A waste-free mind for a waste-free world

[Talk at Vegetarian Society, ]

I’m happy to be here amongst all of you today.
Am I audible to everyone behind? There are broadly two kinds of people in the world. Some people are wise, and some are otherwise. And not only are there these two kinds of people, we can see that we ourselves behave in two kinds of ways.
Sometimes we surprise ourselves by how wise we are, especially when we are giving advice to others. It’s really good insights. But then when we have to act, sometimes we shock ourselves by how dumb we can become, and how foolishly we can act.
So with respect to the environment also, we see that, we could say there are two kinds of people, some who are very conscious of the environment, and how they are affecting the environment. They are in the wise category. And there are others who are spectacularly short-sighted.
And what we are doing to our environment is we are destroying our own home, where we and our future generations have to live. And even those of us who recognise that, okay, we need to be careful about the way we live, we also tend to oscillate. Sometimes we may succumb to behaviours, to habits that are detrimental for us and our environment.
So there is a lot that is being done, especially in the last few decades, for cleaning up the environment. And just a few years ago, I was at the UNESCO Peace Conference. At that time, the UNESCO head was speaking that in the UNESCO Charter, they said that, just as war begins in the minds of people, peace too has to begin in the minds of people.
And similarly, if you want a waste-free world, if you want a clean, green world, it has to begin with the mind. Now, how do we go about doing this? And what does it mean? Let’s look at that. So many of you may be aware of this great Pacific garbage patch.
It is a huge patch that is there to do under 20 million square kilometres. It contains the trash which we humans have disposed and it is accumulated. It is madder than man’s.
Now, this not only is an eyesore, but it is an environmental threat. And this is symptomatic in some ways of our inner world. If we take a helicopter and fly, we will see that the ocean looks beautiful, but this patch stands out as ugly.
And in our inner world also, there is beauty, but there is also darkness, there is also ugliness. And specifics vary depending on the researchers, but many brain scientists say that we use less than 10% of our brain power, some say even less than 1%. And the idea is that there is a lot of waste which sucks our energy.
Now, waste is not just an eyesore, waste is also a danger. And let’s take another example to understand how inner waste works. Suppose you have a cell phone, you charge it in the morning, and then at 10 o’clock, you look at the cell phone, it’s 10%.
What happened? Maybe three, four hours, how did 90% go? That’s the result of waste. If there are too many apps running in the background, then we don’t… Okay, so was my speech on waste till now? Do I need to repeat or was I… Okay, you can hear better now? Thank you. So now, if that’s happened, we understand that if 90% of the battery is gone, without we having done much, then we understand something in the background is draining our phone.
So just as we can feel drained when we have unnecessary apps open and consuming energy, similarly, we can feel mentally drained. So waste, just as waste in the outer world contaminates the world, waste in our inner world drains us. And that’s why sometimes we wake up and just do something for a few hours and we feel, I’m so tired, I’m so frustrated.
I saw a picture, it said, person has woken up at seven and nine o’clock. He’s, oh, only 14 more hours and I can go to sleep again. So what happens? Sometimes we just, it’s not just laziness, sometimes we will be lazy, but sometimes we just feel exhausted.
So we need to learn to manage the waste within us. And the more we can manage to learn how to manage that waste, then we will be more effective in managing our outer waste. The things in the outer world reflect the thoughts in the inner world.
And to the extent we manage the thoughts, the things become manageable more and more. So nowadays, we’re talking about eco-friendly governments. And there is talk of, so that’s one important thing is that when a battery is drained, it becomes dysfunctional.
But when we have waste thoughts inside us, they don’t just drain us, they can also mislead us. They can make us not just de-energised, they can also make us destructive. Because we as conscious beings always have consciousness.
And sometimes people who are destructive, they have a lot of energy. But that energy is going in a direction that either harms them or harms others. So let’s look at this.
So when I talk about having an eco-friendly governance, having a deal. So to understand how our mind works, what causes the inner wastage. And we will try to use a metaphor over here.
So the yoga texts from ancient India offer a model of the self. And they explain that there are three aspects to it. There’s the body, mind, and consciousness.
These are like the hardware, the software, and the user. So in the last few years, or you could say last few decades, in the last few centuries, we have improved enormously at the level of the body. In terms of physical comforts, physical facilities.
