“If you want it, you won’t get it”
I had the second part of this post series all planned out, but now that I am typing it, everything went blank. I cannot for the life of me recall what I had planned. I knew it end to end two days ago, what I was going to type. Now it’s gone. I mean totally gone.
So, here we go. Something ad-hoc. May be while typing it will come back to me.
Again, Like with the first part, if you are an Atheist, just skip this for the sake of your sanity 🙂 This will not align with your world view.
But if you are with a religious or spiritual inclination, I welcome you to read on.
In the first part of these three part series, I mentioned a little bit about finding who ‘YOU’ are. But we did not go in to detail. Now we will.
The two questions many have are
– How do I be happy?
– What do I have to do to feel ‘it’?
Let’s focus with the second question today.
So, how I answer the question “What do I have to do to feel ‘it’?” is by just saying two thing.
– Sit down and close your eyes.
– Do nothing
�That is it.
But then, almost always the question that follows is,
‘How do I do that?’
Do you see what is happening?
You are asking for instructions on how to ‘do’ the act of ‘not doing’.
I am not saying thinking that way is silly or anything. I myself asked that question many times from my spiritual teachers, and luckily for me, they were very understanding and kind and every time gave me some advice to move me towards realising it for myself.
The thing is, all these years, to live our normal lives, we ‘DID’ something or the other.
We ate to be healthy, we studied to get to university, we practiced to improve our skills, we listened to learn, we did and do many many things so much so that the concept of ‘Not Doing’ has become foreign to most of us.
You have been in control of your life, all your life. That is all you know.
You do not know how to let go of life.
You do not know how to let go of your control over your thoughts.
You do not know how to surrender.
Even in meditation you ‘TRY’, you do this and that to ‘CONTROL’ your thoughts. That gives you a sense of accomplishment.
The problem is, action will not get you to ‘it’.
Non-action will.
I am not talking about inaction. This is hard to describe because English is a very limited language and is not designed to be used to convey spiritual things. But that’s all we have for the moment unless I switch to Sinhala, Hindi or Sanskrit, so let’s go with English for now.
I am not talking about inaction. If inaction, meaning, not taking any spiritual action works, then all the Atheists would be the first ones to find the ‘it’, the happiness. But that doesn’t happen. So, not taking action doesn’t work.
On the other side, taking action will not work either. Well, it will work up to a point. You will take many religious and spiritual actions which would nurture you in to a wonderful human being. And you must do that. But you must also remember, all your religious and spiritual knowledge will not take you forward after a point. You need a third approach.
For lack of a better word, let’s call it non-action.
So we have action, inaction and non-action.
I don’t want you to get tangled in the play of words. Just try to focus on the message underneath the words. Words have no place in spiritual journey, only ‘sound’ does and that is a whole big can of worms which we will not get in to right now. May be if you and I have a one-to-one discussion someday, we will dive in to it.
I will explain these things with a simple scenario.
Where ever you are, you are surrounded by electromagnetic waves. Hundreds of frequencies going through you and your home, but you are oblivious to it. All the TV channel broadcasts of your region is going through your living room and you have no clue. You know intellectually, but you don’t perceive them, Right ?
Just because EM waves are going through your house, your living room wall suddenly doesn’t begin to play the next episode of Lost, right? Or evening News.
Why is that?
Because there is no receiver that can capture the waves of that channel and no conversion circuit nor a display module on to which it can be projected.
So, how do you experience the TV channels then?
You buy a fu*king TV.
Simple.
Now let’s take that to our lives.
Let’s assume you go through 4 types of beliefs and we will understand that using the TV example. Again, I implore you to not get mesmerised or hurt by the words, but try to feel the underlying meaning.
First we have the type of YOU who doesn’t buy a TV and keep arguing that TV channels doesn’t exist inside the living room. In other words, you are an Atheist in this scenario.
You will bring all the logic and scientific theories just like person who hasn’t seen a TV would do. A person who has not seen a TV and does not know about EM waves, would argue with all his power ( ironically, ‘believing’ that the teeny tiny amount of science he knows can explain the universe ) and will never ever accept anything other than his logic.
Which is fine. You can go on living life without ever buying a TV and experiencing it, which is your prerogative, you are given a life to live it the way you want as long as that living doesn’t hurt another being. So, its best to leave Atheist YOU to find solace in such ‘beliefs’.
Now, we move on to second type of YOU which is the you who buys a TV. It could be Sony, LG, whatever. This is the you who chooses to be part of a religion like Buddhism, Hinduism, whatever. You choose a religion and embrace it. You say I have a Sony TV. I am a Sony guy, I am a Samsung guy. Similarly, You say I am a Buddhist, I am a Hindu and so on.
Which is all fine and all, but with one teeny tiny mistake.
You do not turn on the TV.
Now, would you experience the tv channels?
No. You would not.
Similarly, if you are a religious person just for the name sake, YOU will not be much different from the Atheist YOU.
You just bought a TV and just use it as a status symbol. Exactly like how you would use your religion for making yourself look good.
The Atheist-you and the Name-sake-religious-you are not that different.
Both of you have not ‘experienced’ anything. One refuses to buy a TV, the other refuses to turn on the TV.
Not much worth to talk there as well, so we move on to the third you.
