How to Transform Oneself With Mindfulness

Recognize unconscious patterns of thought and feeling

What you are is primarily a collection of habits and beliefs that shape your thoughts and actions. It follows then, that to bring about any meaningful transformation, you need to review your current habits and beliefs and eliminate the ones that lead you astray.

Now, a habit is the brain’s way of carrying out certain routine functions on autopilot so that you can focus on bigger tasks that require your conscious attention. Most of your daily activities such as brushing your teeth, showering, walking to the train station, or driving to your office is handled by the autopilot which mindlessly runs operations in the background while you’re involved in more important tasks such as solving life’s big challenges or experiencing new things. “Autopilot’s genius is its very mindlessness. Its quiet efficiency ensures that you have adequate mental capacity to meet challenges in professional and personal life,” says Caroline Arnold, author of Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently.

But the problem is that your brain’s autopilot is not equipped to discern the good from the bad. As a result, you often end up engaging its capacities to develop undesirable programs — unconscious patterns — that become your prison.

“So, how do I break free from this prison?” you might ask.

Becoming aware is the first step

Mindfulness is an ancient but powerful practice that helps you detect where your autopilot is causing trouble and leading to unintended consequences.

Simply put, mindfulness is being fully aware of, and involved in, the present moment. By giving your full attention to whatever it is that you are engaged in, you ensure that the autopilot doesn’t take over and you don’t act out mindlessly. In time, the autopilot “unlearns” the self-defeating pattern and you successfully break the undesirable habit.

Take the example of habitual overeating, which is often a result of a “mindless program” that makes you disregard the satiety signal. The unconscious pattern could be the result of any number of factors including childhood trauma, poor self-image, a way of escaping an emotional issue, scarcity consciousness, and so on. Whatever the cause of the old habit, mindfulness helps you become aware of the pattern, thus helping you retrain your brain to recognize hunger and satiety cues so that you never overeat again. The same goes with the habit of smoking — once you are mindful, you don’t automatically reach out for a cigarette every time you feel bored or anxious. And knowing the health hazard of smoking, I bet there aren’t many who smoke consciously.

Of course, deeply ingrained patterns may need much more conscious effort on your part, but becoming aware of them is always the first and more important step towards becoming free of them.

Cultivate the practice of mindfulness

Before we move ahead, you ought to understand that you can’t be mindful in fragments. In other words, you need to cultivate a mindful disposition such that you remain highly alert, sensitive and aware in the present moment, no matter what you’re doing. In doing so, you will begin to overcome habits and thought patterns that are no longer serving you. Of course, the autopilot will still work efficiently—though it will now be restricted only to those activities and aspects that don’t need your conscious attention.

Becoming mindful can be hard, especially in the beginning. It brings to surface rather unpleasant aspects of you that you never knew existed. In fact, if you are being brutally honest, you may have shocking revelations about your tendencies and behavior, your long-held beliefs and thought-patterns. But once you get past that initial discomfort, it becomes easy for you to overcome your old undesirable patterns. With mindfulness, not only do you break up with your bad habits but you also begin to rediscover simple joys of everyday living; you find a richness of being that was previously inaccessible to you; you feel more alive and sensitive than ever. And most importantly, you don’t form new unconscious patterns.

Kick-start your journey to transform yourself

If the idea of living mindfully resonates with you, there are many wonderful resources available on the internet. Here’s one simple practice that can help you kick-start your journey to transform yourself through mindfulness: Set an alarm on your phone that goes off every 2 -3 hours to remind you to breath consciously. When the reminder comes, just stop whatever it is you’re doing and breathe slowly and deeply three times. This will not take more than a minute but it is a powerful technique to bring you back to here and now.

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We are always trying to find the limits of everything. We haven’t even spared the Universe, making all kinds of speculations about when and how it began as well as when and how it will end. Scientists have propounded theories such as the Big Bang phenomenon which is an attempt to explain how all that is came into existence in one grand instant, then began expanding in all directions, and continues to expand even as you read this. Then, we also wonder whether this Universe will continue to expand forever or will it stop at some point in the future.

These questions suggest that we are unable to accept the idea of timelessness. We cannot imagine something that has no beginning and no end. Our own physical existence is finite and time-bound. Death is an eventuality that reminds us repeatedly about our limited time here. Consequently, we run and chase and go after things and people and experiences. We try hard to accumulate and own as much as we can before our time runs out, never realising that when death comes, nothing will matter.

Empty preoccupations?

No one can be certain about what’s beyond our physical existence, which we call death. Likewise with our birth—we don’t know where we were before we were born. Did we even exist? No one knows for sure where do we come from and where do we go. Do we simply appear one day and disappear another day? Is there a soul that outlasts the body, that existed before birth and will continue after death? These questions are futile because there can’t be “answers” to them. Instead, what we do have are a whole lot of speculations and conjectures that pose as answers.

Of course, there are theories in many ancient scriptures that attempt to explain the cycle of birth and death—some of them seem plausible too. But, without actual direct subjective experience, these theories are nothing more than beliefs. Since experience can’t be objective, it can’t be observed in a lab or transferred as knowledge. Thus, the mystery of life, of sentience and consciousness, seems fool-proof. We can’t solve it until we get there—that is, if there is some place to go, and if there’s something to know.

And yet, our preoccupation with beginnings and endings, with the mysteries of birth and death, takes us away from the only reality there is—the present moment. Life is only available now. We think, we remember, we imagine, we plan—but all of that happens when we are absent to the now. We are lost in contemplations and concerns of the world, losing the most important treasure of life: our awareness, which is eternal.

Not endless time

But timelessness does not mean “forever”; it does not mean endless time. It means no time. And we can only access eternity when we are absolutely present, free from thinking, just being. Only when we are free from time and free from all mental abstractions, can we perceive reality as it is.

We have all had glimpses into such eternity or timelessness on occasions when we accidentally slip into the no-thought zone of pure awareness—a phenomenon that cannot be described by words or understood by thought. Indeed, even trying to explain it relies on thought and memory, which is why it is impossible.