But whereas the hardware has improved, something has gone wrong with the software. That’s why we have an enormous number of people who have mental health issues, depression, anxiety, and so many other disorders. So the hardware improving is important.
One of the insights of the yoga texts is that what we have discovered about our outer world through science is amazing. What we have discovered about our outer world is amazing. But what we have forgotten about our inner world is even more amazing.
It’s amazing because when we discover it is so empowering. And it’s amazing because when in fact we have forgotten something so vital, it’s also amazingly dumb. So it’s amazing.
And what is this inner world all about? Just as when we have knowledge about the outer world, then we can have better control. If we know, say, how gravity works, then we can have laws of motion work, then we can have trains, we can have cars, we can have planes, we can have spacecrafts, we can have greater control. So if we understand how our inner world works, then we can have greater control.
Then we can use inner power better. There’s a difference between physical energy and mental energy. Physical energy we can choose, I have a car, I can choose I’ll stop the car and the energy will be conserved.
With respect to inner energy, it’s always active. You’re always thinking of something or other. And in that sense, if you don’t use the energy, it’s going to be wasted.
So it’s so important for us to learn how to tap our inner energy. The more inner knowledge we have, the more inner control we have, then the better we can tap our inner energy. And we can eliminate waste from there.
Just like if we have software, sometimes there are waste files in the computer, we just take all the space. Sometimes there are viruses, we just reproduce and take a lot of space. So we need to remove these.
So let’s see how we can remove the waste from within. We’ll talk about a green deal to clean your mind. We’re talking about a green deal for cleaning the environment.
And whether that will come through or not, that depends on a lot of factors, most of which are not in our control. But an inner green deal is something which is in our control. There are four aspects to it.
Desire, envision, apply and let go. So let’s begin with desire. We all have hundreds and hundreds of desires.
At each moment, right now, you’re sitting, you’re hearing this talk, you have some desire to hear the talk. But at the same time, there are many other things going on inside. You’re thinking, I’ve not checked my phone for 20 minutes.
What if some new messages come up? Or you’ll be thinking that, I heard there’s a multiple course feast today. What is going to be there? When will I get it? So our mind has many, many thoughts going on. And as we develop the thoughts, they grow into desires.
And every desire consumes our energy. So usually, if our desire is focused, then we can do something constructive. But we need to focus our desire.
So that is rarely happens. Desire just keep popping up from here, there and everywhere. It’s like a phone, which has 100 notifications.
Or a browser, where somebody has opened 37 tabs, and three of them are frozen. And from one of them, a loud noise is coming. And you don’t know which one it is.
So like that, our mind has multiple tracks going on, and each track is consuming energy. So what do we do now? Desire is just natural. So all that we can do is, we need to choose our desires.
Every desire is like a snowball. Last year, I was invited to the University of Calgary in Canada to speak. So I was at the top of a hill, and it was snowing at that time.
So we saw firsthand how snowballs are formed. At the top of the hill, when the snow falls and starts rolling, it’s not a snowball. It’s a snow pebble.
And there, somebody just flip it with their toe, and it will crack. Or it starts rolling, rolling, and gains mass and gains moment. And then as it grows, by the time it comes halfway down, it has become a significantly big snowball.
By the time it has come down, it has become a snow boulder. And the same person who had flipped it with their toe when it was on top, now can fall over that person completely. So similarly is desire.
When it comes initially, it’s like a snowball. But the more we dwell on it, it keeps growing, keeps growing. And then eventually, it can become addictive.
And because of addiction, nowadays we recoil against the notion of slavery. America was famous that day. Slavery was abolished 700 years, or more than 100 years ago.
While in most places, physical slavery is looked down upon and banned, there’s a lot of psychological slavery. Whatever desire we have, the problem is the desire can become stronger and stronger. It can consume us.
And it consumes us. Basically, addiction comes from the root dictation, which comes from dictator. So when a desire becomes a dictator, it becomes addictive.
And that’s like a snowball which has gone all the way down. It becomes a snow boulder now. And for all of us, there are many desires which can overpower us.
About alcoholism, it is said that first, the drinker takes a drink. Then the drink takes a drink. And then the drink takes the drinker.
Just snowballs. So what can we do about it? Now, saying no to desires is very painful. It feels like deprivation.
