Growing through adversities

[Session 2, Spiritual Seekers Retreat, Chicago, USA]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you for being here today. I hope you had a good cooking session.
Good lunch also. So I’ll quickly recap what I spoke yesterday and then we’ll move forwards. I discussed yesterday about the topic of what is destiny.
I mentioned how there are some things in our control, but there are some things beyond our control. And they shape our life. It could be how we are born, where we are born, what kind of talents we have.
So our situation is like a person rowing in a boat. The expertise in rowing is important. But if a giant wave comes, they will be thrown off in another direction.
And then the two extremes of thought could be one is nothing is in my control. Everything is destined. And the other is that everything is in my control.
And both of these are like the pendulums extreme. If we consider the imagination of the human mind as a pendulum, the balance state is that both play a role. I talked about a 4D principle yesterday.
Duty plus destiny plus duration leads to the desired result. And the example of farming as well as of a person, say a sports player is talented. So talent and commitment both are required.
And as the talent grows, then the tennis player may become a success. So talent and commitment will lead to achievement. So today I will speak on the theme of growing through adversities.
So I talk about destiny in one sense is what happens to us. The things are beyond our control and they happen to us. So in this category, sometimes good things may happen, sometimes bad things may happen.
So if we are going in a boat, sometimes the wind may flow in such a way that it’s behind us. It helps us to move faster. And sometimes the wind may oppose us.
And then we have to labour much more. And sometimes the wind may be so strong that we may be swept away from where we wanted to go. So when such a situation comes in our life, the things beyond our control shake us up.
They disrupt our plans. At that time, how do we move onwards? So for that, I’ll talk about a four point acronym, which I’ll come to a new course. The theme which I’ll speak on is we may have to live with pain, but we don’t have to live in pain.
We may have to live with pain. It means because of certain things beyond our control going wrong, bad things happen in our life, and that causes us pain. But with pain means pain is our companion.
Pain is something which is a part of our life. But live in pain means pain consumes our consciousness. Pain dominates our life.
So to grow through adversities, we have to see that the pain is a part of my life, not that the pain is my full life. So a simple example to illustrate this point is, say somebody has got back pain. Now back pain is irritating.
It is nagging. It can be frustrating. Now when people have back pain, there are phases when the pain becomes very acute.
Other times, it is just there. It is a nagging pain. It is irritating, but it is not unbearable at that time.
But if that person starts living in pain, that means thinking even when the pain has gone, oh last time the pain came, it was so bad. And next time when the pain comes, it will be unbearable. So before the pain comes, one is worrying when is the pain going to come.
After the pain comes, again one is resenting, oh why was the pain so bad? And again one is dreading when is the pain going to come next time. So then if we consider a graph of time versus consciousness or emotions, then there are times when the pain shoots up in between. And that is just unavoidable.
But in between those phases, at that time, if we let the pain dominate our consciousness, then the pain will become, we are not living just with pain, but in pain. Living with pain means during my life, this pain comes and I have to live with it when it comes. But in pain means even when the pain is not there, it is dominating me.
I let it dominate myself. So to understand this point, that we can, we can have pain in our life. Now pain can be physical, pain can be relational, pain can be social, pain can be of various kinds.
If we are in a relationship and somebody hurts us, somebody betrays us, somebody rejects us, that hurts terribly. At the same time, that is one incident in life. A painful incident, no doubt, but it’s one incident.
If we keep obsessing over it, that’s when that becomes not just one incident in life, it becomes one incident that defines our life. And that damages us then. So here, I would like to talk about how we experience pain or pleasure.
Normally, we think of pain simply as a one step process. That means this happened and I feel pain because of that. However, pain is not a one step process.
It’s a two step process. Say for example, if suddenly somebody dumped a huge trunk on you and told you to carry this, you feel annoyed. Why should I carry it? But suppose that person is your boss or you’re obligated to them by some way and you have to carry it.
And your arms start paining, you’re carrying it, dragging it along. It’s pain. So you may think, why am I suffering? Why am I in distress? Because I have to carry such a big weight.
But suppose you go to a gym and there you’re doing a workout and there you lift a huge weight. Now that weight also is physically difficult to bear. At a physical level, the muscles will protest.
At a physical level, there is pain. But is the experience of that pain the same as the experience of lifting a huge burden? No, it’s not. Because here, we can see a purpose.
This is going to improve my health. This is going to improve my physique. I want to lift it.
That means the experience is determined not just by the situation. What we experience is not just determined. It’s not a one step process.
Oh, I have to carry a big weight. That’s why I’m in a bad mood. That’s why I’m in pain.
No, I have to carry a bad weight. But there is the situation and there is the emotion. And we think just one to one correlation, situation and emotion.
But actually, there’s two steps. There’s something in between. Between the situation and emotion, there is the conception.
So when I’m forced to carry a weight by someone, the conception is this is a burden. And because of that conception, the pain here is too much. But if the conception is this is the exercise, this is going to build my body.
Then this is not felt that much of a pain. We tolerate that pain. We may even welcome that pain.
When we go to gym, we normally pay for the membership. And what are we doing over there? We are lifting up weights. So normally, if we had a porter, a porter would pay so that you lift the weight.
But here we pay to give someone, pay to someone to give us weights to lift. So this is a difference. So this situation, conception and emotion.
This if you understand, so pain is determined when we are, when we have faced difficulties in life and we face adversities in life. It is not just the situation. Situation is important, no doubt.
And some situations do hurt. But it is our conception about the situation that can either increase the hurt or it can decrease the hurt. Now, one problem which we face when some bad things happen is the why question.
Why did this happen? Suppose we are just going along a road and I was once in about maybe 7-8 years ago. I was walking in a temple in Mumbai and somebody had spilled some water over there. And I just didn’t notice the water.
I slipped and I fell. It is a minor fall, but because this leg already had polio, it has osteoporosis in it, bones also. So just that fall, one fall, and literally the thigh came off from the leg.
It was a severe pain. And after that, when I was in the hospital, I was taken to the hospital. I was doing treatment.
