1. Just like Superman can’t see through lead, a heavy metal, when you’re heavy in a state, you can’t see things clearly. The symbology of kryptonite is about moving from a heavy planet to a light one. The fortress of solitude is a metaphor for where one retreats to in one’s mind and takes stock of things at the end of the day.
2. People say they want to be get ‘better’/ be ‘just’ or ‘kind’. But you can’t ‘be’ something – your state of being has to transform for real change.
3. How do we have an objective view of ourselves? Either we have a bloated or a deflated image of ourselves – both are generated by self-pity. Objectively, we don’t see what we are doing
4. There is a tendency is us – we tend to second-guess people’s reactions and perform accordingly. Let’s say, if the group one is in is about berating oneself or the virtue of the group is to not brag, we are doing what we can to fit in. We give ourselves licence to fail. Since we have a low standard in the group, we make it the norm and say, oh I don’t want to become a sadhu
5. If I say, ‘Visualize the situation and feel the fear…’, I’m not saying the riches will come to you. What I’m saying is you’ll find out why you want the riches. It’s not that you will get your desires, it’s that they will be gone. Mr T was living an ordinary life. We are not here to earn money for the sake of earning money
6. We should try and always look for the third option in things. We have only two ways of looking at things – black or white, negative or positive. So when something is suppressed, it is gathering momentum to express itself. And the moment you express it, you feel guilty and start suppressing again. Don’t create a circle. Life itself is an expression of suppression
7. Sit and visualize the entire event, say if you are afraid of something or you want something to happen in your life. This way, your feelings are felt completely by the system. And if this is done, the need to express is gone. This is because need was actually in a nebulous form. In the beginning, there was only sound and within that sound, the idea was there but it had not taken form. The idea is there but it can take any shape. Eg. The idea of anger can be expressed in normal anger or sex, or if it not suppressed, it can be turned into understanding
8. When I say begin with honesty, I’m not saying swing between ideas that don’t exist. These ideas have a form and are restricted in their form
9. Don’t take things I say literally. When I say, ‘it has to be struggled with’, I’m not saying ‘it has to be controlled’. That’s not what I’m saying, but you only hear suppression and expression. There is a third way but for that to happen, forget the language of the world and stop indulging in the sensuality of forms. In the end, if you can’t recognize language – if it sounds alien and stupid to you – it means you have made progress
10. There’s a myth going around in 3srb circles that if you do the Gayatri, you will invite pain into your life. That is true because the falseness will go away. That is what people call pain
11. Concentrate on incidents where you get flustered. The automatic response is to blame others. We don’t pay attention, so we speed up and we are speeded up, so we don’t pay attention
12. In avoiding pain, we feel it more. But if we go into the pain, it disappears
13. When you make your eyes focus on one single point, everything in your vision becomes clear. This is an analogy for awareness, where, if you just focus on the now – on the single act of doing what is needed at that moment – you have had a moment of awareness
14. Look for the hidden meaning in adversity. Make a list of all the difficult situations you have faced in your life. In retrospect, are there some hidden realizations to learn from them?
15. Sit and visualize the entire event, say if you are afraid of something or you want something to happen in your life. This way, your feelings are felt completely by the system. And if this is done, the need to express is gone
16. Words have to change. They have the deepest impact. Feelings happen in picture mode but what we do is put words. The 52 matrukas are that in which expression of form has given rise to words. Hence the resonance of words across cultures.
We are stuck in our concepts and are enslaved by words that mean a lot to us but in reality mean nothing. Words have to be used judiciously. Use each word you say judiciously. When somebody speaks in a drone, hear them and upgrade your energy. See how you react and change your reaction to that
- Make a list of the way you talk and the way you walk, the bodily gestures you make. Break it and feel the discomfort
- When we struggle, we try to control. That is suppression, don’t do that. In doing this, we give more energy to that which we are trying to suppress. Like Judo, the more energy the opponent gets from you, the more he’ll win. The thing to do is to relax. But that doesn’t mean to indulge. Words confuse you; dialoguebaazi has got you here. Forget the badbad, forget Arjun. To think of reaching his state looks so far away. But it’s also one moment away if you can pay attention now
- Keep a tab on bodily symptoms such as if your skin gets dry or oily sometimes. Don’t, like a fool, attribute it to the weather. (Same with common illnesses: various allergies, arthritis, cholesterol, addictions, high and low BP, asthma etc.)
- Concentrate on incidents where you get flustered. The automatic response is to blame others. We don’t pay attention, so we speed up and we are speeded up, so we don’t pay attention. In avoiding pain, we feel it more. But if we go into the pain, it disappears
- Walk in a bubble, looking at the ground. Don’t let your senses be carried away. Hold and direct the pent-up energy towards going inwards and make it a cyclical thing
- Focus on the inner attitude of stealing. Not just stealing money, but ideas from someone, stifling someone are all ways of stealing. You can never take something meant for another
- Look at your hidden desire for some benefit derived from the exercises. Inner greed remains the same even in spirituality. This comes from fear. There is a need to cultivate a psychological posture during the exercises
- Do this exercise. Be somebody else for a day. Walk, talk, behave like another person you know. When you try to do this, you will realize you don’t even know what that person behaves like, his mannerisms etc. In fact, you don’t even know how you behave
- Whatever the body-brain system tells you to do, you HAVE to do the opposite of that. You have no option. People say, ‘I won’t do this till the day I die’. I say, ‘As long as you don’t do it, you won’t die.’ Do that which gives you discomfort