Your discipline has to come from your very heart

‘Discipline’ is a beautiful word, but it is misused as all other beautiful words are misused in the past. The word ‘discipline’ comes from the same root ‘disciple’; the root meaning of the word is “a process of learning.” One who is ready to learn is a disciple, and the process of being ready to learn is discipline. The knowledgeable person is never ready to learn, because he thinks he already knows; he is much centered in his so-called knowledge. His knowledge is nothing but a nourishment for his ego. He cannot be a disciple; he cannot be in true discipline.

 

Beginning of Discipline

 

When one says: “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” That is the beginning of discipline. When you don’t know anything, of course, a great longing to inquire, explore, investigate arises. And the moment you start learning, another factor follows certainly: whatsoever you have learned has to be dropped continuously, otherwise it will become knowledge and knowledge will prevent further learning.

The real man of discipline never accumulates; each moment he dies to whatsoever he has come to know and again becomes ignorant. That ignorance is really luminous. It is one of the most beautiful experiences in existence to be in a state of luminous not-knowing. When you are in that state of not-knowing, you are open, there is no barrier, you are ready to explore.

People have been telling others to discipline their life, to do this, not to do that. Thousands of shoulds and should-nots have been imposed on man, and when a man lives with thousands of shoulds and should-nots, he cannot be creative. He is a prisoner; everywhere he will come across a wall.

 

Your discipline has to come from your very heart

 

The creative person has to dissolve all shoulds and should-nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space, he needs the whole sky and all the stars, only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing. Your discipline has to come from your very heart, it has to be yours—and there is a great difference. When somebody else gives you the discipline, it can never fit you; it will be like wearing somebody else’s clothes, which might be too loose or too tight, and you will always feel a little bit silly in them. Discipline is an individual phenomenon; whenever you borrow it, you start living according to set principles, dead principles. And life is never dead; life is constantly changing each moment. Life is a flux.

You cannot step in the same river twice. In fact, you cannot step in the same river even once—the river is so fast-moving! One has to be alert to, watchful of, each situation and its nuances, and one has to respond to the situation according to the moment, not according to any ready-made answers given by others.

Try to be alive, with all its contradictions, and live each moment without any reference to the past, without any reference to the future either. Live the moment in the context of the moment, and your response will be total.

Where is the soul?

Will you tell me about the soul?  What do you want to know?

Let’s start with the first, and obvious, question: I already know the answer, but it gives us a starting point. Is there such a thing as the human soul? Yes. It is the third aspect of your being. You are a three-part being, made up of body, mind, and spirit. I know where my body is; I can see that. And I think I know where my mind is—it’s in the part of my body called my head. But I’m not sure I have any idea where.

Wait a minute. Hold it. You’re wrong about something. Your mind is not in your head. It’s not? No. Your brain is in your skull. Your mind is not. Where is it, then? In every cell of your body, you have your brain. Whoa... What you call the mind is really an energy? It is . . . thought. And thought is an energy, not an object.

Syed Usman

Your brain is an object. It is a physical, biochemical mechanism—the largest, most sophisticated, but not the only—mechanism in the human body, with which the body translates, or converts, the energy which is your thought into physical impulses. Your brain is a transformer. So is your whole body. You have little transformers in every cell. Biochemists have often remarked at how individual cells—blood cells, for instance—seem to have their own intelligence. They do, in fact. That goes not just for cells, but for larger parts of the body. Every man on the planet knows about a particular body part that often seems to have a mind of its own...

So where is the soul? Where do you think it is? Behind the Third Eye? No. In the middle of my chest, to the right of my heart, just beneath the breastbone? No. Okay, I give up. It is everywhere. Like the mind?

Whoops. Wait a minute. The mind is not everywhere. It’s not? I thought you just said it was in every cell of the body. That is not “everywhere.” There are spaces between the cells. In fact, your body is 99 percent space.

This is where the soul is? The soul is everywhere in, through, and around you. It is that which contains you. I was always taught that the body is the container of my soul. Whatever happened to “Your body is the temple of your being”?

Have you ever heard of an “aura”? Yes. Yes. Is this the soul?

It is as close as we can come in your language, in your understanding, to giving you a picture of an enormous and complex reality. The soul is that which holds you together—just as the Soul of God is that which contains the universe, and holds it together.

