Stay with what is

2013-06-05

You are something. You want to be something else: a Christ or a Ramana or a Sri Aurobindo. What not! You can read all their books, you can do all that, but you will not move an inch. Maybe you will get some clarity. Maybe you will feel nice. ’Ah! I’m doing this sadhana.’ You’ll feel more secure. These benefits are there, but they will not take you to Mukti.

Very often they induce conflict because you can only be yourself. How can you be something else? However much you can try how could you be something else? You cannot become. That is the illusion from which one must become free.

So, what I am telling is, whatever you are, just accept that. When you accept it, there is no conflict. When there is no conflict there is plenty of energy. When you have energy, you see what is going on inside. You get joy.

Please fully experience that pain.Physical pain itself will become bliss. Sincerely experience all psychological pain. If you fully experience, it becomes joy. Don’t try to escape. If you try to escape from pain, you are putting it under that carpet. After sometime it starts stinking. That is what most people are doing. They never confront their pain. Somebody dies in your family, you lose your job or some other problem, but you don’t experience the pain. You run away from the pain through television, movies, going to a friend’s house, doing some puja (devotional ceremony). This is what is called “sorrow management.” It is good up to a point, but certainly it will not rid you of pain.

So, what you must learn is how to confront this pain. What I am telling is like this: suppose a tiger enters this room, most of you would climb up the fan and hang on there! What I am telling is that hanging from the fan is really painful because the tiger is here and you are hanging on there. I am telling, ’come down from the fan and let the tiger eat you.’ If you are eaten the pain is gone. Allow the pain to eat you. The pain is the tiger. See what happens. It will become joy.

Suppose there is intense jealousy in you. Jealousy itself is pain. You know how painful it is. So instead of saying ’I will try to be non-jealous, kind and loving’- all this is false. You are you. You have jealousy, violence, hatred. All the doshas (mind and body types) are there inside you.So confront it.

I am not telling you be that or this. No. Be what you are. Like Ramana who said, ’Who am I?’ But his discovery is something else. Your discovery would be that you are a Ravana (a demon king in Hindu mythology). All the useless things in the world are inside you. That will be your discovery. That does not take much time. But people don’t like that. You would like to have a nice image about yourself. It is all nicely covered up. But If you dig you will see only rubbish.

So confront that rubbish. It is there. Then accept it, since it is there. How can you run away from it? It is painful, but behold it and suddenly there will be joy.

Where there is joy there will be no dosha. A happy man cannot cause pain to others. Only an unhappy man or wife will cause pain to husband or wife. Unhappy children will cause pain to their parents, unhappy employees will cause pain to employer.

Unhappy people spread misery. Happy people cannot cause pain. If people are happy they cannot do anything wrong. They are happy therefore they cannot do anything wrong. It is unhappy people who land into trouble, who become ultimately thieves, criminals, etc.

So the basic thing is there must be a minimum of happiness and true happiness comes when you confront yourself.

Sri Bhagavan
Oneness Teachings