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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Kapil Gupta
You have had moments of complete bliss. Infinitesimal moments in which you felt light, peaceful, and completely joyous. They might have occurred completely independent of the circumstance in which you found yourself. Perhaps while driving along a stretch of highway. Or while cooking dinner. Or even in the midst of a conflict. Such experiences are often discussed in the setting of athletics. Some have described it as The Zone or a Flow State.
In such otherworldly experiences, it is not that the mind has been calmed or tamed. It is that, for a small fraction of time, the mind has disappeared!
This is the state of No-Mind. The Japanese call it Mushin.
Man is a very adaptable creature. If he lives in prison, he can adapt to the prison. If he lives in misery, he will adapt to the misery. No matter how grave the situation may be, he eventually adapts to it and makes it his home.
We become enslaved by our minds because we believe that we are the mind.
Understand this: Man will take any opportunity to avoid that which is most immediate in his life. He will do anything but the task at hand. He will look at anything besides that which stands inches from his face.
He is an escapist. He is a fantasy-seeker. Illusions are his drug. And reality is of no use to him.
If you seek riches, chase them. If you seek fame, cultivate it. If you seek to be a holy man, become one. If you seek success for your children, help them attain it. If you seek to help the needy, do it. Do whatever you wish, freely and completely. Without the guilt of morality. Or the burden of should’s and shouldn’ts. Are some of these roads a dead-end? Most certainly. But that does not mean that any man or any God should stop you from exercising your will.
Indeed you would. In any and all ways possible. You would flail and kick and pant and do whatever you had to do to keep your head above water. You would not ask for instructions. You would not look for a “how-to” manual or a “self-help” book. You would take matters into your own hands. And you would survive! And the reason that you would survive is because the WHAT would be clearly before you. That WHAT is your life. And because you chose Life, because the What was crystal clear, you would create the HOW for yourself.
We must, therefore, establish your What. How clear is this What? How intense is your desire for this What? Does it mean any less to you than surviving from drowning? Is this What a matter of life and death for you?
Q: My What is complete bliss. To live in joy. But I’m not sure if such a thing is possible. KG: If you are drowning in a lake, do you weigh possibility and impossibility? Or do you simply act, possibility be damned? Q: You’re right. I simply act. KG: The human being who is consumed with a particular vision does not allow “possibility” to stand in his or her way.
I will say this again: The greatest freedom that we have is the freedom to walk away from ourselves.
In becoming nothing, you have gained everything.
The single greatest obstacle to Atmamun is the presence of your manufactured self. The person that you call “myself” is the source of all your miseries. Remove this manufactured self, and you will be as free as a living God.
To be the best in the world at one’s craft is largely a journey into the recesses of one’s self, rather than a journey toward a stage. To arrive at one’s goal broken and battered and soul-less, no matter how grand the achievement, is to have arrived nowhere.
Imagine for a moment what it would feel like to Want For Nothing! To live your days invested completely in that which you love to do. Your art, your passion . . . But Without A Single Iota Of Hope. To live your life as someone who had no need to attain anything else for the remainder of his life. Whatever comes, let it come. And whatever does not, isn’t even noticed. For it was never Hoped For in the first place. Understand this: Hope Destroys!
If who you are today is not enough, it is because you don’t know who you truly are.
Live your life as a lonely stranger. As a wanderer filled with awe and wonder.
Leave everything as you found it. For none of it belongs to you.
Let the events happen around you, knowing that none of them are happening TO You. And you wi...
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One of the most useful qualities of human beings is also their poison. And this is the quality of Adaptability.
If there is one truth that I have learned, it is that unless you find it inside of Today, you will never find it inside of Tomorrow.
A man who pursues his passions and experiences his life with complete boldness has no need to search. He simply lives.
Climb the greatest mountain. Achieve all the accolades in the world. Become the greatest in your field. Achieve fame. Earn millions. And you will enjoy every bit of the journey, if and only if you understand that none of it means anything. When something has meaning, it becomes work.