I’ll come back to this incident more a little later, maybe towards the end. But there, I found while I was there in the hospital, I was talking with other patients. I was admitted for almost couple of months after the surgery.
I found one of the biggest problems among the patients was that why did this happen to me? The physical pain was there, but with some pain medication and gradually the path of recovery, it was manageable. But that question, why? Why did I have to meet with this accident? Why did this happen? Why did this happen? That why question created so much resentment, created so much unwillingness to accept what has happened that that aggravated the pain. So the situation is, okay, there’s a fracture.
But often, resentment of reality hurts more than reality. If say, before, instead of a fracture, if I talk about a flu, suppose we had to go for a picnic, or we go for outing with some friends, and then just the night before that outing, we get flu. And we just can’t even get out of our bed.
The flu is not a very painful thing. It’s tiring, we take a lot of rest, we may have to regulate our diet. But at that time, the pain will be, all my friends have gone for this outing, they’re enjoying, and we’re seeing this mountain, seeing this river.
Why am I here? Why did this happen to me? So that why, the why question which induces resentment is what hurts the most. So here, again, there’s a conception, the situation, conception, emotion. So it’s the conception that determines how much the emotion, what kind of emotion will be induced, and how strong will be the emotion that is induced.
To the extent we can change the conception, to that extent, the pain can, either we can live with pain, or we will live in pain. If the conception is negative, resentment, frustration, anger, then it will be unbearable. We live in pain.
But the conception is, okay, this happened. I can’t figure out why it happened. It’s happened now.
I accept it. It’s happened, acceptance. Okay, how can I deal with it now? So then, that battle, the battle, why did this happen? Sometimes that question just doesn’t have any logical answers.
Things just happen. Bad things happen in life. And if we can just accept it and move on, then the pain can be significantly decreased.
And this acceptance becomes much easier when we understand the concept of destiny. Destiny, as I told yesterday, is the set of things that are not in our control, and how they turn out. What is in our control, we do our best.
But what is beyond our control, if it, I just acknowledge it, I can’t do anything. This has happened by factors beyond my control. That’s destiny.
Let me accept it. Now, my destiny is not that I have to stay if somebody is sick. The destiny is not that they have to stay miserable on the bed when they got flu.
The destiny is they have to stay on the bed. Because they can’t, they don’t have the energy to move. But how they stay over there, that is up to them.
Often when I do programmes in colleges, schools, at that time, I ask students, say, how many times you studied for an exam? But you studied very well. But somehow the question paper came in such a way that you couldn’t do well in the exam. And almost all students raise hands.
Oh, we did, we, things went badly, the exam was very bad. Then I turn the question around and ask, how many of you have the experience, sometimes you studied just a little bit for the exam, but what you studied came in the exam, and you actually got better than what you deserved, as come as you merited as per your exam, as per your preparation. And many students raise hand in the second also.
So destiny doesn’t always give us a raw deal. Sometimes destiny gives us good things also. But the problem is, when we do not have the philosophical understanding that destiny also plays a role in the results, then when destiny gives us some good things, we think, I did it.
Yeah, we did do it, no doubt. But it was not that we alone did it. Our endeavour did matter.
I mean, we study very well for the exam. But then even after our studies, at the time of the exam, we should stay healthy. If it’s a question paper that is said, then we have to, the questions that we have prepared well for, that’s what comes in the exam.
If it’s an interview, the interviewer has to be in a good mood. If it’s a manually corrected exam, the examiner has to be in good mood when they check the paper. There are so many factors which are beyond our control.
And they work out right when we get a desired result. And normally, success, it is said, success has many fathers. And failure is always an orphan.
Success has many parents. When something works out successful, I did it, I did it, I did it. If there’s a team which has worked out, everybody will claim credit.
I did it, I did it, I did it. They were also there, but I played the real, I did the real work. And when it’s a failure, it’s because of this person, because of this person, because of this person, everybody blames.
So, what is beyond our control, sometimes works favourably, sometimes works unfavourably. And if we obsess over the times when things work out unfairly, then we simply hurt ourselves. So, that acceptance, okay, there is a force of destiny, which is beyond my power.
And when that works out unfavourably, even despite my best efforts, some bad things may happen. I do my part. And I continue doing my part.
So, to understand this three-level, the situation, conception and emotion, I’ll talk about a three-level model of the self that the Bhagavad Gita tells us. The Bhagavad Gita explains that our identity is not just physical. We are not just our bodies.
There’s the body, the mind and the soul. The body is the physical shell, the physical aspect of our being. And beyond that is our mind, where the emotions are stored, where our, sorry, where our conceptions are stored.
And then beyond that is the soul. The soul is a source of consciousness. The soul is the experiencer of emotions.
It’s like a computer system in which there’s a hardware, software and user. The hardware is like the body. The software is like the mind.
The user is the soul. And so, going back to these three things, hardware, software and user, so like that, okay, hardware, software and user, so we have situation, conception and emotion. The situation is at the level of body.
The physical situation that is problematic. Say, I didn’t do well in my exam. I lost my job.
My partner left me. Whatever, that’s a situation. I’ve got a sick, I’ve got some disease.
It’s a situation. Then the conception is in the mind. And the emotion, the experience, whatever, that is by the soul.
So for us, if we understand the concept of destiny, then that understanding helps us see that this situation that has happened, it’s beyond my control. Not that everything about the situation is beyond my control, but what has happened has happened. I can’t change that.
Yesterday, I gave the example of, if you’re rowing and a wave comes and knocks us off. There are no oars and there is no boat. Did I give the example yesterday? Yeah.
So there’s no oars and no boat. Then I can’t just keep rowing. I have to swim at that time to get to safety.
So that is like the situation. The wave has come and I’m helpless about that. I’m helpless about the waves coming.
But I can deal with the situation as it is. So basically, what does the conception do? And the situation is here. Situation is here.
Conception is here. The emotion is here. What does the conception do? The conception makes us think, why is the situation like this? Why is it not like this? Why is the situation here? Why is it not here? And the greater, so the conception sets up an expectation.
