Something inside of us is silently judging,
Criticizing,
Guilting,
Projecting something negative,
Pulling out our mistakes and amplifying and reminding us,
Questioning our capabilities.
All this mostly happens when we are alone.
So this voice,
This tendency gets bigger and louder and a lot more colorful.
Other times,
When we are committed to an obligation,
This voice or this activity feels like it's suffocated.
So it complains about the current situation because life is happening to us,
So to speak.
This imagination of our tendency to do this,
To do that,
To live such a fantastic life,
Which is what we paint when we feel bound.
You know what,
When I get free of this,
I'm gonna do this,
I'm gonna go here,
I'm gonna live like this,
If only this thing around my neck is removed.
But then,
When we do become free of this obligation,
The same voice,
The same tendency starts criticizing us,
Guilting us.
How could you think like that about that?
So insensitive.
You should be a better daughter,
You should be a better mother,
You should be a better friend.
How dare you wanted to get rid of them?
I'm sure all of us have gone through this dual phase where we really want something and then once we get it,
We regret or we feel guilty.
And in this process,
Unimaginable amounts of energy is wasted.
For example,
Let's take a hypothetical situation.
Let's say I double book myself.
Let's say at this time,
Instead of,
Not instead of,
In addition to having a commitment of having this meditation,
I have another commitment.
Now I have to choose and no matter what I,
What choice I make,
If I don't let the other choice go fully,
While I'm doing this thing that I chose to do,
I will feel guilty about letting that go.
You might ask,
What's the solution?
Yes,
This happens to me.
What should I do about it?
We have to see this tendency as a dysfunction.
The voice is not a dysfunction.
This tendency is a dysfunction.
It's a habit that has been picked up unconsciously and somehow all of us have picked it up.
So it's not just you in particular,
All of us.
This voice is also the voice of creativity,
Of reason,
Of thinking,
Of solving,
Of preparing,
Of creating.
So the voice is not a problem.
This tendency is a problem.
And once we see this as it is,
As something that is not loyal to any particular side,
The same voice that tells us to do something is going to humiliate us for doing it,
Kick us.
Wisdom says,
Once we see it clearly for what it is,
Wisdom creeps in.
It dawns that maybe I don't have to believe this voice,
This tendency ridden voice.
We have to remove,
We have to isolate the tendency ridden voice with a rational,
Objective voice.
It's the same voice.
It's just dipped in a different sauce.
One is dipped in something which is rotten and it stinks.
Whereas others,
Other voices or other sauces have this flavor.
The flavorful voice may sound something like,
You know what,
That was such a brilliant way of answering a question,
Sara.
Subjective,
Looking at facts.
Unfortunately,
Right after this voice,
There could be another voice saying,
How dare you?
How dare you praise yourself?
Remember that time you bungled,
You made that mistake?
No,
No,
No,
You shouldn't be doing this.
That's why that single voice that was encouraging is taken over,
Completely taken over by this dysfunctional voice,
Which somehow has more power over us than the encouraging,
Flavorful voice.
And experientially,
It's the same voice,
But one is trying to uplift,
The other is trying to kick us.
So there is this constant battle going on,
Battle of supremacy inside of us.
You can look at it as a battle or you can look at it as a court case where lawyers are arguing and then there is a jury to judge,
To give a verdict.
Yes,
You are a good person.
You are a horrible person.
And the reason I'm enacting this neurosis is to emphasize the ridiculousness of what goes on in our minds,
To put it out and see it for what it is,
A dysfunction,
A neurosis.
That's what Eckhart Tolle calls it,
Neurosis,
And to realize that that voice is just a voice.
It has nothing to do with you.
You are the one in which,
In whom this voice appears.
A lot of experts will suggest to replace one voice with another voice.
And I've always questioned,
I've always questioned this gimmick.
Why do we need a voice at all?
Why do we want to wrestle with a pig?
The only strength this voice has over us is us giving it to this voice.
We have empowered this voice by acknowledging its existence,
Its righteousness,
Its comments,
Its commentary.
If we are trying to replace one voice with another voice,
We will be spending our entire life in this voice manipulation.
What happens in the process is we miss out on this objective voice that we call intuition.
It's very soft.
But if we are busy in negative,
Positive,
Negative,
Positive,
Negative,
Positive,
We're just playing this game.
Sometimes you win,
Sometimes this voice wins.
But there is no peace.
At the beginning,
It might feel like you are suffocated when you don't let this voice speak.
So I'm not saying that we should suppress this voice.
We just have to stop believing it.
If it helps personify this voice as a roadside crazy person saying something about you,
You don't pay attention.
And even if you hear it,
You don't believe that voice,
Do you?
And what you'll notice is this voice,
This dysfunctional voice is a function of attention.
When you stop believing it,
Its voice,
Its volume,
Its frequency drastically reduces.
And I'm telling you this from my own experience.
I remember when my teacher,
My first teacher was talking about enlightenment and all these fancy words,
And I didn't really know what all those things were.
