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Are Unmarried People Happier? · Inspiration and Transformation

0:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to Inspiration and Transformation from the Banks of the
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Speaker 1: Ganga with Sadhvi Bhagwati Saraswati, an American Sanyasi living at
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Speaker 1: the Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, India. Sadhvi is president
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Speaker 1: of the Divine Shakti Foundation, a charitable organization bringing education,
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Speaker 1: vocational training, upliftment, and empowerment programs to women and children.
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Speaker 1: Sadhvi is also Secretary-General of the Global Interfaith Wash Alliance
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Speaker 1: and Director of the world-famous International Yoga Festival. Join the
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Speaker 1: musings of an American sannyasi as Sadhvi shares the wisdom
0:40
Speaker 1: and teachings of her guru, His Holiness, Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswataji.
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Speaker 2: Welcome, everyone, to Inspiration and Transformation, from the holy banks
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Speaker 2: of the sacred Ganga River in the land of Rishikesh, India.
1:05
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny because I remember using a similar
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Speaker 2: argument when I decided to take sannyas. My dad is
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Speaker 2: a divorce attorney, so I grew up literally hearing the
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Speaker 2: stories He was never allowed to use anybody's names because
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Speaker 2: of confidentiality. But the stories of what husband A would
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Speaker 2: do to wife A or husband B and wife B.
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Speaker 2: And we have statistics in places like America of, I
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Speaker 2: think it's up to about 60%. At that time, it
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Speaker 2: was about 50%. of marriages that end in divorce. And
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Speaker 2: I remember saying, so if I'm married, I've got about
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Speaker 2: a 50% chance of getting divorced. At least half of
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Speaker 2: the married people I know are miserable. From your question,
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Speaker 2: it sounds like 100% of the married people, you know,
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Speaker 2: are miserable. But I was being conservative and said, you know,
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Speaker 2: about 50% of them seem miserable. Which means that by
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Speaker 2: being married, I've got a 75% chance of being either
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Speaker 2: divorced or miserable. Whereas I, too, looked around. I looked
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Speaker 2: at my guru, Pujya Swamiji. I looked at other people
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Speaker 2: living this life and said, well, this looks like 100%
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Speaker 2: way to be happy. So yes, I noticed very much
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Speaker 2: the same thing. And I, on a personal level, I
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Speaker 2: know very much that this is my dharma, to be
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Speaker 2: a monastic, to not be married, to be celibate. But
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Speaker 2: there are a lot of people for whom their dharma
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Speaker 2: is in the married life. And I do know a
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Speaker 2: lot of married people who are happy. So if you're
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Speaker 2: married or you're looking to get married, don't feel like
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Speaker 2: you are destined to misery. You are not. You just
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Speaker 2: have a different set of challenges. When you're single, there's
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Speaker 2: not a lot of compromise and sacrifice that you need
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Speaker 2: to make on a personal level. In a community, we
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Speaker 2: make it. Living in an ashram, you make sacrifices and
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Speaker 2: adjustments all the time. Living with people in community. If
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Speaker 2: you're living on your own, not in a community, you know,
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Speaker 2: in a house or apartment somewhere, you have a lot
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Speaker 2: fewer adjustments and compromises to make. And the ego is
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Speaker 2: going to bash itself against someone wherever you are. If
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Speaker 2: you've got an ego that you haven't dealt with, even
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Speaker 2: if you're single, unless you become a complete hermit because
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Speaker 2: you have no interest in interacting with anybody, until and
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Speaker 2: unless you've dealt with your ego, you're going to have conflict,
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Speaker 2: whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in an extended family,
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Speaker 2: even if you're not married, whether it's in friend circle,
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Speaker 2: whether it's in your community, even if you don't live
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Speaker 2: with them. So the goal of life, I don't think,
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Speaker 2: is to remove all of the triggers to our ego.
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Speaker 2: It's not, well, I'd much rather keep my ego happy,
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Speaker 2: therefore I'm not going to get married. I wouldn't recommend
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Speaker 2: that as a reason to take a monastic life. It's
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Speaker 2: about overcoming the ego. It's not, well, you know, my
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Speaker 2: ego doesn't get along with anybody, therefore I'm going to
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Speaker 2: stay single. In those cases, it's I need to work
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Speaker 2: with my ego because ultimately at the end of the day,
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Speaker 2: it's the ego that's suffocating me on my spiritual path.
