You Are Not Who You Think You Are!🔗

When you understand the purposelessness of life, you understand the meaning of living.

All our comparison with other people begins with what we think of ourselves. Jealousy disappears when we understand our uniqueness. We may then create another problem. We may believe ourselves to be so special that we start taking ourselves far too seriously.

What is seriousness?

Seriousness is nothing but paying undue importance to something, at the cost of everything else. It arises from the inability to see that all of life is just a drama that is unfolding every minute. Seriousness is the result of over-expectation from life.

A small story:

Two boys were building sand castles on the beach. They suddenly had a quarrel and one of the boys got angry and kicked the sand castle.

The other boy went and complained to the king about his serious problem. The king began to laugh at him for getting so upset over silly sand castles. But the king's advisor, a Zen monk, started laughing at the king.

He asked, 'When you can fight battles and lose sleep over stone castles, why do you laugh at these boys for fighting over sand castles!'

All our seriousness is just about sandcastles! For the child, at that young age, sand castles seem precious, whereas at our age, stone castles seem precious, that's all. Whether it is a sand castle or a stone castle, the seriousness behind it is the same. The object may be different, but the seriousness is the same. So, don't laugh when children fight over sand castles.

Seriousness closes your mind to the openness and freedom of life. It makes you dull and dead. It curbs your thinking and makes you stick to the familiar patterns that you know and use all the time.

A small story:

In a Zen monastery, there was a competition among disciples over who had maintained the best garden. One disciple was of a very serious nature. He took the competition quite seriously. He always kept his garden neat, clean, and wellswept. All the grass was of the same height. All the bushes were neatly trimmed. He was sure that he would get the first prize.

On the day of the competition, the master went around all the gardens. Then he came back and ranked the gardens. This disciple's garden got the lowest ranking. Everyone was shocked. The disciple could not contain himself and asked, 'Master, what is wrong with my garden? Why did you rank me the lowest?'

The master looked at him and asked, 'Where are all the dead leaves? A garden maintained in such a way is no longer alive! It is dead.'

Seriousness kills spontaneity. Seriousness destroys creativity.

Science has proved that when you perform a task in a relaxed and light manner, your thinking and decision-making capacity is automatically enhanced. The same task when performed in a serious manner dulls your mind. When you do something too seriously, when you are too concerned about the result, you are actually not allowing yourself to perform at the optimum level.

Of course, you need to make plans, and you need to think ahead. But do it with sincerity, not with seriousness. Seriousness is not the same as sincerity. Sincerity is focusing on the task with enthusiasm and youthfulness. Sincerity is giving the task your best without worrying excessively about the result! When you are serious, you don't enjoy, you don't laugh. How can you laugh when you are serious!

Perfectionism

Perfectionism always comes from your mind. It becomes a goal for you. You work towards it as a goal. When you work towards it as a goal, it becomes dead and mundane. But when you are total, when you are established in your heart, it becomes a deep experience. The outcome has to be beautiful, and it will give you joy. Then, whatever you do, you will be in tune with Existence. Whatever you do, do it wholly, totally, and it will be total. You won't have to worry about perfectionism at all.

Perfectionism never gives you joy; it only fulfills your ego. Even if you feel fulfilled at the end of it, it is only a fulfillment of your ego, never a fulfillment of your being. Be very clear, perfectionists are the biggest egoists. They miss the dimension of being total. Totality is possible when you enter into something deeply. Perfectionism is never possible because it is in your mind, and your mind keeps changing its definition of perfection!

Most of us unconsciously believe that life is filled with incidents that are under the control of our logic. But life again and again reminds you of the truth that life is beyond your logic. You are reminded of this fact, especially when some near and dear friend or family member dies or when something unexpected happens. If you lose your job, suddenly you see that life is not under your control. You suddenly wake up to the reality that life is beyond your logic. Then you start seeking the Truth.

Especially if you live in the city, your routine is almost fixed. From morning until night, you know exactly how your day will unfold. You know where you will go, what you will do or not do, and what and when you will eat.

Practically, your ego gives an idea, your logic gives you the feeling that your life is under the control of your logic. That is why whenever some incident happens that is beyond your logic, that is not under your control, you are totally shaken. You are not able to handle it. You don't know what to do. Either you fall into depression or you just suffer.

There is an important truth, an ultimate secret that you must understand. Never think things are going smoothly because of you. In spite of you, things are going smoothly! This is one of the important secrets. As long as you think it is because of you that things are going smoothly, you will be constantly suffering with ego.

What is Ego?

According to the Upanishads, as long as you think that life has a purpose and you run behind that purpose, you are an egoistic person. When you realize the beauty of the purposelessness of life, you have dropped your ego. The master is the one who makes you understand the purposelessness of life. Whatever you think as being worthy now is not actually the true and worthy thing. A man with ego searches with purpose and misses reality.