The most that I can say about my visits to the timeless fields is that you feel fully awake, your senses are heightened and everything around you comes fully alive, as if for the first time. Life takes on a completely different texture—rich, vibrant, glorious.

This richness, which is not a feeling or a thought but simply an awareness, lasts for as long as one remains free from time, and from incessant thinking. Then, when time and thoughts return, so do the chaos and speculations.

But the glimpse does one really important thing—it dissolves the need for pointless preoccupations such as the origins and the fate of the Universe.

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Waiting for Success

This is what happens when we chase success the way our modern society defines it. Such success is always relative. The “other” is necessary for me to feel successful. If I want to go ahead, there must be those who I leave behind. And the other too is trying to do the same.

Of course I pay a heavy price for such success. I gain money, fame, power and the contraptions that symbolise success but lose a lot more in the bargain—I  lose my health, my relationships, my peace of mind, my awareness and appreciation of nature, my ability to relax and allow life to unfold, my wonder and awe… all my real wealth. In fact, I would say I lose my very life because when I seek something, I end up always waiting to live, instead of living now. It’s a very big price for something so ephemeral.

A Different Kind of Neurosis

But wait a minute! My ego doesn’t think so. It is very pleased with all the possessions and acquisitions, and the sense of pride and identity it derives from them. It doesn’t matter that inside I feel like a failure because I have gained this success and yet lost the ability to enjoy it—like my friend Abhishek! If this is not neurosis, what is?

To different degrees and in different ways, we are all afflicted by the same neurosis. My friend is a mirror of my own desire; mine is not about achieving more but about making a greater positive impact on the world. Outwardly it seems like a noble intention but make no mistake—it’s just another form of neurosis, different in degree perhaps, but similar in its emphasis on “doing” and living in the future.

I can see that my conviction that some day I will finally arrive, feel truly successful and happy is an illusion, albeit a compelling one. Isn’t it absurd that even though I have no guarantee that tomorrow will come, I sacrifice my today in the hope that I will be happier when it comes?

Real Success Isn’t Pursued

I also understand that unless I change how I define success and what it means to me, my pursuit will never end. I will keep chasing and wanting and doing more—never realising that true success cannot come in the future because the future doesn’t exist, except in my imagination.

So what is true success? A wiser dimension of me whispers that it is the ability to be fully alive now. And it means to be aware of being alive. This is the awareness I need to keep coming back to, each time my neurosis threatens to take my life away from me. This is the anchor I need each time my attention moves away from living now to ‘waiting to live’.

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But Why is Mindfulness So Hard to Practice?

I understand mindfulness as living in the present moment, with all my attention to what is. Being mindful implies being fully aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions.

There are a couple of good reasons why being mindful is so difficult to practise. Let me share them as I have understood.

1. We are all creatures of habit

First, we are all creatures of habit, which has its pros and cons. Being mindful means we  need to become aware of those psychological habits that are detrimental to our wellbeing. Being aware at all times requires a tremendous amount of alertness, which is difficult. What’s more, I have learned that this alertness is not possible to achieve with effort or practice—in other words, we can’t make a habit out of it. It comes only by allowing, by letting it be, whatever it is.

Related » How to Transform Oneself With Mindfulness

2. Busting the myth of our goodness

The second reason why mindfulness is so hard has to do with our belief in our own inherent goodness. I have learned that mindfulness requires shifting my attention from the outer world to my inner world. It means looking within, noticing my thoughts, actions and reactions. When I am mindful, the light of awareness puts the spotlight on those aspects of mine that I don’t want to accept and don’t want anyone else to see—not even myself. Little surprise then, that I find mindfulness difficult. It busts the myth of my ‘goodness’. Being mindful means confronting my own demons, coming face-to-face with my pet monsters. And that is unnerving. It exposes to me my subtle neuroses—my prejudices, my arrogance, my righteousness, my narrow-mindedness, my angst, my aggression—there’s so much about me that my ego camouflages under the guise of being busy, good and right. When I am living unmindfully, I push these aspects under the carpet of my mind, as if they don’t exist.

In being mindful, the facade of being better than others falls away and you realize that, at the core, we’re all the same. You notice that we are all ridden, to a greater or lesser extent, by human frailties of guilt, fear, envy, complexes, prejudices, insecurity and intolerance. And underneath the shell of our egos, we all have same needs and wants—to love and be loved, to feel joy, to express kindness, to know the self and to be at peace.

Why mindfulness is worth your while

Because of its revelational nature, being mindful can be quite shocking and unpleasant, especially in the beginning. The ego, of course, doesn’t want you to be mindful. It feels threatened because all its work, the carefully built palace of illusions, gets shattered. But then mindfulness gives rise to something more valuable and rare—courage.

This courage isn’t the kind that is glamorized in the movies. It doesn’t help you win any battles in the outer world. Instead, it helps you conquer something much more difficult—your inner world. With it, you see yourself as you are, and thus also see others as they are, beyond their respective facades. Suddenly, others are not enemies that you must be wary of, but fellow travelers.

Again, what I have gathered from my journey of living mindfully is that it has made me kinder and more tolerant towards others; I am no longer offended by thoughts, words or actions of others. Most of all, I am patient with myself at those times when I am not exactly living from my highest awareness. That is why, even though mindfulness is so hard, I am sticking to it.

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You had a long day at work and came home exhausted. You got into an argument with your spouse and spent the last hour before you slept looking through your social media feed, filling yourself up with the news that did not matter. You wake up in the morning feeling overwhelmed by another busy day that you are sure will drain your energy. You grudgingly get ready, and as you are having your breakfast, you get a text reminder of the electricity bill that you forgot to pay; the amount seemed to be inordinately high to you. The drive to work takes longer, and you have a review with your boss. You know how it will go!