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Speaker 2: So if I just keep letting the ego run the
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Speaker 2: show by removing anyone and everyone with whom my ego
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Speaker 2: has a problem, I'm not actually benefiting myself. So I
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Speaker 2: always say relationship is a yoga. And if your dharma
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Speaker 2: is to live a gresth ashram life, a householder married life,
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Speaker 2: take that as your yoga. It's not, oh, my ego
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Speaker 2: doesn't like this compromise, therefore we should get divorced. My
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Speaker 2: ego doesn't like this sacrifice, therefore I'm going to leave you. It's, oh,
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Speaker 2: my ego is preventing me from walking this particular path,
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Speaker 2: this particular yoga, closer to God. Therefore, I'm going to
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Speaker 2: work with my ego. My dad, the divorce lawyer, also
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Speaker 2: says he's next to my guru. He's the wisest man
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Speaker 2: I know. And He always gives advice to people, and
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Speaker 2: I remember going back many decades to when my friends
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Speaker 2: were getting married, his friends' children were getting married. And
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Speaker 2: he would always send beautiful letters along with gifts to
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Speaker 2: people getting married, but in the letters, he would fill
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Speaker 2: them with his advice. And his core advice was When
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Speaker 2: you are married, you've only got really one choice that matters.
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Speaker 2: Do you want to be right or do you want
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Speaker 2: to be married? You can't be both. And he would
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Speaker 2: always advise young couples, be very clear walking into this,
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Speaker 2: that you have just been right for the last time
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Speaker 2: in your life if you want this marriage to work.
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Speaker 3: And the.
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Speaker 2: The story that he always told, it was told about
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Speaker 2: George Bernard Shaw, but I'm not 100% sure it was
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Speaker 2: about him. I've since heard it told about other wise people.
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Speaker 2: Was that having been married successfully, happily for 50, 60 years,
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Speaker 2: somebody asked him, what's the secret of your marriage? What's
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Speaker 2: the secret of your happy marriage for so long? And
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Speaker 2: he said, well, when we got married, my wife and
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Speaker 2: I made an agreement. And the agreement was that throughout
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Speaker 2: our marriage, I would make all of the important decisions,
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Speaker 2: the big decisions, and she would make all of the
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Speaker 2: little decisions. And he said, I'm very happy to tell
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Speaker 2: you that in 60 years of marriage, we've never had
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Speaker 2: to make a big decision This is the wisdom of
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Speaker 2: someone who has been not only happily married for many,
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Speaker 2: many decades, but has spent his life guiding, working with
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Speaker 2: people in the midst of divorce as well as guiding
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Speaker 2: those going into marriage. So it's not that you can't
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Speaker 2: be happy in marriage. It's that If your allegiance is
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Speaker 2: to your ego over your spouse, you'll never be happy.
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Speaker 2: Not in marriage, not in work, not in friendship, not
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Speaker 2: in any relationship. In order for relationship to work, your
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Speaker 2: allegiance has to be to the relationship, not to your ego.
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Speaker 2: And the extent of the happiness that you are able
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Speaker 2: to Gain in relationship is directly connected to the extent
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Speaker 2: to which you are able to not let your ego
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Speaker 2: run the show.
9:52
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Speaker 2: Brought to you by the Ad Council. Welcome back to
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Speaker 2: Inspiration and Transformation. I'm so glad to have you all
11:45
Speaker 2: back here with me. So, the word guru literally means...
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Speaker 2: the remover of darkness and the bringer of light. That's
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Speaker 2: what the word actually means. The one who removes the
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Speaker 2: darkness and brings the light. Now the next question, of course,
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Speaker 2: becomes what darkness? For a lot of us, especially from
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Speaker 2: the West, it seems to be a Western illness, there's
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Speaker 2: a sense within us that the core of who we
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Speaker 2: are is dark, that there's somehow something dark about us.