Now, conception that we have, that sets up an expectation. This is how things should be. And the greater the gap between the expectation and the situation, the greater is the pain.
The greater the gap between the expectation and the situation, the greater is the frustration. So our expectations are meant to help us shape things positively. Say, if we buy a new house, then our expectation is that, okay, say, if we are going to construct a new house, we are going to, we got some land and we are going to construct a new house.
Our expectation is, oh, within one year this house will be done and I will design it like this, doors here, windows here, all this. So our expectations, it is just natural to have expectations. And our expectations help us to shape things the way we want them.
If you may set expectations that, okay, right now I am completing my degree. In five years, I want to be in this position, this kind of position. I want to be earning this much.
I want to have this much kind of, this kind of career stability. So that expectations, they give us a direction for movement. They give us some capacity to shape reality, not capacity, but some direction for us to shape reality.
However, if the expectation is thwarted, then that same expectation, which is a power, the expectation helps us to shape reality. But if somehow reality turns out to be something different, then we have to put aside the expectation and deal with the reality. Once in India, I had gone for a interfaith talk.
It was organised by a Christian group and we had to speak on religion and AIDS. So I had gone prepared with all statistics and analysis. And when I got there, I found that not a single person among the audience understood English.
They were all almost people who are villagers and they knew only the local language. Now I can speak that language, the Marathi was the language, but I’m not as good in that as I am in English. So now, I had a particular expectation of what I was going to speak.
But when I got there, the reality is different. The situation is that people don’t understand English. Now, if I keep speaking in English over there, nobody will understand.
The talk will be utterly useless. Now, for me to speak in Marathi or whichever language Marathi is not that easy. But as long as I’m resenting, oh, why can’t I speak in English? I won’t be able to speak in Marathi.
And generally, what happens, the situation is here, the expectation is here. And we are fighting, why did this not happen like this? Why did not happen like this? Why is it happening like this? So when our expectation is frustrated, so much of our energy goes in that inner conflict that why is it not like this? Why is it like this? And that prevents us from dealing with the situation as it is. And actually speaking, if we can just put aside our expectation, okay, it’s not like this, it is like this, we put aside the expectation and deal with the situation.
We will find the situation is not as dreadful as we had thought it is. So yes, speaking in Marathi is not a nightmare. I can speak, but as long as I’m frustrated, why? I won’t be able to speak.
So when bad things happen to us, if we just understand, okay, my expectation was there, but this is how things have turned out. So then that empowers us to deal with the situation. So the situation, as I said, is determined by destiny, and that is something which we cannot control much.
But what we can control is the conception. We cannot even control the conception entirely, certain conceptions are there within us. But if we understand that this is the conception I have, and this is what is shaping my response, my emotion, then that helps us to distance ourselves from the conception.
Otherwise, I just identify with the conception, and that agitates me. So now I will do an analysis of a situation, and then we will have a thought exercise, we will have exercise, where all of you can do this analysis for yourselves. And if any of you would like to share this with everyone, you could do that.
So this is a three-step analysis. So any unpleasant situation that is there in our life right now, it could be adversity, which is quite a serious problem. It could be just a reversal, a negativity, which is a mild problem, whatever it is.
So if we want to deal with it, one way to deal with it is ask three questions. The first question is, what exactly is the situation? Then, what is the emotion I am experiencing? Put it in words. Third is, what is my conception that is causing this situation to create this emotion? So if we do this three-step analysis, we will find that we will get a better hold on both our own emotions and a better hold on our situation.
So three questions, what is the situation? What exactly is the situation? What is my emotion? And what is the conception that is causing this link between the situation and the emotion? So let us apply this practically once, and then you can apply this to your particular situation as an introspective exercise. About a month ago, I was in Australia and New Zealand. So I was supposed to give an important talk.
A lot of people were going to come. And just before that talk, I got a severe sore throat. I started getting a coughing attack.
And I just could barely utter even a couple of coherent sentences and break into cough. And the talk was just a few hours away. And the people over there had actually publicised the talk quite a bit.
Several hundred people were expected for the talk. And it was extremely frustrating. I travel across the world to one primary services.
I meet people, talk with people, and I give talks. So that was such an infuriating situation. And at that time, generally, I find any kind of citric fruits very difficult.
Sweet fruits I can take. Citric fruits immediately cause me agitation of the throat, respiratory canal problem. So that morning, somebody in my breakfast, they offered me some food.
And there was some citric food in that. Some oranges were there. And I was taking food.
I was talking with some people. I saw the oranges. And I thought maybe one orange is a big deal.
I’ll take it. And it is other apples and other things were there. And at that time, somehow that citric fruit caused such a reaction that I was just coughing, coughing, coughing.
And when something goes wrong, what happens is the mind wants to find someone to beat for that rock. So either you beat, why did you give me that fruit? You can beat that person or okay, they give fruit, but why do I have to eat it? I beat myself up. But either way, this beating doesn’t help in dealing with the situation.
So at that time, this talk was in a few hours and I was coughing. I was so angry with myself, so angry with the audience, those who gave me that food. I was thinking this is such an important talk.
What is going to happen? So as I was going through this, for some time, I was just agitated. And then it struck me, how is this agitation helping? Being agitated is not helping me to deal with the situation at all. So then, at that time, in my own mind, I didn’t actually, through that experience, I thought of these three things, situation, emotion and conception.
But at that time, I was just going through that. And I started thinking, okay, what exactly is the problem? So I will apply this retrospectively. At that time, it was more of a, you could say, epiphany that just came.
But if I apply it retrospectively, that thought process, what exactly is the problem? What exactly is the situation? Situation is that I am supposed to give a talk and I am not ready for that talk. Or I am not able to give the talk because of this cough. So the problem is, I am not able to speak at this particular occasion because of this throat issue.
That is the problem. And now just by identifying this problem, I realised, this is not the end of the world. Okay, if I can’t speak, it’s bad.
But the mind makes our problems seem catastrophic. It is a problem. Definitely, I have travelled across to speak there.
