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again you have hardened yourself. The secret is to renounce nothing, cling to nothing, enjoy everything and allow it to pass, to flow. How? Through many hours of observing the rottenness, the corrupt nature of an attachment.
You generally concentrate on the thrill, the flash of pleasure that it brings. But contemplate the anxiety, the pain, the unfreedom; simultaneously contemplate the joy, the peace and freedom that are yours each time an attachment drops. Then you will stop looking back...
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Every time you find yourself irritated or angry with someone, the one to look at is not that person but yourself.
“What does this irritation tell me about myself?”
First look into the very real possibility that the reason why this person’s defects or so-called defects annoy you is that you have them yourself.
But you have repressed them and so are projecting them unconsciously into the other.
pointing out something in your life and in yourself that you are refusing to see?
You become irritated with this person because he/she is not living up to the expectations that have been programmed into you. Maybe you have a right to demand that he or she live up to your programming, as for instance, when he or she is cruel or unjust,
Irritation will only cloud your perception and make your action less effective. Everyone
How foolish of you to demand that someone else live up to standards and norms that your parents programmed into you!
the judgment. This thing or person is good or bad, ugly or beautiful.
If you get caught up in the judgments of people around you, you are eating the fruit of tension and insecurity and anxiety, because when today they call you beautiful and you are elated, tomorrow they will call you ugly and you will be depressed.
How easily we are taken in by the judgment of other people and then form an image of ourselves based on this judgment.
As a matter of fact you also have to be aware of the judgments that you make about yourself, because even those are generally based on the value systems that you picked up from the people around you.
So the moment you accept that compliment and you allow yourself to enjoy it, you will give control of yourself to that person. You will go to great lengths in order to continue to be special to this person.
You will be in constant fear lest he meets someone who will become special to him and thus you will be dislodged from the special position you occupy in his life.
And you will be constantly dancing to his tunes, living up to his expectations, and in doing...
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You have made yourself dependent on him for your happiness, for you have made your happiness de...
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What a wearisome way to live! Suddenly fear comes into your life, fear that the image will be destroyed, and if what you seek is fearlessness and freedom, you must let go of this.
Apply this now to every image that people have of you and they tell you that you are a genius or wise or good or holy, and you enjoy that compliment and in that minute you lose your freedom; because now you will be constantly striving to retain that opinion.
You will fear to make mistakes, to be yourself, to do or say anything that will spoil the image. You have lost the freedom to make a fool of yourself, to be laughed at and to be ridiculed, to do and say whatever feels right to you rather than what fits in with the image others have of you.
So the first ingredient of love is to really see the other.
The second ingredient is equally important to see yourself, to ruthlessly flash the light of awareness on your motives, your emotions, your needs, your dishonesty, your self-seeking, your tendency to control and manipulate.
For you will have attained a mind and a heart that is alert, vigilant, clear, sensitive, a clarity of perception, a sensitivity that will draw out of you an accurate, appropriate response to every situation at every moment.
When you first experience this kind of sensitivity you are likely to experience terror. For all your defenses will be torn down, your dishonesty exposed, the protected walls around you burned.
That is why the most painful act the human being can perform, the act that he dreads the most is the act of seeing. It is in that act of seeing that love is born, or rather more accurately, that act of seeing is Love.
your perception of them is clouded by your need to get your drug.
It is only in this aloneness, this utter solitude, that dependence and desire will die, and the capacity to love is born. For one no longer sees others as means to satisfy one’s addiction.
Can you imagine a life in which you refuse to enjoy a single word of approval and appreciation, or to lean on someone’s arm; in which you depend on no one emotionally, so no one has the power to make you happy or miserable anymore; you refuse to need any particular person or to be special to anyone or to call anyone your own? Even the birds of the air have their nests and the foxes their holes, but you will have nowhere to rest your head in your journey through life.
No, if you wish to break out of the cycle and into the world of love, you must strike while the attachment is alive and raw, not when you have outgrown it. And you must strike not with the sword of renunciation, for that kind of mutilation only hardens, but with the sword of awareness.
What must you be aware of? Three things: First, you must see the suffering that this drug is causing you, the ups and downs, the thrills, the anxieties and disappointments, the boredom to which it must inevitably lead. Second, you must realize what this drug is cheating you out of, namely, the freedom to love and to enjoy every minute and everything in life. Third, you must understand how, because of your addiction and your programming, you have invested the object of your attachment with a beauty and a value it simply does not have:
Happy events make life delightful but they do not lead to self-discovery and growth and freedom.
Whoever or whatever caused those feelings was your teacher, because they revealed so much to you about yourself that you probably did not know. And they offered you an invitation and a challenge to self-understanding, self-discovery, and therefore to growth and life and freedom.
Most people when they feel the stirring of this discontent within their hearts either run away from it and drug themselves with the fevered pursuit of work and social life and friendship; or they channelize the discontent into social work, literature, music, the so-called creative pursuits that make them settle for reform, when what is needed is revolt. These
people even though they are full of activity are not really alive at all: They are dead, content to live in the land of the dead.
Young or old, most of us are discontented merely because we want something—more knowledge, a better job, a finer car, a bigger salary. Our discontent is based upon our desire for “the more.” It is only because we want something more that most of us are discontented. But I am not talking about that kind of discontent. It is the desire for “the more” that prevents clear thinking, whereas if we are discontented, not because we want something, but without knowing what we want; if we are dissatisfied with our jobs, with making money, with seeking position and power, with tradition, with what we
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we don’t accept or follow, but question, investigate, penetrate, there is an insight out of which comes creativity, joy.
They may bring some relief, but the relief will be short-lived. So it is not worth the energy and time you spend in improving your physical appearance or making more money or getting further reassurances of love from your friends. Second, this fact will lead you to tackle the problem where it really is, inside your head. Think of the people who in exactly the same condition that you find yourself in now would not feel the slightest insecurity. There are such people. Therefore the problem lies not with reality outside of you but with
you, in your programming.
The mere realization that you don’t have to do this, that doing this really solves nothing, and that the emotional turmoil is caused solely by you and your culture—this realization alone distances you from the problem and brings considerable relief.
So, say to yourself: “If there is anything I can do about the future, right now, I shall do it. Then I’m going to just leave it alone and settle down to enjoy the present moment, because all the experience of my life has shown me that I can only cope with things when they are present, not before they occur.
always gives me the resources and the energy I need to deal with them.”
For life is on the move and you are stuck, life flows and you have become stagnant, life is flexible and free and you are rigid and frozen. Life carries all things away and you crave for stability and permanence.