A life of wild abandon is the greatest life. Leave purpose to the wind. Give yourself to your life. Surrender yourself to your inspirations. Achieve all the greatness in the world. And be willing to drop it without hesitation. This is a life of joy. This is a life of freedom.
Life is simply a joke. An absurdity. A non-linear, haphazard, and unpredictable trail that is fertile for the imagination of hallucinatory human beings.
To intellectualize life is to miss it completely. If you understand that life has no meaning, the events of your life will not affect you. You will move through the world with ease. For you will have acquired the wisdom to live life as a poetry, rather than a stale and confining prose.
In such an existence there is no such thing as contentment. For contentment is mind’s kryptonite. The Mind lives for Tomorrow. For it simply cannot live today.
The man who is in love with his trade is not a worker. He is an artist. Whether he makes a million dollars or a thousand, he is living in accordance with his nature. And thus his days are filled with joy.
The unbiased honest truth is this: Wealth, success, and luxury do not harm a man. What harms a man is the Attachment to these things.
Attachment is poison. Attachment is the source of all misery. Attachment to money, fame, ego, success, spirituality. Even attachment to family and friends.
You are a creator. And you always have been. Give yourself the permission to create.
The fact that few even ask such a question is further evidence of man’s adaptability. No matter how outrageous a result or situation is, if he is exposed to it enough times, he accepts it as the norm. He Adapts to it and files it in his brain as “normal.”
Human beings tend to become the norm that they are exposed to. This is the astonishing power of environment. You become your surroundings!
It has often been the case throughout history that those who became legends in their fields were often recluses, loners, and misfits.
Legends are created from the inside rather than the outside. They are those who simply see things in a different way. They are often rebellious. They are not inhibited by the status quo. In fact, they seek to shatter it. And they feel comfortable with their ideas. Even though the world may ridicule them.
This will save us a lot of time. You see, performance is a side effect. And if you treat it as a goal, it will elude you.
To be truly great, you must understand that the human body does not respond very well to goals or hopes or expectations. It responds to Perceptions. And the more clear cut your perceptions,
Rather than finding the thing that you can imagine yourself becoming, find the thing that you simply cannot imagine yourself Not Becoming.
When your thoughts feel like imposters. And your ideas seem like noise. And your preferences fail to move you. And your pride is easily dropped. You will experience the state of No-Mind.
When you lose yourself in the activity you are involved in, and that which seemed to be an insignificant chore now seems like the only thing in the world, you will experience the state of No-Mind.
When we begin to viscerally understand that we are not the mind, we begin to look at the mind face to face. And for those moments that we look at the mind face to face, we have transcended the mind. For in order for you to look at something, you can only look at it if you understand that you are not it. Where there was one, there is now two. And this is the beginning of Atmamun.
The Mind Cannot Be Calmed Or Tamed. It Can Only Be Transcended! And it is transcended Not through activities. It is transcended through Understanding.
You have been told to spend twenty minutes a day in meditation. To take time out of your busy day to sit and breathe. Companies now have meditation rooms and yoga mats to avail their employees of a way to “de-stress.” As I’ve mentioned, society only has the capability to reveal partial truths. And a partial truth is just as harmful as a whole untruth. For it leads to greater frustration when the partial truths does not bear fruit.
Meditation is Not an action.
Please understand this: Meditation Is About Becoming LESS Than You Ever Thought Possible.
Meditation is about forgetting yourself. Meditation is about losing yourself. Meditation is about killing the meditator.
If you train yourself to become what you are doing, you will be meditative. If you allow your activity to consume you whole, you will be meditative. Herein lies the secret to creating Masterpieces. The doer must disappear! For once the doer disappears, his masterpiece appears.
Man loves nothing more than to avoid the immediate. He loves nothing more than to abandon the practical in exchange for the romantic. He continually flows toward the path of least resistance. And it is for this reason that he achieves nothing worthwhile in his life.
If you are serious about living a peaceful life, drop all matters pertaining to the world, and pursue all matters pertaining to yourself.
