Are you expanding or dying?
Listen!
Not working on expanding yourself is equivalent to death - because anything that is alive must constantly expand just in order to stay alive!
Expansion is life, stagnation is death. Understand, I am not saying that contraction is death! I am saying that stagnation itself is death, because it is against the law and flow of life.
As long as you are expanding whatever you feel as you - your inner image - you continue to have life! Even if your body drops, you will simply take another body, another birth, and continue your expansion. The day you think you cannot expand your inner image anymore, you are dead - even if your body is functioning.
What can be more exciting for you than your own self? So working on expanding your inner image is the ultimate excitement you can experience. Thinking that you cannot change your inner image anymore is the worst boredom and depression that you can suffer.
When you work on the inner identity, life is exciting. When you decide that you can't transform your inner world any more, it is death! It means that you have given up on you. When you give up on you, even if you have the body, you are dead.
Even spirituality can be exciting for you only when you start expanding your inner identity and see that it brings results in the outer world. What is spirituality? When the transformation you make in the inner world is seen as a result in the outer world, it is spirituality!
There is nothing in life called 'staying in the same place'.
If I am not expanding, I am dying.
Have I expanded in some way today?
What's your customer feedback?
Consider your life as an industry.
Your inner image is the product, how you project yourself to the outer world is your marketing and what others expect from you is the feedback you receive from customers.
If you were running an industry, how important would customer feedback be for you? Invaluable - because that is what is going to help you improve your product. But do you feel the same way about your life? Anyakara is your customer feedback! You need anyakara to develop your life.
So constantly get feedback and develop your product. Only then will you be relevant to life! That is how you will be alive and survive in the market. If you're working with humanity, this is the law of life! The moment you stop allowing feedback from the customers and developing your product accordingly, you are dead.
However big or established a brand you may be, if you stop receiving feedback from society and develop your inner identity, society will start rejecting you. Understand, if you don't take feedback from your customers, they will be giving their feedback to others - which is very
dangerous! If you don't take customer feedback, others will get the feedback. It is very dangerous! Even without your knowing, your brand will be destroyed.
So anyakara is the most precious input for your growth.
Others' expectations from me is the most precious input for my growth.
Authenticity destroys your fear of failure
When you become authentic, you will forget that you even had a past!
Listen: this is not just ordinary forgetting! Normally all our forgetting is out of incompletion. Its root is either unconsciousness or suppression.
We usually forget the past incidents of our life either because we never faced them consciously, or because we found them too painful and strongly suppressed them. But authenticity brings forgetting out of completion! You will forget because it is completely wiped out from your inner space, because it is no more a part of your inner space.
The moment you decide to bring authenticity into your life, you will see so much happening in your inner space.
Understand, it is your past memories of failure that do not allow you to be authentic in the present. You are carrying the wounds of too many past failures and disappointments. Even when you want to stretch yourself, you have too many ideas about failure that come in the way. Sometimes, even the fear of failure – without any actual failure – makes you feel like a failure!
Why do you become inauthentic? Because your past very powerfully tells you, 'You can never be authentic, I know all about you! I know how many times you gave a word and broke it; I know how many times you set a goal and missed it!'
Your past is like a comedian sitting inside you and making jokes about you and making you feel like a fool! You always want to be a hero. But so many times, you become a comedian instead, because your inner space constantly makes fun of you by quoting your past.
Courage to face your past, no matter what, is authenticity.
Listen: a man who is not tired of his own past is a jeevanmukta – he is living enlightenment. The day you start living without becoming tired of your past, without becoming inauthentic due to your past failures, you are a jeevanmukta.
What are the memories of past failures that you are carrying inside?
Today, recall them and complete with them.
Put an end to spontaneous lying
The first effect of the sun rising will be that you will see the fog disappearing.
Then the temperature starts rising, then the flowers start blooming, and so many other effects will be seen. But the first effect of the sun rising will be that the fog will disappear.
In the same way, the first effect of authenticity will be that you will stop lying spontaneously in any situation to save your skin.
You may be thinking, 'What, me, lying?!' That is what we usually think about ourselves! The truth is, most people, most of the time, resort to spontaneous lying out of the fear of facing their inauthenticity.
What is spontaneous lying?
When you are cornered, caught, questioned for a mistake, simply blurting out some lie to escape from the situation is called spontaneous lying.
Spontaneous lying is by its nature unconscious, so people are often unaware that they have a pattern of spontaneous lying. That is why, till they are proven wrong, they will hide their inauthenticity and continue
to use words to defend themselves!
Listen: if you are still spontaneously lying to save your skin, it means that even the first step of authenticity has not happened in you.
Understand, spontaneous lying may look harmless, even 'cute' sometimes, but it is far more dangerous than planned lying – because it shows that lying has become part of your nature. If your first response to a stressful situation is a lie, it shows that lying has become natural to you!
Actually, it is very difficult to tell a lie during a moment of crisis, because the logic no longer works at such times. If your lying pattern has become stronger than your logic, that is very dangerous for you.
Think about it.
List out at least 10 incidents you can remember where you have lied spontaneously. Be very honest with yourself, even if it hurts.
Spontaneous lying is a direct by-product of fear. So now, go back and see which fear has created this pattern in you.
What is the root incident which created that fear?
Even if you cannot trace the incident, you can still complete with the fear.