But whenever she used to talk about peace and how her mind is quiet,
I knew that is what I want.
I don't want all these fancy things.
I want this,
A quiet mind.
So that's when I started taking a deeper and deeper dive into this,
Only to realize that no one's talking about it.
Everyone's trying to manipulate this voice,
Acknowledges its existence,
Dismiss it,
Suppress it.
But if we withdraw the belief that voice doesn't have any power,
Oh,
But it's hard.
It's hard.
It's not easy.
Yes,
I get you,
But it's worth it.
And the alternative sucks.
Happiness is not for the faint-hearted.
It's an act of courage.
It's a continued act of courage,
Relentless pursuit in studying,
Studying yourself.
But it's not like the college education where you get a degree after four or five years.
You start seeing results today.
And it's just like you living in a cluttered house and you go out for a while in nature.
And you have this profound experience like you're having one right now of clarity.
And then you come back home and you see the clutter which you were living in all along.
And it never bothered you.
But when something in you shifts,
It seems like after this profound experience,
Coming to this home,
To this cluttered place has just made things worse.
It's not actually worse.
It was just unseen.
So when you start seeing it,
It seems like it has gotten worse.
So you might feel that,
You know,
Things are getting worse before they get better.
But at every point,
We have to show courage,
Summon courage,
And not the courage of violence,
The courage of wisdom,
Wisdom to not believe something despite how loud it is,
How close it is,
How repetitive it is.
If you had a little child,
Maybe slightly older child,
Who has just started developing this voice inside of their head,
And they start questioning themselves,
They start judging themselves.
What would you tell them?
You would be patient,
You would be kind,
You would be loving with them,
And tell them that that voice is not real.
That voice is not the voice of God.
It's just a habit.
Stay at it.
The same motherly love and a fatherly attitude is needed with this voice.
Motherly love to play longer and fatherly attitude of not giving in.
This voice might camouflage itself as,
Oh,
You're such a nice person.
This world is so bad.
I feel so sorry for you.
Nobody is taking care of you.
And the moment you smell this stench,
The stench of this rotten sauce that this voice is dipped in,
You should realize that this is a gimmick.
If it helps,
Just stop what you're doing.
Do something physical.
Walk up the stairs.
If it gets too overwhelming,
Take a walk.
Don't start a conversation with this voice.
Don't negotiate.
Don't try to shh it.
No.
Until this wisdom gains traction of courage,
From courage,
We should see this voice in all its characters,
Camouflages.
And the only way to know that this voice is this dysfunctional voice is because of this stink that it comes with.
And this stink is felt as a weird feeling,
A feeling of smallness,
A feeling of inadequacy,
A feeling like a failure,
A feeling righteous because someone's feeling sorry for us.
And if this voice is trying to tell you that,
You know,
You made this mistake,
Do you really think we are not smart enough to realize that we just made a mistake?
Is this voice telling us anything that we don't already know?
Think about it.
This voice is a regurgitation of everything that we already know.
It's not like this AI that Iron Man had,
If you are into sci-fi movies,
Where this AI was helping him.
It was an outside voice.
No,
This voice piggybacks on everything that we already know.
You don't need to be reminded of your mistake.
You know you made it.
Move on.
This approach is very rational.
It's very practical.
It's very relatable.
With this approach,
In my opinion,
And in my experience,
There is a definitive chance of this neurosis reducing.
I would be lying if I said that it has completely gone for me.
But it is orders of magnitude quieter than what it was,
Even when I make catastrophic mistakes.
And there is very little maintenance.
Unlike replacing one voice with another voice is a constant maintenance effort.
Negotiating with this voice is a constant maintenance effort.
But this is not an easy path.
This is probably one of the worst addictions that we have in our lives.
And there's no rehab for this.
The rehab is here.
The more you see it,
The more you know it.
And the wiser you keep getting,
The more it's hidden,
The more power it has over you.
Just like any addiction.
But I want to reiterate,
The addiction is not about thinking.
The addiction is not about thoughts.
The addiction is about this voice and us believing this voice.
And this particular flavor of voice that I'm talking about,
Which is stinky,
That is aimed at aggrandizing ourselves or diminishing ourselves.
It's not a voice of reason.
It's not a voice of intelligence.
If I want to borrow language from religion,
It's a voice of Satan.
It's manipulative.
And if you're ever in doubt,
The moment you start suffering while you are alone,
Know that this is not healthy.
I fell for it.
And try to find how did this voice trick you.
So in a way,
You're getting to know yourself every time you are being told to give up.
Every time you're told that you're not good enough.
Every time you are told you suck.
Every time you are told you are wrong.
Every time you are told,
Oh,
Poor you.
Every time you are told you made that mistake.
You're good for nothing.
This is just a habit.
A voice cannot tell us anything about us.
I've tried to address all objections that could come up that I could think of.
Maybe there are more.
But a good litmus test is anytime we are suffering,
It's the rotten voice.
Thank you.
