Dear friends, welcome to Mohanji Speaks. These are answers to questions from listeners. Thank you for sending them. Keep sending them. I will try to answer them as best as I can.
Speaker: This question is from a listener, and it’s actually a series of questions. So we’ll take them one at a time. The first section is around sensations in the body. How do you accept these without judgment?
Mohanji: In one word, the answer is witness hood. Let us compare your body to a car. What is the purpose of the car? Utility; for travel, from one location to the other. What is the utility of the body? To experience the earth, and various aspects of the earth; the journey is from birth to death. When you are going through various sensations, various emotions, various experiences, when you have various expressions, just witness them all, because that’s not the end. They come and they go; witness them, enjoy them, appreciate them, so that you will always be stable. You don’t have to be involved in it. At the same time, you can experience it. Experience life as it comes, with gratitude; look at everything gratefully, even anger, hatred, jealousy; look at everything as flavours of life. But you’re not any of them. You have nothing to do with them. They’re just experiences, various flavours you are experiencing. It does not matter what the cause is, take the experiences as neutral, as they are happening. They come; they go. You’re watching.
Speaker: Along the same lines, the question asked is, when is it important and necessary to express feelings? How do you prevent abuse? And is it enough to just acknowledge these feelings and write them down, rather than actually addressing them to a person?
Mohanji: The situations of life have reasons for it; the causes. One of the major causes of every experience of life is patterns. Patterns have their roots in some kind of suppression, fear, guilt, and such emotions. One other reason for these events of life is desires, inclinations, tendencies, fears and concepts, or other aspects connected to various aspects of existence. So they are within us, and corresponding experience happens in life. What is the best way to handle them? First of all, accept them. Okay, this is my situation, and unique to me. And then, what is the best that I can do in this situation? If discussion will work, definitely discuss with another person and sort it out. If acceptance will work, accept it. If something has to be changed, say, for example, relocation, removal, or any other aspect which takes you towards becoming peaceful, which helps you to be peaceful, that’s fine. But violence is not alright. If somebody is expressing violence, and you also become violent, it only aggravates the situation, it’s only adding oil or fuel to fire.
Firstly, have awareness of the situation, of each situation as it comes; look at it objectively, accept it as it is. Then, ask the question, “Now what can I do here? What is the right action?” Always choose discussion first. Discuss peacefully. Sometimes the other person is not able to listen properly. In that case, you may have to use a different method where he listens, maybe through a friend, or someone he or she respects. Thus, you can convey the message properly. Else, it can be through your own kindness and compassion; through your own lifestyle, you can transform people. This happens. Some people do not get love at home, but they get enough and more love from the society because of their kindness and compassion, because of their disposition, because of their orientation and expression, they get love. So, instead of expecting love from everybody, you choose to experience or you choose to express your highest potential. That will fetch a lot of love and respect from the world. That will compensate for your situation.
Speaker: And then about certain situations; this question is about stopping, engaging in enjoyable activities, sensual touching or sexual… and a view that a dogmatic approach to enlightenment is dangerous, as the person is trying to kill pleasures.
Mohanji: You cannot kill anything. Sensual, sexual and what is related to senses is usually connected to instincts. The primary instinct of every being on earth is survival. Survival has two major aspects. One is food, for sustaining the body. And the second is sex to sustain the species. For all the species on earth, both of these are not difficult to handle, because they go about their ways, just as their instinct leads them. But for human beings, because we have a potential for higher awareness and liberation, we consider some of these as a problem. They are not problems. They are essential necessities; the body needs them, the species needs them; we have to handle them in its own merit. Whatever is connected to your body should not be kept in your mind. Whatever has to be handled by your mind, let it be so. What is required for the body, such as food, should be given to the body, when you have the appetite; when the body asks for it. Sexuality is also essential in our system, otherwise, without sexuality, there are no species. These are all essential aspects of existence. By suppressing them, denying them, or thinking that it doesn’t exist, or that you have grown beyond it, what happens is, they come back with more energy and more impact. I always recommend accepting, because that’s the right way to handle everything. Accept whatever your conditions are, whatever your situations are. And if you accept everything in life; I have these inclinations; I have these tendencies; I have these desires, and that’s fine. All people have them and address them with a cool head. Don’t deny it and say that I don’t have it and you try to pretend to the world that you are beyond all this; it won’t work because no pretension ever works. Pretensions do not work!
When pretension happens, suppression happens. Suppression happens, then, postponement happens. It will come back in its full capacity at another stage. It’s important that we handle everything of life, anything connected to instincts, anything connected to desires, tendencies and inclinations with its own merit and respect it. We have to respect ourselves. We have to respect our feelings and emotions.
Then how do you overcome it? By focusing on something much larger, much higher; so that the lower drops off. That’s the way to completely eradicate certain things from your system. Keep your focus steady or a larger goal, such as your own personal growth, through increasing the awareness in the society to something much larger, such as you have the right to be peaceful inside, and nothing outside can touch you. If that kind of a situation can be conveyed properly with your own life, leading by example; that would be a good goal in this lifetime because the potential of being a human is well used. That way you can come above everything. And you can attach yourself or connect yourself to a very large goal, where eventually liberation would be the only option, and it will happen.
Thank you for listening to this podcast. Do contemplate on it. Do discuss with your friends and let me know what you feel. If you have further questions, do send them to me.
Thank you. This is Mohanji for you.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopal
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