Let go and take refuge in the quiet corner of your heart

January 03, 2012

Q: How to overcome insecurity?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Insecurity is because you feel there is nobody for you. Wake up and see there is so much humanness, there is so much love in the world, and you don’t need to feel insecure.

You are walking in the street and somebody needs some help. They cannot carry their bag; won’t you go and help them? Right?

You know when we feel insecure? When we feel there is no humanness, there is no compassion, nobody is kind and nobody is friendly. Only then we feel the insecurity.

If you wake up and see, in this world there is so much love, so much compassion, so much a sense of belongingness, then there is no need of insecurity, okay!

Pranayama, breathing techniques and meditation definitely helps you to get over this feeling of insecurity. It has already happened. How many of you already feel that you have gotten over this feeling of insecurity? (Many raise their hands)

Q: How do I know if a relationship is good for me or not? Is he just pushing my buttons and I need to learn from this, or is he just not good for me?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Well I have no experience in this, so I can’t tell you.

Before you judge someone else first see how you relate to them. How big a heart you have, how much you can accommodate a person, and how much you can influence someone to change. This is what you need to look into.

Sometimes when you get doubt, the doubt is always about something that is positive. Have you noticed that? We doubt the honesty of a person but we never doubt the dishonesty of a person.

If someone asks you, ‘are you happy?’ We doubt, we say, ‘well, I am not sure’, but we never doubt our depression. Isn’t it so? Our doubt is always about something that is positive. So, see from that angle also.

Q: Dear Guruji, how to build a real pure relationship with others.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Best not to try to build any relationship. Just be yourself. Be natural and be simple. Relationships develop naturally.

If you try to build a relationship that is when you become a little artificial. Then your behavior becomes artificial which is not natural.

Just imagine someone is trying to impress you, don’t you notice that?

If someone is trying to impress you, what do you do? You move away.

See what you like, that is what others like as well. You like someone to be very honest, open, natural, unassuming with you, correct?! That is exactly what others also want from you.

Suppose you are a boss, what type of assistants or subordinates would you like? Someone who is open! Right? And that is also what your boss wants.

Don’t try hard to impress your boss, or impress your girl friend or boy friend. Then everything goes bad. Best is to be yourself, to be natural, to be forgiving and to be in the present moment. It makes a big difference.

Q: What to do when everything seems to be grey, dry and without a purpose. Sometimes I feel all out of love.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: That is when you read knowledge.

I have made a number of knowledge books and CDs. Ashtavakra Gita knowledge is so precious, and meditation. These two things will help. And if there is a silence course like this anywhere, just go and attend. When everything is dry, this infuses the juice back in life.

Q: How did great souls become great and how can we become great souls?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You don’t need to do a great job to become great. You need to do small things perfectly to become great. Be simple and natural, and then great things will simply happen through you. Got it? And you don’t need to be famous in order to do great things. Greatness is inherent in you. It is in you like a seed.

Q: Why have there not been female masters, prophets or famous disciples. I have heard only about male masters, but very few female masters?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Vacancy is there! There is vacancy, you can become one.

Q: Could you talk about healing please?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Healing happens! When the energy is high and when there is love, healing automatically happens.

Q: Dear Guruji, what to do when my spouse always wants to be the boss and chases me up? I love him very much but he makes me restless.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: A gentleman was asked, ‘who is the boss of the house?’

He said, ‘Me! But I have the permission from my wife to say so.’ So the wife had to give permission for him to say, ‘I am the boss.’

You be the boss, but be very subtle. There is a secret about relationships.

One is, you should never make your husband feel small. If you tell your husband, ‘you are vegetable, you are good for nothing. You are a lazy goose!’ His self esteem goes down and he really becomes good for nothing. So however hopeless or weak he is, you should always tell him that he is the best. You should pump his ego. The whole world may say that he has no brains, but you should not say that. As a spouse you should say, ‘you have the best brains in the world. Just because you don’t use it, doesn’t mean that you don’t have it.’

‘So you just don’t use it, that’s all. You have fresh unused brain.’ That is what you should say.

In the same way for women, you should never pour cold water on her emotions. For women, emotional bonding is very important. You should never complain about her parents, her father or her mother or sisters or brothers. If she complains, you keep quiet, don’t say anything. No comment, because if you side them also, you will be in trouble and if you oppose them also, you will be in trouble.

If you oppose her parents, you will be in trouble and if you side with them, she will feel left out. ‘You don’t understand me’, she would start yelling and shouting.

Either way you are in trouble, so keep quiet. Simply move away from there or change the topic.

And if she wants to go for shopping, just give her your credit card. She may have ten pairs of shoes; she may go for the eleventh pair of shoes. If you question why, ‘you don’t have 11 pairs of legs so why do you buy so many pairs of shoes?’, then she will be upset. So for shopping, you should not object.

Q: How do I know if the woman in my heart really loves me 100%?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: I have no idea, nor do you have any idea. Just take a chance. Even if it is 90%, it is good enough.