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Speaker 2: But that's not actually what this means because in the
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Speaker 2: Eastern traditions, in the Vedic tradition, it's who you are
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Speaker 2: is divine. You are inseparable from God. There's nothing dark
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Speaker 2: about you. all of the characteristics of God are the
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Speaker 2: same characteristics of you. Light and grace and love and
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Speaker 2: wholeness and fullness and perfection. That's who you are. There
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Speaker 2: is nothing dark about you. I know for me on
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Speaker 2: a personal level, that was a huge one. Like I
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Speaker 2: had just always carried the sense that there was something
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Speaker 2: inherently wrong about me, something dark about me. And to
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Speaker 2: realize that wasn't true, that that was just my ignorance,
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Speaker 2: was huge. So the darkness that it refers to when
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Speaker 2: we speak about the guru being the one who removes
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Speaker 2: the darkness is darkness of ignorance. We're not evil, we're
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Speaker 2: not bad, we're not impure, we're not wrong. But we
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Speaker 2: are ignorant. We falsely identify ourselves with the body, with
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Speaker 2: the role, with the story, with the drama. And we
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Speaker 2: forget who we are. And in that darkness of ignorance,
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Speaker 2: we suffer. We suffer. We suffer anger, grudges, pain, jealousy, resentment, guilt, shame,
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Speaker 2: not enoughness. All of this is born out of the
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Speaker 2: ignorance of forgetting who I am. The guru is the
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Speaker 2: one who shows you the truth of who you are,
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Speaker 2: the light of who you are. Now, do you need
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Speaker 2: an actual external being to do that? In theory, no.
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Speaker 2: There's no rule that says the guru has to be
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Speaker 2: a human being in form in front of you to
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Speaker 2: do that. I was speaking the other night actually about
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Speaker 2: a beautiful sage in the scriptures who spoke about how
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Speaker 2: nature was his guru when he went through couple dozen
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Speaker 2: aspects of nature and what he learned from them and
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Speaker 2: how he was enlightened by the way that the bird
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Speaker 2: lived and the way the insect lived and the way
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Speaker 2: this aspect of nature lived and the way that aspect
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Speaker 2: of nature lived. So there's nothing that says it has
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Speaker 2: to be. However, as someone who is unfathomably Grateful, indescribably
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Speaker 2: grateful to my guru and to the universe for giving
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Speaker 2: me a guru. What I can tell you is that
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Speaker 2: even though theoretically you don't need a guru who's in form, outside,
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Speaker 2: separate from you, the dilemma becomes the games of the ego.
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Speaker 2: That game of ignorance. It is so powerful. It is
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Speaker 2: so insidious. It is so chameleon. The ego is so
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Speaker 2: good at dressing up as whoever you think you're listening to.
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Speaker 2: I'm just going to listen to my inner voice. So
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Speaker 2: the ego puts on his inner voice hat and then
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Speaker 2: sends you astray. The guru is the one who really
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Speaker 2: keeps showing you that light, who keeps clearing that ignorance.
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Speaker 2: So can the guru be inside? Absolutely. When God is inside,
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Speaker 2: of course the guru can be inside. When the core
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Speaker 2: of who you are is one with the source of
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Speaker 2: all that is, Of course you have everything inside you
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Speaker 2: that you need. The question is, can you live accessing that?
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Speaker 2: Can you live really clearly seeing it, living it, knowing
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Speaker 2: it without the ego seeping in, justifying, how you're living
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Speaker 2: by giving it fancy spiritual names. Like I can't tell
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Speaker 2: you how many people essentially engage in what we would
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Speaker 2: call promiscuity, but call it tantra. Now tantra is a
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Speaker 2: powerful science, a powerful spiritual path, And it has nothing
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Speaker 2: to do with promiscuous sex. But I cannot tell you
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Speaker 2: how many people have come to me following that inner wisdom,
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Speaker 2: the ego, the desire wearing the hat that says inner wisdom,
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Speaker 2: and have decided that they're just going to keep living
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Speaker 2: exactly how they've always been living, but now instead of
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Speaker 2: calling it promiscuity, they're going to call it tantra. I
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Speaker 2: can't tell you how many people I have seen have
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Speaker 2: very powerful, beautiful spiritual experiences of being one with the divine.
