Limiting beliefs

Welcome to Mohanji Speaks.

Hello friends. Today, I have been thinking about our limiting beliefs. I think I have already told you about the story of how a wild elephant is tamed by the trainers to use them in various capacities. The first and foremost is that freedom is limited. In the wild, they are wild and free; they can do whatever they want. They roam around as they like, and elephants usually live in groups, they are social beings, very intelligent beings. When an elephant is caught, it’s tough to discipline it. What these trainers do is to tie a very tight rope on their hind legs and leave them like that. The elephant does its best to break free, pulling at the rope all the time. And it starts getting injuries because of friction. The frictional injuries start to grow as the days go by. The trainers do not try to heal them; they just leave it like that. And the pain would be tremendous; continuous and consistent pain because of injuries in the hind legs. Then and the elephant stops pulling it because it hurts when it pulls. The elephant drops it and doesn’t pull anymore. It understood that these ropes could not be broken. And if he pulls, it gives pain and suffering. So, the elephant surrenders. 

Afterwards, the tame elephant is used for various entertainments or utility matters. But they are tame; they obey the tiny human much lesser in size, and much lesser in strength than itself. But the initial limiting belief, which the trainers were able to give the elephant, stays on forever. Limiting beliefs are the point. We all have limiting beliefs, just like this elephant. Some traumatic memory from the past, its corresponding agony, the feeling, the helplessness and associated emotions and memories that we carry leads us or binds us with our limiting beliefs, and it works through the whole life.

We shy away from many things of life. We fail to achieve only because of our limiting beliefs. This is the truth. We must understand that all these limiting beliefs apart, we are as wild, free and strong as a normal elephant would be in the forest. We should be successful in our daily life. And we should also be a significant part of our society by delivering as per our capacities positively to society. Sometimes these limiting beliefs are so hidden that we don’t even recognize them. It needs introspection, needs contemplation. 

How many times, how many situations we could not handle because of our limiting beliefs? Try to understand. Sometimes limiting beliefs are given by our parents, our teachers or society. Sometimes limiting beliefs are given by religions; all of them create an almost similar effect. We have seen that over history. Limiting beliefs have taken away great opportunities for great progress in human existence. This is very important to understand, limiting beliefs exist, and limiting beliefs are really, really important to understand and come out of. 

We are supremely powerful. Nothing can stop us from doing our good work in the world. I always tell my people, the people who believe in me, we are powerful as a team, and our intention is always pure. We do not want to harm anybody; we have no violence in us; we do not have anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge in us, because they contaminate our inner space. We only have love; we have compassion; we have kindness. This is very strong. And these are very powerful. Compassion is powerful; kindness is powerful.

To have the strength and to have discipline – power without discipline can create havoc. Power without discipline creates atomic bombs which destroy an entire race. We saw the devastation that happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But today, we have much larger, much more destructive atomic capacities with us to wipe out entire mankind. We must observe restraint, we must accept love, and we must be compassionate and kind. Just imagine having great strength, great power and exercising great kindness, how it will be. It can be very transformative for the entire human race. Having great power, and having great strength and capacities, but using it for dividing, harming, or destroying, literally shakes the root of our species.

Nature has given us all the options. Nature has given us everything. And nature continues to provide us, to experience and execute it. We have to be realistic. We have to be responsible. And we have to lead a life of purity and harmony, like one of those great Lamas, who was arrested and imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese authorities after they invaded Tibet. When he was released, he told about his time in the prison. Apparently, it was very torturous; it was very disturbing for him, for his equilibrium, because they tried their best to break him down. As always, as a prisoner of war, he was tortured almost every day for 25 years. 

When he was asked, did you have fears, he said yes because a truly spiritual person will have no fears. There is no room for fears. If you’re really walking the path of purity, you should be fearless. God can be loved because God sits in you as your soul factor. God is to be loved; God is love. So, Lama said, I had fears. Three times it appeared in the canvas of my mind. Each time it was the fear that I may end up hating the oppressors, the guys who are torturing him. And that can cause inner contamination. I didn’t want anything to do with inner contamination. That fear happened trice.

To maintain the purity, you need constant vigil. You’ve got to make sure every day, every moment that anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge, or any emotions which are draining and negative by nature should not enter your mind. You should be free from all that. This is important. This is vital. 

