A desire is never new

When a desire appears in the mind, it has already been enjoyed. 

Is there any way I can desire for a sweet without knowing how it tastes? Something totally unknown can never be desired. Either I have enjoyed it earlier, or someone else has told me about it and I have tasted the possible enjoyment by comparing it with something similar, or by knowing what the components taste like. 

For example, if I have never had a rasgullah, and someone says that it is sweet-tasting, it is spongy, it has lots of syrup, then I know how it tastes because I know how the components taste. There can never be a desire for something totally new. 

Something is desirable because the image of my or someone else's enjoyment has arisen in my mind. In MY mind. So my mind has already enjoyed it. What is the point of repeating the sensory enjoyment? 

Anything desirable has already been enjoyed. Let us be happy with the feeling and watch the desire diminish.

Meditation is like popcorn and coke

You know, when there is an interval in a movie and the lights come on again, and you pull yourself out of the story and the characters of the movie you were so engrossed in till now, and look around and feel the hardness of the seat again and see the people around and maybe buy a popcorn and coke .......... get back to the real world from the unreal. 

Meditation takes us back to the real Self from the unreal world around us. This is also nothing but a 3-D film show. Meditation provides the break or relief from the fantasy that exercises our minds and emotions all the time.

The nature of need

Worse than having a need unfulfilled is to leave it unrecognised. 

Recognising the need forces us to give the need a shape and size and define the depth of its cavity. It defines the amount of energy that the need has a potential to consume. It enables us to look at that need with the background of all other needs and to unconciously decide whether the gratification is worth the energy that will be spent. 

All this thought in fact reduces the energy-potential of the need and it may finally consume far less energy for gratification. Even leaving it unfulfilled finally may not result in a very big energy leakage.

What is dishonesty?

Honesty, as a matter of fact, has no relevence in the past or future. 

What is dishonesty actually? Normally if I understand something in one way and talk about it in another way, I would be called dishonest. But that is actually misrepresentation. I am fully aware of this gap and a acting with a particular objective in mind. 

Dishonesty is the gap between the "real" and the "understood". The only thing real to us are our thoughts and feelings. When our perception of ourselves becomes a distorted view of what actually passes through our minds, dishonesty happens. The distortions are driven by what we would like ourselves to be, which blanks out thoughts and emotions that do not match this image. Someone once said: "There are usually two reasons for doing something - the real one, and the one which sounds good." 

The first and only thing to be honest about is ourselves, our thoughts and feelings arising continuously in our conciousness, and the conclusions that we draw about our nature on that basis. This can happen only in the present moment. Let us be intensely aware of all that is happeneing inside us at the present moment. Let us be honest with ourselves and act based on that honesty. The action that follows will be spontaneous and without effort and will leave little residue. 

Only in the concious Now can Honesty happen. The rest is Misrepresentation.

Age reversal

To be at ease with all people, treat a child like an adult and an adult like a child. 

Give children the respect that you would give an adult. Ascribing adult expectations to him expands his mind. Only in the company of adults a child grows up. 

Give adults the allowance for mistakes and imperfect behaviour that you would give to a child. It is easier to accept and love people if we consider them to be grown up children.

Is effort admirable?

Where there is an effort, there was no intention. 

An intention is a spontaneous willingness to act, arising from feeling. An effort is an intellectual proposal, where the intellect says there is need to act in a certain manner whereas the heart is silent. 

The value of receiving anything in a relationship, be it words or action, lies in the heart innate in it. Let us never ask for an effort, because, if it has not come by itself, it will now come without heart. Whatever comes without asking is pure and accompanied by love, and is worth feeling grateful for.

Honesty and freedom

A relationship cannot have honesty and freedom at the same time. 

In a relationship, the expression of one person's feelings affects another. When there is such an effect, there is a lack of freedom. When, through a commitment to honesty, one person expresses, his/her feelings to the other, the other person is bound to feel pressurised to change his/her behaviour. 

If there is full honesty and full freedom at the same time, the people involved have, in fact, transcended the need for a relationship.