But it’s not a catastrophe. Okay, if you can’t speak, okay, I said, okay, if I can’t speak, maybe somebody else will speak. Or we make some arrangement.
It’s not a catastrophe. So actually, just by verbalising, what exactly is the problem? That itself creates a distance between us and the problem. Then what is my emotion? I identified, I was feeling angry.
I was feeling frustrated. And I was feeling guilty. Angry at whoever gave me that food.
I have a diet chart and I tell that I won’t take citrus fruits. Angry, guilty, why did I take that food? I was feeling guilty about it myself. And I was feeling frustrated.
So now again, as soon as we identify our emotions, that itself also creates a distance. Okay, this is the emotion I’m experiencing. Now, what is the conception? What is the conception that is letting this situation cause this emotion? The conception is, I said conception determines our expectation.
The expectation I had was that I should be able to, I’m going to, I’m coming here for speaking, I should be able to give talk, a good talk and people will come and people will benefit from that talk. That was my expectation that I should be able to deliver a good talk. Okay.
So now, when I consider this conception, so it is that I should be able to deliver a good talk. And that was the conception and that was the problem that I will not be able to deliver a good talk. And that time just struck me, okay, more or less I have prepared my talk and I can make an outline of that.
And I knew a good friend of mine who was there in that community. He’s a good speaker. So I thought he can speak on my behalf.
I can just give an outline to him. And then I could talk. It’s not that I couldn’t talk.
I’m just unpredictably I would get attacks of cough in between. So I said I can give him the points. I can explain what I’m going to speak.
And he can speak that. And as I just as a solution emerges, okay, it’s not that bad. Okay, he can speak at least this issue will be dealt with.
Okay, so the expectation that I should be able to deliver that talk, as soon as I just identify that expectation and put it aside. Okay, I can’t deliver. I can give the content to someone, someone else can deliver.
And then I said, I called that friend. He said, No, no, you should speak. I told him I cannot speak.
Okay, then he came along, we started talking, I gave him. And then I was also taking some medication, something to slowly my cough started going down. I told him then that, you know, both of us will do the talk together.
He says you speak. And then I will address the question answers at the end. And between I might also speak a few things.
He said, okay. And then as I started gaining more and more of a handle on the situation, then in about 45 minutes, before the talks was going to start, I just came to a situation, full acceptance. This is how it is.
And this is how we are going to move forward. And I found as soon as that, at a level of emotion, I accepted, okay, this is what is happening. And this is how it’s going to go on.
It’s almost amazing. Not almost, it is almost miraculous. It is amazing.
It is almost miraculous that the cough just disappeared. And then I told my friend, actually, what I could do is, you also prepare for the talk. But I will prepare and I’ll give the talk.
And if I’m not, if I had to stop at any time, then you take over. And then when I went and actually spoke, I was able to give a fairly good talk without any difficulty. So that time, it just struck me that the problem was not the situation.
The problem was the conception. Now, of course, this may not be a predicament that is universal, because not everybody may have public speaking engagement. But this principle is universal.
That whatever situation we are in, the situation is a problem. But it is the conception that makes the situation a far bigger problem. So we will have a three minute break now.
And if all of you can consider in your own life, some difficulty that you’re facing, and you can do this three level question, self question. What exactly is the situation? Then what is the emotion I’m experiencing because of the situation? Then what is the conception that is making this situation cause this emotion? If you could do this three things, and you yourself will be able to get a better handle on the situation. And after you do this, if any of you would like to speak it, you’re most welcome to speak.
We’ll have about 5 to 7, 5-10 minutes of interaction, or we’ll move on. So do all of you have pen, paper, or maybe you can just note in your phones, or it is better to verbalise, not just put it in the head, you could even type in your phone if required. It’s always generally, and thoughts when they are put in words, that creates a distance between us and the thoughts.
And that distance gives us a perspective, which enables us to deal with them better. So I’ll repeat the three questions. What is the situation? What exactly is the situation? That’s the first question.
What exactly is the situation? Second is, what is the emotion I’m experiencing because of the situation? What is the emotion I’m experiencing because of the situation? And third is, what is the conception that is making, that is letting, this, that is, because of what is the conception, because of which this, this situation is leading to this emotion. So, situation, emotion, conception. If your time starts now, okay, you have three minutes.
If three minutes are not enough, you can have five minutes. It may take a little, once you start getting into it, you may realise that you need more time. When you come to the third question, what is the situation? What is the emotion? What is the conception? Then, at that time, you can process the conception further.
That means, this conception involves some expectation. And then there is a situation. So, is the situation really that bad? If this conception, does it, things don’t work according to this conception, how much of a problem is this? Is this conception really something I’m attached to? Is this conception that important for me? If I put aside this conception, will it help me to deal with the situation better? So, identifying the conception is so that we can check whether the conception is helping us to deal with the situation or the conception is obstructing us.
And then we can put the conception aside, if it is obstructing us. Is it clear or it’s difficult? Clear? Do I, should I give one or more, one or two more examples of what I mean by this? Or this three-level analysis is clear enough for you to apply it? It’s clear okay, fine. So, one more minute now.
Okay. So, who would like, would any of you like to speak? Yes, please. I don’t know if it applies to all of you too, but at the moment when something happens, the emotions are so overwhelming that it’s very, like when you sit here, it’s easy to think.
That’s true, definitely. At the moment, I don’t know if it’s universal, but for me it is. Oh, it is universal, no doubt.
Even for me, I can speak this very nicely here, but even I’ll have a difficulty. But in general, thank you for sharing this. I’ll make a couple of points about it.
First is that even if we are not able to apply this analytical framework in the heat of the moment, but it helps us to prepare for that moment. So, if I know a stormy wave is going to come, still I may be swept. But if I have a plan, okay, when the stormy wave comes, this is what I can do.
Then the magnitude of the sweeping will be less. So, that’s how preparation helps us, or having a framework for analysis helps us to minimise the wrong that happens because of the situation. Now, with respect to parenting, I would like to go a little deeper.
The conception is that kids should listen to me. They should be more disciplined. They should be more responsive.
