u/SubjectSpecialist265

The mind is always about the past that you have accumulated; it is never about what is happening now. It is a useful tool to handle the materialistic aspect of life but if you employ it to handle your whole life, then it’s a total mess.

If you look at it logically, even getting out of bed in the morning will look like a huge feat. Then you have to brush your teeth, eat, work, eat, work, eat, sleep; again tomorrow morning the same thing. For the rest of your life you have to do the same thing over and over again. Logically is it worthwhile? Not at all, isn't it? If you look at your life’s experience, maybe you saw the sunrise and it’s worthwhile. Maybe you saw the birds in the sky, the flowers blooming in your garden or your child’s face, then maybe it's worthwhile. But if you look at it logically, moments of extreme logic are moments of suicide.If you become extremely logical you will become depressed and self-destructive. Right now with a logical mind you are trying to perceive the nature of life. You can try as hard as you want, it is not going to happen. If you want to perceive the nature of your life, you must be willing to look beyond the limitations of the logical mind. Otherwise it is going to be one long, endless, fruitless struggle. It can never get you to a solution. It can only increase the complexity of the problem.This logical mind which is the fundamental instrument through which you are trying to do everything is only equipped to handle the duality of the existence. If you as a being become dual, you become a constant struggle. Once you create this tension, and the more you logically think about it, the more tense you become.All the sadhana, all the meditativeness that is prescribed on the spiritual path is fundamentally to handle this logical mind which is building up a certain level of tension within you. If it is constantly strung tight, then the very life energy in you will become weak and lose its intensity and vibrancy over a period of time.

Life is very, very simple and direct, but the mind is very complex and devious. If you do not pay any attention to it, it will settle down.

Another reason why the mind is going on endlessly – especially when you try to meditate, it takes on a new pitch altogether – is because you have a prejudice against it. You believe, “When I am meditating, no thoughts should come. Even when I am sitting here, I am thinking of something else. What do I do?” It is okay. Whatever your mind is thinking right now – whether you are thinking of Mumbai or mangoes – it does not matter. Just be here like you would sit in a cinema. Simply be with me. Do not worry about what your body and mind are doing.

Why are you so prejudiced against the mind? Do you ever put such conditions upon the body? Do you ever think, “Oh, I am in a spiritual discourse, so my heart should not beat, my blood should not flow.” If your heart stops beating, you would call it an emergency. Then why do you want your mind to stop? Only because you are paying too much attention to it. You are not paying attention to your heart beating, so it is not a distraction. Isn’t your body performing more complex functions than your mind right now? If you pay attention to all that, can you pay attention to what I am saying? No. So you have learned to ignore that. Similarly, it does not matter what the mind is doing once you identify it as a fool. If there is somebody very stupid around you who goes on blabbering, do you not learn to simply ignore him and carry on with your work? That is all you need to do.

Many of you are married, aren’t you? You know how to ignore the other person and carry on with your work, don’t you? If you did not know, you would not be married this long. If you paid attention to every word that was said, and if you reacted to all that, you would not live together. You have learned to pay attention to some things and ignore a lot of other things. So it is okay to treat your mind just like that. Just treat it like a long-time husband. He is saying so many things, but it is okay. Some days he comes home drunk; some days he is upset; some days he is something else. It’s all right. What he says does not matter. You love him; that is all that matters, isn’t it?

Treat your mind like that and you will become very receptive. Don’t try to stop it. Don’t try to fight it, because you cannot fight it. You have no means to fight it. The fight is just a joke because you are fighting your mind with your mind. It is a trickster. If you try to play any game with it, it will trick you. “It’s okay, you play your game,” you can tell your mind, “but I am not going to play the game with you.” Then your mind will slowly recede. Even if it is not receding, there is no problem. Once it does not bother you, even if it plays its own game, you just let it be. If you do this, your receptivity will rise.

