PAST acronym – 4 reflections to go past your past

[Talk at Aus Crystals, Melbourne, Australia]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank Thank You Thank You How could she have spoken like that? Why did this have to happen? And life can victimise us in many different ways.
So when this past keeps coming back to us, this happened, this happened, this happened, and that can prevent us from moving forward in our life. So the negative traumatic experiences from our past can hold us back. They prevent us from experiencing life in the present and they prevent us from developing our potential for the future.
The other aspect is, from the past we may get some cravings, some experiences which might have been good or enjoyable in a superficial way and they keep coming back to us. So for example, if somebody becomes an addict of something, then for them, if they become sober, still their past keeps coming back to them. They keep having that desire again and again.
Oscar Wilde is ascribed to have said that giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I have done it over a hundred times. So I gave it up, but it didn’t give me up.
So sometimes our past cravings, which we now understand are unhealthy, they keep coming to us. So in this sense, our past can haunt us. Just like some people in some movies are shown to be haunted by a ghost.
They don’t want, but that ghost comes and makes them behave in weird ways. Makes them go through all kinds of terrible emotions. So similarly, our past keeps coming back on us.
And in a sense, the further we grow in life, the bigger becomes our past. And although we always have a life ahead of us, but unless we process the past properly, the past can either become a burden which crushes us or it can become a part of the wisdom that empowers us. In one sense, the past is like a resource.
But if I’m carrying a suitcase, and if I’m travelling and carrying a suitcase, and that contains stuff which I just don’t know how to use, but I’m told to carry it, then it will simply be a burden. But if that contains stuff which I need and I do use, then that is an asset for me. So the past is like a psychological baggage that all of us have.
Now we cannot get rid of it, but we can process it. So that it doesn’t burden us that much. So, I was at a mental health care hospital in New Jersey.
I was speaking to the mental health care providers over there. And there, they were telling me that one of the biggest problems for people who develop mental health care issues is that they feel life has treated them unfairly. Something terrible happened to them, it shouldn’t have happened, and they’re just not able to process it.
And because of that, they become so traumatised that they can’t move forward. And what is required for them to move ahead in life is to discover some purpose for life. I was going to talk about Akron in the past, P-A-S-T.
So P is purpose. Every one of us has some purpose behind whatever we do. When we go home and buy food or cook food and eat it, the purpose is to satisfy our hunger.
When we feel tired, we sleep. The purpose is to rejuvenate ourselves. So at one level, for us, short-term bodily purposes are something which we inevitably pursue.
But we human beings need some higher purpose. In fact, purpose is as deep a need for the human beings as is, say, food or water or even air. The lack of purpose may not kill a person physically, but it kills a person’s morale.
And eventually, it kills people. So, one of the most well-known psychology books, probably the last century, was Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl. He was a Jewish psychiatrist who was caught in the Nazi death camps.
And he himself suffered, as well as so others, suffered unbearable sufferings, atrocities, tortures, dehumanising indignities were imposed on people. And over the period of years when he was there, he observed his psychiatric brain, psychiatrist’s vision, which is trained, he saw that the people who survived were not necessarily the people who were the strongest or the fittest. The idea at that time was, the evolution theory was being applied to all walks of life.
And there was a now outdated idea called Social Darwinism, which held that among the human races also, there are some races are fitter than others. In fact, Hitler had that idea that Jews are the most unfit race. And nature is going to eliminate them, but we will help nature along the way.
That was his perverted idea. But anyway, among those people who were in the Holocaust, he found that those who survived were not necessarily the strongest or the fittest, but those who had a purpose for living. That purpose may be, there was one person who was a scientist and he had written some paper, which is a cure for a disease.
And that paper was taken away from him, but before it was taken away, he memorised the whole thing. And then he lived on because he felt, I have to live and I want to publicise this knowledge. So, there, based on the observation, he concluded that we need a purpose as much as we need the physical needs of life.
And when we lack purpose, it is not that we can ever live without purpose. It is just that when we lack purpose, we fall for or we slay for petty purposes that our mind creates. So, for example, people may spend hours and hours, say kids, they may live in comfortable homes where their parents have provided for them financially.
They may have no worry about their career or their future financial security. Spend hours and hours, days and weeks and months just surfing the net and playing video games. And that becomes their purpose.
It’s a trivial purpose, but that’s the purpose. So, all of us need a purpose, but the key is to find a purpose that is bigger than our problems. All of us have purpose in life, but then that purpose is, when that purpose is challenged by problems, at that time, we may give up that purpose.
So, if our problems appear to be bigger than our purpose, then we will become purposeless. The student wants to, say, get a degree. And that’s the purpose when they come to the uni.