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Speaker 2: But they haven't yet had the experience of knowing that
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Speaker 2: everyone else is also divine. And that's okay. Not everybody's experience,
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Speaker 2: I mean, you know, have realization necessarily overnight at once.
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Speaker 2: But without the benefit of a guide, what ends up
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Speaker 2: so frequently happening is that spiritual experience becomes the basis
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Speaker 2: for even more self-absorption, even more arrogance, even more separation
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Speaker 2: between the self and others. It becomes this, well, I'm self-realized,
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Speaker 2: so what do you mean I have to take out
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Speaker 2: the trash? Like, obviously you should take out the trash
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Speaker 2: because I am self-realized. I'm meditating over here, so clearly
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Speaker 2: you should be the one to do the dishes. And
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Speaker 2: you just see a lot of ways that genuine, sincere
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Speaker 2: spiritual yearning ends up kind of diverted, well-intentioned, well-meaning, but
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Speaker 2: gets diverted because we don't have the benefit of someone
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Speaker 2: who's able to constantly show us the light and to
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Speaker 2: be there to say, hey, you might want to double
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Speaker 2: check that decision because that might actually be ego wearing
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Speaker 2: a hat of something else. That may not actually be
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Speaker 2: your highest wisdom guiding you there. Just double check because
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Speaker 2: that sounds to me like fear, like desire. Wearing the
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Speaker 2: hat of higher truth. You know, think about Wherever you
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Speaker 2: go in the world, especially places that you are for
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Speaker 2: the first time, places where you don't necessarily want to
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Speaker 2: make a wrong turn. You know, like I love to backpack.
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Speaker 2: I love to hike. I love to be in nature.
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Speaker 2: And there's plenty of places I know really well. And
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Speaker 2: I'm super happy. I love hiking alone and just running
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Speaker 2: off into the mountains. But if I were going to
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Speaker 2: a new place that I wasn't really familiar with, I'd
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Speaker 2: want to make sure that I was going with someone
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Speaker 2: who knew the trails. Someone who knew the way. Someone
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Speaker 2: who was able, if I ended up running up a
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Speaker 2: mountain that I didn't know how to get down or
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Speaker 2: running along a creek and I didn't know how to
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Speaker 2: get back, someone who knew the way. Someone who knew
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Speaker 2: the difference between the sound of a moose, the sound
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Speaker 2: of a bear, the sound of a raccoon. You gotta know,
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Speaker 2: what is something I should be concerned about? What is
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Speaker 2: something to avoid? What is something that's okay? And since
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Speaker 2: most of us don't have the benefit of the memory
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Speaker 2: of all of our past lives, that clear memory of
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Speaker 2: every time we've done this before, all the mistakes we've
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Speaker 2: made in the past, the right turns, the wrong turns.
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Speaker 2: For most of us, even though we know intellectually this
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Speaker 2: isn't our first time here, it certainly feels like it.
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Speaker 2: It certainly feels like we're navigating most of life for
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Speaker 2: the first time. And I know I've got a limited
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Speaker 2: number of years. And I know that I really want
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Speaker 2: to make the very best use and best choices of
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Speaker 2: all of the minutes that I have and not get
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Speaker 2: too far lost, get too far distracted, get too far
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Speaker 2: off the track. And so having someone who can say,
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Speaker 2: You're no longer on track. Come back.
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Speaker 5: Come back.
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Speaker 2: Or to whom I can say, hey, this looks like
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Speaker 2: a good way to go. Where is this going to
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Speaker 2: take me? And he may say, I don't know. Go
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Speaker 2: and see. Even though you know he does know, but
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Speaker 2: it's important for a lot of the paths for us
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Speaker 2: to navigate them, to make mistakes. to learn on our own.
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Speaker 2: But just knowing that there is someone there who sees everything,
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Speaker 2: knows the paths, knows which way you're walking, knows how
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Speaker 2: to get you back to safety, knows where you're supposed
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Speaker 2: to go, has a flashlight with batteries that never die. Like,
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Speaker 2: why wouldn't you want one of those on your path?