Who says I can’t do it? But the problem is saying yes to desire leads to deprivation. Why? Because we spend time, energy, thought, money, and then it’s lost. So there’s deprivation either way.
So the solution here is that we can’t fight with desires on our own. It’s empower. The power of desire is meant to work for us.
Empower your desires, healthy desires, to fight unhealthy desires. Like I said earlier, every desire has a momentum. So imagine if a huge truck is charging down towards you.
And it’s coming to your property and you don’t want it to come. And you stand in the path of the truck. I’ll stop it.
Well, we are not superman or supergirl or some superwoman or something like that. We’ll be crushed. So our habits, the desire that we’ve indulged in, they have gained momentum.
And they will charge down upon us. We try to stop. It’s almost impossible.
So what is the way to stop a truck? Get into another truck. And if this truck is also large, the other person says, oh, if I come in this truck, there’s a collision. Both of us will be destroyed.
The other person will veer off. So often when we want to, we know some things are not good for me. I should give them up.
But we focus on saying no. And that is a losing strategy. So rather don’t focus on saying no to your unhealthy desires.
Focus on saying yes to your healthy desires. Don’t try to fight your bad habits. Fight to create good habits.
And those good habits will fight your bad habits. And what will happen is, even if you’re not able to overcome the bad habit for some time, even a long time, but still the good habit will create value in our life. The good habit will bring positivity in our life.
And that will increase our self-esteem, our self-confidence, our contribution. So desire is a very great power. And one way to avoid inner waste is to choose our desires.
Choose our desire means each desire you can say like a notification on your phone. And whichever you click, it will zoom out. So focus on which desires we give attention to.
And that way if you do, you’ll find that there’s a lot of conserving of inner energy we can do. The first aspect, desire. Then E is envision.
Now envision is something very, it’s something distinctively human. All living beings have desires. But we human beings can envision possibilities.
All living beings eat food. But it’s only human beings who cook and make food more delicious. And that is one way we have hundreds of questions.
So we can envision how things can be better. And this, if we just try to find that a level of desire, I won’t do this, I’ll do this. Then we’re not using all our resources.
Just like for cleaning the environment, we want to use all the resources available for us. Similarly, cleaning an urban environment, all the resources we have. What do I mean by envision? Our imagination, again, is like our desires.
The desire is, we could say, the first stage. And desire is fuelled and it grows by imagination. So you could say, earlier, example of a truck.
So desire is like a car. And imagination is the fuel for the car. So sometimes we have a healthy desire.
But we have a healthy desire, we have unhealthy desire. But sometimes our imagination gets caught with unhealthy desire. Oh, I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this.
And if that happens, then our unhealthy desires are like cars without any fuel. It just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work.
I gave a talk once on New Year resolutions to the TV talk show. So I did some research for that. I found that 90% of the New Year resolutions are not new.
The same resolutions being made again and again. And the reason for that is, there could be many reasons. But one is that when we have a desire, even a healthy desire, often our imagination doesn’t go with the desire.
Our imagination is going with our unhealthy desires. It’s that, that means, say, if I decide that I want to become healthier, I want to diet, I want to exercise. And say, imagine if somebody goes for the first time to a gym.
And then they say, big, big weights over there, big machines over there. And they say, oh, I have to pull all these weights. If I try to pull this, if I lift this weight or pull this, I’ll be exhausted.
What if this weight clashes on me? Better I won’t go here. Now, we can either look at the huge weights and think I can’t do it. Or we can look at maybe some friend of ours, someone whom we admire, who has a very fit and healthy body.
See, I want to have a physique like that. So either our vision can go toward the effort required or our vision can go toward the desire coming from the effort. So here is a simple example of our vision will determine our determination, our enthusiasm, our action.
So most of the times in today’s world, our imagination is activated by externals, which are out to exploit us. That is the whole, in a sense, the advertisement industry, it is so ubiquitous today that we may even think that maybe 100, 150 years ago, there were no ads, no commercials at all. But now, all the best imagination of the people around us is used, the creative people use their imagination to make things which will fuel our imagination.
And that’s why the result is that our imagination always goes in directions that are not so healthy. I want to eat this, I want to watch this. There are so many allurements all around us.
And when people have already done the imagination, given us the most fertile stimuli, it’s so easy to get kept into it. So for us to imagine in a healthy way, we need good association. So we use our healthy imagination to envision what we can be and what we can do.