But then they feel, studies are so difficult, I can’t do it. They just quit. Now, in general, one of the surest ways for people to deal with depression, depression can be a clinical disorder where medication may be required, but more often than not, depression is caused when we are too caught inside ourselves.
So, one of the easiest ways to deal with depression, it’s not easy for the person who is depressed, but it’s to just get out of oneself. Get out and do something for someone. In India, there is a depression centre, and people are so depressed constantly.
So, they arrange for all the subjects, all the patients being treated in the depression centre, to go to the slums and feed, offer free food to the people over there. Initially, none of them was ready to go. But once they went there, hey, I can do something.
I can bring a smile on someone’s face. And that itself helped them to come out of the depression. So, we all need a purpose in our life.
I’ll give another example, simple example of purpose and getting out of our past, getting past our past. Suppose, we are driving, and we get lost. Somehow, we take one wrong turn, two wrong turns, and we get lost.
Now, actually, it’s annoying to be lost. But, if we were driving for fun, then, okay, I’m lost, it doesn’t matter so much. I’ll just explore, I’ll find a way later.
But, so, I made a past mistake in taking a wrong turn. But, if I have a purpose, oh, I have to get for this meeting in time. Sometimes, we may take a wrong turn, why did I take that wrong turn? Why did I take that wrong turn? Long turn is already taken.
But if I have to get for a meeting in time, okay, I’ll find out what is the right turn I can take. And then, we’ll take the right turn and move on. So, a purpose is what helps us to move on no matter what the past has given us.
And most often, when we start feeling that the past has wronged us, that we have been treated unfairly by life, what happens at that time is not just the magnitude of what unfair thing has happened. It is that we have lost the purpose for our life. We become expert at justifying how life has treated us unfairly.
Expert at blaming our situations, blaming our past. And this disempowers us. So, one of the defining characteristics of a purpose is that it is a driving force within us.
It is not dependent on our situation. And I’ll talk about what is a worthwhile purpose for life in a later acronym. But purpose is something which comes from within us.
And in that sense, purpose is different from a goal. A goal is, okay, I want to achieve this. I want to achieve that.
I want to buy a new car. I want to explore a new relationship. I want to get this degree.
I want to earn more money. These are all goals. But purpose is something much deeper.
A goal is like a destination. A purpose is like a direction. A purpose is a direction.
So, if I’m going in the north, the north is always going to be ahead of me. It’s not going to end. So, the purpose which is deep within us, that is like a direction.
This is the direction which I want to go. So, that purpose may be, suppose, somebody has some artistic talent. And they decide that I want to do art.
Somebody has a writing talent. They want to write. Now, to become a published author, to become a popular author, to become a best-selling author, to earn a lot of money, these are all goals.
These goals, sometimes you may achieve, sometimes you may not achieve. But the purpose is, I want to write. So, goal is not in our hands.
We may or may not achieve it. But purpose is in our hands. Now, here the question may come, okay, if the goal is not achieved, then what is the purpose of purpose? Isn’t it? Yeah, if I study, if I write, and nobody reads my books.
If I write and I don’t earn any money, what is the purpose of purpose? Yeah, it’s not that the goals are unimportant. The goals are important in life. But they are not all important.
When we are goal-driven, we are dependent on externals, which are not in our control. When we are purpose-driven, we are driven from within. And if, based on our understanding of our talents, our interests, our resources, when we come up with a purpose that is important for us, then that purpose is what drives us.
And we might get to certain goals, we might not get to certain goals. So, if I decide, I am going to be a more loving person. If I decide, I want to be in a loving relationship with someone.
I want to have a partner. I want to have someone. Now, a loving relationship is a goal.
But to become a loving person is a purpose. So, whether the other person loves me or not, whether the other person reciprocates or not, that is not in my control. But if I act true to my values, if I live according to my purpose, my life will be richer.
Of course, if the other person reciprocates, it will be richer still. But living according to purpose gives us a sense of control over our life. It gives us something which can keep us moving in life.
I will come back to purpose when I talk about S. That is spirituality. How spirituality helps us to give us a purpose. But before we go to that, the A part is acceptance.
Acceptance means that we have to accept where we are right now. Like the car example I gave earlier, if somebody has gone on a wrong track and they keep beating themselves. Why did I take a wrong track? Why did I take a wrong track? Okay, you have taken a wrong track.
Now, take the right track and move. So, all of us, we have certain expectations in life. Whether it is about our career, about our looks, about our partners, about our financial fortune or whatever.