After all, every human being is capable of knowing. Nobody has come impaired in any way. It is just that life never forces itself upon you. This is the way of life. Divinity never forces itself upon you. If you are willing, it is always there for you. If you are not willing, it is not there for you. So all you need to do is create the right kind of willingness and receptivity. Just to bow down and not have a will of your own is the biggest receptivity. It is the easiest way to receive.If you demolish all your limited assumptions and you sit here blank, that is when you are receptive. Then there is a blast of energy, which is true knowing. Knowledge and energy are not two different things. When you receive a certain energy, you also get to know something.

"Mind is madness. Only when you go beyond the mind, will there be meditation" - Sadhguru

Only this moment is real in this life. The previous moment and next moment are not there in our experience – they are imaginary. If you want to fully experience the creation or the Creator, that is possible only in this moment.

People are giving you a teaching, you must look at it, what is the basis of this teaching? ‘live in the moment, live in the moment.’ You do one thing – live somewhere else, and show .Can you live somewhere else? Somebody says, ‘live in the moment.’ Okay. Live somewhere else, and show it to me, how not to live in the moment. Is it a possibility? Then why such a teaching? Most of the people on the planet are beginning to understand this teaching as, you do not think about your past or your future. If you do not think about your past or your future, life will teach you a big lesson. If you do not think about your future, or remember the past, will life teach you a very bad lesson, or no? It will! You better think about your future, isn’t it?

It took millions of years to evolve this brain to this level of capability. Now, people do not know how to manage this. Now they are saying, do not use it – seize it, do not think about the past, do not think about the future. The beauty of human intellect is – you can look back a million years, and you look forward a million years, if you want.

So, let’s understand this, that these are all patchy things picked up here and there and doled out to the world for commercial purposes. How can you not live in this moment? Why do you need a teaching, ‘Live in the moment’, tell me? What you need is methods to manage your mind. You don’t need a teaching about life, because you are life! If you are not life, I must tell you how to be life. Are you life? Are you life, or no? You are life, isn’t it? When you are life, why should I tell you what is life? Only methods to see that this life finds its fullest possibility.

You don’t have to teach it to be life, because life – ‘being in the moment’ or ‘seize the moment’ essentially means to be alive, isn’t it? So, you think your mental activity, your intellectual competence and capability is not allowing you to be alive. No, it is the basis of your aliveness, it is the crown of your aliveness in many ways. The life evolved from a very basic form of life to the way it is today, and now what you’re carrying as your cerebral cortex, which makes you think about all kinds of things, this is the crown for the life on this planet, isn’t it? Yes, or no? This is the crown of life, and you want to give it up because you don’t know how to handle it, or it’s not fitting tight enough, or it’s too tight. Don’t do that.

Those who think a lot about their future will only keep thinking about their future. You do not have to think about your future. Do your present well – future will happen to you. If you think too much about the future, the future will get postponed, and then the “final future” will come – which is a funeral.

You do not have to make a decision right now with the limited experience and exposure you have to life. You just have to equip yourself – build your body, brain and your ability to grasp things at the highest level. We do not know what will come our way. And nothing needs to come our way. Maybe we will create something that no one did till now.

If you start thinking right now, "What should I do in the future?" you will do some silly thing that people have already done. People's idea of future is, "I will become a doctor, I will become an engineer." This is just about having a better livelihood.

Most educational institutions these days are totally insensitive to any kind of genius.If you show any kind of capability, they do not like it. They want you to just do this, this and this. If you do something else, they say, "No." Many people on the planet who have done incredible things are unfortunately those who dropped out of school. This is not because they had

an aversion to school but because the school had an aversion to genius.

You have to recognize the genius. The mundane will anyway happen. Somehow, everybody will find a job. That is not the point. As a life, what great things happened to this life, is what matters.”

Do not worry about your future. Just do the present really well. Future will blossom.

When unpleasantness arises, the mind often moves into fight-or-flight.

When it seeks instant pleasantness, it can move into compulsive behavior reaching for something that gives immediate relief or pleasure.Then another compulsion can appearthe compulsion to fight the compulsion.

We try to change, suppress, or eliminate our compulsive reactions because we don't like what they create within us.But fighting the reaction can create another layer of resistance more thoughts, more emotions, more entanglement.