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Reena turned 34 last week. Her family reminded her that it was time to find a good guy and get married.
“But, where are the good guys? I am done with these mean, lecherous men,” she confided in her best friend.
“Don’t give up. I am sure there is someone who is just right for you. You will find him someday,” her friend consoled her. If I was Reena’s friend, I’d tell her that she will never find a good guy because she only wants the bad ones. No good guy would ever come near her, or even if he does, he will turn into a bad guy!

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Have you ever had these situations in your life or have you seen someone go through them? I am sure you have because the world is full of people who refuse to be happy. Napoleon Hill said in his book Think and Grow Rich, “You can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” Powerful lines; but they raise an even more powerful question. “What is it that you believe in? Where are you putting your faith?”

Your Beliefs Guide Your Brain

If you are sub-consciously thinking about having a bad day or a bad relationship, you will get that! Through the series of events that we encounter in our life, our brain learns what to expect next. The expected event may actually happen or not. But, because our brain expects something will happen in a certain way, we often end up getting the outcomes that we anticipate. Our belief system or the subconscious mind pattern is largely an outcome of a lifetime of conditioning.

I have often noticed that people who are unable to hold on to relationships have had troubled childhoods or similar painful experiences in the past. Over the years, they develop a belief which guides them towards relationships which do not last. With each bad experience, the belief gets strengthened, and even before they meet the next person, the subconscious mind starts sending warning signals. These signals are strong because they originate from the instinct to survive and protect yourself. Your body responds immediately to these signals, and even before something good could have begun, things collapse.

The same thing happens with people who have a terrible relationship with money. How often have we come across people who, despite having all the great ideas, resources and support, keep losing money in business? It is simply because their mind is conditioned to believe that they can never earn or save enough money and that being rich or abundant is not meant for them. They get what they expect.

People who carry the heavy baggage of limiting beliefs from their past often have a very pronounced flight or fight response. Their primary response to any new situation, even though it may hold potentials of vast happiness, is to look for survival first. Their survival belief system has become so strong over the years that they would choose anything but success or happiness as long as they can keep themselves in the state of survival, inertia and stagnancy. Have you ever seen a leader in any walk of life operating with this instinct?

How Should You Break the Habit of Being Yourself

Dr. Joe Dispenza in his book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself mentions that the only habit that we need to break in order to have the life we truly desire is the habit of being ourselves. What does this mean? Dr. Dispenza explains that our thoughts are very powerful as they make us respond in certain ways. Our thoughts create the feelings and emotions that we feel within our body. For instance, thoughts of fear create an emotion of nervousness, and our body starts to respond—we feel dryness in our throat, and perhaps, we start to palpitate. If fear becomes our dominant thought pattern, we will end up feeling nervous and anxious far more often. Over time, being nervous or anxious would become our temperament, and eventually, it would become our personality.

I am sure you have seen people around you who are almost perpetually nervous and anxious. They have sweaty palms or short breath or a suspicious gaze, and they avoid interacting with you and other people. Such people are so deeply in control of their subconscious mind which makes them behave this way. It has become their personality.

What Thoughts Are Shaping Your Life

Ask yourself. What are your dominant thoughts? If there are certain things in your life that never work out like relationships, health or money, then what is the underlying thought pattern that is making you believe that you can never get those things? Where did it come from? When was the first time you started feeling like that? Perhaps, it was some event from your childhood that left a deep and yet unknown impact on your mind. Finally, have you allowed that thought to shape and change your personality?

As I coach or generally observe people around me, I have come to believe that one thing that stops us from being successful is our limiting subconscious thought pattern. I have worked with people who understand everything that they hear and read. They agree with the concept of building awareness and clarity in life, and the importance of taking action. Yet, when I meet them a few weeks or months later, they tell me that they have not progressed.

It is deeply frustrating for them as it is disappointing for me as their coach. But, the reason is simple. My method of teaching is based on three broad pillars – Awareness, Attraction and Action. Attraction is the concept that we are learning now. It is the bridge between awareness and action. If the bridge has poor foundations, it will eventually break. It can’t handle the positive energy that needs to travel between the points where you become aware and the point where you have to take determined action.

Failure comes swift in such cases, and with every failure, comes a deeper loss of faith in self. Dr. Joe Dispenza says that in order to get past the habit of being yourself, you have to ‘think greater than you feel’. This means that we have to stop thinking in our old, habitual way and initiate a new belief system that is in harmony with our highest purpose and vision.

How Do We Do It?

To bring about this shift in our thought pattern we must change the beliefs that remain stored in our subconscious mind. It means that we must become aware of the limiting or self-defeating thoughts that are hindering our growth. Becoming aware entails far more than just ‘knowing’ what those thoughts are. It actually means that we also become aware of how our body reacts to those thoughts, what actions do we take or do not take as a result of these limiting thoughts and what outcomes do we eventually get. As you do this deep inner inspection of your own thought pattern, you will start to recognize the futility of such self-defeating thoughts. You will also become aware of the fact that the things that you fear or doubt are often unfounded and they actually never manifest.

The next stage of starting to think greater than you feel is to make a conscious effort to replace your limiting thought pattern with more powerful thoughts. It is almost equivalent to replacing infected files in the computer with a fresh set of files. This may take time, but this is the most important work that you can ever do for your own good.

Use Meditation As a Tool to Changing Your Habits

One effective way of breaking the habit of thinking negatively is to meditate each day. In a guided meditation that I help my participants to do, we first build deep awareness of our limiting thoughts. We remind ourselves of what those thoughts do to our body. Then, we start visualizing how we really want to think and feel. When we meditate with the highest vision in our mind, we start becoming aware of the thought pattern we need to imprint in our brain. These are the supportive and empowering thoughts that are needed for the vision to turn into reality. Eventually, in the course of this meditation, we envision living our life to our highest potential. It is at this stage that we begin to reap the benefits. This is where we start to replace the corrupted or redundant files in our brain with a fresh set of files.