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Speaker 2: That's been my experience, at least, I can't imagine under
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Speaker 2: what circumstance I wouldn't be beyond grateful to have that
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Speaker 2: being there. Could I at some point in some lifetime
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Speaker 2: intuit that? Maybe, sure, of course. He's only showing me
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Speaker 2: what's in me. But God, it makes things so much easier.
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Speaker 2: so much clearer so much smoother to have that guide
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Speaker 2: so I'd say you're being very beautifully guided internally which
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Speaker 2: is wonderful keep doing that keep tuning in but should
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Speaker 2: at some point on your path the universe bring into
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Speaker 2: your into your field, someone who can show you some
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Speaker 2: more light. I wouldn't walk into that situation with a
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Speaker 2: preconceived idea that this isn't what I need. Use that
25:51
Speaker 2: internal guru for now. It seems to be guiding you
25:54
Speaker 2: very beautifully. But keep yourself open to if and when
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Speaker 2: a whole other form of light may appear to be
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Speaker 2: open to it.
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
26:12
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Speaker 2: Welcome back. This is Sadhvi Bhagavati Saraswati with Inspiration and Transformation.
27:55
Speaker 2: Is crying a sign of weakness or strength? Neither and both.
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Speaker 2: It's not about a specific emotion or a specific manifestation
28:12
Speaker 2: of an emotion. Being true is strength. Being false is weakness. Now,
28:27
Speaker 2: when we say weakness, it's not derogatory. It's not saying
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Speaker 2: you are a bad person. It just means that for
28:37
Speaker 2: whatever reason in this moment, you've chosen, consciously or unconsciously,
28:45
Speaker 2: You've chosen falsehood over truth. That on some level, some
28:51
Speaker 2: part of you doesn't feel like you can be open
28:56
Speaker 2: and true in the moment. So truth is strong. But
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Speaker 2: crying as simply a manifestation of an emotion is neither
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Speaker 2: by definition true or false. For some people, in some situations,
29:20
Speaker 2: crying is the deepest level of heart-opening, courageous, moving into
29:28
Speaker 2: truth that they can possibly do. For others, crying is
29:35
Speaker 2: just enacting a rehearsed drama of affairs story that they
29:41
Speaker 2: tell themselves. So it's not about an emotion or the
29:46
Speaker 2: manifestation of that. It's about what's real for me in
29:52
Speaker 2: this moment. What is coming up for me in this moment,
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Speaker 2: not what do I think should be there? Many of
30:05
Speaker 2: you have heard the story of one of my very
30:11
Speaker 2: early days in India when Pujya Swamiji took me to
30:18
Speaker 2: see a bunch of schools in a slum area that
30:24
Speaker 2: had approached him because they wanted him to adopt them.
30:28
Speaker 2: They knew that he was engaged in a lot of
30:31
Speaker 2: humanitarian and charitable work. Ten or eleven schools, they had
30:38
Speaker 2: kids coming every day, teachers coming, but the trust that
30:42
Speaker 2: used to run them no longer had money. So they
30:45
Speaker 2: couldn't pay the teachers. There were rooms that didn't have
30:49
Speaker 2: a roof in the rainy season, and they didn't have
30:53
Speaker 2: floors in the winter. I mean, they were slums. They
30:57
Speaker 2: had nothing. But kids came every day, and teachers came.
31:03
Speaker 2: And so the people who started it were naturally and
31:05
Speaker 2: beautifully very eager to keep it going, even though they
31:08
Speaker 2: didn't have any money. So of course, Pujaswamiji said, sure,
31:13
Speaker 2: I'll go see. He invited me to come. I had
31:16
Speaker 2: been here, I don't know, a few months. And we
31:20
Speaker 2: go and see it, and I had never seen poverty
31:25
Speaker 2: like I saw poverty on that day. Not even in movies,
31:28
Speaker 2: not even in news stories. I mean, short of something
31:34
Speaker 2: that I might have caught a glimpse of and turned
31:37
Speaker 2: right off because it was too painful. This was just
31:41
Speaker 2: the worst situation I had ever seen in my life.
31:46
Speaker 2: And we come back to our Delhi ashram. And I'm sobbing.
