Your phobias are only mood swings 29 March, 2012
All phobias are nothing but mood swings!
When phobias are in the initial level, they are called mood swings. When mood swings are strengthened, they are called phobias.
When somebody comes to me with a mood swing, I don't keep quiet. I remind, remind, remind, remind, remind them in all possible ways. Even the basic truths need to be reminded. See, the guru boils you like a potato. Potato tries to jump out of the pot during the boiling! Please don't do it. Wait!
Your mind may say, how can I suppress it? How can I kill it by suppressing it? Only by suppressing it dies.
There are some phobias that are the result of some evil happening in a past life, but not all phobias. You may be wondering, What is an evil happening?
Please understand, if anything that happened in a past life is affecting your present and future, it is an evil happening! Anything which does not affect your present and future is not an evil happening.
The only way to get over the phobias is to untiringly remind yourself that they have no basis in your current experience.
Whether it is a phobia or a mood swing, there is only one thing to watch: are they able to repeat something in a greater frequency, or are you are able to repeat it in a greater frequency? Are the phobias more powerful, or are you? If your phobias say, life is bad 100 times, can you repeat life is good 120 times? That decides whether you are going to get out of the phobia or not. That's all.
~`~
Your biggest enemy
26 October, 2010
One of the biggest engrams, one of the biggest enemies of your sadhana or enlightenment or achievement is laziness. Once the laziness enters into your system, nothing can be done. Any big idea… tomorrow. Immediately your mind says - Good idea, great idea, but tomorrow is a good day to start… our elders always say you should find out the right day, right time to start something new!
Laziness is Maya. So understand, have no sympathy towards laziness. He is a demon, so no question of allowing laziness. The first lesson they teach in Zen is awakening your whole system and breaking the laziness pattern - because Zen is based on silent sitting. You can very easily slip into laziness in the name of silent sitting.
The very word Zen means dhyan, meditation*. Zazen* means silent sitting. You can very easily slip into laziness in the name of silent sitting. You can also very easily slip into that laziness in the name of Samadhi. So Zen first breaks that mental set-up of laziness. You need to first break the mental set-up of laziness to work on your engrams and create the new awakened lifestyle.
Zen monasteries have a tradition where even the Master who is the head of the monastery will not have food if he does not work for a certain number of hours! You need to do physical work for eight hours and mental work for eight hours (meaning sadhana or some other teaching or learning).
A teacher works mentally when he teaches. Disciples work mentally when they learn. So eight hours of physical work, eight hours of mental work, and last eight hours, you will naturally rest in consciousness. There will not be any unexhausted engrams, so the sleep will be deep sleep. Only when you don't work eight hours physically and eight hours mentally, you will have a stressed sleep, disturbed sleep, disturbed memory and disturbed mental set-up the next day. You will not feel as if you slept.
Laziness is one of the worst engrams. It is not even an engram, it is almost like your breathing! Anybody who leaves the ashram due to the laziness engram will not be accepted back. No question of coming back. If they leave because of any other engram, maybe lust, they can go and get married and suffer for a few years and come back. They would have learnt the lesson. If they have the anger engram, they can leave and come back, because, when you express your anger in society, you will get nicely beaten! That mental set-up will be broken.
If you have greed, then you can go and learn the lessons of the greed engram, what you need to do and need not do, if you want to come back. But, if there is a laziness engram, and if they leave, nothing can be done. Laziness is the non-return zone of spirituality. Enlightenment, videha samadhi, and laziness both are non-return zones. If you are caught in laziness, you can never be lifted. If you are relaxing in videha samadhi, you will never come back.
The first thing you need to do on the spiritual path is break the laziness, especially during that early morning brahma muhurta.
Wake up before sunrise and work out, doing either 108 surya namaskar or other yogasanas and pranayama. Take a bath in cold water in a sacred water body and then sit for your puja (offering of gratitude to the Divine).
If you do this, your day is set. You will break all samskaras. Once you break one or two strong samskaras, you will simply know how to break the others. The science of breaking samskaras is learnt. The science of handling your body and mind is learnt.