But if the soul is, in a sense, the “air in and around us,” and if everyone else’s soul is the same, where does one soul end, and another begin?

There is no place where another soul “ends” and ours “begins”! Just like there is no place where the air in the living room “stops” and the air in the dining room “starts.” It’s all the same air. It’s all the same soul!

You’ve just discovered the secret of the universe. And if You are that which contains the universe, just as we are that which contains our bodies, then there is no place where You “end” and we “begin”!

We have everything to lose it all. We will all be left with nothing....

Luckily, you’re Eventually going to die one day

One day you will die and you won’t have any more problems. You won’t have car payments, mortgages or debts of any sort. You won’t ever again have a bad hair day. You won’t ever get into another argument with your boyfriend or sister. You won’t make any more mistakes or find yourself in difficult situations to navigate out of. One day you will be dead. Whether or not you are alone in the world won’t matter. One day you will die and that will be it. Game over. No redos. If that doesn’t cheer you up, then I don’t know what will!

Syed Usman

We have everything to lose it all

The greatest sin that there ever was living a life wasted. I am sure that you have heard people say that the reason they were able to succeed where others failed was that they came to the realization that they have nothing to lose. I don’t see it that way. I believe that we all have a lot to lose. In fact, we have everything to lose and more than that, we will lose it all — every last thing that holds any meaning for us. You will lose everything. All of your friends. Your family and all your experiences — all of it will one day be gone.

So why not risk losing it a little sooner? Why not risk whatever it is that you need to risk in order to sip those glorious drops in that bucket?

Figure out the person that you want to be

Sit down and figure out what you want your life to be like. Figure out the person that you want to be — figuring out who you ‘are’ is only worth a penny if you have a clear understanding of who you want to be. Taking risks and loving freely is the only way to live. If you love someone then don’t wait to tell them; tell them now. Tell your parents, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents how much they mean to you.

We will all be left with nothing

Tell that man that you love him or tell that woman that you can’t live without her. Don’t waste your life fearing commitment because as long as you fear commitment, you’ll never be capable of committing. You will lose all of these people sooner or later; how can you allow yourself not to let them know how much they mean to you? It’s wrong and cruel. We will all be left with nothing when we pass and for this reason we should do our best to accumulate as many pleasant experiences now as we can. If you ever plan on loving deeply then why not allow yourself to begin loving now?

Why be shy and why wait for an ‘opening’ that only exits in your imagination?

We create our openings. We bust down walls to make doors and create opportunities for ourselves. Unless, of course, you are one of those poor bastards under the illusion that once you die, you will be able to do all the things in that bucket list and/or that the problems you are have in life will continue to haunt you afterwards. If you are one of these people then all I can say is this: the last feeling that you will have before you breathe your last breath will be hatred and loathing for yourself and for how stupid you were for allowing yourself to waste the rarest treasure in the universe.

Where were you before your were conceived and before you were born?????

“Whatever is mine, is not me”

By absorbing and understanding these words, one can the password that everybody requires, for their inner search. If not, people always question “How does one discover one’s true self? What is this true self? And the replies, they get from various people, (who are again humans)  are usually that one should meditate with 100% concentration, shut out  thoughts, and one will progress deeper. But this can easily be said than done, for the mind strays, and people get frustrated with meditation and conclude that they cannot do it and they let it go. But if you were to start with what you know, and keep editing that material, you will eventually come to that which you don’t know, but that which is your seeking.

Syed Usman

I have a Car, but I’m not my Car

We start with the words “Whatever is mine, is not me”. So, anything that you can say is yours, anything that you can see as being separate from yourself, anything that belongs to you, to which you can show possessiveness, cannot be you Because, you and that thing that you possess, are obviously different. I have a car, I have a house, a brother, a wife, a son, I am a doctor, I am fat, I am thin—–all these are my assets, my possessions. Obviously, I am not my car, my house, my brother, my wife, my son, my profession—so all these get edited out.

I have legs and hands, they are mine, but I’m not my legs and hands.

Then what remains is my body-mind complex. But I can see my body, can’t I? Yes, I can see that I have legs and hands, and eyes, and a nose and a mouth and so on. So, if I have these things, like I have a car or house, these things are mine, but they are separate from me. I can see them, I can feel them, I know that there is something or someone who is seeing them—-so, my body with its various components, belongs to me, but is not me. That brings me to my mind. Can I see my thoughts?  Yes, I can. Can I see my mind thinking all the thoughts? Yes. We often tell people “To my mind, this does not sound good” or “To my mind this sounds logical”.