And for that, we need people who, good friends around us, good association. Our desires, as they grow, the imagination comes from our outers. So desires are not just linear, they are also triangular.
I’ll explain what I mean by triangular desires. Does any of you know what is a baklava? Anyone? Anyone doesn’t know what is a baklava? Okay, one or two. I was in your condition maybe five years ago.
First time I had gone to Australia and a friend invited me to their home for lunch. And then for dessert, we have got baklava. Would you like to have? Baklava, for those of you who don’t know it, sir, what is it? It’s a pastry.
It’s an Arabic dessert. Of course, all over the world, it’s good. That’s the way it says.
So I had never heard of a baklava. And now if you think about it, the name baklava doesn’t sound very sweet. Baklava, okay.
So they go, would you like to have baklava? I said, maybe later. And then there was another friend of mine who had also come with me for lunch and he said, give me. And then he took a baklava and he started eating it.
And with closed eyes, he was relishing it. And I looked at him and I said, give me one also. So what happened? Just the sound of the word baklava or the sight of a baklava did not activate the imagination.
But seeing somebody eat that activated the imagination. So we have to see if we make, if we have certain healthy desire, this is what I want to do. This is the way I’m wasting my time.
This is the way I’m wasting my energy. This is the way I’m wasting things. They’re wasting my desires.
I want to stop that. The way to stop it is to see what is activating our imagination. And we need to get the association of those people who will activate our healthy imagination.
It’s like if you go for eating food. Now, vegetarian, vegan food is much more eco-friendly than meat-based food. But if you’re surrounded by people who all eat meat-based food, then even if you want to eat eco-friendly, it’ll be much more difficult.
So you’ll see all of them doing that. I also want to eat this. But if you have friends who are eating vegan, then oh, I can also eat that.
It becomes easier. So our imagination is largely fuelled by our association. We can’t quickly change the imaginations because the imagination is already running.
But if we can get stimuli around us, which are healthy, then that will stimulate our imagination. So quite often our resolutions, our desire and strength becomes a resolution. Quite often the resolution doesn’t work because we don’t fuel it with imagination.
That, okay, I’m going to do this. What is the result of this? And that has to be envisioned. Unfortunately, what we envision is our imagination works against us and we envision all the effort, all the sacrifice, all that we are going to lose.
So we need to fuel our imagination attractively, appropriately. And the third part is apply. So if you notice that there is for waste, there is the consciousness, the mind and the body.
So we talk at the level of the mind, there’s desire and there’s imagination. And then we will translate it into the actual world, physical reality. That’s apply.
Now for applying, there are two distinct steps. When we want to envision and that can expand the vision. Why? Because the results don’t come immediately.
Isn’t it? Results don’t come immediately. It’s a one day if I diet and next morning I get on the time of the weighing machine. Well, it’s not that my weight is going to go down in one day.
So results take time. So for envisioning, we have to see the long term. This is where I will be after six months, after one year.
And that activates our imagination. Yes, that’s what I want to do. But while executing, focus your vision.
Focus on small steps. Quite often when we start while applying, if we start thinking of the big term, maybe just overwhelm answers. One of my friends is a champion cyclist and often he climbs, goes and cycles up hills, cross country.
And he told me that, repeatedly it has been found in surveys, that cyclists can cycle more distances at night than at daytime, especially when they are climbing up, they’re riding up hills. So I asked, why is that? Because what happens in the night time, you can’t see the long hill. So all you see is, let me take one pedal, one pedal, one pedal.
You can keep pedalling. But in the daytime, you see the huge hill. I have to go so far.
Just seeing that drains us. So while executing, focus on small steps. What happens for us? When envisioning, we don’t envision much.
And while applying, we start envisioning, we imagine, I have to do so much. And then what happens if you say, oh, I will do this for the rest of my life. And our mind will say, oh, you have the rest of your life to do it.
And we postpone it. So apply means to start small, simple steps. This is SSS, small simple steps.
Let’s come back to this. So small simple steps means that when we work, if you start with, what is it that I can do right now? Okay, for the next one hour, can I be polite? Can I be courteous? Can I be focused? Yeah, one hour is possible. You can do it for one hour.