What I’m noticing through Shoonya meditation is reduction in this reaction and entanglement.The unpleasantness may still be there.The emotion may still arise.The compulsive tendency may still appear.But I don't have to immediately react to it.

I don't have to be uncomfortable with my discomfort.

Perhaps transformation doesn't begin by fighting what is unpleasant.Perhaps it begins by not creating another layer of struggle around it.

When unpleasantness arises, the mind often moves into fight-or-flight.

When it seeks instant pleasantness, it can move into compulsive behavior reaching for something that gives immediate relief or pleasure.Then another compulsion can appearthe compulsion to fight the compulsion.

We try to change, suppress, or eliminate our compulsive reactions because we don't like what they create within us.But fighting the reaction can create another layer of resistance more thoughts, more emotions, more entanglement.

What I’m noticing through Shoonya meditation is reduction in this reaction and entanglement.The unpleasantness may still be there.The emotion may still arise.The compulsive tendency may still appear.But I don't have to immediately react to it.

I don't have to be uncomfortable with my discomfort.

Perhaps transformation doesn't begin by fighting what is unpleasant.Perhaps it begins by not creating another layer of struggle around it.

Day before yesterday, on Janmashtami, I watched a reel by a Hatha Yoga teacher from Leela Yoga, Rishikesh, trained by Isha.

He offered strangers two choices: healthy food or tasty food like pizza and burgers. Most chose taste.

It made me wonder: If we know what is good for us, why do we still choose what isn't?

Then I realized it isn't only about food.

Exercise, waking early, maintaining a healthy routine, even scrolling social media or seeking approval we often choose instant pleasantness or avoid unpleasantness over what we consciously want.

This is compulsiveness.

I remembered something Sadhguru has said consciousness is freedom from compulsiveness. When we constantly seek approval, attention, significance, or gratification, the mind becomes restless.

A few days earlier, I had also heard him say that life is happening now.

Yesterday, I experienced this directly.

I missed my morning Sambhavi and planned to do it in the evening. But when evening came, I kept watching videos—even though most were spiritual—and postponed the practice.

By 8 PM, the thought came: .Leave it today. I'll do it tomorrow.

Instead of fighting the thought, I simply observed it.

I recognized.this is compulsiveness seeking instant pleasantness.

I reminded myself .Life is happening now. I know what I want to create freedom, joy and higher consciousness. I can choose and act now.

I did Sukh Kriya for a few minutes, then Sambhavi, followed by Shoonya.

This morning, I again felt a sense of unfulfillment because I woke up late and missed my usual morning routine.

But I saw it more clearly: the unfulfillment was not reality; it was something the mind was creating.

A sense of fulfillment doesn't necessarily have to come from getting everything right. It can be experienced within, through conscious presence and meditation.

For me, this is becoming clearer:

Acceptance of where I am.

Commitment to what I want to create.

Awareness of compulsiveness.

And conscious choice and action now.

This was a small experience of freedom for me.

If you also sometimes choose instant pleasantness or avoid unpleasantness even when you know what is good for you, you are not alone.

Perhaps we are all growing at our own pace, on our own paths, toward greater consciousness.

Day before yesterday, on Janmashtami, I watched a reel by a Hatha Yoga teacher from Leela Yoga, Rishikesh, trained by Isha.

He offered strangers two choices: healthy food or tasty food like pizza and burgers. Most chose taste.

It made me wonder: If we know what is good for us, why do we still choose what isn't?

Then I realized it isn't only about food.

Exercise, waking early, maintaining a healthy routine, even scrolling social media or seeking approval we often choose instant pleasantness or avoid unpleasantness over what we consciously want.

This is compulsiveness.

I remembered something Sadhguru has said consciousness is freedom from compulsiveness. When we constantly seek approval, attention, significance, or gratification, the mind becomes restless.

A few days earlier, I had also heard him say that life is happening now.

Yesterday, I experienced this directly.

I missed my morning Sambhavi and planned to do it in the evening. But when evening came, I kept watching videos—even though most were spiritual—and postponed the practice.

