28. Tomorrow Never Comes!🔗

When we have a task to do, we often put it off by saying, 'I will do it tomorrow.' Little do we know that tomorrow does not actually exist!

We are used to thinking that the time at our disposal can be split into three parts: past, present and future. What has already happened is in the past, what will or might happen belongs to the future, and what is happening now is the present. I can tell you that your fundamentals are completely wrong. There is only one period of time - now. There is no other aspect of time.

We are fond of saying, 'Tomorrow I will do this.' But, be very clear: when tomorrow comes, it will arrive only in the form of today - now. It never presents itself to you in the form of tomorrow. You can say, 'Tomorrow, I will be happy. Tomorrow I will become enlightened. Tomorrow I will do the meditation.' Please understand that the tomorrow you are thinking about is never going to arrive in the way you are thinking. It is arriving in the form of every moment - now.

Be very clear: again and again, you promise that tomorrow you will be happy, tomorrow you will be enlightened, tomorrow you will be joyful, because you do not yourself believe that these predictions will ever happen. You are simply finding reasons to postpone these things from happening.

A small story from Bharat:

In Hindu Astrology, Saturn, one of the nine planets, is revered as well as feared as a minor deity. GanesÁa, the elephant headed son of Siva, is considered to be immune to the evil intents of Saturn. It is said that he has a big sign on his door that says, 'Go away today and come back tomorrow.' So, whenever Saturn comes around, he reads the notice on the door and goes away. The following day, when Saturn returns, the same thing happens: he reads the sign and goes away. Tomorrow never comes!

This is exactly how we live. In our case, whenever we decide we want to learn to truly live, to fully express our Being, and to live as we truly desire, our mind always says, 'No, No, No, No, No! Now is not the right time. Let us wait. Let us do it a little later. Let us give it a little time until tomorrow....tomorrow.'

When you put off your spiritual development until tomorrow, you are providing an excuse for yourself to never do anything now or today. In fact, by saying 'tomorrow,' you will never achieve anything at all. You will simply find comfort in holding onto the reasons that your mind makes up to satisfy itself. And you will never grow.

29. Reach out from Within

Are we friendly with ourselves? Most of us would have to say, 'No, we are not!' Let us be fully aware of how we treat ourselves. This is a great meditation.

We disrespect and abuse our bodies in many ways. For example, we stay up late into the night watching television. We rub the sleep away from our eyes and ignore our body that is crying out for some sleep. We gorge ourselves with food even when our stomach is full. We smoke even when our lungs cry out. We drink ourselves into oblivion. We treat our bodies like a garbage dump and torture them to extract enjoyment. We are like hogs with our noses in filth. The hogs no longer smell the filth but just believe that the filth is their world.

We are violent in our outward behavior as well. In fact, what we believe as 'love' is actually violence. We think that people we love have to obey us implicitly in order to show that they care about us. We treat people we love as an extension of our ego. This is violence.

We are extremely concerned and bothered about the terrorism that happens outside in the world but ignore the violence at home and violence against our own bodies. Sadism and masochism do not bother us because we feel we have the right to treat our own bodies disrespectfully. Because we have no conscious awareness of this violence against ourselves, we create feelings of guilt. Terrorism bothers us because the violence is projected outside of ourselves. We torture ourselves with guilt; we torture others through our perfectionism.

One of my devotees told me, 'My wife is a lawyer.'

I asked, 'Does she argue in the courts?'

He replied, 'No Swamiji, she argues at home.'

All arguments at home are because we want another person to be like how we want them to be. Let us drop our imagination and dreams about ourselves and our behavior. We can start by becoming friends with our own body, mind and being. Let us carry with us words that heal others and also carry our body in a manner