LIFE – Let It Flow Easy!!

…So the real question for me and my practice and journey since then has been to make the walls of my heart smooth not by isolating myself, not by running away from the stimulus which would continue to knock on my doors every now and then. I had to fully participate, be passionate, be engaged in the drama of life and still not let it touch the inner me, not let it penetrate the sacred space of my heart mind. This basically meant, I had to be vulnerable and not indifferent, I had to be in touch with all my emotions, become more and more aware of my thoughts and question the source of my belief systems, be open to meet my deep hidden expectations, face my fears and then walk towards them, be more accepting of who I was every single day.  My teacher showed me the path on how to become a lotus in the mud. He summarized the entire work flow for me in 7 simple steps to practice Compassionate Detachment. 

Step 1 : You are TOTALLY responsible for how you experience life. 

This meant that I had to accept the law of duality. Along with the positives, I had to accept the negatives. I had to accept the mud – because without the mud, my growth would not be possible. I had to accept that success or failure, life or death, were two sides of the same coin. Just like love within me, I had to embrace the anger within me whenever it arose. Just like happiness, I had to embrace the sadness within me, instead of running away from it, or questioning it every time I felt low. I had to let go of any aversion I had – the biggest one included being averse to toxicity in people’s behaviour. I had to practice being grateful – grateful for every breath, for every inhalation was incomplete without exhalation.    

And as I continued to do that, I noticed that I had started becoming more and more equanimous. The moments of sadness or low points, passed away just like the happy moments did. “This too shall pass” was the mantra I used initially to train my mind when it came to low points and then I started applying the Mantra everyday. As I did that, I also noticed that I was more and more living in the present, rather than worrying about the future or tormenting myself for all the things or decisions taken , the outcome of which had not turned out the way I expected them to.  I had learnt to go through the bends of the river called life.   

Step 2 : You are constantly interacting with whatever is around you, influencing it and being influenced by it. It is a game. 

As I started becoming more aware, I realized that all of life is nothing but an interaction, a relationship with self and the others, the environment, trees, birds, animals, stars, sun, moon, oceans etc etc. We can’t experience ourselves, if we did not have the external world, or the relationships. Emotions and feelings of love, jealousy, anger, gratitude or inadequacy would not arise in absence of the stimulus. It’s always a give and take. There is always cause and effect. And this is what Life is all about – an experience and the idea is to live it fully. This is why we come here – to LIVE, to inspire each other. 

Step 3 : You can only control yourself, not the external world. 

This one helped me understand and practice that I had absolutely no control over how other people responded or perceived information.  My only  point of control was my inner world. It reminded me of the story of Mark and his dog-  Max ( for recap of the story refer Ways To Live -I & II write ups). Max had a mind of his own. Other people have a mind of their own. What we can control is our thoughts, our actions. We can either choose to respond or re-act ( repeat the same action which produces results we do not want or like). But we have no control over the outcome. So let go the desire to control. As an erstwhile perfectionist who took immense pride in being one, it took me a while to realize that it had taken away the freedom within me, had added more stress and anxiety and had taken away the pleasure of doing without worrying about the outcome. 

But the biggest learning for me here was to have a sense of acceptance of wherever others were in their journey of awakening, having a sense of acceptance of friends, family, co-workers, or public at large for who they were, ignorant or awakened. It awakened within me more compassion, more love for others and also evoked a deeper sense of desire to help alleviate people of their immense suffering because they were trying so very hard to control other people, trying so very hard for other people to invest and buy their belief systems. This also taught me patience to let people be and not impose my ideas or opinions onto them.  This was also about becoming more aware of the fact that the seed of the real truth, wisdom is within each one of us. It is just that layers of conditioning ( given and self created) that have to be peeled off.   

Step 4 : You can always change your thoughts. 