By 8 PM, the thought came: .Leave it today. I'll do it tomorrow.

Instead of fighting the thought, I simply observed it.

I recognized.this is compulsiveness seeking instant pleasantness.

I reminded myself .Life is happening now. I know what I want to create freedom, joy and higher consciousness. I can choose and act now.

I did Sukh Kriya for a few minutes, then Sambhavi, followed by Shoonya.

This morning, I again felt a sense of unfulfillment because I woke up late and missed my usual morning routine.

But I saw it more clearly: the unfulfillment was not reality; it was something the mind was creating.

A sense of fulfillment doesn't necessarily have to come from getting everything right. It can be experienced within, through conscious presence and meditation.

For me, this is becoming clearer:

Acceptance of where I am.

Commitment to what I want to create.

Awareness of compulsiveness.

And conscious choice and action now.

This was a small experience of freedom for me.

If you also sometimes choose instant pleasantness or avoid unpleasantness even when you know what is good for you, you are not alone.

Perhaps we are all growing at our own pace, on our own paths, toward greater consciousness.

What happens when one lives in illusion and ignorance, without clarity about what one really wants in life, and without the means or support to create it?

That is one situation.

But when the means and support are available, and still one does not look into what is needed and does not do what is needed that becomes a waste of time and energy.

If one is joyful and enhancing his or her life, perhaps what one does may not matter so much.

But for one who is living and dying miserable, isn’t it worth looking into what is creating that misery and what can be done about it?

Life is happening now.

Maybe the conscious choice is to stop postponing what needs to be done.

As per my present understanding What I see is that life is not thought.Life is not a psychological process. Life is not experience itself the experience of an emotion while watching a movie, scrolling social media, or going through our own mental drama.

Life is not what we experience about another life.

Life is not the activity we do.

Life is not the things we gather.

Yet we live for the profundity of experience and the impact of our activity.

So, what is the profundity of experiencing what life actually is?

As a part of life, a human being has a certain amount of time and energy. Time is limited, but energy is not necessarily limited in the way we usually experience it.

For me, the profundity of experience is in experiencing the raw energy of life itself and being able to enhance that energy at will.

I see that this can happen in a state of stillness, or meditativeness.

And it happens when we are not constantly messing with the mind itself.

As for the impact of activity, for me right now it means being in a condition of meditativeness 24/7.

And I see this as possible through practising meditation and yoga every day even on the day one is going to die.

In stillness, in meditativeness, I see freedom, a natural sense of joy, and an enhanced experience of life itself.

Experiencing raw energy, devoid of memory, is what I see as experiencing life.

Not the drama that runs in the mind, and not the drama that we create outside.

The mind may keep creating its own stories, emotions and experiences, but life itself is happening beyond all of that.

This is what I see about life.

Recently I watched a podcast of Sadhguru with Lewis on YouTube, where they discussed life, death, memory, imagination, heaven, hell, and whether there is a soul.

There were many things Sadhguru shared, but some of them stayed with me.

One thing was about how, as children, we can be joyful without any particular reason. We don't need something outside to happen for us to be joyful. There is a certain joyfulness in life itself.

But as we grow older, we accumulate memory and imagination. Slowly, we start creating a psychological reality and begin to consider that psychological reality as life itself.

That made me look at my own experience.

Sadhguru asked Lewis, "What is life?"

Life is not a belief.

Whether I consider myself a blessed human being or a cursed human being, both are my psychological making. They are not life itself.

As a piece of life, a human being is energy with a limited amount of time.

Another thing that struck me was the relationship between life and death.

We often treat life and death as opposites. But while we are living, we are also moving towards death. Death does not suddenly come from somewhere outside of life. It is happening along with life.

So if I say yes to life but constantly say no to death, I am resisting something that is certain to happen. That resistance itself can increase suffering.

Sadhguru said that striving is needed to create life the way we want it to be. But death needs no striving. It is absolute.