If I had said, I’m not going to be, I’m not going to be angry, I’m not going to be short tempered, I’m not going to snap at someone. Okay, next one hour, I’ll be polite. If you can do for one hour, then good job.
Appreciate yourself. And then see, you’re able to do something. So when we focus on small steps, that when we do those steps, it gives us confidence.
So applying is all about small steps. And it’s amazing, although small steps, the change is evolutionary, the result is revolutionary. It can make a huge amount of difference like this.
So now whenever you have to apply, it’s important that we have certain rules for ourselves. This is what I’m going to do, this is what I’m not going to do. So let’s do a small experiment now.
Let’s play a game. Would anyone like to volunteer to come here and play a game? Okay, please come. Do you want to come? Just play a game.
What game would you like to play? Just play a game. What has happened over here? If I just tell you to play a game, what? What do you do? Expect something. You expect.
Every game, what does it have? Some framework, some guidelines, some rules. So thank you. So the point here is that actually if I don’t give any rules, even if you want to play, as playing is supposed to be enjoyable, but even for something as enjoyable as playing, you need rules.
Without rules, we can’t even play. So imagine two players are playing chess and one of them doesn’t like the game and just knocks over the piece. Hell, then that’s no fun, isn’t it? So now rules, when you apply, you have to set rules for ourselves.
And rules can sometimes seem to be restrictive, but we need to see rules as routes to a better life. Rules are not meant to be restrictive, don’t do this, don’t do this. Rules are routes to a better life.
And with our envisioning, if you’ve done this, okay, this rule is actually a pathway for me to get there. Then we will be able to move forward. So rules enable us to harmoniously belong to a whole bigger than ourselves.
It’s like if you’re playing a team sports, maybe it’s football or cricket or baseball, basketball. If a player doesn’t follow the rules, they’re sent out because the game cannot move on. So we are a part of a whole bigger than ourselves.
And when we apply, if we set rules for us, this is what I’m going to do. Then you can do a simple rule, but you’ll find that rules, if they’re chosen rightly and wisely, the right rules free you to be you. They free you to be you.
Now, anybody who is creative, I write. Now, whenever I write, writing is both a craft and an art. So if I just get whatever is in my head out and write it down, it’s good, I’ve got my ideas out.
But then I’ve got to love myself. Generally, it’s imagine if somebody is going to do a musical performance and just come on the stage and start performing. No practise, no rehearsals, they’ll perform, but it’ll be probably a performance that they will regret.
They’ll definitely not be the best. Now, every time when people practise and rehearse, what are they doing? Actually, following rules. This is how I’m supposed to do it.
I’m doing it this way. Let me do it this way. So actually, rules can help us to bring out our best.
And that applies to the environment also. When we live in the environment, if we have this vision, when I apply, the rules are not just meant to deprive me or take the fun away from me. The rules are actually meant to create a better life for myself.
Now, while applying, if you don’t give your mind a job to do, it will find a job to do and give you a job to do. What that means is, I don’t mind as we say, what do we say? Devil’s workshop. So it said that, one of my friends is a psychologist, so he told me that there are surveys.
When do people worry the most? Is it morning 7 o’clock to 7.30? Is it night 5 to 5.30? No. People worry during their leisure time. During our idle time, our mind works overtime.
So what we need is, we need to apply means get out of the head, start doing something. Sometimes, oh, can I do this? Can’t I do that? Maybe I can’t do this. Maybe I’m going to do it.
Just get out of the head and start doing it. Small steps. Give your mind a job to do.
And one way to do this is to cultivate self-awareness. Because am I doing what I’m meant to do or is my mind getting me to do something? That is, self-awareness comes by asking these three questions. Anytime you start feeling annoyed, exhausted, irritated, depressed, too.
And just ask yourself, okay, what am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? What are you doing? I’m upset. What am I doing? I’m clenching my face and I’m grinding my teeth. Why am I doing this? How am I doing this? What, why, how? As soon as we ask these questions, the waste energy that we are spending on a lot of destructive things, that just gets, we become aware of it.
More often than not, we waste our mental and emotional energy, not because we want to, but because we’re not even aware of it. Like I said, apps, we just consume our phone’s battery. So like that, so many thoughts, desires, they consume our inner energy.