Suppose someone asks you the same question, what would you say? You cannot guarantee your own love to someone 100%. May be this moment, yes, but what is the guarantee next month. I tell you, you cannot guarantee your own mind. You don’t know your own mind. How do you expect someone to know someone else’s mind? When you have no control over your own mind, you try to control somebody else’s mind. It’s impossible!

Just know one thing; whatever is yours will always be yours. Whatever moves away from you was never yours even before.

This is a very good proverb, ‘Whatever is yours will always be yours. Anything that goes away was never yours.’

So, if you know this, you will be at peace.

If you feel freedom from within, and feel the peace, then the whole world belongs to you. Everyone is yours. But the lack of it, however hard you try to own somebody, they will just slip away.

That is why this spiritual knowledge is so essential. This knowledge can not only bring you the inner strength, but also make you the centre of your universe. You will be so centered, and everything will come to you naturally.

In the 2nd chapter of Bhagavad Gita, there is a beautiful verse that says, ‘One who is established in the higher consciousness, all the desires and all the fulfillment will come towards him like the river flows to the ocean.’

How natural, isn’t it? All the rivers, they flow into the ocean. In the same way, all the desires get fulfilled into one who is a Yogi.

That is why, do yoga, meditation and be in the spiritual knowledge. Then everything will come to you. Not to the one who is galloping behind desires. To that person, who gallops, runs behind desires, nothing gets into their hands.

So, let go and take refuge in the quiet corner of your heart. Then everything will be yours. This is very true.

Q: I feel that I can’t live these values at my workplace. Do I need to change my Job?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: No! You can create these values at your workplace.

Don’t worry, stand up and keep talking to people. For a couple of days, they may think you are crazy and you are talking something crazy, never mind! You continue talking. They will start realizing and they will start accepting.

When I first came to west, people thought I was crazy. What I was talking didn’t get into anybody’s head, but I kept coming and everyone enjoyed it. So, the same will happen with you at your workplace.

You keep talking about the knowledge and about transformation.

See, twenty years ago, I remember, when anybody spoke about vegetarian food or planting more tress, or environment, people would ridicule it. Does anyone remember that?

When someone would speak about a clean environment, or no plastic, people would say, ‘this is stupid. They have no sense. It is impossible’

Thirty years ago, if someone would say you should not smoke, people would say, ‘this is absurd.’

You were considered not to be in the mainstream if you don’t smoke.

Every seat in an airplane had an ashtray. And at the place where there is the seat belt sign, the smoking sign would come on as well, for passengers to not smoke during take-off and landing. Otherwise people would smoke. Only three to four rows in the front were of non-smoking. Rest were all for smokers.

It didn’t make any sense because the air will come from the back to the front as well.

In those days, if you were a non-smoker, you were considered unfashionable. I am talking about some thirty five years ago. But today, all the airplanes in the world have banned smoking. There is no ashtray in any airplane, isn’t it?

So, in the same way, you keep talking about these values, about meditation.

In those days, sitting cross-legged and meditating would mean that you are someone who is out there. Someone who is in mainstream would not do it.

But today, you see all the big companies, when they are marketing relaxation, they put a picture of someone meditating.

All the companies advertise on yoga and meditation. So things are changing.

So you have the power to change your workplace. Don’t run away. Be in the place, and dose by dose talk to them about these values. They will change.

We have courses designed just for the corporate sector. There are people who can go and learn them, and there are teachers who can teach at corporations. Many corporations today are doing this course. As we are talking, the company called ‘Bosch’, they are having two courses. All the top executives are doing the course in Bangalore in two batches. I just got an SMS. They have come to the ashram in Bangalore.

So many companies are doing these courses and the atmosphere at workplaces is changing.

Even in airlines; I remember some twenty five years ago, people from Lufthansa came and attended our course. Some people from British airways attended our course. And today they have put a guided meditation in the airplane. Channel 13 on Lufthansa has put a meditation in English and in German.

Though I don’t agree to everything they say there. They are not so precise but there is some relaxation.. It is not perfect, but something is better than nothing. A lot of imagination and a lot of effort have been put, but nevertheless, there is something to that effect.

So the world is changing. You can bring a change at your workplace, don’t run away.

If you want to change your job for any other reason, you can do it. If you are getting paid better somewhere else, then definitely change. But not because the people around are bad, that you run away, no!

If people around you are bad then that is all the more reason for you to be there, because you are the hope. You can bring the change there.

Q: I am doing reasonably okay in life in terms of work, family etc. I am also doing a little bit for society in terms of education. But I feel I am capable of doing more for society. I don’t know how to go about it. Please guide.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You need to come along with Art of Living’s work. We have a lot to do. We will need you there, definitely.

We are building our first University in India, where I want to give the best of East and best of West to children. We have all the best of knowledge from here and the best from the East, because there are a lot of good things in the east and a lot of not so good things also. Same in the West.

So we want to choose the real best of East and West together to bring a complete transformation in human consciousness.

So we need a lot of help from you all.