There was another point I found interesting: if a person is joyful and whatever he is doing is enhancing his life, then it may not really be a waste of time or energy.

But if one is miserable, then the real waste is not just time or energy it is life itself

The aspect that resonated with me most profoundly was the necessity of clearly differentiating between memory, imagination, psychological reality, and existential reality.

If I cannot distinguish between what actually exists and what I have created psychologically, then my life can become accidental.

It is like four wheels going in different directions. If the wheels are not steady, the journey becomes scary because you don't know where you are going.

Perhaps this is also where meditation becomes important not necessarily to escape life, but to create a more stable platform from which one can live life without getting completely entangled in one's psychological creations.

There were many other things discussed in the podcast whether there is a soul, what heaven and hell could mean, what happens after death, and many other dimensions of life.

However, a more profound question persists for me: Am I genuinely experiencing life, or am I primarily engaging with my memories and imagination and labeling that as life?

And if there is a difference between what life actually is and what I have psychologically created, perhaps knowing that distinction is itself an important part of living consciously.

I saw a video where a man was demonstrating something. He used tamarind and salt, tasted it in the video, and asked whether, just by seeing him eat it, saliva came into our mouths with a sour taste.

Then he said that what he had just eaten was not actually tamarind and salt.

Yet, simply by watching him, the viewer may experience something similar.

He was demonstrating something about the narratives we see on social media — how even something that is not actually true, when presented convincingly, can create a real experience in the person watching it.

I found it interesting because I too spend a lot of time on my mobile, and I have often wondered: why am I actually doing this?

Maybe this video gave me an answer. Or maybe it is simply my own interpretation, but it somehow feels real to me.

Maybe our screen time is high because we are constantly hunting for experiences related to our own desires.

When we watch something anything we have an inclination towards perhaps it is because it helps create an experience within us, allowing us to experience something without actually living it.

Maybe this is also one reason for the birth of cinema. We watch a movie and experience something without actually going through that experience ourselves. And now, with the mobile, we have access to almost every kind of experience all the time.

Then I started looking at my mind in a similar way.

My mind is like social media. All kinds of information and narratives are there. It creates pictures based on fear, desire, memory and imagination.

And just like social media algorithms understand what we are interested in and keep showing us more of it, the mind seems to have its own way of creating bondage through our likes and dislikes.

What we like, it keeps presenting to us because we want to experience it again.

What we don't like, it keeps throwing back at us in another way, creating resistance.

I can see this as one of the ways the mind plays its game.

Even when we are involved in some work, the mind seems to present something that we like. Once it has grabbed our attention, it can simply stop offering that experience, and again something else appears to pull us away.

It is almost like social media the mind has its own tricks for creating experiences and keeping us engaged with them.

And when an experience is happening within us that we don't like, we seek distraction.

Maybe this is why meditation and yoga are not only about calming the mind. They also help us become aware of how the mind functions.

They help loosen the bondage with the mind itself.

When we become conscious of what is happening within us, perhaps we don't have to compulsively act according to every thought, desire, fear or dislike that appears.

It feels like becoming conscious of the one who is acting awakening from a kind of dreaming state.

Then perhaps one does not have to live entirely inside the illusion created by the mind.

One can remain in touch with what is actually happening, with existence itself, and if one wants to create an experience, one can consciously create it without getting trapped in the experience itself.

I didn't like the bondage of the compulsions of my body and mind, the bondage with it. And the more I didn't like it, the more bonded I felt with it.

But with acceptance, I feel free.

And with acceptance, along with my commitment to sadhana, I am able to take steps for my wellbeing, for freedom, and act consciously rather than being driven by compulsiveness.

This is my present condition.

Where I want to grow is in making my mind joyful and peaceful. That is my goal a healthy mind.

Because I see a level of irritation, poking and bondage coming from the mind itself. I see it as a kind of sickness of the mind.

So through sadhana, I want to make my mind healthy and immune to these kinds of sicknesses, until my last moment in this form.

For me, this is not about fighting with the mind anymore. It is about accepting where I am and consciously working towards freedom.

