Friends, I am inviting you to walk this path together so we can work on our conscious goals which we have individually identified. I see you did extremely hard work, waking up at four in the morning, going all the way in the meditations and activities throughout the day and now sitting together at almost midnight. Throughout the day, in this duration, whatever you found good and useful to apply in day to day life, once you found it and you decided that it is good, then do not postpone. Either here and now, or never. If we postpone, then it will be postponed again and that will be postponed again. The postponement will go on and on and on. So anything which we find good, we should apply it immediately. I would like to share a story regarding this.
There once was a sannyasi, and the tradition was that whoever goes to meet him will take three rounds and bow down and only then would have any dialogue or conversation with him. So one person went to meet the sannyasi and he did not take three rounds, he straight away went to meet him and asked the question he had. How to know truth? And the sannyasi asked him to at least complete the protocols. The man responded, “What if in taking three rounds I die? And I die without knowing the truth, without learning the process how to know the truth. I will do the protocol, but please first tell me how to know truth.” That is the kind of thrust required for any method we have chosen and identified as good. If we have that thrust, then life becomes heaven, here and now. If we postpone, it’s hell, here and now and it will remain hell. So this life is hell and after life would be another hell. Whatever good we find, we immediately act on it and use it to bring change within ourselves. Use any source that offers something good,the opportunities to learn something good are endless, including learning from our enemy. In fact, enemies teach us more, constantly they are doing our audit. A Saddhu called Kabir Dasi used to say, “Keep the one who criticizes so close, like in your living room because he will keep telling us the facts. Then it is up to us, if we find it useful, if we correct ourselves and work on it.”
So whatever good we identify, we act on it. Take a step a day, work towards going to the peak instead of going to the gutter. One step at a time. How to do this practically? For example, if you have identified that talking is a waste of time, then before saying anything we should ask ourselves, “Am I going to say anything that adds value or is it going to be another waste and I will remain in this process of wasting time? Why should I talk?” So creating awareness and asking ourselves before we automatically speak would help. Write down the challenges which you face. Start with the family. The family bothers us, that matters, they are deeply connected. Prioritize the challenges with them and work on it to resolve it. Any stone thrown at you, you convert it into a milestone, see it as an opportunity to work on yourself. We come to know something new about us. That person irritates us and that irritation is coming from within us. So we get an opportunity to respond, rather than reacting. We get to see if we are really responding or reacting. Are we an echo point or we are responding? An echo point is when you make a sound and the sound comes back. So identify what are the critical issues in the family. Find out what bothers you and then work on it. Then you can identify other issues too. What are the issues which are bothering us and what are the solutions for it. If you honestly work on them, solutions are very simple. In our clouded mind, in our ambitions, in our desires for more money, we unnecessarily make it very complicated. Fearing the scarcity of tomorrow, creating some sort of security and then hankering for that security to remain will happen throughout the whole life and we forget about the here and now. Anything which we find not good, it’s always good to wait. It is mentioned that when George Gurdjieff’s father was dying, he called his son. He never taught him anything, but before leaving the body he wanted to teach him and this is the only thing he taught him. He said, “Anything you find or you feel is not good, wait twenty four hours before doing it. This is the only teaching I have for you, nothing else.” He left the body and this is the only teaching he gave to George Gurdjieff. Wait twenty four hours before doing that which is not good. So if we wait twenty four hours, then what arises in the moment and we would have acted on it immediately or in an impulse, maybe anger, frustration, anxiety, gets cooled down. And then we don’t act without awareness, we act with awareness.
After twenty four hours, if you find it appropriate you can do it with as much energy as you have. So this is the first and foremost, not postponing something you find good. Immediately act on it and then continue step by step. Take a step forward and then go on, don’t just rest on it and then again take a step backwards.
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