This you is the you that you must focus on making yourself to be first. ( nice wordplay, wasn’t it? )
This is the YOU who buys a TV and turns it on. The ‘Religious-You’.
Now, you begin to see the channels. The Cartoon Network, Sports Channels, Nature Channels everything. You begin to experience the wonders of the world from your living room. Just like magic.
Why, because you did what is necessary to tap in to the EM waves that are invisible, that surrounds you.
This is exactly what happens to you when you actually practice your religion, regardless what your religion is.
You could be meditating, chanting, praying. It could be in the temple, church, mosque, near a river, in the bus, at home. It doesn’t matter how or where or what religious thing you are doing, as long as you are truly doing it. Then you begin to feel the power of your Dharma, Karma, God, Universe, Nature, what ever you call it.
Like magic.
You begin to experience the channels. Just like you switch from one channel to another, now you can experience different dimensions of spiritual experiences that your religion will bring.
At first you will get this urge to tell others about this wonderful thing. You will tell the ‘Atheist-You’ people and they will not believe, there is no changing those minds. So you move on and try to tell the ‘Name-Sake-Religious-You’ kind of people, and they are only interested in the superficial stuff, and will listen but will not ‘Turn on the TV’.
Trying to convince others is fine and all, but if you are truly devoted to your practice, you become more and more silent.
Then you realize, with time, that it is not your purpose to show anyone anything. Each person has a path to walk, it might seem wrong path from your perspective, but from their perspective it could be the right path. So you just leave them to be.
And then something wonderful happens.
Your practice starts to go deeper and deeper. You suddenly have access to more and more channels in your TV and you just have to go to which ever one you want to experience by clicking the remote control
This is a strange yet wondeful experience that cannot be put in to words. You must experience it. ( Like I said time and time again, it’s easy. Sit down. Close your eyes. Do nothing )
This is the place where many will get stuck.
Let’s understand from the TV and the remove scenario.
You have access to many channels, you flip through them whenever you want. You click one number on the remote to get to the Cartoon Network, another to Sports, you know how to go forward, backwards using the remote control, and you know how to switch on the tv and switch off the tv. Just like that you know what religious practice to use when, to experience different dimensions of life. and you also know how and when to keep your religious experiences off and on.
That’s the ‘Religious-You’.
From here onwards, it’s the ‘Spiritual-You’. But this is tricky, so pay attention.
Now, you get to hear about this one amazing channel. No one actually knows how to explain it. There is no step by step by step guide. But you hear these rumours of people who have see this ‘it’ channel.
So what do you do?
You take your remote, you flip through all the variations. You just click all the buttons, trying to find that ‘it’ channel. You try and try and try without any success.
That is what happens in life too. You try and try and put effort, so much effort to find the ‘it’. The ‘happiness’.
But the problem is, you can try all you want, you can click the remote in any way you want, but ‘it’ channel will not come.
Why?
Because,
“If you want it, you won’t get it”
So what do you do? ( Rather not do )
Say, at this point someone comes and tells you,
‘hey, just do these these things’ and then just do nothing.
He might say, ‘Turn the TV to that side, push the TV to that corner, rotate the antenna to that direction and raise the antenna to that hight’ and so on.
So you do those things. �Nothing happens.
But then that person says, ‘you did all you can do to prepare, now let go. Relax. When the channel is ready to appear to YOUR tv, it will appear. You no longer have to do anything nor you can do anything even if you tried.’
So you did all the preparations and you just let it go. When ‘it’ channel will come, it will come. You take the Non-Action path.
And suddenly, when it’s time, magically, the ‘it’ channel appears in your tv. Without you having to do anything.
See?
Now let’s take it to your spiritual journey.
How do you go from ‘Religious-You’ to ‘Spiritual-You’
You fine-tune your antennas, placements of your SELF. You do that through the advices that is given in the CORE teachings of your religion.
See the emphasis of the word Core Teachings.
Every religion has got mixed up with many things over thousands of years. The core message has got diluted. You must find the core message.
Then fix yourself up through that.
Say it’s meditation.
You do what you can to tune yourself up.
But then if you keep trying to tune yourself up and force yourself to ‘catch’ the ‘it’, you will fail. You will spend years and years and decades and decades doing, trying, forcing and failing.
Just like in the tv scenario, once you tune yourself up, you Surrender.
You give up control.
You stop forcing.
You stop trying.
You stop doing.
You stop wanting.
You go from action to non-action.
You sit down with closed eyes and just do nothing.
You just exist.
Not in past, Not in future. Not even in now. You just ARE.
Then ‘it’ channel appears.
The ‘it’ you were searching all your religious life, finds you.
You don’t find it. It finds you.
“If you want it, you won’t get it”
‘It’ could be your Dharma, Karma, God, Universe, Oneness, whichever you wish it to be. Whichever you believe it to be. All are one, it’s just a play of words. Words doesn’t matter in Spiritual dimension, only sound matters. Don’t get tangled in the differences in words, don’t argue on the petty things.
Spiritual dimension is much much bigger, much more magical, and has much more wonders than you realize.
You Surrender.
You Fall.
You let yourself fall in to the unknown abyss.
And ‘it’ will catch you.
…………
That is it for now. The last part of post series will be on the concept of Time. At least I am planning it to make it about Time. The past, present, future, predestination and all that. But may be I will change my mind. Who knows. And who cares.
Until next time, byeeeeee 😇