Fear binds you, so you must practice fearlessness. Anything which gives you the fear of anything should be avoided because one fear leads to another fear. Fear binds, and fear distorts our vision. It’s important to know to understand that we are born free, and we have every right to exercise our highest potential and possibility of existence while we are living on Earth. Life has got to be lived. Life has got to be experienced. Life has given us an opportunity to attain the highest possibility of human existence. We must make use of that, not existing like bricks on the wall. It’s living a full life. We have the capacity, and we have the ability.

I’ll leave these thoughts in your plate today. Contemplate on it and discuss it.

 Lots of love. This is Mohanji.

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Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan

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What we resist, persists

Good day friends, this is Mohanji.

Today we will talk about an internal subject called resistance. Many opportunities are missed because of resistance. First, we talk about internal resistance. We gather a lot of concepts, prejudices, various likes and dislikes, inclinations, tendencies and because of that, we develop certain resistance. Sometimes, this resistance comes out as prejudices, sometimes as fears and phobias, sometimes an exaggerated caution. In various ways, we express resistance.

What happens when we resist something? That thing persists. That thing stays for a longer time. This we have seen in our own life. Whatever we hate, whatever we resist; they stay more. And sometimes, it affects our life adversely. Sometimes, it creates a lot of inconveniences, roadblocks. We see this happening. Some people have resistance to certain things and then they do not even venture forward; they stop. This is our food for thought today.

Everybody, all the people who have done something in the world, who have left a mark in the world, have experienced resistance from society, from the people, from various situations; they have experienced resistance. But their courage, confidence and conviction, helped them move forward. They walked forward. They kept walking, so they turned the resistance into inspiration because they were sure; they knew what they were doing.

Jesus had a lot of resistance in his life. So many people did not approve; and they were influential people, High Priests. And they were very upset that a carpenter is coming and speaking philosophy. People were following him; this annoyed them. And they tried their best to slow him down, or even annihilate him, which they did eventually. But Jesus did not stop. He kept walking. He kept doing his thing. Even when adversities happened; he continued. This is the sign of great men.

We can see that in history, they faced a lot of resistance before their accomplishment. It’s like going and working out in a gymnasium. You have to literally pump the iron to create a toned up body. Similarly, you got to really fight to move the pressurizing society, and walk. Contemporary society may not even understand. What do they do? They talk to others about you. They threaten you and they character assassinate you. All those things they do. But if your conviction is clear, if you know where you’re going, if you can handle resistance; there will be a success around the corner.

So resistance is part of existence, you can’t avoid resistance and live. Think about the resistance inside, prejudices inside, concepts, contamination inside; what have we gathered from the society? Many things we have gathered and many of those things that we have gathered are useless.

But life is about experiences. Every moment experiences. When we are walking, talking, sleeping, eating; everything is giving us experiences. So, why are we afraid? Why are we afraid of people? We have our life, we have our expressions, we have our inclinations, we have our tendencies. If they are harmless to others, we don’t have to be worried about it. If they are harmful to others, then we must check what we are doing. We must stop, think, and correct.

And we have seen people, highly destructive, especially you can see that in politics. So much of mudslinging happening in politics. Sometimes, innovative, good politicians get affected, and they are sometimes removed by some people who do not want progress, who do not want innovation, who do not want to change the country. Their selfishness supersedes the progress of the country because they are more interested in maintaining their selfishness and gathering more for themselves and their families; rather than making a change in the country. So, if selflessness is ruling, if somebody is working with selflessness, often they are attacked, and they are sometimes character assassinated and sometimes they are removed. We have seen that many times in politics.

So, all these things are part of life. But resistance; always remember that what you resist, persists, they stay on for a longer time. Anything new comes to us; we resist. And if they keep on coming, after a while you get used to it, then you accept. But by then precious time is lost.

We should be like a child. Everything is coming, and we accept them. We look at them, is this suitable for us? Take it. If it is not suitable for us, discard it. Everything we need not accept. Any philosophy, any person, any time, space, any material, coming to us; everything is probably not suitable for us. That’s alright because we have our orientation. We have our own character, constitution. So, only accordingly we can accept. So, this is fine. This is okay, but if we keep on resisting people, we keep on resisting ideas, we fail to live. We become like a caged animal; we are kind of caged, our movements are restricted. So, this is very important to understand how deep is your resistance level, or how much you resist, that is the benchmark for how much you will progress.

So, I leave this thought with you. Think about it, how much you resist in life, how much you accept in life. Acceptance makes life smooth. And we accept ourselves, then the people around us, then the society, materials, what has been provided to us; accept them. Be thankful, be grateful, how life will be. I leave this food for thought on your plate.