We have certain expectations in life. And these expectations can stimulate us, they can inspire us to work hard. But sometimes, life doesn’t work out as we expected.
Not sometimes, most of the times we can say. Now, at that time, if we can’t accept the reality, then this is life, this is the expectation. And we are consumed by dealing with the expectation that has not been fulfilled, then dealing with the life as it is.
I’ll give two examples to illustrate this. Suppose, a person is trained to row a boat. And then, they’ve got their friends to watch them.
And they’ve got a boat, they’ve got to row and they’re expertly rowing. As they get into the sea, they’re rowing, at that time, suddenly a strong wave comes. And they’re toppled over.
Now, there is no boat, there are no oars. And they keep still rowing. If they still keep rowing, they’ll simply drown.
Now, okay, you had a plan to row, the expectation was I’ll row and I’ll show my skills. But we have to deal with reality as it is. Now, when there is no boat and there are no oars, rowing is useless, it will be suicidal.
At that time, we have to swim and get out of the water. So, at that time, trying to row is not only a waste of energy, it is actually self-destructive. So, now, the person, they know to swim, they’re not in mortal danger.
They can come out of the water. But in the mind, if they keep dealing with their dream, their expectation, they can’t deal with the reality. And then that saps their energy.
So, similarly for us, we may have had a certain expectation of how my life should turn out. Oh, this should happen, this should happen, this should happen. And it’s not happened like that.
Okay. But what is the reality? The reality is sometimes life just throws such a curve ball that everything changes in life. So, then we have to accept the situation and deal with that situation.
So, now, accepting the situation does not mean approving the situation. Accepting the situation does not mean accepting defeat. Accepting the situation doesn’t mean saying that what has happened is not bad.
Accepting simply means we deal with the reality as it is. Now, if it is a bad thing, if somebody has cheated us, if somebody has betrayed us, then accepting doesn’t mean we are going to let them go scot-free. Accepting simply means we are not going to continue dealing with our expectation and the frustration of that expectation.
I’ll give another example to illustrate this difference. Suppose you want to build a new house. And then you decide that you will have some agent whom you’ll pay and you tell them that they’ll build the house.
And then you start paying the agent regularly and they say, can I see how the house is constructed? No, no, wait, wait, wait. When the house is constructed, I’ll show you. And then the agent keeps asking for more money, more money, more money.
And the agent doesn’t allow you to go and see the house itself. And then eventually you say, no, I want to see the house. No, no, no, it’ll be done.
I just need more money now. And if you go and see the house, there is nothing over there. The agent has simply taken the money and is fleecing you.
And such a thing happens, what would you do? What would we do? Cry? Okay, cry is possible. What after that? Sorry? Kill them! I think there are two extreme reactions. They say, don’t be passive, don’t be aggressive.
So don’t be passive, don’t be aggressive, be assertive. So what would be an assertive way to act in this situation? Get a lawyer. At the very least, fire them.
And I don’t want to work with you anymore. Fire the agent. So the house is here, we are here.
The agent is meant to help us construct the house. But if we are paying the agent and the agent is not helping to construct the house, get the agent out of the way. We can get the money back later, but at least get the agent out of the way.
So the agent is simply acting as a middle man who is not letting anything move forward. So this metaphor I am using says that reality is like the house we are building. And the agent is like our expectation.
Our expectations are meant to help us to change the reality, to manifest a positive reality. But sometimes when things go so wrong, at that time we are caught in dealing with the expectation and the reality is left on the side. Now why is it not happening like this? Why is this happening like this? So all our emotional energy is going in dealing with the middle man of expectation.
And our capacity to change the reality is completely squandered. So it is not natural and human to have expectations. And if our expectations are fulfilled, wonderful, celebrate.
But if our expectations are frustrated, we need to recalibrate. Recalibrate. Ok, now this is not happening.
This is the reality. So acceptance is actually empowering. Because it saves our energy from being dissipated on the frustration of the fact that our expectations have been frustrated.
So we might have had a particular vision of how our life was going to be. Might have expectation from a partner, expectation from our own body and our physical health, expectation from our career. And sometimes these don’t work out.
So then we have to accept, ok this is where I am at right now. Once we accept, get the middle man of expectation out of the way, we will find that we do have power to deal with the reality. We do have power to affect the reality.
The reality may be unpalatable, but at least we are negotiating with the reality. We are acting on the reality. Otherwise we are caught in the mind and we are just dealing with the phantom of expectation and not doing anything at all practically.
The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient yoga text which is a guidebook for living. And there it says that if we can learn to live without attachment to expectations, then we can live much more effectively. It is not saying that we cannot have expectations.