When done over a period of time, this meditation can be incredibly powerful. As new thoughts start replacing the old ones, we no longer feel the same way as we used to in the past, and with time, we start to develop a new personality. Dr Joe Dispenza says that our personality defines our personal reality, and that is what we must strive to do.

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“How do I practise awareness?” You cannot practise it. How can you practise life? If you were dead you could practise life. If you are alive, how can you practise life? It is just that right now, you are not giving much room for your aliveness to happen because you have given too much significance to what you think and feel. Your psychological process has become far more important than your life process. Why awareness seems to be so difficult is simply because we have let our minds go into endless chatter. If your mind is not chattering, awareness is the natural way to be.

The primacy of existence

People have made their thought process so important. They have even gone to the extent of saying, “I think, therefore I am.” Which do you think is true: you think because you exist, or you exist because you think? You can generate a thought because you exist, isn’t it? We want to shift the significance to the life process. You can play with your psychological process whichever way you want, but it is only because you are alive that you can think.

Once in a while, if I just close my doors and sit in a place for five days, I do not have a single thought for five days. I don’t look out of the window, I don’t read, I don’t do anything. I am simply being alive. This is such a huge phenomenon happening within you, what is there to think about? Being alive is a far bigger process than your stupid thought process.

Anyway, what can you think? You are just recycling the nonsense that you have gathered. Can you think something other than the nonsense that has been fed into your head? You are just recycling the old data you have gathered. This recycling nonsense has become so important that you can even dare to say “I think, therefore I am”, and that becomes the world’s way of life. Existence is, even without your silly thoughts.

Not thinking, just living

If you choose, you can fully be and still not think. Please see, the most beautiful moments in your life are those moments when you were not thinking about anything. What you call moments of bliss, moments of joy, moments of ecstasy, moments of utter peace, these were moments when you were not thinking about anything but were just living.

Which is more important, living or thinking? You must decide this—do you want to be a living being or a thinking being? Right now, 90 per cent of the time, you are only thinking about life, not living life. Are you here to experience life or to think about life? You want to experience life, and you cannot experience life if you are lost in your thought. It is only through perception that you experience. You cannot experience through thought. With the past experience of life, you are cooking up something in your head—that is a thought process. Whatever you think has no significance because your thoughts have nothing to do with reality. They do not mean anything. Everyone can think up their own nonsense whichever way they want. It need not have anything to do with reality at all.

Your psychological process is a very small happening compared to the life process. Isn’t being alive right now more important for you than thinking? But if I trample upon your thought even a little, you are even willing to die for it. People die for their ideas. People die for their thought. People die for what they believe in. Thought has become far more important than the life process because people have not realised the immensity of what it means to be alive.

Logic divides

Because life has been restrained within the survival activity, thought looks grander than life. But it is not so. Thought is just a small happening compared to the life process. Aristotle is considered as the father of modern logic. His logic is very simple and straight—A can only be A, B can only be B. A cannot be B, B cannot be A. Can you argue with this? Logically it looks perfect. But let us look at this.

You are here either as a man or a woman. But how did you come here? Because a man and woman came together. Now suppose you are a woman, does it mean to say your father has made no contribution to you? He does exist within you, doesn’t he? Suppose you are a man, does it mean your mother made no contribution to you? Doesn’t she exist within you? The fact is that you are either a man or a woman, but the truth is you are both. Truth is that dimension which is not logically explainable. It does not fit into logic because logic is always dividing; truth is always unifying. So Where will this logic fit into life?

If you apply your logic too much to your life, all life will be squeezed out of you. The logical aspect of the mind is useful only to handle the material realities of life. If you try to handle yourself with logic, you will be a total mess because fundamentally, if you look at your life absolutely logically, there is no meaning to it.

When you wake up in the morning tomorrow, think absolutely logically. Don’t look at the sunrise, don’t look at the birds in the sky, don’t think of someone you love, your child’s face, or the flowers in the garden. Just think logically. Now, you actually have to get out of bed—that is not a small feat. You go to the toilet, brush your teeth, eat, do some work, eat, work, eat, sleep —tomorrow morning, same thing—over and over again. You have to do this for the next 40, 50 years. Think 100% logically, without looking at your life’s experience—is it really worthwhile?

Moments of extreme logic are moments of suicide, please see this. If we think 100 per cent logically about life, there is really no reason to live; there is really no reason for you and me to exist here. But if you look at one beautiful moment of your life’s experience, suddenly everything is sparked up and you want to live. The logical aspect of your life and the experiential dimension of your life are diametrically opposite to each other. That is why you are struggling with it. If you look at life experientially, there is every reason to live. If you look at life logically, there is no reason to live.

Why does someone commit suicide? Because they refuse to look at the experiences that they have had. If they fail an examination, people commit suicide; their husbands left them, they commit suicide; they lost their property, they commit suicide. People do it for so many reasons. Let’s say, today your husband or your wife left you. If you think logically, “My whole life was to love this person and be with this person, and now this person is gone. Where is the reason for me to live?” If you go logically, you will commit suicide. But if your husband or wife is gone, maybe it is a whole new possibility in your life. Maybe things that you could never imagine will happen to you simply because you are free from one aspect of life. We do not know, but it is possible.

If you think hundred percent logically, there is really no possibility of life. Only if you know to what extent your logic should go and where it should not go, your life will be beautiful. If you become absolutely logical, there is no beauty to your life. Everything becomes bare and no good.

A dimension beyond thought

Logic is essential only to handle the material aspect of life. If you want to know the experiential dimensions of life, you will never know it with your petty thought. Even if you have Einstein’s brain, it is still a petty thought because thought cannot be bigger than life. Thought can only be logical, functioning between two polarities. That is too small. If you want to know life in its immensity, you need something more than your thoughts, your logic, or your intellect. Only if you open up that dimension, you will taste life in its larger proportion. Otherwise, you will know only the physicality of life. With thought, you can know the physical and use the physical, but you will not penetrate anything other than the physical.

