Just Remembering is Enough

A Spiritual Story told by Osho:

I have heard that a king expelled his son from his kingdom. He was angry with his son, a spoiled son, and so in a moment of rage he threw him out. The son did not have any skills or vocation. What can a king’s son know? He was not even educated, so he could do nothing to make a decent living. How ever he had, by way of a hobby, learned a little singing and dancing in his childhood. So he took to singing and dancing on the streets of a town belonging to a hot and arid neighboring country where he found refuge.

For ten years the king’s son lived the life of a homeless beggar in tattered and dirty clothes. So he completely forgot that he was ever a prince. And curiously enough, in these ten years, he was increasingly maturing towards kingship, since he was the only son of a king who was growing older and older. But, at present, he was a faceless person moving from door to door with a begging bowl in his hands.

When the king became very old he grew worried about the future of his throne. Who was going to succeed him and manage his kingdom after his death? So he asked his prime minister to search for his only son, whom he had expelled years ago, and bring him back so he could take over the reins of his kingdom from him. Even if he was stupid he had to be recalled, the king thought. There was no other alternative.

The prime minister went out in search of his king’s son. After a great deal of inquiry and effort he reached the town where his future master was living as a nobody. His chariot halted in front of a hotel, where he found him under a scorching midday sun, a young man begging a little money from the hotel manager to buy himself a pair of sandals. He was pointing to his bare and bleeding feet, lacerated with wounds. The prime minister stepped down from the chariot and approached the young beggar. He took no time to recognize him – he was the king’s son – although he was in rags, his body emaciated, his face shriveled and sunburned. He bowed to him and said, ”The king has pardoned you and asks you to return to your kingdom.”

In a second, a split-second, the young man’s face was transformed and he threw away his beggar’s bowl. In no time at all he ceased to be a beggar and became a king. And he told the prime minister, ”Go to the market and bring me a pair of good shoes and good clothes, and in the meantime make arrangements for my bath.” And with the stride of a prince he walked to the chariot and stepped aboard.

In and around the hotel, everybody, who a little while ago had given him alms or denied them, came rushing, crowding around his chariot. And they found he was a different man altogether, he was not even looking at them now. They asked him, ”How is it you forget us in a moment?” The prince said, ”I remembered you as long as I had forgotten who I was. Just now I have remembered who I am, so forget I am a beggar. ” When the crowd reminded him of what he had been only a moment ago, he said, ”Now I remember. Now I know I am a king. I have always been a king.”

Enjoy other interesting Stories told by Osho HERE!

How to Control Anger?

Anger! An emotion everyone experiences very often and are afraid of. The fear is not about anger itself but what we do when it envelopes us. It's like a storm which consumes us and makes us do things which we would not have done under normal circumstances. It makes us loose control on ourselves, we loose the sense of discretion and logical thinking, and finally it leaves a lot of damage behind which makes us regret our actions and carry the regret for rest of our lives.

Now to tackle this beast we need to understand it better. I am jotting down my understanding of Anger, lets see if it makes things clear about Anger.

1. Anger is a form of energy which wants to come out of our system

Like Joy, Happiness, Sorrow and Fear, Anger is an emotional energy which wants to be released and expressed by our system. Some people express it by throwing things and some by withdrawing themselves from the situation. When we are not able to express our energies in a positive and constructive manner, it can result in anger. Which is basically a forceful expression of our energies.

2. Anger depends upon our Internal State of Being, than the external situations

The reasons for getting angry are many and it's simply useless to list them. We can get angry on or because of anything or anybody. For example while driving if some one overtakes us rashly we can get angry and go after him and if the same thing happens when you are in a happy mood, you may just ignore that person. So the happenings because of which we get angry are only triggers, what is more important is in what state we are in at the moment. We have to understand that Anger is dependent on the state in which our mind, body and emotions are and not on external situations. If we can maintain out internal situation in a state of balance and calm, no external situation can cause anger to be generated in us. (Internal situation can be maintained better by understanding the Characteristics of Mind.)

3. Physical effects of Anger

Anger is like a disease which can be monitored by watching out for the symptoms. There are many symptoms for Anger:
Change in breathing pattern, heavy breathing, increase in body temperature, increased thought flow, loss of logical thinking, loss of discretionary thinking, increased hormonal (adrenalin) flow in the stomach and other part of the body etc.,
If we can observe these symptoms we can maintain a distance from anger and control it better.