31:50
Speaker 2: I sobbed the whole way back to Delhi. I can't
31:54
Speaker 2: stop sobbing. It's dinner time and I say, I can't
31:57
Speaker 2: eat dinner and I'm sobbing. And he looks at me
32:01
Speaker 2: and he says, are your tears helping them? I said, no,
32:08
Speaker 2: but oh my God. And he said to me, and
32:15
Speaker 2: you have to know Pujya Swamiji to know that this
32:18
Speaker 2: is This is love in words. It can sound harsh
32:25
Speaker 2: if you don't know him. He's the most tender, compassionate, present,
32:34
Speaker 2: love-filled being on the earth. And when we are in
32:41
Speaker 2: the throes of illusion, he is like a knife that
32:45
Speaker 2: just cuts right through it. But it's a surgeon's knife.
32:49
Speaker 2: So it's the knife that's there to actually save your life,
32:53
Speaker 2: not hurt you. And he says to me, your tears
32:59
Speaker 2: are only helping your own ego. He said, you're able
33:03
Speaker 2: to say to yourself, God, look what a compassionate person
33:06
Speaker 2: I am. See, I'm crying. See, I can't eat. See,
33:09
Speaker 2: I'm so compassionate. He said, it's not actually helping any
33:15
Speaker 2: of the children. He said, if you really want to
33:19
Speaker 2: help them, stop crying, eat dinner, go to sleep, and
33:26
Speaker 2: wake up at 5 o'clock tomorrow morning and figure out
33:29
Speaker 2: how you're going to raise enough money for us to
33:32
Speaker 2: sponsor all of those schools. So in a situation like that,
33:38
Speaker 2: the crying for me, even though my heart felt like
33:44
Speaker 2: it was breaking, I mean, it was certainly true in
33:47
Speaker 2: the moment in terms of my sadness, it was much
33:51
Speaker 2: more me and the drama of myself on a very
33:58
Speaker 2: deep spiritual level. It was me and my ego drama
34:02
Speaker 2: of the one who's identified with the victim and with
34:05
Speaker 2: the poor kid. And, you know, oh my God, can
34:09
Speaker 2: someone please just give me a hug because I feel
34:13
Speaker 2: so bad for these kids. And, and And he saw
34:19
Speaker 2: that right away, that under the guise of, look how
34:25
Speaker 2: compassionate I am, that actually it wasn't about them, it
34:29
Speaker 2: was about me. And if I wanted to do something
34:33
Speaker 2: for them, he gave me the equation. As far as myself, well,
34:42
Speaker 2: he brought me the the healing and the transformation that
34:48
Speaker 2: ultimately enabled me to move beyond that or move through
34:53
Speaker 2: that sense of heart breaking in that identification. But so
35:02
Speaker 2: that's an example where The tears were not true in
35:08
Speaker 2: that moment in terms of what they were theoretically being
35:11
Speaker 2: shed for. My highest truth was not in crying more
35:15
Speaker 2: for the kids. It was in actually realizing that the
35:20
Speaker 2: children of the world are not there for me to
35:26
Speaker 2: process my stuff through. That if I'm actually going to
35:31
Speaker 2: be of any benefit to the children of the world,
35:34
Speaker 2: I need to work through my own stuff separately and
35:37
Speaker 2: then actually help them in a very real way. Crying
35:42
Speaker 2: for me always has come very easily, very naturally. And
35:48
Speaker 2: then you have people for whom finally opening their hearts
35:53
Speaker 2: up to pain that they feel. You see it a
35:57
Speaker 2: lot in people who are violent and angry. The violence
36:03
Speaker 2: and the anger tends in many cases to be pain externalized.