It is just that we avoid attachment to expectations. And many times in our life it is the expectation that keeps us from acting on the reality. It is the frustration of the expectation that consumes our energy.
And it prevents us from acting on the reality. There is another ancient text called the Mahabharata. It says that lamentation, lamentation about the past, lamentation achieves nothing except to sap the energy of the lamenter.
This happened, this happened, this happened. Why did this happen? It just saps our energy. So basically purpose is what directs our vision towards the future.
And acceptance is what helps us to understand where we are. So going back to the driving metaphor, if I am lost, my purpose reminds me this is where I wanted to go. Acceptance means this is where I am right now.
And then I can map a journey forward. This brings us to third point, spirituality. Now spirituality is not just something which makes us feel good.
I am spiritual, I feel good. Yes, there is that aspect to it definitely. But spirituality is not just a state of the mind.
Spirituality is a level of reality. Spirituality is not just a state of the mind. Oh, I am feeling spiritual, I am feeling peaceful.
I am feeling joyful. Yes, those feelings do come when we are spiritual. But spirituality is also a level of reality.
Level of reality means that the Gita which I quoted earlier, the Yoga text, it explains that our present existence is three dimensional. Body, mind and soul. The body is like the hardware of a computer.
The mind is like the software. And the soul is the user. So to give another metaphor to illustrate this is that the mind is like the integrator of the inputs coming from the outer world.
So you are seeing with the eyes, you are hearing with the ears. Maybe you are feeling the cool environment within your skin. Some of you are feeling the fragrance of the setting.
So all these inputs are coming in from the various senses and they are integrated and put together on a screen. And that screen is the mind. So let’s do a simple thought experiment to illustrate what I mean by the mind.
So wherever you are, you can sit comfortably and you can close your eyes and closing your eyes you can take with me three deep breaths. One Two Three Now with your eyes closed try to look in front of you and notice what you see. Obviously with your eyes closed you can’t see whatever is physically in front of you.
But it is as if there is some kind of screen inside you and on that screen there are various images that may keep appearing and disappearing. You may see this room, you may see your home, you may see your car, you may see a loud one, you may see various images coming and going or you may see just a dull haze of colours. But whatever you see you see it on a inner screen.
Now while you are noticing that inner screen try to take a step back and look at the seer of that screen. Try to take a step back and notice who is it that is looking at that screen. Try once again.
There is a screen on which you see various things but who is it that is looking at that screen. No matter how many times you try to step back the inner seer steps back with you. What we are looking for is what we are looking with.
You are that inner seer. You are the soul, the inner seer and the inner screen is your mind. You can take one deep breath and then you can open your eyes.
Thank you. So right now when you are looking at me say I am a part of your outer scene. So when our proper perception happens at that time the outer scene, the inner screen and the inner seer, all three are in one line.
Now suddenly if you remember, hey when I came here did I lock my home or did I forget the key? Merely thoughts, oh where is the key? Is it here? Is it there? And then suddenly a movie starts on your inner screen Is it here? Is it there? Is it there? Is it there? And then if I speak something you may not even notice what I have spoken. Sometimes in a class if sometimes a joke is spoken and many times people turn, what was the joke? What was the joke? Because what happened was they were physically there but something else was going on in their inner screen. So, hey then what happens? We are watching a movie on that inner screen but then you find everyone laughing here.
This is more enjoyable. Let me find out what it is. So you want to come back.
So basically the inner screen is the mind and the inner screen is where the impressions of the past replay. And when they replay that’s how they catch us. So spirituality helps as I said spirituality is not just state of the mind it is a level of reality.
So many people think being spiritual means if nice images start coming on my inner screen I start feeling good, if I start feeling peaceful, I close my eyes and I get good thoughts then I am being spiritual. Yes that could be but that alone is not spirituality. Spirituality means that beyond whatever is coming on our inner screen, the seer of that screen is the spiritual you and the spiritual me.
That is the soul. So to the extent we understand that I am not my emotions. I am the experiencer of my emotions.
And not only am I the experiencer of my emotions I can also be the observer of my emotions. I can be the selector of my emotions. And I can choose not to select some emotions.
Say if we have an inner screen like a TV and say while we are watching something on the internet something else pops up. When something else pops up we can choose whether to click on it or not click on it. So we all have this capacity innately to select our emotions.
I was doing a seminar in UK on anger management and there one person who said I just can’t control my anger. I just grew wild. I asked him okay.
So I shout at people. I become physical. I just can’t control my anger.
So I asked him that do you get angry when you are at work? He said yes. So do you shout at your boss? He said no. How can I shout at my boss? If I shout at my boss my boss will fire me.
