Leave Your Spiritual Progress To The Sadguru

Good, good, good. So, you gave me some good clues and we can start a conversation based on that, and then we can modify, based on what is resonating and what is not resonating. So, firstly, I don't feel like you're doing badly at all, you're doing well. You're following the Masters, you’ve tried Self inquiry, you have come to insights about your Self as Awareness, you have transcended the mind at times, you see. Now, what seems to be happening [and this is not a diagnosis, it's just a conversation starter], so, what seems to be happening is that there is the conceptual 'I' or the ego-'I', is trying to now juggle between your spirituality and your work life and trying to find the balance and ‘How do I always stay here?'. So it is almost as if the non-existent ego is now trying to help you resolve your life. But in the inquiry, the 'I' that you found, or what you found yourself to be, is there really another one compared to That? And if there isn't another one, then who is trying to manage life or their existence in this life? [Silence] So, who are we trying to help, whose problem are we solving? Is the Self inquiry such that I can discover an aspect of myself which will help my idea of what my life should be? Or is the Self inquiry to come to the Truth of what I am, and then automatically the tentacles with which we want to control this life get chopped away? What is your insight into that?

Yes, yes. I was just saying [I'm not sure if I'll be able to repeat, I usually forget everything], but let me see what comes. So, is the Self inquiry such that we discover something, so that this 'I' which wants to have a certain standard of life or the way of living, so it can achieve that? Or is the Self inquiry bringing us to a point where we discover ourself to be That to which the idea of controlling any aspect of life seems alien?

So, if it is That, then who are we attempting to help now? Because, if this life belongs to the Self, if it belongs to God, then we can allow God to run it the way it wants. [Silence] Who is concerned about what texture life may take? [Silence] Or, we can start even simpler than that. So, we have a sense that 'I was doing inquiry', 'I was doing meditation', 'I was doing Vipassana', 'Now, I'm not doing'. Can we identify this doer or non-doer?

Yes, as a sort of conceptual creation, isn't it?

So, my first advice to you would be to completely surrender. First advice would be to completely surrender. Everything that is happening is the Sadguru's problem, everything that is happening is the Sadguru's Grace. Nothing you have to do, or deal with, or sort out, you see. Allow yourself to be fully open and empty in that surrender. Which means, surrender does not mean if I surrender to Guruji's, and then my life will go where I want it to go. Surrender means that outcomes, actions, everything is surrendered. Fully let go. If that complete surrender seems like too much, seems like too much, ‘My temperament is not that, I'm more of an inquirer', then I would suggest that you take your inquiry to fruition, to a point that everytime you start believing an idea about yourself, which is in the narrative, which is like ‘you're a body-mind’, you see, then that becomes less and less, and it becomes laughable over a period of time. So, if you feel more comfortable with the inquiry to investigate who you are then stay with that to such an extent that when you pick up the wrong idea about yourself as somebody limited in time and between birth and death, then when you check you're able to immediately drop that. So don't give up on the inquiry if surrender does not seem natural to you. So, surrender means, whatever proposals the mind is making, we allow it to be the Sadguru's problem.

Very good, very good. Yes. And like that,like that come to this point where there is a lot of self concern for this non-existent one, which will get dissolved in the surrender and the inquiry. Like 'What shall I do now?', 'Am I dropping it, am I missing it?', 'I don't want to be lost again', 'I want to finish it'. In all these proposals, who is the 'I'? Who are you taking yourself to be? Not the Reality of what you discovered in your own insight, no? It is still the one which is proposing this limited body-mind identity. What is time for the Infinite One? When you say 'How long will this go on, I want it to be over', whose tantrum is that? Sometimes it's okay, sometimes it gives you a momentum to inquire even deeper. But if it's just like a frustration thing, 'No, no, I don't know how long, does this even work, should I just go back to normal life, this thing is all not working', you see, this kind of frustration, we're just buying into an idea about ourself which is contrary to your own discovery about yourself, because you say that 'I have seen my Reality as Awareness', isn't it.

