Let go of the control over life.
Let go of control over events.
Let go of control over what should happen,
How it should happen,
When it should happen.
Let go of the tightness that you are holding on to in light of this so-called control.
Relieve your body from this holding on of the mind that creates all sorts of tensions in the body.
Open your fists.
Recognize that control is an illusion.
Any sense of control is a false sense of control.
Nothing in our body,
In our mind is in our control.
Forget about anything outside of it.
The only control,
The only freedom that we have is to be and let everything be.
The only freedom we have is to pretend to be a fragment of this world and try to manipulate the world and its events and the people in it for the satisfaction of this overthinking,
Control-freak mind.
If we really had control over our mind and our body,
Then we would only think positive,
Happy thoughts.
We would never forget anything.
We would be able to let go of anything that doesn't serve us.
Self-discipline,
Self-help would not be such a big industry.
There is this true recognition that yes,
I have freedom.
And the struggle becomes if I have freedom,
Why can't I exercise it?
Because the one who has freedom is not a fragment of this world.
You,
The awareness,
Are free.
You,
This personality,
This belief to be a separate entity,
Wanting to control,
Bend,
Manipulate for your own gain is not free.
For some unknown reason,
We have fallen for this delusion that we can think our way out of most things in life.
We can figure things out,
We can figure life out.
We can manipulate things,
We can change things.
There is no truth to this delusion.
Just because one thinks so doesn't make it so.
The truth is that we are the flow.
We are flowing with the rest of the world,
With the rest of the events.
Think of life as this river that is gushing.
Think of our experience of life as the river that is gushing and meeting the ocean.
As long as we are flowing in the direction of the flow,
There is harmony.
The moment we try to control,
There is resistance,
There is obstruction,
There is suffering.
Of course,
The mind is so hell-bent on controlling that it is able to convince us to suffer in the process.
By painting this such a rosy picture of how things will be awesome in the future and it's okay to suffer now,
But the heavens will be ours in the future.
All the comforts,
Immortality,
Eternality,
All people will agree with what we are saying.
We'll have infinite money,
Infinite energy,
Youth.
But we have to suffer now.
We have to be desperate,
Anxious.
That's how it's able to convince the best of us,
The smartest of us,
The most educated of us.
The analogy that I really like as humans is this idea of being an ant colony.
All of us have to contribute to the colony in whatever shape,
Way or form as necessary.
Most ants probably haven't met the queen,
But they know what to do in her service.
That's how we are.
We are in service of life.
We have been assigned something to do.
Resisting it,
Rejecting it,
Complaining about it,
Wishing it was different,
Dreaming of that which is not here only makes this life the experience of life miserable.
If you notice that nothing about how you look,
What preferences you have,
Where you were born and brought,
What kind of food your body agrees with,
What colors your hands gravitate towards,
Whether you like tea or coffee,
Nothing was a choice.
This was the configuration given to us.
This was the context of life given to us with the freedom to follow this enthusiasm,
To follow the love,
To follow the fun while we are serving the queen of life.
As a separate person,
We are stuck.
As awareness,
As presence,
We are free.
As a separate person,
We dislike whatever is happening.
We have an opinion about everything that is happening or unfolding.
As awareness,
As presence,
Everything is just fine.
Of course,
The mind will be infuriated at this claim that I am making because it wants to change the world.
But it is not complying even to change your basic habits about eating,
About exercising,
About moving,
Being happy.
This grandiose delusion only keeps us separate,
Only keeps us isolated from the rest of the flow.
Not in actuality.
In actuality,
We are flowing,
We are kicking and screaming with the flow because the flow doesn't wait for us to say yes.
It's like the experience I had when I was living in Mumbai in 2007-8 where you just show up on the platform for a local train and the flow takes you in and the flow takes you out.
If you resist,
Your clothes will be torn,
Your headphones will be destroyed,
Like mine were.
And we have all experienced that in different ways in life where we have resisted and we have suffered until we have accepted what has happened.
The longer we have taken to accept something,
The longer we have suffered,
The more we have suffered.
What if we decide to accept everything today?
Everything that has happened and everything that is happening cannot be contested.
And whatever we want to do as a part of serving this flow,
This queen,
Has to be done in this moment.
We have to exercise our freedom in this moment as awareness,
Being the manager of this body and mind.
Trying to control the future when we can't even be present to this present moment is just absurd.
Because the future can only be accessed in the now as it unfolds.
Thinking takes us in the future but completely cuts us off from the now.
So we spend most of our life dreaming in our thoughts about the future,
About the past.
That's why in the Indian tradition there is a call to action to wake up from this open-eyed dream.
It might seem like a defeatist's approach to life where we just give up.
Because that's how binary the approach is in the mind,
To be arrogant or to be defeatist.
There is no room for wisdom in the mind at this point until we recognize ourselves as the presence which is where the wisdom,
Insight,
Understanding,
Love,
Truth,
Beauty resides.
There will be this conflict of aggression versus defeating attitude.
If you ever are drunk on what the mind is feeding you,
You can always have a reality check.
Whatever habit you have wanted to change in your life,
Whether to wake up early to work out,
To give up something or to pick up any habit,
Try doing that for seven days and see the agony that the mind puts you through.
The delusion of freedom is not a quality of the mind.
Actually,
The delusion is the quality of the mind.
The real freedom is with you.
The one that knows that you need these habits in your life or these habits out of your life.
If we could have this moment-to-moment acceptance,
This simple yes attitude,
Because what has happened is not waiting for you to say yes.
It has already made itself available.
It has announced its presence.
You,
The mind,
Saying yes has no value.
But the only reason I am suggesting this yes attitude is to counter the no attitude that we have.
Just like your yes has no value,
Your no has no value either.
But yes keeps us open.
Yes leaves room for wisdom,
For intelligence.
No keeps us dreaming,
Wishing,
Fighting,
Complaining,
Struggling,
Suffering.
As my teacher likes to say that it's about having a universal yes to life.
Because think about it.
The only thing we can say yes to is the present,
Which becomes the past the moment it happens.
You can't say yes to the future because it hasn't happened yet.
And you saying yes to the past is a consolation.
Being afraid of the future is a no,
And we know how painful it is to live in anxiety and fear.
But if we can say yes,
Yes,
This itch to control falls flat in this understanding.
There's a lot more fun while serving the queen.
There's a lot less suffering.
Allow your mind to dive into this recognition.
Let all its resistances,
Objections be washed clean in this recognition.
Thank you.