And if we have some app which detects, which shows us all the apps that are open, oh, this app I don’t need, let me close this, close this, close this, close this. So like that, these three questions can help us to close all the unwanted apps in our inner phone. All the channels in which our thoughts and desires are going, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? How am I doing it? Once we start asking these questions, we find that each one of us can channel our energy much more constructively.
I’ll skip some slides here. The last part is let go. This is extremely important.
One of the ways we waste our energy is by using it on that which is not useful. If, say, I’m driving a car and the road is blocked over there. And if I use my car to push the blockage in the big tree, push and push and push and push, and my car is not going to move that tree.
Better find some other way. So there are times when the most empowering thing to do is to let go. Now, let go, often we see that as a weakness.
Why should I let go? I want to do this. Yeah, there are times when, if you’re always letting go of things, that is weakness. But if we let go of things that are not working, so that we can catch hold of the things that are working, that is intelligence.
Letting go is what empowers us to channel our energy the most constructively. I’ll give two examples to conclude this. Suppose somebody is planning to learn rowing.
And they take classes, they practise, and then they’re going to exhibit to all their friends. Come and see how smoothly I row. And they’ve got a whole movie plan in their mind.
And I’m going to row smoothly and all my friends will click photos and videos and they’ll share it on social media and everybody will appreciate how what a graceful rower you are. They get into the boat and they’re rowing. And they start rowing and suddenly a monster view comes from nowhere.
And the next moment, there is no boat under them and there are no oars in their hands. Now, if they keep rowing at that time, what will happen? They’ll drown. Isn’t it? So, if the reality has changed suddenly, then I still have a plan to learn rowing and show, exhibit my rowing skills, but not now.
I have to let go of my plan. I have to first swim and get back. So, for each one of us, we may have a particular plan.
And we all have dreams. We all have aspiration of what we want to do. And we want to actualise it.
That’s wonderful. But sometimes just the reality changes drastically. And the reality has changed.
We need to let go of the things that we can’t change. Let go. It is not going to work.
Now, when we let go, how can we ensure that it is not weakness? By checking whether holding on is helping us to deal with reality or is making us deny reality. So, if I am here, the reality, the situation, reality is here. And my hopes, my dreams, my expectations are here.
Now, for all of us, our dreams can help us to shape reality. And that’s important. We have those dreams so that we can change reality for the better.
So, if it’s like this, the hopes, the dreams, the expectations, they’re all useful. But sometimes things change so much, it becomes like this. I am here, the reality is here, and the expectations are in the opposite direction.
And now, if I’m dealing with the expectations, dealing with the expectations is actually denying, is depriving me of my ability to deal with reality. And the result of that is, we drain ourselves. And that is very painful.
That is very wasteful. Some of you may have noticed that I use crutches for walking. So, I have polio in one of my legs.
And I often speak at places where people with special needs, they have their groups. And I find some amazing stories of resilience among such people. But among many, I see a painful amount of resentment.
Many of them are fighting battles that are already lost. Somebody lost a hand or a leg maybe 10 years ago. And still they are resenting the accident that led to that.
Somebody lost an eye maybe five years ago. And still they are hating the person because of whom they think that happened. Now, to fight a battle that is already lost is to be lost.
Resentment of reality often hurts more than reality. And letting go helps us to let go of the resentment. The key to resilience is to accept the unchangeable without accepting that everything is unchangeable.
To accept the unchangeable, this is happening. I can’t change it. Let go.
Let go of that. But that doesn’t mean everything is lost. To accept the unchangeable without accepting that everything is unchangeable.
And that becomes easier if you understand that there is a higher plan and purpose to our life. That we are not alone in an uncaring universe. Our efforts are important.
There is a higher plan. Every morning when birds chirp and they search for grains, the birds are searching for grains. But along with that, if they are not producing the grains, there is a higher arrangement that provides for the grains.
They just go and search in front. If they don’t get grains in one place, they go to the next place. If they don’t find the next place, they go to the third place.
So for us, bad things happen to everyone. But if we can let go of what has happened, then everything that happens is not good, but everything that happens can be for good. It can be for good.
If we move forward, if we don’t hold on. The second example is of a baby bird in a shell. Now the shell is for the baby bird a very comfortable place.
And as it keeps growing, growing, growing, slowly the shell starts cracking. And then maybe its leaf comes out. The leaf comes out.
Sorry, not leaf. Its wing comes out. Some feathers come out.