It is because the world has given so much significance to Aristotle and his tribe that all the sciences have developed in the physical dimension. With this, much comfort has come. You may be thrilled about how many things your computer or the internet can do, but if you really look at it, it has not done anything to your life. It has brought comfort and convenience, but ultimately, it has not brought you any joy. It has not taken you to any higher dimension of experience or existence.

In spite of all this exploration, no new dimension has occurred to you because the instruments of exploration that you are using are too limited. They are just logical and intellectual, so there is no way you will touch another dimension of life. It is not possible. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but it is as if you were trying to go to the moon with a bullock cart. It doesn’t matter how hard you beat the bulls it is not going to get there.

If you beat the bulls really hard, may be you can climb a mountain on the bullock cart, but you cannot go to the moon. Either you learn this out of your intelligence, or life will maul you and teach you a lesson slowly.

The choice is yours.

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“I am good when I give to others. It’s better to give than to receive.” Myth or magic?

Although many of us have grown up believing that it is our solemn duty to give, give, and keep on giving to others, that is only half-truth—a myth that prevents us from living joyfully and giving fully. Instead, consider what the world’s great sages say: You have a duty to give to others and to give to yourself. When you are in need, you must also receive. This advice sounds obvious, but how many of us are even near the top of our own copious to-do lists?

The principles of giving and receiving that apply to our daily lives are no different than the principles that operate in nature all around us. “A field that has rested gives a bountiful crop,” said the Roman poet Ovid. The earth must receive enough sunshine, water, and nutrients before it can produce a bountiful harvest from the seeds we plant. After the earth has given birth to the harvest, it must then rest and restore its life force so it can give again. The same is true of your life. How can you give to others if you don’t first nourish and fill yourself?

In a way that you might not have considered before, that question is embedded right inside the first principle we are taught as children—the golden rule. The golden rule is found throughout the world’s traditions. The Mahabharata, the ancient epic of India, says, “Do naught unto others, which would cause you pain if done to you.” Islam affirms that a true believer “desires for his brother that which he desires for himself,” and Christianity teaches, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” Yet, if we are to love and treat others as [that is, in the same way that] we love and treat ourselves, how does that leave them if we treat ourselves with anything less than love and affection? Put another way, we can’t really honor others if we don’t first honor ourselves.

Myth: It is always my duty to give to others.

Magic: It is my duty to give to myself as well as to others. By giving to myself, I am giving to others.

Here, then, we meet the first paradox of the inner art of giving and receiving—we are able to care for and love others best when we care for and love ourselves first. Like all true paradoxes, the two seeming opposites are not mutually exclusive but mutually inclusive.

There is a season for both giving and receiving. Ecclesiastes, known as “the Teacher,” tells us [in the words made popular in the song by Pete Seeger]: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;… A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.” Our job is to recognize which season we are living in at the moment and honor its call.

Learning to give to yourself

Some of us are awesome givers but not very good receivers. We don’t ask for support. We don’t admit to others or to ourselves that we need any. We don’t even like to accept compliments. We reside on one side of the paradox [“I have a duty to give to others”], but we have forgotten about its complement [“I have a duty to give to myself”]. When that happens, the universe will step in to wake us up, to create balance, and to show us that we must honor ourselves too.

No matter who we are, life automatically apprentices us to the art of giving and receiving, and our lessons often begin with what we can see and touch—our bodies. They start with the questions: Do you love yourself enough to honor your body’s needs? Do you give yourself the nourishment, rest, and recreation you deserve?

If you don’t willingly give that to yourself, your body will eventually make sure you get it. I saw this happen to an acquaintance I would spend time with a few times a year at business meetings. At one meeting, I asked how she was feeling, knowing that she had been recovering from a recent surgery. “I’m good, but busy again,” she said with a frown. “If I don’t get some time off soon, I’m going to have to schedule another visit to the hospital!” My heart skipped a beat as I realized that she might very well fulfil her own prophecy. She hadn’t learned the lesson her body had tried to teach her the first time.

I’m no stranger to these lessons myself. When I was recuperating from my own unexpected trip to the hospital, a friend, who was a nurse, insisted on dropping by a few times a day to make sure I had everything I needed. She could see I was having a hard time sitting still and accepting the fact that I should rest, so she appointed herself my guardian angel for the week. I kept telling her that I felt fine and there was no reason I couldn’t get up. Besides, there were so many things I needed to attend to. She didn’t buy it. Looking me straight in the eye, she said, “Your job now is to sit still and relax.”

If we want to get in touch with our inner potential, we must also care for our bodies

She went on to tell me that she was just passing on a lesson she had learned when she had gotten sick. Like me, she had wanted to bolt from her bed and get going. A mentor of hers, catching her out of bed, sent her right back under the covers. “It’s where you belong,” she had told her. “You’ve been a nurse for so long that you think you should always be giving to others. Now you have to learn to receive.” I could identify with that. I suspected that my tendency to work so hard for so long was partly what put me into the hospital in the first place. After my friend left, I sat back, closed my eyes, and promptly fell asleep. She was right. My body wasn’t quite ready to start giving again.

Although we have been taught to think that spirituality encourages us to turn our attention away from the body and the material world to what is “otherworldly,” there’s a misconception wrapped up in that logic—a misconception that the world’s great teachers have warned us to watch out for. They tell us that if we want to get in touch with our inner potential, we must also care for our bodies.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, for example, said, “Strengthen your body before you strengthen your soul.” More than two thousand years earlier, this same realization prompted the founder of Buddhism to develop one of the keystones of his philosophy—the Middle Way. Siddhartha Gautama, an Indian prince, left his wife and young child looking for something more than riches and material pleasure. For six years he was an ascetic, believing that the practice of intense austerities would lead him to his goal of becoming enlightened. Depriving himself of the nourishment he needed, he became so weak that one day he almost died of starvation.

