Unity. Light. Love.
Practice
Freedom from Opinions
(or I Am Bad from the Outset)
In giving you this new practice, I want to offer you a new philosophy of life.
I am not at all sure that everyone will understand it, let alone understand it correctly. But this is a matter of understanding, not a problem with the philosophy. Some will not understand today, but will understand tomorrow or after some time. Others will understand but will not want to use it. Everyone has their own path.
What makes our lives less free? Most often, it is the desire to be liked by others. Since this is naturally impossible, at least with everyone, or for long, or with the people whose approval we want, an endless effort begins to prove that you are actually very good and that other people's opinions of you are mistaken.
There is nothing and nobody to whom you must prove anything. That is not what your life is for. Your life is not a proof of anything. You do not need to prove anything to anyone; do not waste your time on such a pointless activity.
If you carefully examine your life, or even the lives of people you know, which you can see from the outside, you will notice that they consist entirely of such attempts at proof. All your life, you try to prove to everyone that you are different. Your every action cries out: "No! I am not the way you think I am!", "Stop thinking that! You are wrong about me!", "I am nothing like that! Why do you think that of me? Everything I do shows the opposite!", and so on.
The desire to prove to everyone, or to someone in particular, that we are "good" makes us slaves. We stop doing what we want, what we were born for, and begin doing what others want, as they manipulate us through their opinions of us. Is it worth tormenting yourself like this? Will it change anything at all? Of course not. Life becomes one long triumph of madness and celebration of meaninglessness. Why does it matter so much who thinks what about you? Do you yourself change because of it? Not in the slightest. You are what you are, no more and no less. What truly changes you is spiritual practice.
So why not let everyone think whatever they like about you from the very beginning? Why not throw this pointless burden off your shoulders, all of it, all at once?
The freedom that comes will surprise you, and you will no longer want to bend your back beneath that heavy load.
What do you need to do?
Simply say inwardly: "I am to blame for everything!"
I am to blame for everything! Everything that happened in the past, everything that will happen in the future, and everything happening now. Everything. Bad weather outside? My fault. Sunshine and heat? My fault too. A light bulb has burnt out, important documents have gone missing, the television has broken, there is no butter in the fridge... My fault. They think I am a lesbian or gay? Quite right, that is me. Someone misunderstood my words and blames me for everything? That is how it is. Someone misinterpreted my actions and now thinks I am to blame for everything? They are absolutely right; I really am to blame. I am bad...
Simply allow the situation to be. You do not have to think of yourself this way. Just give everyone permission in advance to think whatever they like, to the fullest extent. Do not let yourself try to prove anything to anyone. Do not even let yourself do it mentally, not for a moment. Cut it off immediately with phrases such as "Bad? Then bad it is", "Not good? Then not good it is", and so on.
Imagine setting off on a pleasant, exciting journey, travelling light. Enjoyable adventures lie ahead, and you expect many impressions and discoveries. Suddenly, however, you receive a fragile, delicate gift that can only be kept in calm conditions. You know you will not give up the journey you have planned for so long and already begun. You also know that, sooner or later, the gift will break because the journey is so active. The gift is valuable and expensive. You will become dependent on it, worrying whether it is still intact or has broken. Your journey will no longer be so free. I would even say it will become impossible.
This practice asks you to do the impossible: destroy that gift. Break it right now and continue your wonderful journey. Go as you intended, and let nothing stand in your way. Nothing is more valuable than freedom.
I hope this practice will bring you closer to even greater freedom. See also these practices: Freedom from the Egregore, Psychological Relief and Support, Breaking Out of Cyclical Consciousness, Completely Stopping the Inner Dialogue, Positive Thinking, Self-Awareness.
© Author: Sergey Veretennikov (Om Shanti)
13 November 2009
It has been six years since I gave you this practice. Some have forgotten it, some have reflected on it, and some are even practising it.
Its essence is this: the overwhelming majority of people on Earth create an image of themselves and then spend their whole lives maintaining it. They suffer greatly when they cannot do so, which happens quite often. As I said six years ago, trying to be liked by everyone is a futile undertaking. It is better to choose a path where you like yourself. Only then will you enter a state of being at ease with your conscience, at peace with God and with everything around you.
Then peace will come to you: Shanti.
Everyone seeks Shanti. Even when you seek Love, you are really seeking Shanti, because Love opens Shanti to you. You will not attain peace until you love everything around you. It is simply impossible. And if you do not attain peace, even Love will not bring you complete fulfilment, because only Shanti, peace, can do that. What happens when lovers finally come together in marriage? They become calm. Before that, there is a storm of emotions, passions and feelings: "Do you love me, my beloved?" "Yes, I am yours forever." "Oh, you do not love me; how I suffer!" "No, I am mad about you!" And so on. After all of this, peace finally arrives. Like a mother, Love brings her child to the Father, to peace, to Shanti.