We might go deeper, and it might also be conception. Conception might be that if my kids don’t behave properly, then that means I am not a good parent. That might be insecurity.
Or if my kids behave in public, what will people think of me? So, the conception, if we go deeper, it often relates with something which is our insecurity. If I’m in a relationship and the relationship breaks down because of something, then I start thinking maybe I am unloveable. Maybe something is wrong with me.
So, we go deeper into the conception that helps us better understand why am I reacting this way. Now, as far as kids are concerned, I think it was Mark Twain who said that when I was 15, you know, that’s okay. When I was 15, it’s an approximation of the code.
When I was 15, my father was a fool. Now, I’m 25, and I’m amazed how much the old guy has learned in the last 10 years. So, sometimes they just have to grow, they have to go through that situation of teenage rebellion, and they go through that, and eventually when they come to the adulthood, they realise, okay, what I was doing was that they were not right.
So, it’s a predicament of me not being able to get our children to behave responsibly. That is a universal predicament for all parents, I would say. So, that’s the second point about parenting itself.
And the third point is that when we come to this conception that at that time, okay, they’re not behaving properly, the expectation is they should be doing this, this, this, but this is what they’re doing. So, then if this is what they’re doing, how can I deal with this? As long as why are they not doing like this, that is the situation, then we are holding them up to a particular standard, and we will make them feel bad because they are not up to that standard. But if you consider this is where they are from here, how can I encourage them? How can I inspire them? How can I guide them to move upwards? Then we’ll find that the situation is not that difficult to deal with.
Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, please. Disease, fine wounds, and stage four endometriosis.
So, having a child is difficult. The emotion is like a limitation. That’s how the emotion feels.
Disappointment, fear, and sadness, and then the conception is not the expectation from myself, because I understand what’s going on is the expectation of other people, putting expectations on me, and especially being a female, having expectations that like, because I’m a woman, I should produce. I mean, that’s my own, but the expectation of other people putting on you as you go into that programme. So, like, not only do you have your own expectations, but then you have other expectations, other people’s expectations.
So, then the pressure just builds, you know. So, the conception is like all this pressure all the time. That’s all I got.
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. It’s a difficult situation.
It requires courage to share that. Thank you. As you said, often others’ expectations creates a lot of unhealthy pressure on us, and one way to deal with that pressure is to recognise that actually everybody has a movie going on in their head, and in that movie, they are the star character, and everybody else is an extra.
If some people maybe have more significant role, some people have less significant role, but everybody is an extra. So, we often spend a lot of time thinking about what other people think of me, and yes, we live in a community. We live in a society.
So, what other people think of us does matter, but it doesn’t matter as much as we may sometimes imagine. So, we wouldn’t worry so much about what other people thought about us if we knew how little they thought about us. Because if we turn that situation around, how much do we think about other people? We all have our own issues.
We have our challenges, our dreams, our difficulties, and it’s not that we are selfish. It’s that everybody has their own life to deal with. And on the occasions when we interact with each other, our friends, our relations, relatives, you know, family members also.
Family members may be a little more, but still, everybody is dealing with their own life. So, when we understand that people, whenever they interact with us, they may put some pressure. Why is this? Why not do like this? Why is this not happening? Why is that not happening? But actually, their opinion about us will hurt us only if we let it hurt us.
It’s now, yes, their opinion may affect certain physical situations, and we may have to deal with it. But with respect to internally, it is often, if people don’t think I’m a good person, then that means I’m not a good person. Our sense of self-worth, to the extent it is shaped by people’s opinion, to that extent, we will have that insecurity.
Now, how can our sense of self-worth not be shaped by others? We are, as I said, social creatures. Yes, we are. But, so we can’t avoid other people affecting, other people’s opinion affecting us.
But what we can do is, we can choose which other people’s opinions do we take seriously, and which we don’t. Because the easiest way to make ourselves miserable is to try to please everyone. It’s 100% guarantee.
There is a story in India, but there is some variant of the story across, I’ve heard in Australia, in UK, in South America, there was a father and a son who had gone to buy a horse. And then they got the horse, and both of them were riding the horse. And some passer-by said, this poor horse, you’re putting double weight on this horse, it’ll get crushed.
Don’t you have any care for the horse? And the father said, oh son, you get down from the horse, I’ll walk. You get down, I’ll ride, you walk. And then some passer-by said, what is this? The father is making a small child walk, and is himself riding on the horse.
There’s no parental love at all. And the father said, you get down, I’ll get down, you ride on the horse. And when they were riding along, people said, what is this? This child, doesn’t he have any concern for his father? He’s young, he’s healthy, his father is ageing, his father should ride the horse.
Why is he riding? Doesn’t he have any love for his father? Finally, the father said, son, you get down. And both of them were walking along with the horse. He said, what stupidity? If you have a horse, what is the purpose of the horse except to ride it? So, actually, we just can’t satisfy everyone.
So, we have to choose among our social circle, which people or whose opinion are we going to take seriously? Whose opinion really counts for us? And that is determined by our purpose. What am I meant to do in life? What am I meant to contribute in life? What do I want to do with my life? So, this purpose is a theme, which I will talk about more in tomorrow’s first session, which we’ll have in the morning. But at this point, we all need to recognise that some people, whatever we do, they’re not, they’re just going to be the way they are.
It said that, like I mentioned yesterday, I think some people bring happiness wherever they go. And some people bring happiness whenever they go. So, now it’s curious that it’s not that people are bad.
The same person may bring happiness to one person, and the same person may create anxiety to another person. So, the dynamic of the relationship can be quite different for different people. So, in our social circle, there are some people who’s interacting with whom whose association, it gives us strength and energy.
And there are some people who’s interaction interacting with whom takes away our energy. And you meet someone and you feel so enlivened, yes, I will move on in my life. You meet some people and as soon as we finish the meeting, we feel relief, the meeting is over now.
So, in general, we have to make sure that the people whose interaction gives us strength, that is at least equal to the people whose interaction takes away our strength. And if you don’t have these people, you have to find those people. If you can’t find them, then they have to go inwards towards our purpose.