36:10
Speaker 2: And if you can get people to actually finally open
36:13
Speaker 2: their hearts to the pain that they are feeling, they're
36:18
Speaker 2: able to stop bringing that pain onto others. They're able
36:24
Speaker 2: to stop being violent with others, to stop lashing out
36:28
Speaker 2: at others because they're able to be honest with themselves
36:32
Speaker 2: and to heal their pain without needing to essentially vomit
36:38
Speaker 2: it up all over other people through their anger and
36:41
Speaker 2: through their violence. So for someone like that, starting to
36:47
Speaker 2: cry would be a beautiful transformative moment, a moment of
36:52
Speaker 2: great truth. But it's a case-by-case basis. What we are
37:01
Speaker 2: called upon to do in our emotional, psychological lives is
37:08
Speaker 2: neither call forth something nor push anything away, but simply
37:16
Speaker 2: to be present with what is. To allow it, to
37:20
Speaker 2: notice it, to see it. Emotions are waves. Whatever the
37:30
Speaker 2: emotion may be, whatever the feeling state may be, they
37:34
Speaker 2: come as you develop your practice of mindfulness and awareness.
37:39
Speaker 2: You'll notice that you can start feeling it brew long
37:44
Speaker 2: before you're actually in the throes of an emotion. Before that,
37:49
Speaker 2: most of us are like, oh my God, I can't
37:51
Speaker 2: believe I punched that person. I was so angry. I
37:54
Speaker 2: didn't even know what was happening. And the minute you
37:59
Speaker 2: start developing a little bit more awareness, you actually start
38:04
Speaker 2: to feel just a little bit of a flutter of
38:08
Speaker 2: the internal energy as the anger starts to brew and
38:12
Speaker 2: you start to notice a little bit of the contraction
38:17
Speaker 2: of the vision, of the awareness as we start to
38:20
Speaker 2: get that tunnel vision of anger. And you start to
38:25
Speaker 2: actually be able to see it happen long before you
38:30
Speaker 2: pick up a hand and hit somebody. So emotions come,
38:36
Speaker 2: they come in literally like waves of an ocean. The
38:42
Speaker 2: broader your vision, the farther out in the ocean you
38:45
Speaker 2: can see it before it starts to come. You know,
38:49
Speaker 2: if you're not very aware and you're just playing on
38:52
Speaker 2: the shore, A wave comes and hits you out of nowhere.
38:56
Speaker 2: You didn't even see it coming. But if you're watching
39:01
Speaker 2: the ocean meditatively, you can actually see from really far
39:06
Speaker 2: off on the horizon, waves start to come. And in
39:13
Speaker 2: the same way with our emotions, we can start to
39:15
Speaker 2: see them coming. Ah, look at that. I'm just starting
39:21
Speaker 2: to have this nervous system reaction that give me another five,
39:27
Speaker 2: seven minutes and I'm going to be in a rage.
39:31
Speaker 2: But look here, I've got a good five, seven minutes
39:34
Speaker 2: before it really... For some of us, maybe it's two,
39:37
Speaker 2: three minutes. Maybe it's only one minute. Maybe you're particularly reactive,
39:43
Speaker 2: but it's still a minute. in which you can actually
39:49
Speaker 2: see it coming. And you may choose to do something
39:57
Speaker 2: to stop it, to start breathing, to chant your mantra,
40:02
Speaker 2: to take a walk, to think about how much you
40:06
Speaker 2: actually love this person in front of you. Or you
40:09
Speaker 2: may simply bring presence and mindfulness and awareness to it.
40:14
Speaker 2: You may simply say, I see you. I see the anger.
40:22
Speaker 2: And it comes. And it builds like a wave. And
40:29
Speaker 2: it peaks. And it crashes. And then it recedes. And
40:39
Speaker 2: you can actually just watch it. Anybody who thinks that
40:43
Speaker 2: their emotions overtake them is someone who's never actually watched it.
40:52
Speaker 2: It overtakes me only if I'm afraid of it and
40:55
Speaker 2: trying to outrun it, or if I've given it the
41:01
Speaker 2: keys to the car that drives my life. But if
41:08
Speaker 2: I simply am able to just notice it and be
41:11
Speaker 2: aware of it, I'm not pushing it away, I'm not
41:14
Speaker 2: convincing it that it's wrong, I'm simply noticing it. So
41:21
Speaker 2: that's what we are called upon to do with our emotions,
41:24
Speaker 2: is just notice them. And again, in the ones that
41:28
Speaker 2: are troubling patterns, we look for ways to work with them,
41:33
Speaker 2: with a mantra, with an affirmation, with some injection of
41:41
Speaker 2: truth into that, whether in a question form, whether in
41:46
Speaker 2: a statement form, but just not necessarily letting a script
41:51
Speaker 2: keep repeating itself. And so whether it's tears, whether it's laughter,
41:56
Speaker 2: whether it's joy, whether it's ecstasy, whatever it may be,
42:02
Speaker 2: the emotion in the love itself is never weak or strong.