So then I said that means that there you know you are getting angry. So he would get angry with his family at home. But not with boss at office.
So the anger is the emotion that is coming. But this is not the time to get angry. So here it may be repression.
That may not be the healthiest way to deal with the emotion. But I am just giving this as an example. All of us we have experiences when we feel certain emotions but we choose not to act on those emotions.
So this indicates that we are not those emotions. We are different from those emotions and we have the capacity to choose whether we act on the emotion or we don’t act on the emotion. Now how is this relevant for getting past our past? If we understand that I am the inner seer and not the inner screen then on the inner screen certain negative emotions may come.
Oh you know this happened, that’s why you will never be able to do anything in life. So we start doing something positive and then something says, you see you made a mess of so many things in your life, this is also going to be a mess. We start doing, exploring some new relationship, exploring some new options, doing something new in our life.
Nothing has worked, this is also not going to work. When this sort of thoughts start coming, if we understand that this is actually not who I am, this is simply something that is appearing on my inner screen and I can choose whether to focus on it or to not focus on it. And this capacity to realise our spirituality is increased by education and meditation.
When we study spiritual wisdom texts, then they give us philosophical, logical, analytical understanding of how we are different from our emotions. How we exist at a higher level of reality. And from there we can observe and we can we can respond.
So spirituality also means understanding that there is a higher plan to life. That there is a greater intelligence than ours that is working in our life. And that intelligence will bring good out of the bad.
So ok, this bad emotion is there, but it is I am different from it. So to the extent we study spiritual wisdom texts such as the Bhagavad Gita, we practise meditation. There are different forms of meditation.
We in our tradition practise sonic meditation, sound guided meditation. We focus on chanting of sacred mantras. And these raise our consciousness upwards so that we understand I am different.
I am different from my outer scene. I am different from the inner screen. To the extent our meditation gives us this awareness, to that extent we become situated in inner security.
And our past will replay. It will keep replaying in our mind. But it doesn’t have to affect what we do.
It’s just some movie that is played inside. We notice it, we move on. It doesn’t have to translate into reality.
So for this to take place, this can all seem very abstract, but actually if we try to apply it in our life by spiritual practises, so at one level it is intellectual, but it is not just intellectual. I am different from this inner screen. We have to distance ourselves from the inner screen.
And that distance it increases to the extent our spirituality increases. To the extent we become more and more spiritual, we distance ourselves from the externals. And then we can move forwards.
And the last T is time. Now time is the greatest healer, it is said. But time can heal only when we allow it to heal.
So sometimes in our life we all go through bad phases. Those bad phases are just something which we have to experience. If we stay caught in those bad phases, if we overreact to them, if we replay them, if we resent them, then we stay stuck in the past.
The flow of time keeps moving forwards. In the bhakti yoga tradition, time is also considered to be a manifestation of the divine. And just as time keeps moving forwards, the divine is leading our life forwards.
And if we keep moving forwards, the past will become the past. But we have to keep ourselves open. When we focus on this principle that time is something which is my friend.
Time is my friend. How is it my friend? Suppose say we are going in a car. We are going in the car, we see some areas which have a foul smell still coming from them.
If say we have kept the car open because ventilation was there, then now that foul smell is foul. But if we keep driving our car, then it will remain behind. It will stay behind.
And we will move forward to another area. So time takes us all ahead from wherever we are. And if just as physical wounds heal with time, emotional wounds also heal with time.
But we need to let them heal. If say my hand is fractured, I am not going to use my hand to lift big weights at that time. Or if my hand was fractured, I am not going to bang my hand again and again.
That is the only way to worsen it. Just let it go, let it rest, it will heal. Similarly, for us, emotional wounds also do heal.
They do heal. Unless we keep replaying them, we keep re-enacting them, we keep letting ourselves get caught in them. I conclude with one anecdote and then if you have any questions we can discuss.
I was just in, about 6 months a year I spend in America, 5 to 6 months, apart from travelling across. So there, I met one boy, he told me that he grew up in a foster home. So I told him what happened? And after we got to know each other a little bit, I told him what happened, did your parents die in an accident or something like that? He said no, both my parents are alive.
I said why were you in a foster home? He said, when I was 5, my parents separated. And when they separated, it was a very bitter separation. And both of them told me that this marriage was the biggest mistake of our lives.
And they said, we just want to get over it. We want to move on in our life. And both the mother and father told the child, you remind me of the worst mistake of my life.
And therefore, both of them abandoned the child. And despite having two parents, he became a war of the state. Now, here the parents will say, I want to go past my past.
But this is not the way to go past your past. We have to re-envision the past. It’s not that the child can be seen as, the child is not a product of that mistake.