And from there, we have to get that strength. So, once we, so that conception that, oh, people should think good about me, that’s, that conception is what creates pressure on us. And that may have also shaped our expectation, oh, I should be like this.
Yes, now, if if you’re not able to have a child, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can’t have a child. We can always, there are many different ways in which one can have children also. So, those options are there.
But when there’s pressure, then that this has to be done in this way alone. That is where the problem comes up. In the, in the Bhakti texts of ancient India, there’s an example given that just as a river keeps moving towards the ocean.
Similarly, let our consciousness keep flowing towards truth, towards reality, towards ultimate spiritual understanding. So, sometimes when a river is flowing, the river, one path for the river may get blocked. But then, the river will find some other way to, this is blocked, from here I can move forward, from here I can move forward, from here I can move forward.
So, like that, we can create channels for moving onwards in our life, even if one particular path is blocked. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? Okay, I get your question.
Yeah. Isn’t it dangerous to decide that we will listen to some people and not listen to some people? No, okay, I’ll make it, there’s a, there is, there are situations. Say, for example, if you are driving, and say, maybe our friends are young and they are intoxicated and telling, drive faster, drive faster, drive faster.
And if a cop is, see, the cop is pull over, I’ll not listen to the cop. I’ll listen only to my friends. That would be stupid.
So, there are definitely situations where this kind of selectivity can lead to destruction, it can lead to disaster. What I’m talking about is a subtler situation. There are times when there are, when what is right and wrong is objectively clear.
Breaking a speed limit is wrong. So, then in those situations, to listen to somebody who is prompting us to do wrong, and to neglect someone who is prompting us to do right, that is dangerous. We are not, we are not talking about that kind of situations.
There are many situations in life where it’s not black or white, it’s multiple shades of grey. And in that grey zone, there is neither right nor wrong. It’s just what works best for whom.
So, in those situations, we, by our intelligence, by our experience, we may understand that this is what I can do in this situation. And then we need to move forwards. So, it’s primarily in the grey zones where we have to take a decision to move onwards.
And at that time, there are some people who encourage us on the decision, some people who discourage us. And if we feel inspired to take a particular decision, and it’s not that it is wrong, if it is a black, then definitely it’s a very different thing. If it is white, then also those who are discouraging us, we will just neglect them completely.
But when it is in the grey zone, at that time, it’s not a matter of principle, it’s often a matter of, you could say, preference. How do I do things? So, at that time, we may just, we may just talk with those people who encourage us to move on. So, if, say, we are holding some celebration where we have to decide what is the menu we are going to cook.
Now, some people say cook this, some people say cook that. It’s not a matter of right or wrong. It’s a matter of preference.
Now, if we feel that this is what I would like to cook, this is what I’m good at, and somebody else tells me, you cook this, that’s what people will like. But I’m not good at cooking that. If I cook that, I might make a mess of things.
Then better, let me cook what I can do well. And if it’s cooked, people will like it. So, I’m talking about situations of grey, where if we are being egged on to do something wrong, that’s definitely undesirable.
But we all have to choose whose opinions we take seriously, and whose opinions we do need to neglect. Sometimes, that neglect can be dangerous. But sometimes, we have to neglect so that we can move on.
So, if you look at the lives of great sports players, sometimes they got some advice, which, if my familiarity is more with cricket, one of India’s greatest cricket batsmen, who became one of the greatest batsmen, he initially had a desire to become a bowler, primarily. And then, one famous celebrated fast bowler told him, actually, you just don’t have the physique to be a fast bowler, even a medium-paced bowler, you focus on your batting. At that time, he had a dream of being an all-rounder, but he accepted that advice.
Another player told him that, another well-known batsman told him, actually, the way you bat, the way you hold your bat, the kind of bat you use, this is going to impede your play. But that was the way he was used to playing right from his early teens, and he was doing well. He tried to adapt, because this was a big player, he tried to adapt it, and he was just not able to perform.
He went back to his original play, and he succeeded. So, these are not situations where things are black and white. So, talking about those situations, in black and white situations, obviously, we can’t be selective in whose opinion we take.
But in situations where in the areas of grey, it is ultimately we who have to live with the decision. It is we who have to implement the decision. So, if our heart is not in the decision, then we may take the decision, but we will find that because somebody else told us to do it, but we do it half-heartedly.
And even if it is the right decision, because we are doing it half-heartedly, it may not work out. And even if we turn out to make a wrong decision, if we have done it with a due amount of thought, then we’ll recognise, okay, this is not the right decision. We’ll be able to do course correction at that time, when we realise it.
Does that answer your question? Yeah. A lot of times, things that I thought were very, like you talked about somebody leaving you or whatever, that, you know, maybe in the past somebody left me and I was so miserable, but now I’m very happy that they left me because I could have ended up with the wrong person. In work, it’s the same thing.
You know, maybe I was fired, but if I would have stayed at that work, it was a dead-end job that would lead me to nowhere. So, the fact that I got fired, I found better opportunities elsewhere. So, I think a lot of times, what is good or bad, we judge it at this moment, but later on, we discover that we were very wrong in return.
That’s very true. In general, if we consider our life to be like a movie, if say, you like a particular hero, like to go and watch an action hero, just, you know, beats up and defeats all opponents, and then you go right in the middle of the movie, where that hero is being beaten by the villain, once, twice, thrice, you say, what kind of movie is this? This hero is being beaten all the time. But then, you have to wait for the movie to go on.
Maybe the hero is beaten 10 times, and through that, the hero’s resolve crystallises, and then the hero works very hard, and then in the final decisive fight at the end of the movie, the hero wins. So, basically, our life is like a multi-stage play. And when we look at only one stage in that play, and then we say, why is this happening? If we disconnect the present from the bigger picture, then we may catastrophise, why is this a terrible thing that’s happened? But, if you understand there is a bigger plan, there is a higher purpose, towards which things are evolving, then we won’t be so judgemental about the way things are turning out.