And then the shell snaps back. It’s painful. Has any of you ever seen a baby bird coming out of a shell? Yeah, it’s quite a painful experience to see.
It’s an effortful experience for the baby bird. Then they crack. And then again, they come out a little bit.
The bird comes out. Again it cracks back. Again it cracks back.
Now the baby bird could give up. If it gives up, it will suffocate inside the cage. So inside the shell was comfort.
Coming out of the shell requires effort. But if it comes out of the shell, now somebody can very easily break the shell. And the bird can come out effortlessly.
But the result of that is that the baby bird’s wings are not developed enough. And the wings are not developed enough, then it can’t fly. And any predatory bird can come, any predator can come and devour it.
So although often we think of our problems as burdens, our problems are also what are essential for making us stronger, for helping us to evolve. We all live in our comfort zones. And we need to let go of the comfort zone.
Let go of the things that we can’t change. Comfort is always collapsing around. I can’t change that.
But a bigger, better life awaits us. Just as when the bird comes out after breaking the shell, it has a whole sky to fly. Each one of us can be much, much better than what we are right now.
There’s a spark of divinity within each one of us. We belong to a whole much bigger than ourselves. And the light of divinity can shine from within us, making our life brighter and making our world brighter.
If we let that light shine. And for that light to shine, the shell of our comfort zone needs to be broken. And breaking that shell requires us to let go.
If we learn to let go of the things that we can’t change, let go of the thing that has just happened, let go of the past, all that gone wrong in the past, and just take small steps to move forward. If you do that, you will find each one of us has the power to create a better life for ourselves and to contribute to creating a better world. We can become channels for something far bigger than ourselves to act through and create a better life for ourselves and for us to become agents of change in the world.
So letting go of the things that we can’t change so that we can focus on the things that we can change is one of the most empowering ways to avoid inner waste. And then we just learn to let go. The waste within us will all go away.
And we will find that we have far more energy, far more potential, far more power than what we thought we had. If we can manage the waste within us better, we’ll discover that we are tougher than what we thought we were. Our own spirituality is obscured by all the waste around us.
And when the waste is removed, our spirituality comes out and we can brighten our life and we can brighten the world around us. A waste-free mind can empower us to create a waste-free world. I’ll summarise.
I spoke today on the theme of a waste-free mind for a pacific patch. In the ocean, there’s a great ugly patch inside us and that drains our energy just like a battery of a phone gets drained. But when energy is drained, it doesn’t just disempower us, it makes us destructive also.
So how do we deal with this waste? What we have learned about our outer world is astonishing, but what we have forgotten about our inner world is astonishing also. We have talked about the three-level model of the self, body, mind and consciousness. And we have progressed to the physical level, the hardware, but the mind which is in software, that is regressed, that is corrupted by viruses.
And our four strategies for assigning the inner green deal with ourselves. What are the four points? Desire. That is, we strengthen our healthy desires.
We don’t try to say no to our unhealthy desires. That’s like trying to stop a truck on our own. But empower the healthy desires and let them fight with unhealthy desires.
What is E? Envision. So our desires are fuelled by our imagination. Quite often our resolutions fail because our imagination goes on what we have to sacrifice, not what we have to gain.
If I look at all the weights I have to lift, I can’t do it. If I see what kind of physique I have, I will be inspired. So we have to see what is activating our imagination.
And often it is our association. So our desires are not just linear but also triangular. So if we get good association, then we will also learn to strengthen our healthy desires and thus we can eliminate our unhealthy desires, our wasteful desires.
Apply. Apply essentially means that when you are envisioning, think big. When you are applying, think small.
Cyclists can cycle more at night because they don’t see the big thing. Small, small steps. Small, simple steps.
For applying, we need to get out of the head. If you don’t give your mind a job to do, it will find a job to do, and make us do that job also. Give us a job to do also.
So three questions for fostering self-awareness. What am I doing? Why am I doing? How am I doing it? Applying involves setting rules. Rules can seem restrictive but rules can empower.
Even a game can’t be played without rules. The right rules free us to be us. Rules we need to re-envision them not as deprivers but as routes to a better life.
And last L was? Let go. Thank you. Resentment of reality often hurts more than reality.
