Watch Your Thoughts

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Watch your thoughts and hold on to faith

Watch them, do not participate, do not energize them. The more you energize them, the more they stay. Also, as we evolve into silence and enlightenment, year by year or lifetime by lifetime, all our fears have to come and go. Even if one small fear lies in our system, it traps us back to Earth, it brings us back. So it is very simple. Start looking at yourself. Look at your own mind and simply watch your thoughts. Thoughts are just like our children, we have no idea what is coming until it comes. We cannot predict! Once the thought occurs, we understand it. We can neither control it nor decide what to think! We believe that we decide, but usually, thoughts flow on their own. So, watch the thoughts. There is a rush of thoughts in the mind. Say, a policeman is standing at the gate, as a crowd enters the stadium. Even though the policeman does nothing, people form a queue just because a policeman is watching them. People start behaving themselves. Just like that, thoughts start to get in line. We are not doing anything, neither judging nor censoring, just closing our eyes and watching our thoughts. This is possible; this is a meditation and can lead to perpetual states. Thus when you keep watching your thoughts for some time, your thoughts start falling in line. You can’t do this in one day. Take your time, there is no hurry, nobody is going to watch you. Slowly, as you continue to keep watching your thoughts, what will happen is there will be small gaps between thoughts. This is exactly what we are afraid of in normal life. We don’t like gaps of thoughts, and that is why we try to fill them in with activity, either mental activity or physical activity. In some way we try to fill in the gaps, but we start noticing that there is a gap between the thoughts and we start falling in love with the gap, slowly. So when this gap occurs, this silence happens, and the first reaction is that our fears start surfacing. Our fears have remained suppressed, because when we are hyperactive they cannot surface. However, in silence, the first thing that happens is that the fears come out. In fact these fears come out from each cell and sometimes it’s terrible! Again you have to hold on with faith. This is why sometimes Gurus help. You trust in the Guru, you have faith, so you hold on. A fear which has remained trapped has to go through your mind, please understand it. It cannot come out in any other manner. Something which you have to experience in a dream has to be experienced in a dream; you cannot bring it to the physical state. Similarly, you cannot take a physical experience to a dream state. You cannot swap these things. This is how we are programmed. So when we experience silence, when the gap increases between thoughts, and we start loving this silence, we have to face lots of fears. Sometimes you will be surprised at the number of fears. We might have no inkling that so many of them exist! These are not always fears from this life; they are fears from many lives. They have been suppressed and remain stored in our cellular memory. As they come out, allow them to go. Simply witness it. How do you witness? Be in the spine. If you participate it is possible that sometimes you feel that these are not mine or that you start feeling scared of them. If you do, they get again trapped and are pushed down. The moment you touch the fear, it goes down. You have to just watch it, not do anything. Then they come out and go through your mind. As the fears escape, you will start feeling lighter. Please don’t think this can happen in a period of six months or a year. It’s a process. Otherwise, everyone would have attained enlightenment quickly. So remain patient and go through the process. As the process happens, the fears completely vanish over a period of time. Then, freedom happens, liberation happens. When the fears vanish, you will be in perpetual silence. The mind will be extremely calm because along with the fears, many desires which are of no use also leave. So when desires go away, fears leave, you empty yourself and then what happens? You observe the silence, like a watchdog, and then God fills in, the God element fills in. You start feeling being God, being Shiva, being Jesus and this is exactly the consciousness we are talking about! This is exactly what we want to achieve. Then we feel, we understand and we realize, “Aham Brahmasmi”, “I am Brahman, the Infinite Reality”. So fears have to be tackled through observation.

Q: At the feet of the Guru and God how can one end the prarabda karma?
Mohanji: Prarabda karma is a set of desires, which you chose, before you took birth. This is why you were born. A guru brings the fire of awareness so that you can easily handle your karma. Say you are bicycling uphill, the Guru oils the bicycle so that it becomes effortless. Then, of course there is the protection factor…
However, please understand, there is a big difference between an Acharya and a Guru.
Many times, people say practise this for some time. So we keep experimenting, and trial and errors take a lot of time in life. Some people search their entire life for the path and they exit without finding the path. Then they have to come back. Of course it is possible to have many lives, so it is not a problem. When people search their entire lives and do not find a path, they feel disillusioned. You can see this quite often in the Himalayas. People try various paths, various Gurus, but still do not know their way out. Then they may decide to teach (HA, HA) so that they feel better off, just joking….!

Q: How to find peace when the mind is disturbed?