We need people who can help in fund raising, people who can sponsor children. We need people who can help in building the buildings. There are a lot of things that can happen there. So you are most welcome to be part of this venture.

Q: I feel I am a very loving person and I have a lot of love to give. All I ever wanted was to get married and have my own family and children, but it hasn’t happened even after so many years. How can I attract love and marriage to manifest in my life?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Well, I don’t know.

Not that there are no loving people, not that there are no single men and women. There are, but may be you are too choosy. If you think you are very loving, you find the other person not so loving. You’ll try to find faults in others. So anyone whom you meet, you think, ‘this is not right, he doesn’t look good’, or, ‘he’s too tall’, or, ‘he is too short’, or, ‘he is bald’, or, ‘he has too much hair’.

If you start judging everybody, finding some fault, I don’t know how you will be able to find a husband. Someone asked me the other day, ‘I want to be with the perfect man.’

I said, ‘okay, you will find a perfect man but he will want a perfect woman also, which you are not. So what will you do?’ A perfect man would want a perfect woman. Are you perfect? When you are not perfect, why do you insist on perfection in others? Do you see, sometimes we think in the air. We are not practical and that is why things don’t move towards us. We should move away from over-perfectionism. When you have this over-perfectionism, you get annoyed very easily and you get angry for small things. You get upset about nothing at all. You become so emotional. And if you throw your tantrums like that, then nobody would like to be with you. They get scared.

So when you are centered, when you are choice less, then everything happens in your way.

Q: When we see you in satsang or in Kriya, we feel high, but how to get that high always?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Forget about always.

When you take shower, you feel that warmth or coolness. Shower is for sometime only, but that shower keeps you clean the whole day. Isn’t it?

If you say you want to always be in the shower, then you have to be a fish. You can be in the water all the time.

Even a few satsangs and Kriyas that uplift your energy is good. It’s natural in the world. Energy comes in waves, you feel high and then when you go back in market, the level goes down. And then you go and watch a movie, it goes further down. It happens! You know, just watch the faces of people who come out of the movie theatre, they look like zombies. They don’t come with brilliant shining eyes or with a brilliant face or with high energy. They don’t have that high enthusiastic energy. Because of two hours of sitting and watching, they feel so dull and tired. These things happen.

So energy level is never steady. It goes in waves, up and down. And doing all the practices, coming to satsangs, keep it more or less on the high note, okay!

We shouldn’t mind if it goes down sometime, otherwise that becomes another worry, ‘Oh my energy is down.’ Got it? And turn back and see in your own life, how it has been? As you are attending meditations, satsangs, steadily there is certain stability in your energy level too.

Q: I am an emotional eater. When I am sad, depressed, angry, I automatically start eating and eating. How to control this as I am gaining on a lot of weight?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Yes. I don’t want to give you any ideas or suggestions now. Do you know why? Because you will forget them, and when you remember, you will feel even worse, ‘Oh no, I didn’t follow those instructions.’ Right?

When you feel upset, you know what will be good? Put on some music and just dance. Even if it is sad music never mind, just dance. When you dance, you will put on less weight and you will lose what you have. Okay! At least at that time you will eat less.

Maybe after finishing the dance, you may feel more hungry and eat more.

Unless you determine yourself to do something about it, nobody can do anything about it. So on your own, you have to come to a conclusion.

Q: While meditating, is it normal for your body to jerk?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Yes. It is ok. It is good.

Q: Guruji, I have a very important and difficult question. Can you say something about not wanting to eat enough and eating only super healthy food and having too much discipline? What is the cause and how to solve this?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: If you are always eating super healthy food, sometimes your body loses it capacity to adjust and your immune system becomes a little weak. So you should make your body flexible. Sometimes you can eat not too healthy food. I am not saying eat unhealthy, don’t eat unhealthy food, but it doesn’t have to be organic all the time. Sometime you can also eat non organic food, doesn’t matter. Your body has the ability to adjust to every situation. Don’t make it super sensitive. Do you see what I am saying?

You know people in poor areas, slums especially, I am talking about India; they are so much stronger. Their immune system is very strong and their body is like steel. You will be surprised. People who are in urban areas, their system is a little weak. You catch cold, you get cough when you go to some polluted areas. But these people who live in slums, they are so robust. Their immune system is so strong, because it is active. It is very strange but true. People in unhygienic places are healthier.

Not everywhere, I won’t say everywhere, but in some places they are much healthier and their system is much stronger.

Same if you got to Brazil and you walk in their favelas, the slum. You will see that they are quiet strong, macho men, and they live in slums near Rio de Janeiro. I have seen it; I have walked into those slums. They don’t appear as slums. There are quite healthy and strong people.

So you don’t need to sensitize your body to super healthy food all the time. Follow the middle path. Take healthy food most of the time but sometime be used to other food as well.

Q: I feel this practice makes me feel even more lonely rather than expanding my sense of belongingness. Please advice.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: No! Come on, wake up!

It can give you that sort of feeling just in the beginning, but it will pass. You just be with it, be with that loneliness. Go deep into it and you will find that it is giving you so much more strength.