So my tip would be, don't make an understanding out of that. You see, because then what will happen is that the understanding of yourself as a limited 'you' and an understanding of yourself as Awareness will have a fight. But that is not what we want. We want the understanding of 'you' as limited 'you' to drown in the insight of yourself as you really are, so the Truth doesn't have to be remembered actually. So, you do not create a conceptual Mahabharat (war) in your head. What you're doing is, every time you start to take yourself as a limited Being too seriously, then you just look and say 'Okay, who am I?', 'What am I?', and you recognize that you are this Awareness. And then once you see that the main character which the thoughts are proposing you to be doesn't exist at all in the first place, then you'll find it very difficult to take these thoughts seriously, you'll just laugh at them. [Pauses] So, stay with your inquiry, stay with your surrender. And don't try to convince your mind about whether they are effective or not. You see, that's where trust comes in, that's where devotion comes in that the Masters are pointing you to this, and you do not take the mind's diagnosis about your progress and things. They are bound to work, they are working already very well. That is why the mind is throwing bigger tantrums. If there was no danger to its supremacy, then it would not throw tantrums. If there is any trouble in any aspect of the inquiry, I'm always available, always happy to answer those as well. And one tip I want to end with, it will give you a lot of space, a lot of freedom, is that don't check on your spiritual progress. Let that be the Master's problem. Like this judgement about '90 percent of the time I'm out and only a little bit I'm in', you see. You don't even remember 90 percent of the moments of your life, how can you make that judgement? Maybe it's just the other way round. You see, it cannot really say. We may say, 'You see, yesterday I got so angry' or 'Yesterday I was feeling so lustful', or something like that, and based on that we may make a judgement about ourself. But actually just a few moments don't define life. Maybe the rest of it you were completely open and empty. So leave that tracking and that progress to the Sadguru which is taking care of everything. I remember my children, our job was to study and follow what the teacher was saying, and the teacher's job was to give the marks. Now we want to have the teacher's job also and the student's job. So, you follow the teacher's instructions and let the teacher do all the scratch, report card and tracking.

If you are fallen back into identification, rather than thinking more about identification 'Why I got identified?', all of that, use that opportunity to let go of that identification fully in that moment instead of analyzing the past. Like I was saying to someone, I feel like it's a useful pointing. When you are identified, you're identified. So, you are suffering, suffer, it's ok. When you are not identified, in that moment what most of us are doing in spirituality are thinking about the time when we got identified and beating ourselves up for those times and saying 'I shouldn't have done that, why did I get identified again, my Masters have told me...', you see, all of that. Instead of that, meet God fully, meet yourself as Awareness fully in that moment. So I was saying to someone last time that when you're not identified and you notice you got identified, what is the best gift you can give to yourself? Embrace God fully, embrace God deeply in your heart, instead of thinking about 'Why should, …', all of that is continuing the same thing, the identification. In the garb of trying to fix the identification mind finds a way to continue the identification through that kind of mental process. Instead of that you notice 'Uh, I got identified’ finished, it's over. Now, God is here.' Enjoy that.

What happens is, maybe there is a software engineer conditioning here and there is a software engineer conditioning here [points to himself] also, so what happens is, we try to find solutions to everything, answers to everything in our mind, you see. Like 'Why does this happen, what is the root cause, what can I change', all of this. But what happens is that in this process it is very different. It is- you notice that you're going with the mind and as you notice that, you drop into your Heart, that's all. You drop into your Presence, you drop into your Being. That's it. We don't have to fix anything there [pointing to his head], because there is no solution over there. Sooche Soch na hove jo soche lakh var -You may think and think and think one lakh times, but you will not find a solution there. You will not find God there. And discard all Why-questions. Why-Why-questions are all pointless. It puts us in time, 'why' means causation, causation implies there is cause and effect, that means there is time, so we're putting ourself back in limitation. If you want a three letter question which starts with a 'W-H', pick the Who-question, not the Why-question.

And, don't trust your mind when it's telling you you're not doing well. I can see you're doing well, don't worry.