A beautiful story:
Junaid continued walking.
The man gave up trying to ask further. After some distance, Junaid said, 'You will have to walk at least ten hours.'
The man was surprised and exclaimed, 'You could have said that before!' Junaid replied, 'How can I say before? I needed to watch your speed first. Then only I could tell you how long it will take to reach the capital.'
In the same way, the time it takes to realize also depends on your intensity. If you are intense enough, it does not need time to reach the Ultimate. Where you are, who are you is irrelevant. You can reach here and now.
If you don't live any moment intensely, what happens?
Your mind looks for repeating the action in that moment.
Why? Why does your mind pull you to the same experience again and again? You may crave for a particular candy or you may be addicted to something. Why?
You cannot feel fulfilled by offering sense pleasures to the senses. Living intensely does not mean fulfilling your senses, pouring pleasures into your senses, or living as you wanted. Eat intensely. When you are eating, only eat. When you are sleeping, just sleep. When you are drinking, only drink. When you are making merry, just be merry.
Actually if you look deep you can see it is because you never eat the candy or cater to the addiction completely with full involvement. You hold back from throwing yourself into the action fully. Maybe you feel guilty about it or you have too many confusing thoughts at that time. So you decide to just do the action ignoring your thoughts and feelings that are coming in the way of your pleasure.
You see, part of you wants to indulge in the action. Another part of you argues why you should not. You are caught in too many thoughts, many of them self-contradictory. You lose energy in fighting with yourself. Finally, you are not integrated whether you do the action or not. You are not intense. So the desire is not completely fulfilled and leaves behind its memory in your inner space.
Engraved memories of desires that are not completely fulfilled are called samskaras. These engraved memories have the power to make you return and travel in that same path. Whether it is coffee or champagne or smoking, whatever engram you create will have the power to make you do the same action again and again, till you feel completely fulfilled with that habit or with that enjoyment or pleasure.
If you enjoy your addiction intensely even once, only once, you will be completely liberated. That engram will never ask you anymore to travel in that path. It will liberate you.w of life! It is a law of life!
Karma is nothing but unfulfilled engrams and desires, which are inside your being, which constantly make you again and again to travel in that same path, trying to give the experience of fulfillment in your inner being.
Unfulfilled engrams are what I call karma. You keep your body alive, you keep your mind alive, because still you have hope that the body can give something to you, the mind can give something to you. Still you have the hope you can enjoy something, or something needs to be fulfilled through the body and mind. That is what I call karma.
Look at the Oyster, it is waiting for the rain water to make the pearl. When the rain water falls, she just carries the rain water into her womb and goes down into the ocean. The process happens on the rain water and the pearl reacts.
The Oyster will be waiting with the mouth wide open on the waters of the ocean. She will be just waiting for the rain water. She cannot take the salt water and make the pearl. She needs pure rain water. The moment one drop of rain water falls on her immediately she will go into the deepest layer of the ocean and she will start doing the process. She will come out with the pearl. Intensity is integrity. Usually intensity leads to solid feelings. You may be intense but you may have lost the ability to flower or you may be flowing but may have lost the intensity.
You may be intense but you may have lost the ability to flow, because you are driven by your ego. You are determined to achieve what you want but you have your own rigid idea how to get there. The other possibility is that you may be flowing but may have lost the intensity. This is the case with people who have no facts, and waste their energies getting distracted by anything that comes by. Intensity is integrity and focus. Intensity with integrity and focus is called burning intensity
When we change gears while driving a car, whether we change from first to second, or second to third, or any gear for that matter, we have to pass through neutral every time. We have to completely de-press the clutch, or 'unclutch', move through neutral, and only then we can go to the next gear, right? In the same way, we experience a neutral space between any two thoughts in our mind..