Okay, this is what has happened. Let’s move on, and eventually we’ll find that good came out of that. Thank you.
So, any other one else would like to share? I just had a little similar moment like that one time. I was travelling, and one of the seats was overbooked, and it was me and one other person. And it was critical that I get on that flight to get home, and I was so frustrated at first.
I have my ticket, my seat’s assigned, why am I not on this flight? And I kind of went back to that, because I had a similar moment before that. I forget what it was, but I remember just thinking, if I just allow this to happen, something I don’t know is probably going to come along better than I first expected. And then, like 15 minutes later, a guy in first class was bragging about getting a night pass security, so they kicked him off, and I got upgraded from a coach seat.
So I was like, there you go. Amazing. That’s true, good.
Thank you for sharing. Yeah. That’s true.
Thank you. Yeah. It’s not necessary that every bad thing from the past will become good.
That’s true. Another thing that I was talking about is, we may have to live with pain, but we don’t have to live in pain. So that’s what, as our distance from the situation increases, even the pain is there, it won’t hurt us that much.
So one way we create the distance is by the inner analysis, as I said. This is the conception, this is the emotion, this is the situation. When you do the analysis, we can create the distance from the situation.
Another is just by the passage of time. Sometimes when I do these kind of workshops, we do an exercise that, you know, I don’t think we have the time to do it today, but you know, think back three years ago, what was the biggest problem you faced in your life? Look at six years ago, what was the biggest problem you faced in your life? Look at nine years ago, what was the biggest problem you faced in your life? And now, if you think about that problem, you think about your emotion about that problem then, and you think about it now. Why was I so worried about that at that time? So it’s just that things work out.
It’s not that necessarily that problem goes away, but distance gives us a perspective. So we all need to get perspective, and how we get it will vary from person to person, from situation to situation. So actually, I will, okay, yeah, please.
No, please go ahead. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I agree with you.
Thank you. That makes sense. So it’s true that sometimes we may look back and we see that a decision put us on a wrong track, or a track which created a not so positive future for ourselves.
Life never comes with the guarantee of right decisions. No matter how carefully we deliberate, we plan, we prepare, often life is like jumping into the dark. So it may be that sometimes decisions turned out to be wrong.
But my point here is not whether the decision was right or wrong. The point was the emotion that we associate with a particular situation. This is catastrophic.
This, that emotion that we associate with a particular problem at that particular time. Okay, if we had not associated with emotion, maybe we would have had more clarity to take a better decision at that time. And we are simply not saying that decisions do not have, situations are not real, or decisions do not have consequences.
And sometimes some things can have bad consequences also. The point is, we are trying to see if we can distance ourselves from the emotion. We can minimise the emotion so that there can be better reason and there can be better decision.
Okay, thank you. So I will make a couple of points and then we can conclude the session. Actually, I was, when they live with pain and live in pain, that was how to grow through adversities we were discussing.
So I will, I was planning to speak on an acronym, but I will go into that acronym more tomorrow when I talk about making good choices in life. That is a part of decision making. So what differentiates between live with pain and live in pain? So I use the acronym with W I T H. W is wisdom.
Wisdom is, I talked about how there is this situation, there is this emotion, there is conception, there is emotion. So if you just get this wisdom, then we will find that okay, this wisdom will help us to see things in better perspective. All this I am just mentioning, I am going to elaborate on this tomorrow.
So it is just a, you could say a preview of what I am going to speak. But wisdom helps us to see this problem does not have to consume my whole life. This problem is there.
It is one part of my life. Then I is intention. Intention means that what is it that I want to do? How do I want to move forward in my life? As long as, if this is the situation, this is the expectation.
So the wisdom helps us to see the distance between the situation and the expectation. And then if I look what was my intention, I wanted the situation to be like this, but it is like this. But why did I want the situation to be like this? Rather than looking simply at the frustrated expectation, we can look deeper.
What did I want through this situation? What did I want? What was my actual need? If we go deeper to that, we will find that to fulfil that intention, there might be some other way to move forward. Suppose, this is again a theme I will talk more about. I just mentioned briefly about how there is a higher plan, which brings things to a positive direction in the long run.
So that is, there is a overarching divinity, which does guide the ways of life. So intention means that if a child is hungry, a child goes to the forest, there is an orchard over here, and I get, I want this mango. A child goes and shakes that mango, shakes that mango, shakes that mango tree.
And you can see the mangoes shaking, but nothing is falling. Shake, shake, shake. Oh, why is this mango not falling? But without the child making any effort, an apple might fall from a neighbouring tree.
The child’s expectation was I want a mango to eat. But the child’s need was food. So sometimes when we are shaking a mango tree, we become blind to the falling of an apple.
But instead of just focussing on the mango, why is this mango not falling? If we move back, okay, what was my actual need? What did I want to do through this? What was my intention? Then you may find that there is some other way to fulfil an intention. We may sometimes ask for bread, but we may be getting flour. Now with that flour, we have to make the bread.
There’s more labour involved, but it can be done. So if we have that, if we have our intention clear, what exactly do I want from this? Then that will help us to move forward. Like I told the river, this channel is not moving forwards.
Okay, I can move from this channel. The river can move from this channel. So if we have that intention, and if we are clear, what did I want through this? And sometimes it is difficulties that help us to understand our intention better.
We’re doing certain things, but we ourselves may not be clear. Why am I doing this? But when the difficulty comes, okay, this is not happening. Why am I doing this? This is what I really want in my life.
That intention often becomes clear when there is an obstacle. What is it that I really want? And that’s where the potential for growth comes up. And so W I T, T is tolerance.
Tolerance means that when bad things happen, if we could just accept them. The tolerance is not passivity. Tolerance is priority.
What is more important? What is less important? Tolerance helps us to keep small things small, so that we can focus on the big things. Sometimes some problems, they come in our life, and by destiny they are meant to be there for some time. So I was in Florida last year, and I gave this example in a class, and there was one person in the audience, he said, I actually had an experience of this in my life.
He was a farmer, and he said that he was, sometimes when you work in the wilderness, so the leech may catch us. And and the leech is sucking blood. It’s scary.