The child is an individual being who has his own personality, his own life, his own emotions. And the child’s life is separate from whatever the dynamics may be among them. So, when we in an unhealthy way want to get past our past, we just dump our past.
But then, that doesn’t work. The parents, probably sooner or later, they’ll feel guilty of what they did to their child. And even if they don’t feel guilty, they have severely damaged that child.
But this boy, when he got introduced to spirituality, at that time, he, in the bhakti tradition, we understand that all of us are conscious beings, we are souls, and there is a supreme soul. And that supreme soul is known by different names in different traditions. We know him by the name Krishna.
And he is considered to be the source of all love. All the love that we get from anyone in this world, that is ultimately the love of Krishna coming to us through them. When a mother has a child, and she offers that child her breast milk, that is one of the most intimate acts of love.
And yet, if we analyse, the mother doesn’t do anything special to produce milk to feed the child. The same higher arrangement that send a child through the mother’s womb into the world, also arranged for milk in the mother’s breast to feed the child. So yes, the milk that the mother offers is the mother’s love.
But it is not just the mother’s love. It is also the love of the higher being who arranged for the mother to have that milk. So the bhakti vision is that whatever love we get from anyone, ultimately it is coming from the infinite.
And sometimes, these channels, they work wonderfully, we get affection, we get regard, we get love, but sometimes they get interrupted. But that higher channel of love, that is always open for us. So we could say we have vertical relationship with the infinite, and we have horizontal relationship with others in the world.
And ultimately, the best way to get past our past, wherein certain things in our horizontal relationships are frustrated, is to focus on our vertical relationship. That infinite is the source of infinite love. So this boy, he started practising bhakti yoga.
Bhakti yoga means we have various practises by which we channel our devotion towards the infinite, and we connect with the infinite. So mantra chanting is one, and there are various other practises on that. And the result of this was slowly, surely, as he started chanting, he started feeling, as he started practising bhakti, he started feeling peaceful, started feeling strong, started feeling calm.
And, over a period of time, this boy, he became, he was almost like an orphan, he was staying in a hostel. And, the boy was staying in this hostel, he became slowly, like a role model for other students. And eventually, unfortunately, one of his, one of the other boys staying in the hostel, he had a, he was a teenager at that time, and his parents passed away in an accident.
When that happened, that boy was devastated. And when he was devastated, he was just so traumatised, he tried to commit suicide. And, when he tried to commit suicide, this boy, he, he was there.
He talked with him. He consoled him. He helped him.
And he found, because he had also practically not had his parents, so he was able to understand what this boy was going through. And when he helped him, at that time, he was himself a teenager, just coming out of teenage, a little older than the other boy, but when he helped him and he could help him, that was the time, he told me, it dawned on me, why all this happened to him. And he has now become an activist, who has started a forum for caring, for offering emotional and spiritual counselling for kids who have been abandoned by parents or kids who have lost their parents.
And he brings empathy into his work. Deep spirituality and deep empathy into his work. And he, when I met him, he told me that, I experienced so much fulfilment in my life.
So all that frustration I had gone through, it was at that time traumatic. But now, it has given him a defining purpose for life. So, when that moment will come for us, when we will, when that insight will dawn on us, what was the purpose why all this happened? Why in the past terrible things happened to us? Sometimes that illumination will come to us maybe a few minutes after that happens, sometimes after a few months after it happens, sometimes a few years after that, sometimes it may even take a few decades.
But, whatever we have gone through in the past, that is not meant to be wasted. Even our pain is not to be wasted. If we are alert, if we are spiritually attuned, even our pain can be harvested.
Harvested for our good and for others good. So this is how, actually speaking now, if we look back, I’ll summarise and I’ll talk through this example of the boy, what he did. So, I talked about the acronym PAST, how to get past our past.
And in that I spoke, our past impressions, in the sense of negative experiences, traumas may keep replaying and our past addictive desires may keep coming back to us. So they become like ghosts troubling us. So, talked about four points for dealing with this past.
What was P? Purpose. See, look at this boy who was abandoned by his parents. But, it was through that, he found a purpose.
The purpose was, let me take care of others. Let me help others in a similar situation. At that time, he was himself a student.
He didn’t have many resources. But that purpose enabled him to move on. I talked about how goals are externals which we may or may not get.
Purpose is the internal that drives us. And, just as our bodies need food, air, water, similarly our heart needs purpose for living. And, we have practical purposes in terms of fulfilling our bodily needs.
And, our life, our mind sets up various purposes. Do this, do that, do that. We need a purpose that is bigger than our problems.
