healthy and fulfilling relationships. No wonder our society is becoming more and more depressed by the day.
It doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve taught this for several years now – you attract what you give out. When you’re willing to open up your heart, you attract similar people towards you. Yes, you still have to ‘put up’ with what you will eventually perceive as fake relatives and colleagues, but you will have more loving and open people in your life. The main question for today is, do you really want a life like that? And more importantly, are you willing to invest in such a life?
Akshay Tritiya: A celebration of material prosperity
Hinduism celebrates spiritual progress as well as material prosperity, today is one day where material prosperity is celebrated, and any new venture started on this day is said to bring wonderful returns. So if nothing else, people just go buy gold.
All the same, it is important to know the rightful place of material prosperity. Recently someone I know confused ‘motivated by profit’ with ‘we all work for money’. What a dangerous lack of fundamentals, and unfortunately this seems to be a trend in India, not just in our generation. I even remember how my boss (when I was an engineer) sat my colleague down one day and taught her to fake bills so that she could get three times the compensation.
It is one thing to receive remuneration for your services. It is quite another to be dishonest, to take a bribe or be motivated by profit. Excuses like ‘everyone does it’, ‘It’s not harming anyone’, ‘I’m compensating by helping others’, etc, are all just pathetic. Like I said earlier, the light greys of our life turn to black before we know it. Believe it or not, it IS possible to live honestly, earning purely by honest means, and to thrive, to have plenty.
Money earned dishonestly will be lost to dishonest people – people who cheat in construction, greedy doctors who prescribe unnecessary medicines and procedures, fake gurus convincing you to part with your money, etc. When you eat food bought with dishonest money, it destroys your viveka, your capacity for discernment.
So a very Happy Akshay Tritiya to you, and may this day transform the way you look at material prosperity
Oh, and let us please look inwards and explore our own tendencies to be dishonest please, instead of thinking about others. Be the change; no use pointing fingers.
A friend said this on a phone call today morning. It was an interesting discussion.
It’s true, isn’t it? Think about everyone you know in your life, is there anyone who you really 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 like? And compare that with the love for your child. The love we experience for children is in most cases, quite unconditional. And that is not because we are capable of unconditional love, oh no not at all – but because we actively reject and deny every aspect of our child which we don’t like.
We allow the parts that we accept as ‘part of being a child’, of course, most parents go crazy at how naughty their kids are, how they drive them up the wall, etc etc, but no, that’s not what I’m talking about. As parents we actively reject the idea that our child may be the sort of person we wouldn’t really have liked hanging out with. It is an area we’re too afraid to explore. ‘I really don’t like you, but I love you because I gave birth to you’ – is really not an option. Some people, when they painfully realise that their adult children are people they don’t like, just reject the child outright as a waste of investment. Others try to force them into becoming what they thought they always were. “You’ve changed so much, your friends are brainwashing you.”
Even scientific studies show that parents have the least perspective on the true personality of their child. Because to allow yourself to love your child unconditionally, you’ve created and fallen in love with an illusion that does not exist. The person you are in love with is a figment of your imagination, not your child. Scary right?
It doesn’t have to be. If we felt free to dislike the person our child was, and didn’t expect the child to be what we wanted them to be, then we can teach them freedom and teach them how to respect differences between people – something that is starkly missing in the society today. And our children will also grow up completely self-assured that they are loved no matter who they are, and no matter how much their parents dislike their personalities or disapprove of their choices. Imagine that kind of freedom
I just realised that almost everyone we’ve met this whole week, including yesterday, does not eat dinner. What a blessing to exist in a world where so many conscious people exist, where so many people are so deeply in touch with their bodies.
In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from today morning’s discussion. We were discussing how knowledge is not always an advantage, it more often than not gets in the way. And this story I thought, was worth sharing.
Shankaracharya even, had an ‘attitude’ about being so knowledgeable. One day as he walked to the river for his bath, a cobbler lay in the path. Brahmins weren’t supposed to get anywhere near Shudras, lest they get ‘polluted’. So ‘hey! Move out of the way!’ he screamed.
“Who are you asking to move out of the way?’ the man replied. ‘Is it this body you refer to? Made of merely pancha bhootas, they have no life or will of their own. Or do you refer to my soul, which is infinite? How can something which is omnipresent, move?”
Shankaracharya realised his folly, thanked the man (who is said to be Shiva in disguise) and never made caste an issue again.
So knowledge is useless if it merely comes from books. Sometimes the most profound lessons are taught by the ‘insignificants’ – a child, an uneducated pauper, a rodent, an apple even.