Fortunately, a young girl found Gautama and offered him a bowl of nourishing rice milk. Realizing that his sacrifices and severe practices had not brought him closer to enlightenment, he gratefully ate the meal. Strengthened, he vowed to meditate under a tree until he attained enlightenment. Gautama faced many temptations during the ordeal but, with his strength intact, he succeeded at last in achieving his goal. After his awakening, the first thing he taught was that only when we walk the Middle Way—can we attain enlightenment, indeed any deeply held goal.

That universal principle of the balanced Middle Way applies as much to us today as it did to those who first heard it from the Buddha’s lips. We, too, must examine whether our extreme sacrifices and the habits we think are making us “good” are actually bringing us closer to the fulfilment and meaning we seek in life. Do you sacrifice the needs of your body because you have adopted the myth that “my one and only duty is to give to others”? Do you ignore the warning signs and messengers who are trying to get you back into balance? Do you think of your body as something you must love?

Nora, a biochemistry researcher, found that changing how she looked at her body changed her life. For years, Nora had struggled with all kinds of diets and regimes without any success. When she had a serious health scare, she told herself that this was the last straw. She had to get into shape. It was now or never.

Fast forward three months. That’s when I met a new Nora, with a triumphant smile on her face. She had astounded herself and her friends by losing more weight than she had ever thought possible in so short a time. “I tend to be in my head a lot,” she admitted, “and so I never took much time to pay attention to my body. Once I started doing what was good for me physically, I saw that it wasn’t about losing weight but about loving my body. That made all the difference. Being careful about what I feed myself isn’t hard when I think about it like that.”

The first step to bringing your life back into balance is to be able to recognize when you are out of balance

You don’t have to be overweight to identify with Nora. With the hectic pace of our lives, when something has to give it’s often our bodies that get the short end of the stick, whether that’s reflected in the meals we skip, the fast foods we gobble down on the run, the excessive stimulants we drink, or the exercise we never quite fit in. The problem is that when we don’t keep our body in balance, the rest of us—our mind, our emotions, our spirit, our relationships—suffer as well.

There is a scene in the book Zorba the Greek that sums up the importance of caring for our bodies. The earthy Zorba never does anything without total resilience and passion. Zorba’s boss has yet to learn the joys of his life-affirming lifestyle. When his boss, head buried in a book and in the clouds, claims he’s not hungry and doesn’t want to eat the delicious meal Zorba has just prepared, Zorba exclaims, “But you’ve not had a bite since morning. The body’s got a soul, too, have pity on it. Give it something to eat, boss, give it something; it’s our beast of burden, you know. If you don’t feed it, it’ll leave you stranded in the middle o’ the road.”

The illusion of being full

Another myth that makes it hard to give ourselves the attention we deserve is the myth that busyness is strength—that the more balls we can juggle, the stronger we are. When we seem to have the ability to keep pushing—to go, go, go—we believe that we can do anything. We think that we’re members of that special breed who are built to give and who don’t need to rest and take breaks as much as everyone else. This is, in fact, a trick we play on ourselves. The truth is often that the more driven we are, the less energy we really have.

Brendan Kelly, an acupuncturist and herbalist who specializes in Chinese five-element acupuncture, talked to me about how this works, because, admittedly, I’m one of those who has managed to fool myself. Like all healing traditions, there are many ways of looking at how energy works in the body and in our lives, and what follows is just one interpretation of the classic Chinese view of how the body, mind, and spirit work together. It’s based on the idea that the body naturally needs alternating cycles of activity and rest so that we can replenish our reservoir of strength.

Our modern, fast-paced culture adds to the illusion by encouraging the buzz of busyness

An abundance of activity in our lives creates what Chinese medicine looks at as “heat” in the body. The heat we produce by our constant busyness uses up our body’s “coolant,” which we need in order to maintain our internal resources and reserves. When we use too much of our reserves and have much more heat than coolant, we can start to have a variety of symptoms, anything from anxiety and insomnia to hot flashes, redness, or heat anywhere in the body. “This coolant is what the Chinese call yin energy, and it is one source, though not the exclusive source, for our internal peace as well as deep wisdom,” Brendan explained. “What happens when we burn out this coolant is that we are sacrificing the possibility of deep peace and wisdom for short-term activity and busyness.”

In other words, by keeping our lives full of activity without taking time to reenergize, we create “a lack of internal peace and we don’t have the ability to listen to who we are,” said Brendan. “Without enough ‘coolant,’ we cannot know who we are in our heart or express who we are in a balanced way.”

As you might expect, we can rebuild our yin energy [our coolant] by relaxing and creating a state of stillness, whether by giving ourselves more breaks or more sleep, engaging in prayer or meditation, or using certain healing therapies.

Now, here’s how we trick ourselves. The less strength or resources we have within, the more we may sense an internal inadequacy, as if we just don’t have enough to keep going. None of us likes that feeling, so we tend to push even harder to make up for it. We pump ourselves up with stimulants, fill our days with activity, and create more external busyness. All of that masks the feeling that we’re really running on empty. The busyness, the activity, and the stimulants conceal our internal depletion and create the illusion that we have more energy than we do. Our modern, fast-paced culture adds to the illusion by encouraging the buzz of busyness. We are skilled at creating all sorts of products and elixirs to help us keep on buzzing. But all along, the internal buzz that we label as energy isn’t real energy. Instead, it indicates a lack of real energy.

“The extra heat in the body gives us the impression that we have more energy,” says Brendan, “but we don’t have more energy—just more heat. When you use heat instead of real energy to propel you through the day, what you give up is a sense of internal well-being.” What’s the difference between that and a state where we are truly energized and full? When we have ample inner resources, we don’t rush to and fro. Instead, we are at peace and have inner stability because we feel full and secure. We take care of what needs to be done, but we aren’t consumed by the compulsive need to push beyond what our bodies can handle at the moment because we know that we cannot continue to give to others if we ourselves aren’t full.

Myth: My drive to stay busy and my ability to keep doing more means I am strong.

Magic: Stillness creates strength.