When Parikshit grew older, he married Prince Utar's daughter, Iravati. They had four sons together, out of whom the fourth, Janmejaya, won the most importance. King Parikshit rose to glory with his three very successful Ashwamedha yajna on the banks of the river Ganges.

One day while wandering in the forest, the king got very thirsty. In search of water, he entered the hut that seemed to belong to a hermit. The owner of the hut was a sage called Samika.

The sage was in deep meditation and turned a deaf ear to the king's pleas for water. The king got furious, picked up a dead snake, and threw it on the sage. The sage's son, Sringin, was furious at the audacity of the king. Seething in a fury, he cursed the king that he would die of a snake bite seven days from then.

The king retired to his fate on returning to his kingdom. He handed over his throne to Janmejaya and resorted to listening to the discourses from Ved Vyas's son, Sukadeva. The same discourse later came to be known as Bhagwath Purana.

After listening to the whole discourse and worshipping Sukadeva, he declared that he was no longer afraid to die and that he felt at peace. After Sukadeva left, Parikshit sat to meditate. Just then, the God of snakes, Takshaka, disguised himself as a Brahmin to get near Parikshit. When he reached him, he bit Parikshit, causing his death. That’s how Parikshit of Mahabharata died.

Aggrieved by his father's death, Janmejaya swore to perform a sacrificial yajna for all the snakes. He pledged to sacrifice all the snakes to the fire of the yajna. Terrified, Takshaka ran to Lord Indra for shelter. Here, Janmejaya urged the brahmins to start the most powerful chants of hymns that would summon all the snakes to the place of sacrifice. However, he gave up when Lord Brihaspati intervened and made Janmejaya forgive Takshaka and the other snakes.

Why does one go to a Guru? To be saved from death?

Or to know the Truth itself?

The Story of Parikshit Raja Parikshit was destined to die.

When the time of death approached,Shukadeva, the son of Vedavyasa,became his Guru.But Shukadeva did not prevent his death.He did something deeper.The Guru did not liberate Parikshit from death itself.He liberated him from the fear of death.From identification with the limited self.From bondage to the idea:“I am this body, and therefore I am dying.”The law of the physical world continues.Actions have consequences.The body is born, lives, and dies.

The Guru does not necessarily intervene to change these laws.Instead, the Guru points beyond them.Perhaps This Is Why We Go to a GuruNot to escape death.Not to make life permanently comfortable.

But to discover:Who am I beyond the limitations

I have mistaken myself to be?

Perhaps the Guru does not save usfrom death.

The Guru shows us what death cannot take away.

From one of Sadhguru’s videos, I become awre something about grace, acceptance, and commitment.

My understanding was that, for grace to function, there needs to be a certain willingness or acceptance toward whatever situation life presents. Perhaps he was pointing toward non-resistance because resistance and unwillingness can turn pain into suffering.

For example, if it rains and I don't like the rain because it disrupts my plans, the rain itself may not be the problem. The rain is simply happening. My resistance to it is what creates an additional layer of suffering.

If there is something I can do about the rain, I can do it. If there isn't, what is the point of mentally fighting with something that is beyond my control?

This made me see that, in many situations, there are essentially two things available to us:

What we can do, we do.What we cannot do, we learn to accept.

At the same time, Sadhguru also spoke about commitment an unwavering commitment toward creating what we want in our lives.

So I see these as two different dimensions:Acceptance of what is.

Commitment to what can be created.

If either one is missing, even the breath we take can become poisonous.

When I looked within myself, I realized that I had been carrying a sense of unacceptance for a long time. It was simply something I had not clearly seen in myself.

My mentor helped me recognize this in her own way. She told me, in essence, that this is the process of life. Everyone is growing, learning, and evolving at their own pace.

I can still have a strong commitment to create the life I want without constantly rejecting where I am right now.

Maybe acceptance doesn't mean giving up.

Maybe it means stopping the inner resistance to what is, while remaining fully committed to creating what can be.

I was scrolling through Instagram and came across a video from the account conscious_chasing discussing what liberation means. I was touched by the sharing, so I felt it was worth sharing. Full credit to the creator for the original message.