4. Anger happens when our desires are not fulfilled

The basic trigger of anger are when our desires are not met. All the triggers of anger are just that, our unfulfilled desires, whether it's a desire to cruse smoothly on road, or have a quite undisturbed dinner with a loved one. When someone or something causes these desires to be unfulfilled it triggers the already bubbling volcano of anger inside and it results in we exploding in anger. (you can check out my article on What is a Desire for more information on desire)

If we can understand these characteristics of anger we will be in a better situation to handle it when it comes out and we can also take steps to prevent it from building up to the breaking point in the first place.

The various steps we can take to prevent anger building up and to control it when it comes out are:

1. Delay taking any action when we are angry. It's best sit through the storm of anger than do anything to express it.
2. Watch the show, Don't stop it. The trick is to just let things happen and watch the show. If your breathing is going up - Watch it, if you are getting hot - Watch it, If you are getting a strong urge to throw things around -  Watch it. Keep watching and slowly the anger will loose steam and come to a halt. If we try to stop it, the energy will go back inside the system and will wait for next opportunity to come out.
3.Yoga and Mediation will help in channeling the energy in the system in a proper and will help in preventing the energy build up which will lead to anger bursts. It will help in maintaining our internal situation in a balanced and peaceful state.
4.Physical exercise can help in dissipating the excess energy and can help in preventing anger.

Basically it's about understanding the functioning of anger by watching ourselves intensely in angry situations and keeping ourselves calm and peaceful.

Well my journey of self discovery continues and I will keep updating on other techniques to tackle the beast of anger, till then Stay Calm, Happy and Watch the Beast.

JKS

How to Break Habits and find Freedom?

Every year at end of December a huge amount of talk and thought goes around us on the most simple and toughest thing to follow "The New Year Resolution". We have been making a whole lot of New Year Resolutions and breaking almost all of them year on year. This has become a yearly phenomenon and will continue so.

I always used think "Why is it so difficult for me to keep my new year resolution?" and every time I get the same excuses of not having enough time, not having enough money or not having enough support etc...
When I analysed this yearly routine of making and eventually braking resolutions, I realized that every year my resolutions have been to either change my old habits which I thought was not on par with my expectations or to create a new one. On further contemplation the realization hit me is that changing old habits is not something which happens in a day, it is a long and tedious process.

So I set on my journey to discover what exactly an habit is, how does one cultivate it and what are its characteristics. What I found out so far is:

1. Habit start like any other activity
Any activity that we do in our day to day life can be turned into an habit if it's repeated for a long period of time. Initially when we start a activity, like learning a Bicycle, we tend to concentrate on every aspect and movement of our body. As we keep practicing and repeating this activity our body gets into an Auto Pilot mode and keeps doing it without much consciousness from us. After some time this happens even without our consciousness, now it's a full blown habit which has embedded deep inside ourselves.

2.  Habits are at various levels
Our habits can be at our body level, mind level and even our emotional level.
Any physical activity when repeated and performed over and over will become a habit for our body. Not much of mind will be involved in it. For example riding a Bicycle, playing basketball or running.
A thought process when repeated again and again will become a habit of our mind. Like if we keep on showing our kid a dark room and tell her that it's a very dangerous place, and we do it every day she will start associating dark room or darkness with dangerous. This is how various though patterns of ours starts establishing.
Similarly our emotions gets habituated when we are exposed to similar kind of situations repeatedly. Like in the above mentioned case, the child start feeling fear as soon as she sees a dark room or area.

3. It takes considerable amount of time for a habit to be established
Any habit will require repetitive involvement for a considerable amount of time for itself to go deep inside us. Habits at physical level can be established in short time like 45 days, whereas habits at mind and emotional level will take more time a minimum of 6 months.

4. Habits in Auto Pilot (Unconscious) mode
Once a habit get established it start working automatically. More established the habit more unconsciously we do it. Unconsciousness is the strength of habits, the more unconsciously we perform our activities the stronger our habits become and for difficult it will be for us to change it.

Now how to change a Habit or Create a new one.

We can simply understand the key characteristics of habits and use the same to change them. By using the above mentioned characteristics we can change or create a habit by following the below given steps.

1. Start doing the old activity (habit) which you want to change with complete consciousness.Once consciousness enters into the habit it will loose its strength.
2. Do this conscious activity for a minimum of 45 days(for other levels of mind and emotion it will take more time) to break the old habit.
3. Then start establishing the new habit.
4. Continue the new activity for a minimum  45 days(for other levels of mind and emotion it will take more time) to deeply establish the new habit.
5. Now we have completed the cycle of breaking the old habit and creating a new one.

If we can go through this cycle successfully once we will  have a lot of freedom in choosing what kind of habits we want to let in and what we want to keep out.

By this we can find what is called real FREEDOM as we in turn will become the rulers of our body, mind and heart instead of the other way around, which is the current reality.

I wish that all of us will find true FREEDOM in our lives.

JKS