A classic image that is sometimes used as an analogy for this process is that of a fire [heat] burning beneath a bowl [our body] that is holding water [our yin coolant]. The fire heats the water and creates steam, which represents what the Chinese call ch’i, our vital energy or essential life force. The ch’i is the sustaining energy we need to live. When things are in balance, the fire creates a natural warming effect. But if the fire becomes too hot, the water begins to boil. If this goes on too long, the heat literally consumes the water and dissipates the energy we need to bank our inner fire. Once the water is boiled away, we can literally collapse because we are not able to produce any more energy, or ch’i.

“When this happens, the results can be dramatic,” says Brendan. “One month you feel that you have a lot of energy and the next month you fall off the cliff—you’re in bed and you can’t move.”

Are you running on full tank or are you running on the illusion of a full tank? Do you let your tank become empty before you fill it up again and therefore run the risk of stalling out? Do you let your light go out because you don’t have enough oil in your inner lamp? In short, where do you put yourself on the list of priorities in your life? Too often we relegate our needs to the bottom of the list, if we’re on the list at all. We take care of our duties and obligations to others first and use the energy that’s left over for ourselves. But, truthfully, how often is there any energy left over?

During the natural ebb and flow of our week, we all need relief

What if we reversed that order? What if we made sure our lamp had enough oil in it first before lighting the way for others? Wouldn’t that help us keep our lamp burning strong so we could give more light to others? To do that, we must learn to recognize our inner needs and then draw healthy boundaries so we have the time and energy to fill those needs. To renew ourselves so that we can continue to give, and give well, we must embrace the paradox that saying no will enable us to say yes.

If the idea of saying no makes you cringe, know that this principle comes straight out of spiritual tradition. The greatest teachers knew how to say no. Like all of us, they needed time alone to recharge and renew. Even an indefatigable missionary of mercy like Mother Teresa taught that renewal is a prerequisite for strength. She said that renewal is what gives us the energy to continue serving others. She observed that “the contemplatives and ascetics of all ages and religions have sought God in the silence and solitude of the desert, forest, and mountain” and said that we, too, are called to withdraw at certain intervals. It is when we are alone with God in silence, she said, that “we accumulate the inward power which we distribute in action.”

She was following the advice of her own teacher. Jesus did the same after he fed the multitudes the loaves and fishes. He told his disciples to go into the boat ahead of him, and “when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.” With a somewhat lighter touch on the same topic, John Barrymore once joked that “God said it is not good for man to be alone, but sometimes it is a great relief!”

During the natural ebb and flow of our week, we all need relief. That’s when drawing boundaries [saying no politely, of course] is appropriate. When your energy is ebbing, it’s time to shift gears from an active orientation of giving energy to a receptive one of receiving. It’s time to plug back in to your energy source and do what most reenergizes you—whether it’s walking in nature, listening to a favorite piece of music, playing a game, or simply closing your eyes, doing nothing, and taking a long, deep breath.

Getting to know you

Instead of pushing yourself beyond your limits and pumping yourself up with more stimulants so that you can fulfil more commitments to others, honouring yourself calls for a different habit. It asks you to become conscious of what you need, right now, inside and out. In order for you to do what you must to regain balance, and to remember to do it tomorrow and the next day and the next, you first have to know yourself.

“I know myself”—it’s one of the most profound statements we can ever make. Self-knowledge, after all, is the ultimate goal extolled by mystics and masters the world around. Inscribed in the forecourt of Apollo’s temple at Delphi was the famous command “Know thyself.” The Book of Thomas the Contender says, “He who has not known himself has known nothing,” and the Zohar, from the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, encourages, “Go to your self, know your self, fulfill your self.”

One of the reasons you may not take specific actions to fill your own needs is simply that you don’t really know yourself at the most basic level. You don’t know how you really feel and what you really need. While “knowing yourself” is a lifelong goal that has deeper and deeper layers of meaning, you can take tiny steps toward that goal every day. Here’s a simple question that can help you refocus on what you need to do to come back into balance: What do I need right now to be happy?

When I’ve asked myself that question, I often answer that to do my most creative work, I need quiet and I need regular doses of fresh air out in nature. Yet awareness alone is not enough. If I don’t care enough to honor myself, to put those needs on my priority list, I won’t remember to turn to those antidotes when I begin to feel cranky and anxious. When things start spinning out of control, unless I make a point of asking myself that question again and again, I forget to fill my lungs with fresh air. I forget to take control and create the quiet I need by turning off the phones, refusing to look at my e-mail, or physically moving myself to a quiet spot to work.

A friend who works out of her home reminded me of how empowering it can be to know yourself and then act on that knowing. One day I asked her when was the best time for us to meet. She immediately replied in a straightforward way, “It’s better for me to meet in the late afternoon. If I go out in the morning, I am tempted to start doing errands. I stop here and there on my way back to my office, and I just don’t get the work done that I need to do.” She knew that much about herself and therefore she could set up a schedule that was best for her. Like many of the methods for honoring yourself, this doesn’t sound difficult, but it takes practice. The change starts with watching yourself, getting to know yourself, and then translating that knowledge into action that honors your needs.

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I cannot say about others but reading inspirational wisdom featured within Complete Wellbeing and elsewhere has helped me expand my awareness of myself as well as of the world. And isn’t awareness the only way one can bring about any transformation within oneself? Reading stimulates my mind and leads me to question the status quo and reflect on my thoughts, feelings and behaviour. I have become much more open-minded and a lot less rigid about my worldview. Yet, I must say that cobwebs accumulated over years cannot be cleaned in one sweep—it requires persistence. De-conditioning deep-rooted beliefs requires deep-rooted conviction and persistence.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of good reading to my life has been the sheer volume of unlearning I have gone through. Owing to the wisdom I have gained from reading inspirational stuff, I have managed to free myself—and continue to do so even now—from  hundreds of old, useless and outdated beliefs that didn’t serve my highest good.