When we hear words like Mukti or Moksha, we often think of liberation as something that happens after death.

But I found myself wondering: What is the use of liberation after death if I cannot experience it now, while I am alive?

What if liberation is something that can be experienced in this very moment, in this life?

If, right now, there is nothing within me that is psychologically binding me no compulsive thought, fear, resistance, or attachment that I am unable to be free from then perhaps that is liberation.

Think about it.

We are constantly seeking some form of freedom.

We eat because we want freedom from hunger.

We earn money because we want financial freedom.

We seek relationships, success, security, knowledge, and experiences because we believe they will free us from something we don't want to experience.

Even coming to an ashram or beginning a spiritual practice can come from a longing to be free from the way we have been living.

In some way, everything we do is an attempt to become free.

But perhaps the problem is that we keep looking for liberation outside while the fundamental bondage is within.

Life will never remain the same. Sometimes it will rain, sometimes there will be sunshine. Sometimes things will happen the way we want, and sometimes they won't.

If my sense of freedom depends on everything happening according to my expectations, then I will always be a slave to circumstances.

But if I can remain free within myself regardless of what happens, then perhaps that is a different kind of liberation.

For example, it is raining.

I can resist it, complain about it, and mentally fight with the fact that it is raining or I can simply experience the rain as it is.

The rain doesn't necessarily have to change.

My relationship with what is happening can change.

This is where I feel yoga becomes such a powerful possibility not merely as physical exercise, but as a way of exploring freedom within.

Maybe liberation isn't about escaping life.

Maybe liberation is being fully in life without being inwardly bound by it.

And if I can experience that freedom while I am alive, perhaps the question of what happens after death becomes much less important.

What do you think does liberation mean freedom from life, or freedom within life?

I was worrying about something today when a thought came to me

All this greed, fear, and anxiety that I carry what happens to it at the moment of death?

Everything I am trying so hard to hold on to, protect, achieve, or control will eventually be left behind.

Just remembering that I can die at any moment somehow changes the way I look at things. It makes me a little more humble, grateful, accepting, and willing to surrender.

It is strange how something as simple as remembering death can loosen the grip of greed and fear.

Someone once said that meditation is, in a way, preparation for death.

Maybe that is why, in meditation, something seems to die again and again not the body, but the limited identity I keep creating around myself.

For a few moments, my usual interests, worries, desires, and psychological identities can dissolve. I am still here, but the person I am constantly trying to maintain becomes less important.

Perhaps meditation is learning to let go before life forces us to let go.

Maybe we don't have to wait for death to discover what it means to be free from ourselves.

Intellect, Intelligence, and Clarity of Perception

Recently, while listening to Sadhguru speak about his new book Disappearing Face, something struck me.

The book contains photographs rather than written text.

He mentioned that many of the people in the photographs are from hilly and mountainous regions, and said that these are “his people” people whose perception is highly sensitive. Looking at their faces, he said, one can almost get a sense of the geography they come from.

What I understood from this is that information and perception are not necessarily the same thing.

We usually assume that having more information means having more understanding. But information also comes with conclusions, comparisons, categories and interpretations. If we are not aware of this, the information we carry can begin to interfere with what we are actually perceiving.

We see something, immediately compare it with what we already know, analyse it through our accumulated information, and then call the conclusion “understanding.”

Perhaps this is where clarity gets lost.

Someone with very little information may sometimes perceive something more directly because there is less interference from accumulated conclusions.

This made me look at the difference between intellect and intelligence.

Intellect works with information. It can analyse, compare, reason, classify and draw conclusions. Logic is an important function of the intellect.

But intelligence, as I understand it, is something more fundamental. It is the capacity to perceive and respond appropriately to what is actually happening.

So perhaps:

Intellect is a faculty of intelligence, but intellect itself is not intelligence.

And therefore, logic is not intelligence.

Logic can help us process what we know. But clarity of perception may require us to know when to stop processing and simply perceive.