Mohanji: Watch it. Do not participate. Only when you energize, does it become alive. As the worries are happening, watch them. This is when faith comes into play. How deep is your faith? Usually, we say we have faith and we say we surrender. However when you surrender something at the feet of God, it should leave your mind. It should not remain there. Don’t hold on to it and then surrender. People say Baba I leave it to you and then they take it back. Baba cannot work on it because you have not left it behind. Baba says, “If you leave it at my feet, I will take care of it”. So LEAVE IT! Don’t take it home. Surrender should be complete. Do not partially surrender. It is of no use. If you do not, you might as well carry it home. If you can handle it, please do, it is not a problem. However, if you wish to surrender something, surrender completely. Then you are relieved of it. It’s akin to saying, “It’s not my baby anymore, now you take care of it.” This works very well, because such powerful entities like Jesus or Baba can perform miracles. However, you should allow it to happen. Faith should be absolute, not partial. You cannot say, “If you do this, I will have faith in you, otherwise I won’t”. Faith should be absolute, with awareness.

Q: Is it “Saburi” (patience)?
Not Saburi… as there is no faith, one’s faith is a shaky faith. Understand that there is no degree of faith. Either you have faith or you don’t. Having ten percent faith is useless! Either I have faith or I have no faith. Our mind can categorize in many ways. Saburi is not there. That is why Baba kept repeating Saburi. Have patience. We want everything happening yesterday! As if we chose that way!

Forgiveness

Q : How to seek true forgiveness and how to forgive others, when saying sorry to the person concerned physically does not work ? What do we do in this situation?
Mohanji: Forgiveness is actually unburdening and helps liberation.
When someone is agitated, if you ask them to forgive you or you say that you forgive them, their response may create more emotions. The first level of creation is always the thought. You start forgiving at that level. If you talk, it might actually create another situation. Words are always in your control. As I said before, you do not control your thoughts but with words, you do have control, because you can choose what to say. Likewise, with actions, you definitely have control. You can choose how to act and what to act on. So start forgiving at the thought level. It’s a mental wave and creation happens there. So you keep forgiving the person who hurt you or whom you are hurting or you think you have hurt. Start forgiving in the mind, “I, so and so, forgive this person, please forgive me and release me too.” Thus it is unhooking. You have to keep unhooking the person or they cannot leave. Suppose I tie your leg to mine, I also cannot walk! This binds two persons or a set of people. Thus forgiveness should be total release. And it should first happen at the mind level. If you keep repeating it at the mind level, the vibration reaches that person. It is subtle, but it does actually reach the person. Some people say Manasa Pooja, i.e. that Pooja in the mind is more powerful than an actual ritual. This is because if the mind is traveling while doing the ritual, then the ritual is of no use. However when the mind is doing the Pooja, it is more effective. Why? Because the mind is constant on the activity. Thus the mind has to be present for any result. Any ritual which is done mechanically is just an activity, it has no value. So the first level of forgiveness is in the mind. When the situation becomes conducive to speaking, you will know. Till such time do it in the mind, and do not say it. When you are ready to speak and the other person is ready to receive, you can sit down and talk. Otherwise further emotions are created. Emotion is the glue that attaches a thought, a word or an action to the subconscious, and that creates Karma and unfulfilled desires. That is why I always say, while the body is moving with time, from 1 o’clock to 2 o’clock to 3 o’clock why don’t you take your mind with you? Why do you leave it behind? Take the mind with you, and then it will not be stuck with events. Your mind will be free and you can keep traveling ahead. This is good and you are staying liberated. You are moving with all your properties and belongings. In contrast, if you leave all your belongings in various places, you have to go back and collect them! This takes time and energy and also creates agony, at times. Thus whenever your mind is stuck with a past event, there is guilt or fear or inconvenience at the least! Leave the past behind. The past is over, you can never go back and correct anything. Who is to say that we should have done better? Others can say it, but others do not know you. You did well in the past. You did the best that you could. No one does things deciding that he or she would like to mess them up, right? We all try to do our best, every time. So accept that! I did my best at that point in time and it is good enough. Move on. The future may show that it was a blunder. However it is alright, because my awareness only gave me so much capacity. What can I do? My intention was to lift 100 kilos, while my capacity was only 10 kilos! I can only use my capacity. I cannot use someone else’s capacity. I cannot be Sylvester Stallone, nor can Sylvester Stallone be me! This is how the world is created. Every person is unique, they have a value, a function and they are supposed to be themselves, not someone else. However sometimes we do not allow that to happen. Thus forgiveness is first of all an understanding and the first level of forgiveness is in the mind, followed by words and after that comes action. Thus just like many thoughts, fewer words, lesser action, there should be more forgiveness in the mind, fewer words and lesser action. Before the action occurs, the situation should be sorted out. Then, it’s liberation.

Transcribed by Vidya Rajagopalan
Edited by Caroline Moscato