Lots of love. This is Mohanji for you.

 

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

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How to attain permanent happiness?

We all know deep inside, chasing the paltry pleasures of life is not life. We know there is something deeper. We all know, we all feel that there is something deeper and profound in this existence. And many times, we feel that what we’re doing is not the right thing. That’s why people will ask the question, what’s the purpose of my life?

Well, karmically the purpose of your life is every moment experience; the waking state experience, the dream state experience and the deep sleep state experience. Sum total is life. We express what we are to the world outside, and that’s also part of the purpose of our existence. But we know deep within, we feel that this is not what the whole thing is about. These pleasures are temporary, they come and go. And then we crave for more. Then it becomes a habit, then it becomes an addiction. Like that it goes, going round and round, it doesn’t evolve. We go for the familiar likes and dislikes. So, we have this continuous need for pleasures. But at the same time, we are not happy. We are happy when pleasures are accomplished. Familiar situations make us happy. Comfort zones make us happy and we crave for it. If that’s taken away, we feel like a fish out of water. That’s a very scary feeling, you know. People become restless and people become insecure.

So, we are experiencing a situation like that, now, with this lockdown happening. We do not know what to do. We don’t have the usual freedom which we are used to, for a long time. So we feel, how do we handle this? It’s a very good time to get back to yourself and ask this question. It is a good time to ask a good question. What is a good question? What makes me really happy? What is happiness? What makes me really happy?

None of these recurring needs for certain pleasures is making us happy. They’re making us feel okay. That’s not happiness. Happiness is a permanent state. That question happened in everybody’s mind at some point in time. And this is an inevitable question.

When the great masters went deep inside exploring this question over time, again and again, they realized a few things. One of the major things is the cause of sorrows. The cause of sorrows, they narrowed it down to dependencies, deep expectations and fears. These are the causes of sorrows, major causes of sorrows. There are many minor causes but a major cause of sorrows are expectations and dependencies, as well as fears, and then, they started working on them.

First and foremost, what are dependencies? We are dependent on so many things in life, including the dress we wear, the food we eat, the places we are used to, the relationships that we have, and the environment, spaces, time, and so many factors. And these are the things which are very detrimental for us; to leave the usual patterns and reach a state of freedom with no patterns. What they found through contemplation, they could correct also through contemplation, by going individually, facing each fear, understanding each dependency, accepting each expectation.

So, while understanding each dependency, they realized that they are all connected to certain notions of pleasure. If I have this person with me, I am happy. If the person goes away, I feel insecure. If I have this relationship; if the person is happy with me, I’m happy, if the person is not happy with me, I’m sad. Like that, there are so many permutations, combinations which we have created for ourselves. So, they found that all these relationships had an element of conditionality; that so many relationships are very conditional and it’s related to a certain time, space, moods, so many factors. So, there is no continuity there. How can you change that?  Make all relationships unconditional. That solves that issue, which means less expectation.

Give more than what you take. So, if you require less from people, from the relations, then you’re free. So, freedom is connected to the expectations of a certain nature. If expectations are less, we have more freedom. Likewise fears. Many fears that we have, have no root. They are connected to certain notions, certain beliefs and certain things which we have picked up from society, from education, from people, and from religion. So, these fears, they bind you because you don’t do anything about it. Then they realized that it is good to face those fears, address them, look into the eyes and accept them. The moment you start looking into your fears; you’re not afraid of your fears anymore. Fears wither away. So, every dependency every addiction, every pattern, they are all kind of staying there because we don’t address them.

So individually, contemplation has a lot of value. We contemplate on it, and we come to terms with it. We start accepting ourselves more and more, and we start doing things in a non-reactive way; we don’t react. We don’t react at all. We respond. And we do not resist. Instead, we accept.

This became a big help. And that’s the way they guided the next generations. These masters guided the next generations to accept themselves, assimilate themselves and have permanent happiness, freedom.

 

Permanent happiness is a possibility when the dependencies are fewer, expectations are less, acceptance is more, fears are less or fears are taken care of. If we go into that kind of a mode, then, we do have the possibility of a permanent happiness state. Permanent happiness is when the mind is not running after needs, requirements, and wants; when the mind is stable and peaceful. That’s when the permanent happiness happens. So permanent happiness is a state which is definitely achievable to every individual. For this, the step is not meditation, it’s contemplation, introspection, acceptance.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

 

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