The question for me is not whether information is useful. Of course it is.

The question is:

Can I hold information without allowing it to distort my perception?

Maybe real intelligence is not having more information, but being able to see clearly even in the presence of information.

“The more conclusions you make, the less alive you become.” Sadhguru

While watching Sadhguru on Kailash Yatra, something he said really struck me.

He was somewhere beyond Saga on the Kailash route, around 14,600 feet above sea level. He pointed out that, surprisingly, he was feeling less cold than expected. He said he didn't know why maybe it was global warming, or maybe something else. He simply didn't know. He also mentioned that the same place had received snowfall just three days earlier.

What I found beautiful was not the weather observation itself, but his willingness to simply say, “I don't know.”

There was no immediate conclusion.

If we make positive conclusions about everything, we may become sweet but also naive.

If we make negative conclusions, we may feel that we are being intellectual or realistic, but slowly become suspicious, bitter, and closed to life.

And even when we call our conclusions “knowledge,” they can become a psychological cage when we start living according to them.

Maybe there is a certain aliveness in being able to look at something and simply say:

“I don't know. Let me see.”

Without immediately labeling it good or bad, right or wrong, possible or impossible.

When there is no conclusion, there is room for wonder.

And when there is wonder, perhaps we can experience life as it is not merely as the picture we have created about it.

Maybe being alive means to see we actually don't know about creator and creation with that wonder we can live with more aliveness.

Can morality itself become a barrier to seeing reality clearly?

We carry ideas of what is good, right, wrong, moral and immoral. These values may help us function in society, but they can also become a lens through which we interpret everything.

Something happens in reality and before we actually see it, our ideas tell us what it means.

Then we are no longer simply seeing what happened.

We are seeing our interpretation of what happened.

And that interpretation also shapes how we respond.

“Instead of trying to be right, why don't people try to be sensible?”, "Sadhguru".

What if, for a moment, I put even my idea of morality aside not to become immoral, but to see without immediately judging?No good.No bad.No should.No shouldn't.

Just seeing.

For a moment, the intellect that has accumulated all these conclusions can become quiet. And perhaps then perception becomes less distorted by what we already believe.

This doesn't mean abandoning intelligence or discernment. Maybe it means going one step deeper from borrowed morality to conscious seeing. I feel grateful to those who bring such possibilities into our lives.

And perhaps life becomes lighter when we stop trying so hard to make reality fit our idea of what is right.

Maybe the real question is not:

“What is right?”

but:

“Can I see clearly enough to respond to what is?”

One day, while watching a video on devotion on Sadhguru Exclusive, I heard Sadhguru talking about devotion itself. What I heard was somewhat like......

If we keep living through our memory and imagination, we are, in a way, living too much for ourselves. A devotee is someone who can put that aside and see everything as a part of the Divine, with a sense of reverence.

I later saw an Instagram reel where an Isha hat yoga teacher was talking about how, in spiritual growth, continuously attaching ourselves to the past or repeatedly reliving it can become like taking a backward step.She has also heard it from Sadhguru.

This made me look at my own mind.

Maybe the mind has its own ways of constantly pulling our attention back into its play. It brings memories from the past, creates images of the future, and makes us live inside a psychological time that exists mainly within itself.

Interestingly, the mind also seems to create its own space or time. Which is future or past.

Reality, as it is happening now, is simply what is happening. And it happens now But the mind immediately adds its interpretations and values to it: good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, right or wrong, success or failure, moral or immoral, life or death.

The event itself may be neutral. But through memory and imagination, we give it meaning, colour and emotional weight.

And then we may start living more in our interpretation of life than in life itself.

What I can actually experience is always happening in the present.

The past exists as memory. The future exists as imagination.

But what is happening right now is complete in itself.

Perhaps the incompleteness I keep experiencing is not actually in life.

Perhaps it is something the mind creates and then keeps trying to complete.

Maybe devotion is, at least partly, the willingness to stop constantly making everything about "me" and simply see what is here, with reverence.

What do you think, does sadhna and seva help in living now? Please share your thoughts.