Yesterday a friend mentioned to me that the recent medical report had shown haywire vitals, a severe imbalance. I knew what the emotional root cause was, and called immediately. She parked her car on the side and I ran her through a round of EFT over the phone. Just one round.
The self-directed anger, disgust and hatred she had received as a gift from her mother and tortured herself with for decades just vanished. The right timing, along with the right words and insights make EFT work like pure magic, cutting through the need for years and years of therapy.
If you’d like a tip, here’s one. Many of you who’ve worked with me know the importance of surrender. But sometimes in the name of surrender, we tend to suppress what we’re really feeling. You learn the hard way from life, that certain attitudes and actions are painful. So we reverse it, feeling either nothing or by suppressing the action/ feeling. This causes disease. The key is to FEEL what is happening inside, but merely to not let that transform into actions. But the feeling bit it critical. Feel it, and ideally, EFT it.
But more than anything, practice deep listening. I cannot overstate the importance of this. It’ll help you get a much stronger grip on what is really going on inside. And also on what is going on in the hearts of those around you, probably more clearly than they themselves are aware.
We just spent the evening with a brilliant Swiss man who manages business in 55 countries. He’s worked for cancer hospitals and like others we know, he’s quit because he couldn’t take it – couldn’t face the inhumanity of what was going on behind the scenes… bone chilling stories that patients never realise, but that’s for another day.
The really interesting bit was this. At one point as we shared about spiritual practices, he asked us.. ‘but what is meditation?’ And I found it a little bizarre because he ‘looked’ like someone who would know, from his energy field. But I explained, and then he said yes yes, my mother taught me this, and proceeded to explain the meditation, relaxation and the visualisation techniques his mother taught him which he also used to top his class many times. No wonder he had such a beautiful aura.
And it makes me realise I miss it so much, people who know SO much, and whose knowledge empowers them instead of inflating their ego. We’ve become a generation of defending belief systems, instead of being open to learning from each other. What a beautiful reminder this has been, of how enriching conversations can really be.
Here’s a woman who was in pain for many, many years. About 3 days of short chats over Whatsapp and this is what she said. The spiritual path way is not about never having problems. Sometimes there is no light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes it is as if there is nothing but pain.
The spiritual pathway is about choices. When your world is falling apart, can you surrender to the pain? When your life is perfect, can you surrender to the joy? And believe it or not, even that is rarely done. And there’s immense freedom in that state – sometimes it is almost like you’re smiling behind those inconsolable sobs.
One of the most powerful paragraphs I have read recently in Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts sums it up –
It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.
We all tend to think that we’re people that hurt no one. But all the same, we say and do hurtful things to manipulate people who love us.
Today, let us reflect carefully on what we tend to do, to hurt those close to us. Do we tell them they aren’t a good enough.. spouse, son, daughter, parent, employee, anything else? Do you raise your voice or say harsh words when you’re angry? Do you deliberately do things you know will hurt that other person to get back at them? There is no need to judge ourselves for the things we do, but there certainly is a need to change the fact that this happens – There is absolutely no excuse for hurting someone else deliberately.
Not only is there no excuse, but when we open our eyes, we see that we only ultimately hurt ourselves for a short-term bargain or illusion of control. This habit of hurting people ruins our relationships, we lose credibility with the people we love, and lose the capacity to open up and be vulnerable with the other person too because you cannot want to control another person and give your heart to them at the same time. If we want deep and fulfilling relationships, we have to learn to be kind and forgiving, and own our pain instead of blaming or trying to fix the other person.
Let us be more non-violent in our hearts. When we own our pain, it makes it easier to manage the pain as well as our relationship. When we try to change the other person in order to remove our pain, we only create more problems.
I must at the outset, mention that my teacher says ‘Forgiveness is part of the illusion, but it is a part of the illusion which can take you home’. And from one perspective, I agree that it is true. I could never see the point of forgiveness ever since I was little though, and this is just that perspective.
If someone hurts you and then asks for forgiveness, it might make sense, although even that, I feel leaves some open ends, but let’s set that aside for now. In my understanding however, when forgiveness is not sought, trying to forgive someone is extremely pointless. Here’s why.
The idea of forgiveness places you above the other person
I find the idea of forgiveness a little dangerous because a person who is supposed to forgive someone is clearly ‘above’ the other. By placing a victim higher than the oppressor, we can create dangerous emotional patterns where we repeat abusive patterns in our life to feel superior to others.