Death clearly shows that whatever mind you lived with has no real existence. When you realize the purposelessness of life, a new consciousness starts blossoming in you. The moment you experience that there is nothing to be achieved, that the diamonds you are protecting are not diamonds but stones, and that all your great things in life are mere toys, you will understand the purposelessness of life.

The real purpose of life cannot be understood by the ego. When the ego is dropped, you will understand the Divine purpose of life, the leelas or the Divine play; you will enjoy the drama. If you keep thinking that life has a purpose and wait to achieve something, you will miss life itself.

Life itself is the path and the goal. When you have a goal, you will run. Your feet will not touch the ground and you will miss the beauty of Existence or nature. When you drop the goal, the emphasis will be on the path.

When you understand the purposelessness of life, you understand the meaning of living. Until then, you are just a 'living dead' person. A person in a coma lying in the hospital bed and a normal person who has not realized the Truth, both live without proper consciousness. The master is the one who makes you realize this truth. The meaning of living is the meaning of life or Existence.

Drop the goal and enjoy life. Meditate on this teaching again and again. The Truth will dawn on you and the nithyananda state will flower in you, the state that is the very meaning of life.

Many times you may have seen that whenever someone says something to you, the first reaction inside you is a certain resistance, a 'no'. When you say 'no', it is egofulfilling. You feel solid and firm inside yourself. When you say 'yes', you feel liquid and vulnerable. Your ego feels submissive, which is uncomfortable, so you say 'no'.

This is also why you feel good when you break rules at home, school, in the workplace, or while driving. You feel boosted in ego when you say 'no' to rules. You can see this with small children. The moment you say they are not meant to have certain things, they will ask only for those things!

Whenever you try to live for your ego, you make your life and others' lives miserable. Most of the time the miseries you face in your life are not created by others. They are unknowingly created by you. You may not even derive any benefits from them. But just to prove your ego, you create them.

A small story:

An enlightened master, Suzuki, lived in Japan. When his master passed away, he started weeping profusely. One person asked him, 'You are an enlightened person. Why are you crying on your master's passing away?' Suzuki replied, 'My master was the most extraordinary man on planet earth.' The person was puzzled and asked him, 'What was so extraordinary about him?'

Suzuki replied, 'I have never seen such an extraordinary person who thought he was the most ordinary man!'

In ordinary life, every average person thinks he is extraordinary. When you feel that you have undergone the maximum suffering, your ego feels good that you have been able to handle a tough life. Only when your enemy is big, you feel big. When your enemy is small, you feel small.

For the same reason, if your suffering is big, you feel good. Your ego feels satisfied. You measure life with the amount of your suffering. Unknowingly, you torture others as well as yourself. Suzuki's master was extraordinary because he thought he was the most ordinary, whereas in this world, every other person thinks he is extraordinary.

If you want to check whether you are average or not, do this experiment. If you feel extraordinary, be very clear: you are average. If you feel ordinary, you are extraordinary!

You all play different roles and use different masks in your day-to-day lives. You use one mask with your mother, a different mask with your father, a different one with your boss and so on. As long as you use the right masks with the right people, it is alright. The moment you use the wrong mask with a person, be aware that your ego has stepped in.

All you have to do is switch masks efficiently and enjoy the show. Then you are a watcher. You can do this only when you know that you are something beyond the mask. Otherwise, you will get carried away by the mask and lose the whole charm of life. When you know that you are only using masks, your desires drop.

Just like when you grow up, you automatically drop your toys, in the same way, when you look at these masks intelligently, you don't have any desire for them and simply use them as needed.

Ego is born from discontentment

If you are a strong egoistic person, you don't need a separate hell because the mind can exist only in conflict and discontentment. With contentment, with satisfaction, you will lose your boundary. That is why you don't want joy or bliss. Please never think you want bliss. No! Actually you are afraid of joy and bliss. Whenever you go through a peaceful, no-worry feeling, just watch yourself. You feel you are missing something when there is nothing to think about! Unless you have something strong to brood over, you don't have a clear-cut boundary in your inner space.

Your mind exists when it hits the corners of your suffering. You don't feel your boundary or your identity unless you have enough suffering. If you look a little deeper, you will understand that many times you feel lonely if you don't have anything to worry or suffer about. That is the way you believe yourselves to be, because by its nature, the mind can record only negative things. The mind can flourish, it can create more thoughts, it can more clearly identify with suffering, dissatisfaction and discontentment. The quality of joy is boundarylessness. When you are in joy, you won't feel your boundary. Whenever you don't feel your boundary, you are in a state of joy, in a satisfied and contented mood.

Your ego cannot exist without your suffering. Suffering is the root of your ego. This is an important thing you need to understand. We always think that the ego is disturbed by suffering. No! Ego is enriched by suffering. One more important thing is that if your suffering is less, your ego is less. You feel you are too small, so you increase your suffering so that you can feel you are somebody.