And, that purpose is what will empower us to move forward in life. A purpose is like a direction. A goal is like a destination.
So, somebody who is writing, the purpose is to write. The goal is, I want to be a published author. I want to earn money.
So, goals, we would like to achieve them. But, we don’t reduce our purpose to the achievement of goals. So, by looking inwards, by understanding what is important for us, what contribution can we make in our life, if we find a purpose that can give us a vision of the future, a direction for the future.
People who are very depressed, they can just get out of themselves by doing something good for someone. Just feed somebody who is hungry, see a smile on their face. That gives them a sense of purpose.
It brings them out of themselves. Then, I talked about, A was acceptance. So, it means that we have certain expectations of life.
So, we are here, expectations are here, life is here. So, when the expectations are thwarted, at that time, we need to accept the reality and then deal with it. If we were planning to exhibit our rowing skills and suddenly a wave knocks us into the water where there are no oars and no boat, at that time, we have to recalibrate and deal with the reality.
So, expectations are like the middle man who is meant to help us build our house. But if the middle man starts feasting our money and nothing is happening on the ground, then we have to dismiss the middle man. So, it is human to have expectations.
But, if you become attached to the expectations, then our energy gets dissipated in dealing with the frustrated expectations and we have no energy left for dealing with the reality. So, acceptance is not approving, it is not accepting defeat, it is just accepting the reality. So, this boy, if he had not accepted, my parents would have abandoned me.
But, let me see what I can do with my life now. Acceptance empowers us to deal with reality as it is. S was spirituality.
In the thought experiment, spirituality is not just a state of the mind, it is a level of reality. In the thought experiment, we saw that there is outer scene, inner screen and the inner seer. So, the inner seer is who we are, that is the soul.
And our past keeps replaying on that inner screen. If we keep identifying with that inner screen, then we get victimised by the past. But, spiritual education and spiritual meditation helps us become self-aware that I am the inner seer.
And just like sometimes some pop-ups come on our phone or our computer, we note them, but we don’t keep watching them. They just go away over a period of time. Similarly, the past may replay, but if we understand I am different from it, then we can persevere.
And then lastly, T was time. Time is our friend. Time is a manifestation of the divine.
Time keeps helping us to move forward in life. And if we keep moving forward, then wounds that may seem devastating right now, even they will be healed. And for that, I talked about how we have horizontal relationships in this world and we have vertical relationship with the divine.
So, ultimately, whatever love we get from anyone, it is the divine offering love through that person. When a baby is loved by the mother, it is not just the mother’s love, it is the divine’s love coming through the mother, who has arranged for milk in the mother’s breast. So, in the world, in our horizontal relationship with others, sometimes we may be frustrated, sometimes we may be devastated.
But the vertical relationship is always open for us. And if we connect vertically and experience this divine love through the practise of Bhakti Yoga, then every one of us can become not only freed from the past, but we may even discover a purpose by which our pain will no longer be a burden. Our pain won’t be wasted, but it will be harvested for ours and others’ goods.
Just like this boy, who was abandoned by his parents, but eventually he found his calling in caring for abandoned and lost kids. Thank you very much. So, are there any questions or comments? Any of you would like to speak something which you felt that you will carry home? If you don’t have any questions still, just share some point that you liked, that you felt was something useful for you.
Yeah. Thank you. Anything specific? Yeah, it’s true.
It’s true. Anything specific from the talk you felt was, what addressed you? Yeah. When you read back, isn’t it? All of it was really good.
The thing that stuck out for me was, don’t continue dealing with expectations and frustrations after a betrayal and don’t put energy into that. And then you went on to talk about how it replayed. It can be easier said than done.
Yeah, at least it’s true. It’s not easy, but at least when you understand what exactly is happening, if you analyse these three parts, the expectation, the reality and I, then it’s at least easier to direct our energy, otherwise we’re just caught inside our head. Thank you.
Anyone else would like to share anything? Yeah, please. Is there a different dimension or is that still in the 3D? Mind, body, soul. Actually, yes, it’s a good question.
The soul is spiritual, the divine is also spiritual. At the same time, the divine is accessible both at the physical level as well as the material level. The divine is not physical or material.
But the divine is accessible at the physical level. So, for example, when we read wisdom texts, we talk about spiritual reality. The book is a physical book.
The text on it is physical marks. But they are channels by which our consciousness is rooted towards the spiritual. Similarly, in the bhakti tradition, there is a concept called avatar.
Avatar means incarnation or descent of the divine. So, to continue this particular metaphor, to develop it a little bit more, I talked about how there is the inner seer, the inner screen and the outer scene. So, now it is explained in the yoga tradition that the divine is next to us in every one of our hearts.