I owe a lot to those who have shared deep insights about the various aspects of life—they have helped bring out my latent strengths, while simultaneously pointing out the weaknesses that hold me back. Reading has taught me that the heights of love, peace, joy and fulfilment are not reserved for a chosen few—they are available to anyone. Whether or not I end up reaching those heights depends only on one thing—my choice.

“An ideal life” doesn’t exist

Coming back to the question at the start, not only am I far from living the ideal life, I don’t think I’ll ever get there—for that’s not the goal. To repeat an old cliché, happiness is not a destination, it’s a journey. But I do believe it is possible to live a richer life than I am living now. I also know that there’s only one corner of the universe I have the power to change, and that corner lies in me. Through Complete Wellbeing, we try to bring this awareness to our readers.

And no, I don’t follow every advice given in Complete Wellbeing—it’s not even designed that way. It is structured in a way that allows us to choose the thoughts and ideas that resonate within and then experiment with them to find our individual truths. Knowledge can be transferred, but experience has to be gained firsthand. No matter how sound the advice, no one else can live my life for me. And what’s more, there’s no “ideal life”… there’s only a quest to learn, to grow and to evolve into a greater version of oneself.  It’s this quest that I am learning to cherish. What about you?

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And when we accumulate knowledge, what do we do? Nothing changes inside. The being remains absolutely unaffected. Just like dust, information gathers around you—just like dust gathering around a mirror: the mirror remains the same, only it loses its mirroring quality. What you know through the mind makes no difference—your consciousness remains the same. In fact it becomes worse, because accumulated knowledge is just like dust around your mirroring consciousness; the consciousness reflects less and less and less.

The more you know, the less aware you become. When you are completely filled with scholarship, borrowed knowledge, you are already dead. Then nothing comes to you as your own. Everything is borrowed and parrot-like.

Borrowed knowledge is dangerous

Mind is a parrot. I have heard—it happened in the days of Joseph Stalin—that a man, a very prominent communist, came to the Moscow police station and reported that his parrot was missing. Because this man was a very prominent communist, the chief at the police station inquired about the parrot, for it was significant and had to be searched for. In his inquiries he asked, “Does the parrot talk?”

The communist, the comrade, felt a slight fear, and then he said, “Yes, he talks. But note it down: whatsoever political opinions he has, they are completely his own.”

But how can a parrot have opinions of its own? A parrot cannot have opinions of its own—and neither can the mind, because mind is a mechanism. A parrot is more alive than a mind. Even a parrot may have some opinions of its own, but the mind cannot. Mind is a computer, a biocomputer. It accumulates. It is never original, it cannot be. Whatsoever it has is borrowed, taken from others.

Beware of hidden ignorance

You become original only when you transcend mind. When the mind is dropped, and the consciousness faces existence directly, immediately, moment to moment in contact with existence, you become original. Then, for the first time, you are authentically your own.

Otherwise all ideas are borrowed. You may quote scriptures, you may know by heart all the Vedas, the Koran, the Gita, The Bible, but that makes no difference—they are not your own. And knowledge that is not your own is dangerous, more dangerous than ignorance, because it is a hidden ignorance, and you will not be able to see that you are deceiving yourself. You are carrying false coins and thinking that you are a rich man, carrying false stones and thinking that they are Kohinoors. Sooner or later your poverty will be revealed. Then you will be shocked. This happens whenever you die, whenever death comes near. In the shock that death gives to you, suddenly you become aware that you have not gained anything—because only that is gained which is gained in being.

Knowledge must be transcended

You have accumulated fragments of knowledge from here and there, you may have become a great encyclopedia, but that is not the point; and particularly for those who are in search of truth, that is a barrier, not a help. Knowledge has to be transcended.

When there is no knowledge, knowing happens, because knowing is your quality—the quality of consciousness. It is just like a mirror: the mirror reflects whatsoever is there; consciousness reflects the truth that is always in front of you, just at the tip of your nose. But the mind is in between—and the mind goes on chattering, and the truth remains just in front of you and the mind goes on chattering. And you go with the mind. You miss. Mind is a great missing.

There are no shortcuts while seeking truth

Knowledge is borrowed, realise this. The very realisation becomes a dropping of it. You don’t have to do anything. Simply realise that whatsoever you know you have heard, you have not known it. You have read it, you have not realised it; it is not a revelation to you, it is a conditioning of the mind. It has been taught to you—you have not learned it. Truth can be learned, cannot be taught. Learning means being responsive to whatsoever is around you—that which is, to be responsive to it. This is a great learning, but not knowledge.

There is no way to find truth—except through finding it. There is no short cut to it. You cannot borrow, you cannot steal, you cannot deceive, to get to it. There is simply no way unless you are without any mind within you—because mind is a wavering, mind is a continuous trembling; mind is never unmoving, it is a movement. It is just like a breeze, continuously flowing, and the flame goes on wavering. When mind is not there the breeze stops, and the flame becomes unmoving. When your consciousness is an unmoving flame, you know the truth. You have to learn how not to follow the mind.

Stop seeking truth from another

Nobody can give you the truth, nobody, not even a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna—nobody can give it to you. And it is beautiful that nobody can give it to you, otherwise it would become a commodity in the market. If it can be given, then it can be sold also. If it can be given, then it can be stolen also. If it can be given then you can take it from your friend, borrow it.

It is beautiful that truth is not transferable in any way. Unless you reach it, you cannot reach. Unless you become it, you never have it. In fact, it is not something you can have. It is not a commodity, a thing, a thought. You can be it, but you cannot have it.

Truth can never be possessed

Truth can never be possessed. There are two commodities which can be possessed: thoughts and things. Things can be possessed, thoughts can be possessed—truth is neither. Truth is being. You can become it, but you cannot possess it. You cannot have it in your safe, you cannot have it in your book, you cannot have it in your hand. When you have it, you are it. You become truth. It is not a concept, it is being itself.

Excerpted from And The Flowers Showered Courtesy: Osho International Foundation; osho.com

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