Forgiveness comes from a false idea of justice
Have you ever tried to analyse why there is a need to forgive someone in the first place – what is the point in holding on to that grudge? If you look at it carefully, you’ll find that somewhere there is this belief that if you forgive them, they won’t be punished. It comes from our childhood where accepting the other kid’s ‘sorry’ meant we don’t hit them out of revenge, or that they don’t have to be punished.
In reality holding on to a grudge or the pain someone caused you hurts no one but you. Their karma will bring them the fruits if and when the time is right – for all you know, the other person hurting you was a balancing of your own karma and the accounts would have been settled if not for you carrying the grudge.
So drop the desire for ‘justice for your pain’. Your pain might have been the justice. (I am not implying that victims must not file a police complaint etc – relevant actions need to be taken. But the idea of seeking justice in the mind, even more so when nothing can be done, is pointless)
The confusion about ‘how to treat the other’
Probably what I get asked the most is ‘how do I treat someone who hurt/ still hurts me after I’ve forgiven them?’ And ‘must I also forget, when I forgive?’ And this is the aspect which I believe makes the idea of forgiveness the most redundant.
Replace Forgiveness with Common Sense
Here’s a simple fact – shit happens in life. It happens. But if you observe, you don’t feel the need to try to forgive in every scenario. Think about a dog barking for 6 hours at night, waking your little baby up again and again and not letting you get any sleep when you’re already sleep deprived for days. You’ll be frustrated with the dog yes, but you will never message me asking how you can forgive the dog – the question does not arise, because you know that it is a dog – it will bark.
When someone hurts us, whether it was personal or not, intentional or not, they are simply acting out their patterns. If we expected different from them, that is our error of judgment and our mistake. When someone hurts us, if we focus on resetting our assessment of them instead of trying to forgive them, it can help to cope a lot better. A compulsive liar for example, is going to lie – whether it is to his wife or children, or boss. If we understand that this is how this person is, we can learn to accommodate this person and work around their traits in a neutral way, just like you won’t try to pet an aggressive dog who just tried to bite someone.
So…
If you like working with forgiveness, go ahead, that’s lovely. But if you’ve been struggling to forgive someone who hurt you – take a step back and get a larger perspective. There’s nothing to forgive, shit happens. Restructure your assessment of that person, learn new and balanced ways of coping with them if they still hurt you, do your best to heal yourself, and move on.
Some time back I was really hurt to realise that someone I liked was saying mean, cheap and nasty things behind my back. But once the initial pain and hurt faded, the wisdom set in.
Energy is energy. When people think about you, they contribute to your success. Look at Donald Trump, look at all these silly artists campaigning against Modi, the tabloids spinning false stories about celebrities – hatred in most cases contributes to a person’s success, because the more energy a person has access to, the ‘bigger’ they become – if you know how to use it.
So I sat down and welcomed everyone’s energy – everyone who was talking nonsense, I said bring it in, breathe it in. It’s not easy, of course, because it also involves allowing the pain and the hurt and the betrayal in. But it is also so far in my experience, one great way of speeding up the good things in your life, because now you have much more than your own energy working for you.
So can you imagine this? Everyone who says shit behind your back is going to contribute to you expanding in so so many ways. Remember this when you gossip about others too though – you are sacrificing your own energy and giving it away to them – so in the long run, you have less and they have more – of everything.
I share this because I’ve recently seen on my timeline, posts indicating people are hurt by gossip about them. There’s a beautiful, beautiful way of turning this in your favour. To put it simply, just request the universe to make this work for you.
Once, a donkey fell into a dry well in a village. Obviously it was terrified and kept braying indefinitely. The villagers gathered around, tried to get the donkey out and realised there was no way. The donkey was going to die a slow horrible death due to hunger and dehydration.
So it was decided that it would be more painless if they simply filled up the well with sand – the donkey would then die much faster. They gathered around and started throwing mud into the well. After a while they realised that every time they shoveled sand into the well, the donkey would take a step up. Eventually they filled the well and the donkey jumped out.
The negativity others send you is like that sand. They’re throwing it at you in order to suffocate you – and you will, if you just stay there and do nothing. But you can choose to step up instead.
So here it is – this meditation will help you transmute the negative energy people send your way, into positive energy which will help you grow and expand.
This works on intent so honestly I’m not sure how deep it will be if you don’t have a strong spiritual practice, but go ahead and try it anyway. Do it daily for a week to 21 days depending on the situation and on how ‘strong’ your energy field is.