The divine is our constant companion. But our consciousness is turned away. So, we don’t perceive that presence.
It’s like, say, if you have a child who is caught in watching a horror movie and as that horror movie is going on, the child is trembling, panting, sweating, crying and you are right now in that same room and your child is safe. But as long as that child is caught in watching the horror movie, the child can’t perceive you. So, similarly for us, we can say our consciousness is caught at the physical level.
And it’s caught at the physical and the mental level and we can’t perceive spiritual reality. So, when we are caught in watching a movie, we don’t even remember who we are or where we are. Our consciousness is projected completely into that.
Similarly for us, although we are spiritual beings, right now our consciousness is projected into the physical and the mental levels. So, now when the mother is seeing that, my child is so scared. But the child is so scared that the mother comes and touches the child, the child will think, hey, that monster has come.
And the child will scream. So, the mother even can’t even touch that child. So, consumed by what is going on over there.
So, what does the mother do? So, the mother actually, she has another remote. So, what she does is, she just changes what is going on over there. And then suddenly, the child says, oh, there is a noise.
The mother may have made other children and she may have made some movie of her, a video of her with other children. Playing, reciprocating love, having a lot of fun. And then the child sees that, hey, what is this? Isn’t that a nice person? She is so nice.
She is so loving. They are all having so much fun. He starts getting attracted.
He gets more and more attracted to that. Then this horror movie is going on. Sometimes we have TVs with dual screen or sometimes we have one programme going on but another programme, you can get a sneak peek of what is happening.
Hey, this is good. The child maximises that. Let me see this channel.
And that goes in the background. And the child starts seeing that more and more. Oh, she is so loving.
She is so kind. The child starts becoming calmer. As the child starts becoming calmer, then, the mother comes and touches.
Oh, she was there. She is here also. And the child hugs the mother.
Similarly for us, the Divine is present with us but we don’t perceive. So, therefore, there are the manifestations of the Divine at the physical level. So there can be, as I said, the sacred sounds, the mantras.
We chant the mantra Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare. So there are various sacred chants which are actually manifestations of the Divine. In fact, as I said, when the Divine descends, at that time the Divine performs various sacred activities which are also like the movie being played.
So when we hear about those activities, when we read about them, then our consciousness gets diverted. But for us, practically, there is a higher dimension. It’s not the 3D 3D when we talk about, often we think of it as length, breadth, width.
But that’s not our space time at the most. That’s what physics talks about. This 3D is somewhat different.
This is body, mind and soul. And at the spiritual level, the Divine is present. But the Divine can be experienced through the physical, through the mental and gradually we become spiritually awakened.
And then we start experiencing the Divine directly at the spiritual level. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
So if you are playing the horror movie, how do we change the channel? There are broadly three ways. One is sometimes in extreme situations, some Divine insight comes from within. That is rare but it also happens.
Like this boy, when he was helping that child, suddenly that other friend, at that time this is what I am meant to do. So those are special moments of inspiration when some insight may come to us from within. The second more accessible way is association.
If we associate with spiritual people, it’s like we are watching a movie, we are watching a horror movie. But we associate someone who is watching something very soothing and pacifying. Then hey, this person is so peaceful, I am so troubled.
So association shapes us not just externally but also internally. So even if our own minds are replaying the horror movies, it is not that they keep replaying it 24 hours a day. There are times when they just bombard us intensely.
And to change things internally takes time. But changing things externally is relatively easier. You can just come in a spiritual association.
Just hear some talks. Associate with spiritually minded people. And that creates within us the desire to change the channel.
It gives us the capacity to make that change. And then thirdly is practise. So practise means that your mind will go off.
It’s like the horror movie is going on and then we change the channel but again that old channel reverts. But we take it back. It goes off here, bring it back.
Goes off, bring it back. So by that process of inner discipline, gradually things change. That’s because our mind is habituated to functioning in a particular way.
So that is it’s a default and it doesn’t change. But we can change it consciously. By study effort that is focused on especially we do our spiritual practises.
So if we study wisdom texts, if we chant the holy name, if we chant sacred mantras, this is like a practise by which we are retuning. We are changing the channel. And as we keep doing it more and more, then this also creates positive impressions within us.
Like I said, in the past, there have been negative impressions. But through the process of spirituality, we create positive impressions. And these positive impressions then take our thoughts towards the positive.
So in time, if we keep doing practise, then gradually by default, the horror movie won’t start off, the horror channel will start off, but a healthier channel will start off. Thank you. So thank you very much for your participation.
Thank you. Thank all of you for coming