The less the suffering, the weaker is the ego. The more you suffer, the stronger your ego becomes. So, you always exaggerate your suffering. The problem is that after some time you forget that you exaggerated. Then you are also caught in the same net. You might disagree and say, 'No, you don't know my life; you don't know my suffering.' But be very clear, after some time you are caught in the same net that you yourself created!

Dual identities

We all have two identities, the identity that we project to the outer world, and the identity that we believe to be us in the inner world.

The identity that you believe to be you inside your mind is called mamakar in Sanskrit. It will always be much smaller than what you really are. You will carry or remember all your failures, past mistakes and guilt, constantly trying to work on them.

The identity that you project to the outer world is called ahankar. Ahankar is your visiting card. You print on it everything that you want others to know about yourself. This is based on the identity you show to the outer world. It will always be more than what you have, more than what you are. It will always be much more than what you are because you think you have to sell yourself. It becomes a basic need to do this, especially in the societies where you have to market yourself.

Ahankar will be based on a superiority complex. Mamakar will be based on an inferiority complex. Ahankar will be based on fear. Mamakar will be based on greed.

The basic truth is that you are much more than these two identities. When you unclutch from these two identities, you will suddenly realize that you are beyond the two identities. When that happens, these two identities can never bind you again.

An incident from the life of Ramana Maharishi:

One of Ramana Maharishi's disciples translated one of his books into another language. In the translation, inside the book, his name was also published as the translator.

When the disciple saw the book, he was shocked to see this. He went to the concerned authorities and scolded them for this mistake. He then went and told Ramana Maharishi, 'Bhagavan, they should not have put my name. I don't feel my name should be publicized. I am not that kind of person.'

Bhagavan said, 'The ego that asks for the name to be there and the ego that asks that the name not be there are one and the same. Relax.'

Be very clear, the inferior ego that is trying to show humbleness is also ego.

With a superiority complex, with a violent aggressive ego, at least society will teach you. This ego is very visible. With the humble ego, you will escape from society. That is more dangerous. It is the cunning ego that can nicely save itself. Ego is just the identity you carry about yourself.

Types of Ego

The active ego is easy to recognize. People with an active ego will behave in a highhanded fashion; they will claim self-importance openly. They will be arrogant. This ego is actually easy for a master to deal with. He just needs to bang on it a few times and it will break!

A small story:

A psychiatrist asks his patient if he is suffering from fantasies of self-importance. The man replies, 'Absolutely not. In fact, I think much less of myself than I really am!'

A person with an active ego will not be willing to let go of it at any cost.

Passive ego is very subtle and cunning. People who have a passive ego will pose as being very humble, lacking courage to face people, and shying away from taking credit. The worst part of this is that they think they are like this because they are not egoistic. Actually, they are so carefully guarding their ego from getting hurt by unconsciously thinking they are humble!

People with active ego are like dried, hard twigs. They can be broken easily. People with passive ego are like fresh, green twigs. Each time their ego is hit, they bend but don't break! Their ego is so well safeguarded that it becomes difficult to deal with. Actually, they work very hard to safeguard it but in a sweet and passive way.

'I' is the ego, the root of fear. 'Mine', 'this is my house', 'that is my car', 'these are my friends', is the root of greed.

'I' means continuously doing. 'Mine' means continuously having. Continuously you try to expand your boundary. Continuously you try to change the things outside. You want to expand your boundary of 'mine'. For example, you have a basic car now but you want to have a more luxurious car; you may want more than one car. You have a house to live in, but you want a bigger house. This kind of personality is based on having. Such people feel happy, secure and relaxed only when they continuously possess more and more things.

The deep feeling of insecurity, that fear, drives us to more greed, to continuously try to possess more things. Continuously possessing things is nothing but a feeling of deep insecurity. You can see the idea of continuously possessing more and more things is just because of fear and insecurity.

We usually feel more secure if we have more friends, more relatives, and more things around us. With more security, we feel we will not be taken away from this world.

People ask me, 'Why do we have to follow masters?' I tell them, 'You don't have to follow masters. But if you don't follow masters, you will be following your ego, that's all. There are only two options. Either you listen to the master or you listen to the ego.'

Master is the being who has already achieved eternal bliss, nithya ananda. If you follow him you will also reach that state. As for your ego, you know what it has achieved so far and what it is heading towards! If you are happy, comfortable, contented and blissful in the path in which your ego is already leading you, then you can follow your ego. Nothing is wrong with that. If you are a little uncomfortable, if you want to change, then follow the master's path.

There are only two to follow: master and the mind. If you follow the master, you cannot follow the mind. If you follow the mind, you cannot follow the master.

There is a beautiful word, 'na maha'. It means, 'not mine', 'I am not' – I surrender the 'I' and 'mine' at the feet of the master or god.

A M editation