Progress Happens Imperceptibly At The Subtle Levels

Progress happens so imperceptibly at first that you might think that nothing's happening at all. But that would be a false assumption. Keep going and suddenly, you notice you are a completely distinct person from before.

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Transcript

Hello everyone!

I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

In this one I wanted to speak to you about progress.

Measuring progress,

Figuring out if you're making progress,

Not feeling like you're making progress.

All of that,

All of the above,

Right?

Recently I was in a meditation class.

I take a meditation class weekly because I'm always trying to improve myself on that regard.

I feel like meditation is one of those things that no matter how long you've been doing it for,

You always need to improve on.

And actually I feel like the more I do it,

The worse I feel I'm becoming because I'm noticing how flawed I really am in so many different ways.

And I notice how terrible my concentration is really because at first you can fool yourself a bit but eventually it gets harder and harder to fool yourself as you meditate for longer.

Which I love.

That's one of the reasons why I love it so much.

It's because I don't want to fool myself.

I want to look at reality as it is.

But I was in the class recently and I was doing a practice and it's a difficult practice.

It's been difficult for me forever and I felt like I would never improve,

That I would never get anywhere,

That I'm going to be stuck in that novice zone forever without making even a smidgen of progress.

I felt like I was just going to be in zero zone forever.

Which is fine because I was like,

Alright,

I accept it.

I'm just going to accept the fact that I'm going to be here forever and I'm just going to enjoy it.

So I was like,

Alright,

Let's just do it.

Let's just have fun with it.

Let's just do it.

Let's just keep on meditating the same way that we're doing forever and ever even if we make no progress at all.

And then as it always happens,

As soon as you accept a position or accept a particular situation,

All of a sudden it switches on you.

It's as if it was waiting for you to accept it.

It was as if it was waiting for you to say,

Yeah,

Okay,

Cool.

I'm fine with you.

I love you as you are.

I'm actually absolutely okay with the way you are right now.

I'm not going to try and change you.

I'm not going to try and berate you.

I'm not going to try and hate you or put you down.

I love you as you are.

And all of a sudden,

As soon as you do that,

It changes.

And that's what happened for me in my meditation.

I was doing it,

Doing it,

Doing it.

Felt like I was making no progress,

Accepted it.

And all of a sudden I made that leap,

That jump over to,

I don't know if you want to call it the next level,

But over to something different.

And I was telling my teacher about it and he's like,

Yeah,

Well,

You've been practicing for a while now.

So of course you're going to notice that you're going to make progress.

And it was really interesting to me because all of a sudden in my head I realized,

Ah,

That's what it is.

That's what progress is all about.

It was like a light bulb just went off in my head.

And I don't get a lot of light bulbs in my head,

I must say.

So when it went off,

I felt like,

Oh,

Right,

This is the epiphany that I was looking for.

And of course I wanted to share this with you all because that's what I do,

Try to do at least.

If I can articulate it in a epiphany,

I'll try to share it with you.

Most of the times I can't articulate it.

So that's why I don't share a lot of stuff with you.

But I realized that that's what it is.

Progress is so imperceptible.

It's just,

It happens so softly and so slowly.

And so just it happens as if you don't even notice that it's happening.

You're taking steps forward,

Little by little,

You're moving forward.

You know you're moving forward because you think you're moving forward.

You imagine you're moving forward because you've been working at it for a while and you're like,

Well,

I must be moving forward.

But all of a sudden you open your eyes and you realize,

Yeah,

Actually I have moved forward.

You know,

I was there,

Back there and now I'm here.

And it might not be a lot of progress.

It might just be a step or two.

But yeah,

I've made a little bit of progress.

But that's what it is about progress is that,

You know,

We imagine looking at the world and looking at the fast paced world that moves so zoomingly towards us and away from us,

That we imagine that we're supposed to be moving at that rate as well,

That we're supposed to be progressing at that rate as well,

That we're supposed to be zooming towards our end goals like that.

But what in reality happens is that we move slowly like turtles,

Like tortoises,

Not like hares,

But like,

You know,

Not like bunnies,

But like by little baby turtles very,

Very slowly towards our end goal.

And a lot of times it feels like actually we're not moving at all.

In fact,

Sometimes it feels like you're moving backwards and you're moving backwards and you're moving backwards.

And you're like,

I don't know why I'm doing this anymore.

Should I just stop?

And you're like,

No,

No,

No,

No,

I need to keep on doing it.

Maybe it doesn't look like I'm making progress,

But I am.

And that's the whole brilliant thing about progress in any shape or form,

Whatever you're doing,

It doesn't really matter.

It might be playing the piano.

It might be meditation.

It might be doing these videos.

It might be walking.

It might be running.

For the longest time,

You might not notice any difference at all.

And you are you've been working at it and hustling at it.

And you've been doing this and that and pumping iron or whatever it might be.

And nothing shows.

You know,

You're looking at yourself and your arms are as puny as they were before.

And the biceps that you've been waiting for haven't arrived yet.

And you wonder to yourself,

Am I doing it wrong?

Am I not doing it right?

Maybe I should just stop.