The key to resilience is accepting what is unchangeable without accepting that everything is unchangeable. So if some things have happened, our dreams, aspirations, expectations, they can help us to shape reality. But sometimes if the dreams are in the opposite direction of reality, then we need to let go.
If there is no boat or road with me, then I can’t keep rowing. I have to start swimming, get back. If we are in a shell and are comfortable there but the shell is cracking, we are crowing, then we need to let go of the comfort of the shell so that a bigger, so that brighter and better we can emerge from it.
When we let go, we need to understand that the things that are not in our control are not out of control. There’s a higher plan and by that higher plan, good will come even out of the bad. So let me do the best that I can.
We all can, we are all parts of a whole bigger than ourselves and we let ourselves become channels when a divine light can shine through us and make our life and our world better. In this way, by freeing our mind from waste, we all can contribute to make our world free of waste. Thank you very much.
I’m going to take a few questions. Do any of the students have questions or comments? Oh, lots of process. Hello.
I’m Shelby. You spoke upon the devil’s workshop in terms of when your mind is left with nothing to do, no roles. I just kind of want something I struggle with a lot recently is just having leisure time for a long time and my mind being controlled literally by the devil’s workshop.
And so just you kind of speaking up on that. It’s kind of just like, where do you think that comes from? That devil’s workshop? Is that some like inner subconscious void? Is that some higher spirit? Is that some like trauma within the self that you haven’t dealt with? Like, where does that come from? And how does it stick? It sticks around so long until maybe you realise that you’re a bird that can fly, but you have to do the work. So I’m curious.
So when our mind works like a devil’s workshop, where does that all those devilish tendency come from? Yeah. Broadly speaking, they come from our past too. The past can be something which we have done, something which others have happened to us because of someone else.
The mind is like a software. So you see this outer world, this inner mind, and in the outer world. So every action that we do, it creates an impression in our mind.
And that impression comes as a proposition. So action, impression, proposition. So a simple example, suppose somebody has visited a particular website, say sports.com repeatedly.
And they come for a talk like this. It’s a spiritual talk. It means spirituality is something interesting.
Let me find out more about it. And then they go on their phone and start typing SP. What happens? Sports.com. Sports.com comes up.
Why? Because that’s what they have chosen earlier. Although they didn’t want to go to sports.com, but the past comes back. So for us, every action that we have done, it’s stored as an impression.
And especially actions that we have done repeatedly, or even situations we have gone through repeatedly, they are stored as impressions within us. So those impressions come as propositions. And during our idle time, so basically the mind is here, the body is here, the consciousness is here.
So the way to deal with the mind is either you get out of the mind and go below, or go above means through practises like meditation, spirituality, we raise our consciousness upwards. Go below means start doing something physical which requires attention, which requires focus. So with the idle mind we say, what is happening? There is nothing at the physical level, and if you are not present at the spiritual level, then we just become like sitting ducks for the mind.
And those impressions come. Now leisure is important. It’s not that leisure is bad, but even leisure needs to have some context, some purpose.
What am I going to do in that leisure time? Maybe I’m going to read something, something uplifting, maybe I’m going to watch something inspiring, maybe I’m going to meditate. So if during the leisure, not in a driven, hyperactive way, but in a calm way, we are doing something which is either getting us in the physical element, go for a walk, go for a jog in nature, or do some meditation. In our tradition we do mantra chanting.
Do something like that. Then that leisure won’t be the time when our mind starts working hyperactively. So we can’t change what impressions are there within us.
But we can create special impressions. Two things we can do. We can choose when a proposition comes, whether to accept it or not.
Say if I go to spirituality.com once, twice, thrice, four times. I go ten times, next time I type SP, spirituality.com will come. So just because we have a thought doesn’t mean we have to act on it.
We actually use the word thought in these two senses normally also. Say I just got a thought and I have given this a lot of thought. So I just got a thought means it’s like a proposition that has come up with me.
I have given this a lot of thought means I have analysed it and I have deliberated and decided something. So basically if you do those two things, choose which impressions you act on and then create fresh impressions. Then we can let the past stay in the past.
Thank you for the very good question. Any other quick questions? If someone would like to share, one or two people who said something that you carry home with you, anything which you found was useful, valuable, relevant? I am going to speak out loud. Anyone else? Anybody coming from the sustainability? Anybody shy and hungry? You don’t want to waste time after our talk.