One message that my teacher drilled into my head was “There are absolutely no choice-less moments.” Every moment, how we process our thoughts, defines the quality of that moment. Whether we choose to act from fear, or wisdom, from a mind of a Master or a victim, the choice is always there. Every moment brings in a new opportunity for us to change if  there is something that we do not wish to experience or bring in to our lives. Life doesn’t change unless we choose to think differently. That Success of failure are neither final nor fatal. We can always change our destiny by managing our thoughts. I frequently remind myself of Lao Tzu’s quote ” Watch your thoughts, they become your words, Watch your words, they become your actions, Watch your actions, they become your habit, Watch your habit, they become your character and watch your character for that becomes your destiny”.  

This also meant that I had to be more aware, more conscious of the blind spots I had, where I refused to change my views of something. It meant that I had to learn to be an empty cup every single time I looked at something. In simple words, I had to practice letting go of my attachment to my thoughts, my ideas and belief systems. A Relationship Counsellor once said, that in her years of numerous counselling sessions, the one thing she figured out was that there are more than two hundred ways of doing dishes.  

Step 5 : There are no victims. 

This is radical. If we truly can understand the Law of Karma, the law of cause and effect, we would understand that in reality there are no victims and that Karma is not a law of punishment as misunderstood by a lot of people. Everyone is out here to face their own individual Karma, family Karma, Society Karma, Country Karma and Earth Karma (collective Karma). I noticed this more in the current Covid Pandemic. In the name of development, human beings have been brutal to the lungs of the earth – our earth’s green belt, our forests. And the COVID virus has now turned to be brutal to human being’s lungs. What we sow, is what we reap. We sow banana seeds, we will get banana tree and not apple tree. 

But the question was how do we practice this when it comes to others – for others do cause us pain, hurt either through words or actions.  We do tend it to feel like victims. The key practice for me here was three fold. 

1) to practice non judgement ( for recap read the story of the old man and his horse under the Blog title Failure or Feedback). 

2) to stop the blame game and go back to step no 1. I am totally responsible for my experience. The choice to be a Master or victim is always there at any given moment. 

3) practice forgiveness ( for recap read the write up under the Blog Title Forgiveness). 

If someone hurt me, I had to practice breaking the compulsive desire of labelling it as bad, horrible, or sad. I had to acknowledge and accept that yes the action of the other had caused me hurt in that moment. But to continue reliving the hurt and bring more suffering to myself by having to repeatedly talk about it, get consumed questioning that how could he or she hurt me, why would they do such a thing, or why did they not stand by me is pointless because that moment has passed. It’s a past event, and I had to remind myself what my teacher had told me that “the past is dead, except in your head.” It was now up to me how I chose to respond to my next course of action,  weighing all my options. But here taking action meant that I had to first practice forgiveness. 

Step 6 : Whatever you have thought of, and have attributed feelings to, and then taken action on, will crystallize. 

The Law of attraction couldn’t have been simplified further. We do not attract what we want, but we attract who we are. So who we are is a function of our thoughts, feelings and actions. If our thoughts are focused on what’s missing in our life, it is natural for us to feel inadequate. Inadequacy reflects low self esteem and any actions taken from a low self esteem will never result in amplifying our self esteem. So if we want to experience more love in our life, then it will never crystallize from a space of lack of love for the self, for we can’t give to others, what we don’t have. 

Step 7 : You are more powerful that you believe. 

This is a reminder to see oneself as a marvelous piece of art, unique and special in its own way, of the creator. Just like an artist cannot experience oneself without his or her creation, piece of work / art, humans are The Creators creation, to experience itself – every single individual equally unique, special and important in this universal web and a necessary part of Existence.We are not separate from nature, we are part of the nature, we are part of the SOURCE particle, the God particle, each particle with its own unique thumb impression. We are all original and unique creation of the Artist called God, Source, Universe, co-creating our own unique individual creation called experiences, none above or below each other. So “Be an original and don’t be a copy“, like my teacher used to say, when it comes to shedding our sheeple mentality.