First of all to see, feel the bite and feel the blood being sucked. Now some leeches are such that their grip is almost unbreakable. If you try to pull the leech out, it will cause the whole skin to get ripped out from there.
It will not let go. But if we just let the leech suck the blood, how can I let it do that? It’s sucking my blood. But no, the leech does not have infinite capacity to suck blood.
It has its tubules, and once the tubules are full, it will itself let go. Just flick it, it’ll fall off with it. So at that time, the leech is already biting.
The best way to deal with that leech is tolerance. Tolerate it. Tolerate it.
Nothing in the world is temporary. Nothing in the world is permanent. Everything is temporary.
Pleasures that the world promises are temporary, but even the problems that the world threatens us with, they are also temporary. So when some problem just comes upon us like a leech, at that time we may overreact. Why? When we overreact, it’s like trying to pull out the leech.
But that only makes things worse. Tolerance means, okay, this is there. Let me just accept it.
And how tolerance is to be actually applied, I’ll talk about this tomorrow. As I said, this is just a skeleton of what I’m going to speak. But tolerance helps us to ensure that, okay, this problem is, this leech is biting me, but this is not going to keep biting me for the rest of my life.
It’s just for a few moments. So again, tolerance helps us to live with pain, but not in pain. It’s tolerant.
And then last, H is hope. Hope means that we look ahead to a brighter future. And this hope is not just some starry-eyed idea that things will work out right.
Actually, if we look at our own lives, at every stage of our life, we are dependent on so many things beyond our control for working out right. When we eat food, how that food gets converted into energy, we just don’t know. We eat and there’s a whole complex mechanism that converts food into energy.
Scientists try to create artificial digestive machines. Like if the heart is not working properly, we may have a pacemaker. If the kidney is not working, we may have a dialysis unit.
The hand is not working, we may have a prosthetic unit. So if we try to make artificial digestive machine, it’s almost impossible. Because digestion is so complicated, we’ll not need a machine, we’ll need a factory.
So now we don’t even know how it happens. Probably the only time we think of our digestion is when it doesn’t work. So there are a lot of factors beyond our control that are working right now also.
And there is a higher plan to life that even the bad things that are happening in our life, there is a positive thing that will come out of it. There is darkness, but there is light also. There is a dark cloud, but there is silver lining to it.
So the attitude of hope, this problem is there, but something positive will come through this. Now how that positive will come, that is another aspect of the destiny that we will talk about tomorrow. But through this four things, wisdom, intention, tolerance and hope, through that we can actually contextualise so that the pain doesn’t consume us.
So that the pain may be a part of our life, the problem may be there, but we can see that our life is bigger than the problem. That our consciousness, our vision of our life, our understanding of our own selves will expand. This problem is here and if we get consumed by that problem, then our consciousness shrinks and we can’t think anything except the problem.
But with this four point contemplation, we can expand our consciousness. And then whatever problem is there, we can face it with more positivity. So I’ll summarise what I spoke today.
I spoke on this theme of growing through adversity. And I started by talking about how destiny may sometimes create unfavourable situations which may put us in pain. And we may just be helpless at that time.
So we may have to live with pain, but we don’t have to live in pain. A person has backache and backache comes like spikes in the graph of their consciousness. The pain comes.
But in between, if you are resenting it, if you are dreading it, that will make pain a constant presence in our dominating presence in our life. Resentment of reality often hurts more than reality. If I have flu, that’s difficult, that’s the stress, that’s annoying.
But if I’m resenting, why did I get this flu? All my friends are enjoying, I’m in this bed. Then that resentment hurts us much more. So to deal with this resentment properly, I talked about how our experience of pain is not a one-step process.
It’s a two-step process. Situation does not cause the emotion. In between the situation and the emotion, there is the conception.
I talked about the three-level model of the self, the body, mind and soul. So the body is the physical situation, related with the physical situation. The mind is where the conception is present.
And the soul is the experiencer of both pleasure and pain, the emotion, the experience with the soul. So we did this thought exercise of how whenever we are facing difficulty, ask these three questions. What exactly is the situation? What is the emotion that I’m experiencing because of the situation? And what is the conception that is making this situation cause this emotion? So I gave the example of how I couldn’t speak because of a sore throat.
And by that analysing this, I could create a come up with an alternative plan. And eventually, I was able to speak. Many of you also shared various challenges.
And we discussed how we could deal with those challenges by understanding the conception. So often the conception creates a certain expectation, either because of our own expectation or because of the world’s expectation. And that distance between the expectation of situation is what aggravates the pain.
But our expectation can help us to shape the reality positively. But if the reality has already become negative, then we can put the expectation aside and deal with the reality. And that reality, if we can put the expectation aside, is not as bad as when we filter the reality to the conception it appears to be.
So we talked about how we all have to, especially in situations where it’s not black and white, but grey, we have to select those people’s opinions, expectations, which will help us to move forward, not those which will hold us back. And then I talked about this acronym WITH for moving from living in pain to living with pain. Wisdom, that actually it’s not the situation alone that is causing the problem, is my conception.
This three-level analysis helps us to see things in perspective. And I was intention that sometimes our particular expectation may not be fulfilled. I may not get a mango, but my need, food may be fulfilled through apple.
So if we go deeper, what was my intention in doing this? What was the actual need that is to be fulfilled? Then we will be able to find a way forward even amidst that frustration also. Then T was, anyone remembers? Tolerance. I give the example of leech biting.
Just accept it and the leech will suck blood and go away. So like that sometimes by destiny some bad situations happen. They’re temporary.
Just tolerate it. Don’t, no, instead of overreacting, just accept it. It’ll be there, it’ll go away.
And last was hope that even now our very existence depends on so many factors that are not in our control. And they are working out right. That’s why we are living and moving onwards.
So there is a higher plan and purpose and that will bring good even out of whatever bad we’re going through right now. Thank you very much. So does anyone have any other questions or comments? Maybe you can check what is the next programme or you know about it.
So it’s a small break. Thank you very much.