What Is Conditioning?

[Reads from the chat] ‘I would love some clarity around habits, triggers and conditioning. In order to transcend these things, do I need to understand where it comes from and where it began and why? Or will it transcend by itself, without trying to figure it out? Is it enough to stay as Awareness? Let’s look at this question in some detail. ‘I would love some clarity around habits, triggers and conditioning.’ So, let’s take the superset, which is conditioning. [Encompassing gesture with hands] Now, conditioning, especially in India because there is a very scary-sounding word, ‘vasanas’, can sound like a huge project to deal with. And the idea that, ‘When will I be free from my conditioning?’ or ‘When will I be empty of my vasanas?’can seem like a super difficult task and we keep trying to force ourselves to not be conditioned in that way. Because we can contemplate this and really look, ‘What is conditioning?’ And the word itself contains the answer. If you have a condition about the manifest world, of any sort, then that is conditioning. So how to be rid of conditioning? Firstly, in this very moment, you are already rid of conditioning. You see? Bhagwan said, Bhagwan Sri Ramana Maharshi, he said, ‘All you have to do is stop practicing the false.’ And what is the false that you are practicing? It’s these conceptualizations, these… coming up with mental sort of answers or conditions about all of this. So, a devotee said, ‘Okay, that is all there is. Then how can I free myself from all of these conditions?’ And he [Bhagwan] said, ‘You are free from them Now’. So… that is the beauty of this. That is the good news, the best news. That already, right here and now, you are free from your conditioning. Now, what happens? The mind goes to past… and says, ‘But, but, but… yesterday, you don’t know how angry I got, or how lus{ul I got, or how greedy I got, or how whatever I got’. Or it will say, ‘Yes, yes, right now is ok, but what about when I’m out of Satsang, or later?’ You know? All of these things. So, like this, like time is also a condition. So, when we give credence to a past or a future, we’ve already bought into the conditioning of time. Or, any such speculation. Like, for example, ‘Can I keep this?’, ‘Yes, yes, I’m so Free now. I see it now. But, how come I can never keep this?’ That’s a new condition. So, don’t bother with it. So, to be free from conditioning, just be free from conditions. Don’t take any condition to define anything. Then you will be rid of your resistance. What are these conditions? ‘The world should be like this’, ‘It should not be like this’, ‘My partner should be like this’, ‘He or she should not be like this’, ‘Life should be like this, should not be like this’, ‘My Master should be like this’… You know? All of these are conditions. But we hold on to them, thinking two things: One is that we are right. That righteousness is super important to us. And secondly, we think that life will become a huge mess if I drop all of this. ‘How will I live my life without these conditions?’ Both of these things are not true. These are the impulses which keep us holding on to conditions. Because we feel like we need to be right. We’ve been taught that unless you are right, you are worthless. And secondly, there’s a fear, and sometimes it’s accompanied by like a sensory wobbliness as well, which tells you that if you just let go, if you’re open and empty, then you cannot live a life. God cannot run your life, unless you are thinking about your life. That’s the idea, no? Like, unless you help God by saying, ‘Okay God, this is what we need to do. Here’s the plan.’ [Laughing] This kind of thing. So, the first one is pride, is arrogance. And the second one is fear. That is what keeps us sticky with our conditioning. And ultimately, both are the same thing; but we don’t need to dissect that so much. So… are you willing to let go of all pride? And all pride means… You don’t have to be like this to be proud: [mimics proud attitude] ‘Oh, I’m so proud!’[chuckles]. It’s not like that. Pride means anything that you think you are right about; which is just a concept. It is only a thought. Firstly, we must realize that everything that you think, is just a thought. It sounds like the most obvious statement ever. But I am telling you, that ‘Remember - everything that you think it is just a thought’. And no thought is big enough for the Truth to be captured by it. The Truth is too subtle, it is too broad, it is too universal, in fact beyond universal, for it to be an object of your thought. So, if the Truth is what we are talking about, the Truth in our way of communicating, then no thought really can be a valid representative of the Truth. So, there is the number one reason for why all our righteousness is all fake, is all fake , it’s all made-up. Because to be right, you need to have been truthful. But a thought cannot contain the Truth. So, let go… let go. And as you let go, then… a kind of wobbliness will come. A kind of fear will come. All kind of concepts will come, saying, ‘But, this is no way to live’, ‘What if all of this is fake?’ So, that is why trust comes in, that’s why devotion comes in. And if there is devotion, then that is the antidote to that fear. Because devotion means what? Love plus trust. You can love many, but you don’t trust all of them. You see? There are many partners who love each other to death, to bits. But they can’t trust what comes out of the partner’s mouth. Some, you may trust, and, ‘Yes, yes. This one always speaks the truth. I trust them’. But you may not love them. Now, your relationship with a Master is that of devotion. Which is beyond love and trust. It is both. So, when you trust and the Master says, ‘Let go. Just trust. Let go’. And love is the antidote for fear. When you’re in love, when you experience love, you cannot experience fear. That’s why devotion is a great antidote to this fear. So, how to be rid of conditioning is to let go of all conditions. Then, let’s look further. [Reads from chat] ‘In order transcend these things, do I need to understand where it comes from, where it began and why?’. Sometimes, in the play, it is helpful to recognize the trigger. You see? Sometimes it is helpful to recognize the trigger. But we don’t have to make it like very forced or something. We don’t have to make it very forced, because ultimately the cause of all things is Consciousness alone. So, sometimes we may get a clue and it may lead to some release. [Mimics] ‘Yes, yes. It all started in my childhood or in my teen age, when something happened’. Just to recognize that and to visit that, sometimes is helpful to release. But many become obsessive about that kind of discovery and recognition. They keep searching, ‘When did this happen? When did that…?’ But that kind of thing is not needed. And if it is not clear where it comes from, just leave it. Just say, ‘It is all Consciousness. All happens only in the light of Consciousness. So, it just happened because that was the will of Consciousness’. So, we don’t have to revisit that in some way. And, the question of understanding is a very broad one, because what does ‘understanding’ mean? To come up with the concept about ‘because’? Does that mean that is understanding? But that is not understanding, because we already discussed that no concept can really hold any Truth. So, understanding is only intuitive. The intuitive sense that you get is an understanding about it. And usually, the best understanding is openness, it is acceptance. So even when we revisit and see, ‘Okay, this is the first time in this life that I had this sort of experience.’ It is so that there can be acceptance, there can be forgiveness, there can be openness, which was not there for all this time. So that is what I would call understanding. Like an openness about whatever happened and is happening. [Reading from chat] ‘Will it transcend by itself without trying to figure it out?’ Yes. Yes. Even as you are revealing your own Self to yourself, as you are coming to the discovery of your Self, then all of these conditions will be out of you. And many times, without any of the work that is used to clean up in other lines of therapy and things. Sometimes you will find yourself free from all of this.