Why We Are The Way We Are

Whichever way you have ‘become’,
you have only created and cultivated
a small part of it consciously.
A large part of you is unconscious because
most of what you perceive is not in
your awareness.
Sense perception is like that – everything
that goes in through your sense organs gets
established in your system to be remembered
forever. This is karma. Every impression
that the five sense organs take in is
stored. This is not against you; this information
is useful. If you clean up all this information,
you will not know how to handle
even the simplest aspects of life.
It is only because the information
is coming in such torrents, it is
so complex, and most of it goes into
you without your consciousness so
it has become a problem. How you
became the way you are is just a
tendency that you developed because
of the information you
gathered.
This tendency is traditionally
called vasana. It is like a smell. Whatever is
there in maximum quantity is the kind of
smell you experience. Because you produce
this kind of smell, a certain type of life
moves towards you, and you also tend to
move in that direction.
Now, you use perfume to cover the
smell. In the first meeting, people may get
deceived. The moment they notice the
stink, they are going to run away. Is that the
way to live?
So it doesn’t matter what impressions
you have gathered, what you make of it is in
your hands. An unpleasant experience is
carried by most like a badge, always talking
about it. “This happened; somebody did this
to me, that’s why i’m like this.” They try to
cover all their unpleasantness with this one
badge.
One basic symbolism in yoga and Indian
spirituality has always been a lotus. This is
essentially because a lotus grows best wherever
there is dirt. Either you can resist the
dirt; you can become the dirt, or transform it
into a wonderful blossom. It’s your choice.
If unpleasant things have happened to
you, it is all the more important that you
turn wiser and more beautiful as quick as
possible, because you know the pain of unpleasantness.
If unpleasant things have happened, all
you have to do is see how such
things do not happen again to you or
to those around you. Whatever you
are right now is your own creation,
perhaps an unconscious one.
Unconscious processing of your
impressions has landed you
where you are now. If you consciously
process the impressions,
you could turn them into something
else.
To drop your vasanas, and get released
from these tendencies is an endless work because
in the process you may end up creating
more karma. So, instead of trying to
erase the smell, you need to distance yourself
from the source.
Whatever the nature of karma, the recording
mechanisms are only two – your
body and mind. If you create little space between
you and your physical body and mental
structure, then whatever the karma, or
vasanas, they have no impact on you. Then,
they just die.
The choice is yours – you could be a victim,
a spectator, or the master of your life.

Discourse: Sadhguru

 link : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life/spirituality/speaking-tree/Why-we-are-the-way-we-are/articleshow/5620694.cms

Happiness is in you

Sadhguru jaggi vasudev

You deal with people and situations effectively only when you are happy.

Otherwise, in your unhappiness, it won't matter what good intentions you have, you will only spread misery in the world. Being happy or unhappy is actually your choice. People have chosen to be unhappy because they think that by being unhappy they will get something. Once you are unhappy, whatever you get, what does it matter? If you are happy, if you don't get anything, what does it matter? This is not a philosophy; this is your true nature. By nature you want to be happy. Every creature wants to be happy. Everything that you are doing, every single act you are performing, is in pursuit of happiness in some way. Why would you want to serve people? Serving people gives you happiness. Somebody wants to wear good clothes, somebody wants to make a lot of money, because that gives them happiness. Even if he is giving away his life to somebody, he is doing it because it gives him Happiness. So happiness is the fundamental goal of life. Why do you want to go to Heaven? Only because you've been told that if you go to heaven, you will be happy. After doing all that you are doing, if you didn’t gain happiness, somewhere you have missed the basics of life. When you were a child, you were simply happy.  Without doing anything, you were happy. Then somewhere along the way, you lost this simply because you got deeply identified with many things around you, your body and your mind. What you call your mind is actually just the stuff you have picked up from social situations around you. The kind of mind you have depends on the kind of society you have been exposed to. Everything in your mind right now is something you picked up from outside. You got so identified with it and now it is causing you misery. This body is not yours; you have picked it up from the earth. You were born with a tiny body, which your parents gave you. After that, you ate plants and animals and grew. You borrowed it from the earth; it is not yours. For a while you have to use it, so enjoy it and go. But you have become so deeply identified with it, you think this body is you. No wonder you suffer. The basis of all this misery is: You have established yourself in untruth. You are deeply identified with that which you are not.  Hence, you go through all the suffering.  Source : http://www.deccanherald.com/content/38910/happiness-you.html

True happiness

First we need to know that the basis of our misery is that we have established ourselves
in untruth. We are deeply identified with that which we are not. Somewhere along the
way we have gotten identified with things around us. We have got identified with our
body and mind. That is the source of suffering.
Whatever you have known right now, your experience is only limited to your five sense
organs. Whatever you have known either of the world or yourself has come to you only
by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting. If these five senses go to sleep, you
will neither know the world nor yourself. They feel everything only in comparison. So
this is not a matter. Whatever your idea of God is, it is simply coming from the limited
experience of who you are right now. It is not coming from any true experience. The
only thing that you can experience is that which is within you. And that which is within
you, you have never really looked at in real depth.
The whole experience of transcending your limitations must happen within you.
If you want to transcend, only if you are truly willing, it can happen.
Otherwise, no power on earth or in
heaven can move you recognition of divinity,
and we will see that there is no reason for misery in the world.
The whole process of yoga is to make your interiority absolutely in your control. It is a
possibility to move from a state of external enslavement to inner completeness, which
is the state of unboundedness. If your inner nature is unbounded, your life is also
unbounded. You can either sit with your eyes closed or you can perform different action
– both ways your life can be complete.
When a man has reached this state within himself, where his actions are only to the
extent required for outer life situations, then he is a complete person. If within you,
your inner nature has attained fulfilment regardless of the external situation, we can
say that you have become unbounded. This is a state of true happiness.
Grace & blessings
Sadhguru

Source : ChennaiOnline - 30 january 2007

COMPASSION CANNOT CHOOSE ...

"suffering is suffering , whatever may have been the cause for it .
when there is suffering ,what caused it is not important . There is 
no such thing as one kind of suffering being great and another kind
of suffering being small. It is not right to think that if one suffers
from cancer you should give him love and if another suffers from 
HIV/AIDS you must not give him love .


If our humanity is functional, when someone is suffering , we 
spontaneously feel that we ought to do something about it . No
one has to teach this to us . But because we have come to wrong
conclusions about those suffering from HIV/AIDS, an environment
has been created in this society , to act against human nature ,
thereby destroying the basic humanity in us .


when the Tsunami happened , everyone was reaching out . I do not
understand  why people are not reaching out to the HIV situation in the same way and with the same vigor . why not ?


Clearly , compassion cannot choose ...."
                                                                              -Sadhguru                


source : Compassion cannot choose 
link: http://www.ishashoppe.com/India/books-english-c-44_74.html