Let go of everything that you know The known interferes with the now It colours the now It dismisses the now There is a phrase in English called The curse of knowledge What you know will hurt you Of course it doesn't have to if we can handle The knowledge,
The information But most of the times we are rendered helpless in front of our mind I'm sure you've had experience where You were relaxed Peaceful maybe And then you found out something Whether your flight is delayed Whether something is broken Whether you've lost money or whatever it was That rattled you The sheer shift from not knowing to knowing Rattled you in that moment and then Was appropriated by your mind To weave fearful,
Scary thoughts And torture you in the process Yes at some level we want to know But at a very deep level We know that we are helpless We feel helpless in front of our mind About what we know So let's start today with Abandoning With wisdom Whatever it is that we know Everything that we know About the world,
About ourselves,
About other people And just because a thought is dangling In your mind and you are aware of it Doesn't mean you need to do anything about it The helplessness comes when There is a compulsion To do something about every thought That passes through your mind But if we can take a step back From all thoughts With this understanding that I don't have to lean in to them Then there is no helplessness But fundamentally Because of the unaware,
Unwise,
Uninvestigated lives that we have led Our mind and our thoughts have kind of Put us on a leash And we have to helplessly follow Whatever thought comes up All knowledge is about the past Yet it controls us in the present Take a step back and refuse to be controlled The thought or the thoughts are appearing in you You are bigger than the thoughts See this See this right now in your own experience Without talking or negotiating with your thoughts Just see them as something that they are appearing and disappearing My voice is falling on your ears as sounds Those sounds are not bigger than you They appear the same way,
They appear to you And they pass away Let go of the past Let go of the knowledge of the past Understand the nature of the mind To take whatever is coming in front of you and amplify it Because the mind understands Fear,
Greed,
Jealousy,
Anger Are your weak points It amplifies out of habit It cannot do that without your tacit approval The thoughts don't have power in and by themselves They are merely appearing in you and disappearing in you That's why people prefer not to know I had a friend who was in pain But he didn't want to go to the doctor Because he didn't want to find out what it is The fear makes us do crazy things And the fear is not of the fear of tiger in front of you The fear is of the thought that has terrorized you all throughout your life And you are afraid of those thoughts So this exploration,
This entire thing that I share is based on two important aspects Three important aspects to be honest First is freedom Second is wisdom And third is courage Inwardly we lead a less courageous life Helpless in front of our thoughts In front of the feelings that accompany those thoughts Inwardly we lead a life of less wisdom In Indian tradition it's called ignorance A less investigated life where we only take things at face value But if we investigated our own experience,
Our own thoughts,
Ourselves as awareness We will see that thoughts appear in us How can they be bigger than me?
How can they control me and my life?
So yes at a practical level we want to know things But that knowing is not being controlled It's only for survival and interaction with the world Deep down,
Inwardly We should be free to let go of anything and everything at will Courageously,
Wisely,
Freely And this cannot happen until we understand fully,
Deeply understand that Thoughts are ephemeral,
Fleeting I don't need to do anything with most of the thoughts that come to me And whatever analysis,
Conclusions the mind is presenting you Based on this information that you have achieved Is one of the million possibilities out there It's not the only possibility The reason we are on a tight leash by our thoughts is because we treat them as absolute That's the only truth The truth of our thoughts is the only truth No it isn't 99% of the times our thoughts are wrong,
Are untrue The conclusions that our mind comes up with and presents to us as thoughts Are one of the many possibilities Fear,
Anger,
Cells that grabs your attention,
You lean in Letting go is boring Wisdom is boring,
There is no action,
There is no drama,
There is no suffering in it So by default we have embarked on the path of drama And in the process we have willingly relinquished our freedom,
Our wisdom and our courage The same knowledge that we boast about Everything that we have gathered mentally and physically Those accumulations become the source of our pain But because we are proud of them The tables have turned They have grabbed us,
They have put us on a leash One of the most important ideas of the spiritual exploration,
The exploration of peace and happiness Is the idea of detachment When I ask you to let go I am asking you to be detached To be like the lotus leaf in water,
Untouched by the water Completely submerged in water yet untouched by water All your knowledge,
All your belongings,
Mental,
Physical accumulations You can be in it without being touched by it If you can learn the art of letting go Because the physical accumulations and the mental accumulations In and by themselves don't stick to us The stickiness comes from us Yes,
We have to take care of our belongings,
Our accumulations That we have gathered over the decades But we have to know this for sure that we came in this world empty handed And we are going to leave this world empty handed The stickiness,
This mineness Is unnecessary Actually,
It's more than unnecessary because it is ruining the quality of our life Deep down we want to live a free Courageous,
Wise life But us grabbing,
Pulling,
Sticking to things To people,
To situations To ideas,
To accumulations Makes us feel helpless and cowardly inside Think about it,
How many times what you remember makes you suffer The words spoken by other people,
By your loved ones The remembrance of being betrayed,
Being taken advantage of All those things have happened in the past You have already suffered in the moment But the repeated suffering is only because We lean into our memories that appear to us as thoughts We even say sentences like,
Oh I'm never going to forget this experience Because deep down we want that drama We want to remember that this person did this But if we actually zoomed in on how our mind works It doesn't want to remember You don't remember most of your life The mind wants to forget superfluous things So what makes these painful Memories Important is our emotional charge,
Our attachment Our stickiness to it Suddenly what was supposed to be superfluous Just like most of our thoughts Ends up sticking to us,
Controlling us,
Suffering Making us suffer So stand as the awareness in which these thoughts are appearing Stand as the awareness In which these words are appearing And see that whatever is appearing Disappears in the same moment Leaving no trace Stand as the awareness and let go of everything you know Whenever you don't need to know anything When you are all by yourself,
Alone Not doing anything,
You don't need to know anything That's where new can come to you As long as you are enamored and proud of the old,
The dead The new is repelled Yes,
There is comfort in the old But that comfort comes at a cost of suffering Be like the lotus leaf Completely submerged in water In life,
In this world In your relationships,
In your work In your accumulations But be untouched by it,
By everything What has come will go What is here was not here before and will no longer be here While you are always here The best is to be with yourself And not stick Not be attached to anything else Let everything that is already stuck fall away In this understanding,
In this wisdom Be like the lotus leaf Thank you