So, we are able to see the mind in action and can see with the mind, the logic of a situation, the right or wrong of a situation. We can also see that the mind is not constant. It is frequently changing. Yesterday, I disliked someone. Today, I like that person. Yesterday, I wanted to see a movie. Today, I am not interested. A few years ago, I wanted a fancy car. Today, I am not interested. We often tell people “:I changed my mind”. If I can see the mind as an entity different from myself,, an entity which is not constant but always changing, it cannot be me, can it? To call something as ‘me’, I need something that is fixed, unchanging, rigid and constant. And my possessions, my relations, my body and even my mind changes with time.

They are all mine, but they are not me.

Having edited out most of the things that are mine, what remains, is me. This is the search that we have to undertake. Ramana Maharshi said the same thing, in different words, “Who am I?” Was the only question he wanted his disciples to answer, to themselves. Nisargadatta Maharaj said the same thing when he said “Where were you, before you were conceived, before you were born? That is the real you. Zen people have a term for it “Your real identity is the face you had before you were born”.

These word “Whatever is mine is not me” are the golden passwords for our inner search. Start applying them today and see how far this journey takes you. What you will discover cannot be obviously described. It can only be experienced.

Find your Purpose of life……

We look for value addition in everything we do.

Parents who put their children through an expensive education hope that they will end up with five-figure salaries. Young women get married in the hope that their husbands will treat them like queens and hold them as the apple of their eyes. We question the worth and the price we pay for everything. True, we like to make the best of every bargain!

Have you indeed made the most of your life? Are you living your precious human life meaningfully, consciously, purposefully?

I know the answer to that question is not easy. But you will agree with me that we need to think about it, at least occasionally. True, we all love life and want to make the most of it. We long for happiness, peace and fulfillment in all that we do. But do we know the purpose of this life, the goal of this life?

Human birth is invaluable, it is God’s greatest gift to us.

let us use it wisely and well. Have you ever asked yourself before you cuddle into bed and drift into sleep:

• what have I done with my day today?

• Have I moved closer to God?

• Have I brought happiness to anyone?

• Have I spoken kind words?

I know several businessmen who do not leave their offices before the day’s accounts are corresponded and closed to their satisfaction. But how many of us tally our daily accounts in the book of life?

we do not even know what we want out of life. We work like machines, going through the same routine day after day.

If truth were to be told, we live a life of inertia. So many of us today are just drifting through life. We do not know where we are going; we do not even know what we want out of life. We work like machines, going through the same routine day after day. We forget that each of us is unique. They say that there are hundred million people in India today. Just imagine, among those hundred million people there is no one exactly like you. Why, among the billions of people, who inhabit the earth, there is no other person who is like you? You are unique. God made you for a special purpose. Discover that special purpose. Make it your goal and once you have fixed that goal, you must keep your eyes always on that goal. This is one of the secrets of making the most of life—fix your goal.

If I were to ask you right now:

• What is that you want out of life?
• What do you wish to achieve?

Not many of you will be able to give me an answer straight away. But if I were to phrase the same question in a negative manner, “What is it that you feel you cannot achieve?” Many of you will have ready answers.

Some of you will say to me, “Achievement does not run in our family. My father achieved nothing; my brother achieved nothing. I shall achieve nothing.” Perhaps others will say, “I do not have the power, the education or the influence and the resources to achieve whatever I want.
” Yet others might say, “My brother has all the brains in the family and my sister has all the good looks, I have nothing, so I cannot do anything.”

To each of you I would say: you must fix your goal. It may be a material goal or a spiritual goal but you must fix your goal, and every day, you must work to reach that goal!

The river of time flows on. The hours quickly change into days, the days into months and the months into years. Suddenly, one day, the bell rings and the call goes forth: “Vacate the house [of the body]!” The body drops down and man realizes that he has lost the golden opportunity of the human birth. We must use it creatively and never forget that every moment is just the right time to do a right thing. If we wait for more opportune moments, we may have to wait till eternity.

Therefore, we must fix a goal. So many of us, alas, are just moving, knowing not where we are going. Therefore, let us fix a goal—secular or spiritual—and each day strive to draw closer to the goal.