If someone is fortunate enough for Shanti to pour down upon them, they will immediately feel Love, Light and Unity, and many other exalted experiences. All of these are present in Shanti. Shanti consists of them, because it is the very summit of all experience.
So in truth, everyone strives towards Shanti, towards this unearthly calm and peace.
Shanti is peace in the soul. It is peace with yourself. Then tranquillity comes.
If you create a false image of yourself, you fall into a serious trap. You lose your peace. You are constantly preoccupied with maintaining that false image, always at war with anyone who does not see you as you wish to be seen. Conversely, you are happy when others see you exactly as the image you have created. But you often fall from that summit, because your position depends on others, not on you. You cannot always control other people. That is the problem: you are vulnerable.
Your world begins to divide into bad people and good people. The bad ones do not see you as you wish; the good ones see you as you have imagined yourself.
But the "good" ones are also a changing variable. Keeping them seeing you as you would like consumes enormous resources within you. Worst of all, with every passing year you realise that this is a losing battle, that you cannot live in such constant tension.
Over time, you run out of strength to argue with everyone and prove things. The division into enemies and friends only grows stronger. In the end, you are either left alone or with a few people who simply love you as you are, such as relatives, children, a wife or husband. You will be very fortunate if you have such people beside you.
Is this game worth such effort, when you already know you will never win? Sooner or later, you will have to begin looking for yourself: not the self you have invented, but who you really are.
How can you free yourself from this illusory struggle? I gave you a method in the practice above. Let everyone think what they want about you. As I have said, it will not change you in the slightest. You will remain exactly as you are. There is no need to panic and rush back into battle, crying: "Ah, so that is what you think of me! But I am not really like that..." The only way to free yourself is to allow everyone, right now, to think the very worst of you. Then whatever negative thing someone says about you will have no harmful effect: you already know that everyone thinks the worst. Give all of that back to them. Give them their opinions, whatever those opinions may be. Let them do what they want with them. Free yourself from this absurd struggle.
Long ago, stories about Indian saints, sadhus, used to surprise me greatly. And not only Indian saints: such people exist everywhere, including here. They behave like mad people. An ordinary person meeting them will see nothing but madness. They deliberately assume the appearance of the lowest of people. If they began to shine with their full brilliance, they would attract everyone. Yet they want only one thing: for God to be seen in them, and only by those who are worthy. Believe me, they do not merely avoid wanting people to think well of them; they do everything possible to make people regard them as worthless, the lowest of the low.
What happens if you are actually honest, but two or three people at work think you are a liar because they misunderstood something or imagined something? What happens? Nothing happens. Why spend your inner resources trying to change the situation? Let them think it. People are like this: they think according to what they see. Today they see one thing in you, tomorrow another. That is their problem. Even ten lifetimes would not be enough to follow them around, persuading and explaining. And why do it?
Suppose these people tell your boss that you are a liar. The boss thinks: "Well, what an unpleasant person we have in our friendly team. Perhaps I should dismiss them..." Then the boss begins checking up on you discreetly. But you keep telling the truth, nothing but the truth. The boss is puzzled: those people said you were a liar, yet you have passed every check. So the real liars must be the people spreading the gossip, and the boss dismisses them. Do you see how it works?
Even if it does not happen this way, believe me, the Universe has other possibilities in store for you. Do not be afraid to give it your little plastic toy car: behind its back, it has a real, expensive car waiting for you. But you must give your gift first; then it will give you its own.
Now raise the level a little. Put God in place of the boss, and replace what people say about you with what they think about you. Have you done that? An interesting picture emerges: people think badly of you, yet God sends you only good things. God does not care what anyone thinks of you; He knows who you are. He does not learn this from others.
You need to understand the world you live in: a world where most people will do anything for their own advantage. Do not try to reform them or force them to think things about you that please you. In any case, they will think of you from the standpoint of their own benefit. So do not even begin to batter yourself against that wall. You will never break through it. What they think about you is entirely their problem. It does not concern you. You have no connection with this phenomenon.
Nothing changes because people think something about you that differs from what you think of yourself. The sun will not stop shining, clouds will not stop drifting across the sky, and the stars will not fall. Everything will continue as usual. Why all this fuss about what someone might think of you?
Instead, try to understand who you really are and what you are like. I guarantee that even you do not know what you are like. So why take offence at others who do not know either?
They say a human life is given for one purpose alone: to discover who you are while there is still time. Try not to miss that opportunity.
© Author: Sergey Veretennikov (Om Shanti)
7 July 2015