Maybe my body is not meant for it.

Maybe my mind isn't meant for it.

Maybe my psyche is not meant for it.

You know,

Maybe I'm just a weird person.

I'm never going to improve.

Right.

And so you kind of go through those plateau periods where it feels like nothing's happening.

But the interesting thing is that a lot of energetic and subtle changes are happening at a very deep,

Imperceptible level that we're obviously not aware of.

But they are taking place without our awareness.

And they're happening in the deeper surfaces of our body,

Our psyche,

Our mind.

And just because we're not aware of it doesn't mean that it's not actually happening.

And you can actually really see this in the general scheme of the world right now.

You know,

The awakening that's happening in the world right now.

For the longest time,

Nothing happened.

And it felt like the world was asleep,

That human beings were asleep.

It felt like we were going to make no progress at all,

That we're going to be stuck in that zone forever of being asleep and unconscious.

And then all of a sudden,

We moved rapidly.

It felt like it moved so fast that all of a sudden we went from zero to not 100,

But I would say 20.

We're surely at 20.

We're not at 100 yet,

But we'll get there,

I'm sure.

And that's what happens.

These changes,

They're taking place under the surface without us being aware of it.

It's like an earthquake.

There are all of these tectonic plates that are moving under the surface.

And everyone on the surface,

On the earth,

Isn't completely unaware of it unless you have some kind of measuring device.

But these tectonic plates are moving imperceptibly,

Little by little,

Every single day.

And we don't know until all of a sudden,

The whole earth opens up and an earthquake happens and everything just shifts and tumbles and falls apart.

Well,

Hopefully the things that you're doing,

Like meditation and working on yourself,

Improving yourself,

Working on your fitness,

Perhaps,

Or working on your self-development and growth,

A lot of that stuff is obviously not hopefully not going to fall apart.

It's not going to burst the earth open,

Or maybe it will.

But a lot of it's going to be happening under the surface.

And as I said for myself,

I was looking at myself meditating and I was like,

Oh,

Gosh,

I've been meditating for years now and I am not even a smidgen closer to where I'm supposed to be.

Supposed to be right.

And so our mind makes up all these stories that,

Oh,

But I should be there and I'm not here and I'm here or I'm supposed to be there.

And why am I doing this?

Why bother?

Maybe again,

We think things like maybe I'm not suited for it.

Maybe someone else should be doing it.

Maybe I should just give up on the whole affair.

And a lot of times we do,

Unfortunately,

Give up before we see the effects of it.

Unfortunately,

That's the reason why a lot of us,

We're so close to the goal point.

We're almost right there and we give up.

And if we're just taking one more step,

One more meditation,

One more workout session,

One more whatever it might be,

If we just done that one more thing of two more,

Ten more,

Whatever might be,

Just a few more,

We would have gotten there.

But because we got impatient,

We started thinking,

We started poisoning our mind.

We didn't.

We didn't go that last step.

I remember the story I read a long time ago and I'll end with the story.

There was this,

And again,

I'm paraphrasing here because it's a long time ago that I read this story,

But there were these two people who were looking for gold in a mine or they were looking for gold by digging the earth,

Something like that.

I'm not an expert in that.

Anyways,

There was this one person who was looking for gold and he dug,

Dug,

Dug,

Dug,

Dug,

And he didn't find anything.

And so he gave up and he left.

And then this other person was like,

Well,

He's been looking in this place.

And I really do think there's gold there,

But he didn't find any.

Maybe should I even bother looking?

And he's like,

Well,

You know what?

Let me just try it.

Let me just try a little bit more.

And so he dug in the same place as the first person and he dug a little bit deeper,

A little bit deeper,

Like a little bit further.

And it's funny because if you look at the picture in the story,

This person,

He was here,

The first person,

And the gold was right there.

It was a little bit of a distance.

If he had just dug a little bit deeper,

A little bit further,

He would have found the gold as well.

But because he gave up right before it,

And I feel like a lot of us do this,

We give up right before the gold.

It's going to be there.

We're going to get it.

But we stop and we give up because we're like,

Well,

Why bother?

It's not happening.

Nothing's happening anyways.

You don't know.

Actually,

A lot of things are happening under the surface that you're not aware of.

You just keep on going.

If you don't give up,

You just keep at it.

You'll see that you'll get the gold as well or whatever you're looking for.

I wanted to share this with you because I thought it was so powerful for me.

Of course,

The question is,

How do you know if you're making progress?

Well,

You don't.

And also the question is,

Is it important to make progress?

Not really,

But it's nice to know that you're at least doing something for some good rather than just uselessly wasting your time.

But in fact,

Even if I wasn't making progress in meditation perceptively,

I would forever and forever and forever keep on doing it because it's such a powerful practice in so many other ways.

So,

Of course,

There's so many nuances to the subject and I'm sure I'll do other topics,

Other videos on this topic for sure.

But if you have questions about this and if I didn't cover something that you have a question about,

Obviously let me know and I shall do a follow up video.

Again,

Thank you so much for watching,

For being on my channel.

I really appreciate your support and I shall see you the next time around.

Bye for now.