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Video Information: 18.08.2024, Vedant: Basics to Classics, Greater Noida
Context:
How to beat anxiety in life?
Why I want to be constantly preoccupied with work?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
➖➖➖➖➖➖
#acharyaprashant
Video Information: 18.08.2024, Vedant: Basics to Classics, Greater Noida
Context:
How to beat anxiety in life?
Why I want to be constantly preoccupied with work?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Thank you. I tend to be an restless, overactive and anxious overachiever. The main reason
00:17for it seems to be that if I stop, I become in touch with suffering in me. I have understood
00:25that facing this pain is the way to self-knowledge, even if the watching means feeling the hurt.
00:32Still I notice myself behaving repeatedly on this dissociating addictive way. It is
00:39a kind of an autopilot mode and it is exhausting. Could you help me with this? Thank you.
00:46This too is a story. This too is a very convenient part of the fiction that observation of the
00:59continuous desperate movement will bring you suffering. It is not the observation that
01:07brings suffering. Suffering is inherent in the desperate and blind movement and the blind
01:17movement wants to continue itself. Therefore, it has woven a very convenient story, a cock
01:27and bull story which is that if you observe what is happening, then the observation will
01:34give you pain. Does it really pain you? No, it does not. Just this morning I tweeted,
01:41before the tweet ran something like this, before, what is fun? Maya. Maya meaning illusion. So,
01:58when you really don't know stuff, then it sometimes happens that you start decrying fun
02:08itself. You say, no, if you go for fun, then you will land in trouble and all that. The more
02:17interesting part is the second half of the tweet. It said, after, after, what is Maya? Fun.
02:26What is Maya? Fun and that's what I am pointing at. If you can observe the play of Maya in yourself,
02:38it is not really painful. It's a lot of fun. I put it this way sometimes that it's a great thing
02:53to catch yourself red-handed. Catch your own thief red-handed. See, you are already smiling.
03:04There is a certain pleasure in catching somebody else with his pants down. The fellow has been
03:13lying and you just catch him in the act and also click a few pics or make a video. Now you have
03:21irrefutable proof and now the fellow would be begging, no, no, please, please, don't make the
03:25thing public, whatever. So, there is a certain pleasure in that and there is a greater, much
03:32bigger pleasure in catching your own inner thief. See how one deceives herself and in the moment of
03:42deception, you just say, nah, I got you. I can see what you are up to. You are devising that same
03:51story once again. I can catch you. So, that's fun. What is Maya? Fun. Good fun. If you keep
04:01believing that you will experience suffering in the process of self-observation, obviously you
04:08see the result. The result would be that the story will not allow you to see anything and you must
04:16also see very clearly where the story is coming from. The story is coming from the refusal to see.
04:23The refusal to see must have something that represents an argument, something that appears
04:32at least faintly logical. So, this kind of logical argument, so to say, is concocted. If you
04:46look at the wound, it will pain all the more. This is nonsensical, is it not?
04:56On the contrary,
05:01when one develops a taste for humour,
05:09probably this self-observation is the mother of all jokes.
05:16You see what you were pretending to be, not just to others but also to yourself and what you
05:25actually are. And the more dispassionately you look at yourself, the bigger is the laughter.
05:31And really free is the person who can laugh recklessly at herself,
05:51laugh with no care at all.
06:01Why to take oneself so seriously? What hurt, what wound can be so big? When we fully well know that the only thing that really is, is the truth.
06:21Can there be two truths? The truth and the wound? The wound has to be a lie, right? But it will continue to pretend to be the truth as long as you avoid looking at it.
06:35The more you look at it, the more you will see that the wound is just some kind of dressing up that has been needlessly done.
06:51I have wanted to ask you also this, because I know this is also this story, but I tell you still it.
07:02I have this PTSD, this post-traumatic stress disorder, and I go to therapy and some peer support groups.
07:13And I have been thinking that what is it doing to this process of trying to get this self-knowledge?
07:23Because there we are so much talking about that I do suffer and I have this story and there is this pain.
07:33Could you shed some light on that?
07:38There is the pain that you experience and there is the therapy. So there is stuff going on, right?
07:48The more you can, in an uninvolved way, with detachment and abandon, see what is really happening, the more you will find that the therapy works better for you.
08:03In fact, you will be able to more correctly deduce when you are no more in the need of any therapy.
08:12If the disease stands exaggerated, so will the treatment, no?
08:21If my disease is this big, the treatment will have to be proportionately bigger.
08:31What if I discover slowly that the disease is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking?
08:38That will help me opt out of the treatment one day, no?
08:51Don't be afraid. Watch yourself in all the small things that happen.
08:57There is nothing big anyway inside us.
09:01All kinds of puny pettinesses and trivialities, they get together and coalesce to form this thing called the self.
09:13Nothing gigantic, nothing fabulous, nothing overwhelming is there within oneself.
09:19We would want to believe that something enormous is sitting in our heart. Well, there is nothing.
09:28Only very little things are there. Only very little things are there and when you look at them, you are relieved of them.
09:38All those littlenesses are worth some good jokes.
09:47Come up with really, really wicked jokes.
09:52You should be the butt of all your own jokes.
10:00Yeah, humour has helped a lot to be able to laugh at anything.
10:09But still there is this tendency to take this pain too seriously.
10:17It's a mark of both freedom and intelligence, the ability to just suddenly burst out laughing at oneself.
10:26And it's a mark of stupidity and heaviness, dullness.
10:36That one takes himself just too seriously all the time.
10:41Only very dull people do that.
10:44The dull people we find being just too touchy and too sensitive about things like self-respect and such things.
10:54All the intelligent people, they will relish having a crack at themselves.
11:02Socrates it was who said, you know, I am the most stupid person. All I know is that I know nothing.
11:09It takes a Socrates to admit that one is de facto stupid.
11:23Thank you so much. I have been listening to these newer Vedanta English sessions a lot lately.
11:33And it just keeps giving and giving and getting deeper.
11:40I feel like every time I hear something new.
11:44I'm so thankful for this teaching.
11:48I'm glad. I'm glad. Welcome.
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