42:07
Speaker 2: The only question to ever ask yourself is, how true
42:11
Speaker 2: am I in the moment? How present am I? How
42:16
Speaker 2: clear am I? How aware am I? Or how much
42:22
Speaker 2: am I running or hiding? And sometimes the tears will
42:29
Speaker 2: be very true and very beautiful, clearing our sight, right?
42:36
Speaker 2: I think of them like the washer fluid for my eyes, right?
42:40
Speaker 2: If your car's windshield is really dirty and dusty, you
42:44
Speaker 2: pull the thing and all this washer fluid sprays on
42:48
Speaker 2: it and then the windshield wipers clean it off and
42:51
Speaker 2: I think of tears like that washer fluid. And you
42:55
Speaker 2: blink a few times and your sight gets cleared. And
43:02
Speaker 2: sometimes they're just part of a drama. And you'll feel it.
43:06
Speaker 2: You'll notice it.
43:08
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Speaker 3: This is Kathy Beal, host of Celestial Compass, featuring astrology
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44:02
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44:04
Speaker 3: at 5 p.m. Eastern Time for Celestial Compass. It's enlightening, entertaining,
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44:12
Speaker 7: Every two minutes, an American is sexually assaulted. The majority
44:17
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44:20
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44:23
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44:26
Speaker 7: is Christina Ricci with RAINN. Call the National Sexual Assault
44:30
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44:43
Speaker 2: Welcome back. This is Sadhvi Bhagavati Saraswati with inspiration and transformation.
44:53
Speaker 2: So how to overcome the fear of death and also
44:58
Speaker 2: as it manifests in this sense of, well, if I'm
45:03
Speaker 2: going to die soon anyway, why bother learning things? Why
45:08
Speaker 2: bother doing things if I'm just You know, moving along
45:12
Speaker 2: toward death, what's the point of doing anything? So I'll
45:18
Speaker 2: take the second part first, which is we are here
45:29
Speaker 2: in this body, in this lifetime, to experience the truth
45:34
Speaker 2: of who we are. to know the truth of who
45:38
Speaker 2: we are, to have an experience of that which is
45:41
Speaker 2: not the body, that which is not the story or
45:47
Speaker 2: the career or the relationships or the history, to really
45:54
Speaker 2: have an experience within of that self which doesn't change.
46:06
Speaker 2: that self which is constant, eternal. That's why we're here,
46:13
Speaker 2: is to have that experience of that presence of the
46:18
Speaker 2: divine within ourselves. And then with every moment we have left,
46:30
Speaker 2: to use that awareness to That which you don't do
46:35
Speaker 2: in this lifetime, as far as your own karmic journey,
46:42
Speaker 2: you're just going to have to do again in the
46:43
Speaker 2: next lifetime. It's like saying, ah, it's already March. School
46:48
Speaker 2: is over in June. Why bother learning anything? Right? Like
46:54
Speaker 2: three months left, spring quarter. Ah, who cares? What's the point?
46:58
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go to class. I'm not going
46:59
Speaker 2: to do my homework. Well, Because if you don't, then
47:06
Speaker 2: you don't graduate. You got to come back next year
47:10
Speaker 2: and do it all over again. So in the same way,
47:18
Speaker 2: that which is left undone, unrealized in this life, we
47:30
Speaker 2: come back next life to do it. That's this cycle
47:34
Speaker 2: of birth and death and rebirth. We have to clear,
47:39
Speaker 2: we've got karmic bank accounts. When you do something, an action,
47:45
Speaker 2: a karma, it generates a fruit, that karmic fruit. And
47:55
Speaker 2: it goes into what you could think of as like
47:56
Speaker 2: a karmic bank account. And you've got sweet fruits and
48:01
Speaker 2: bitter fruits, what we would call bad or good karmic fruit.
48:08
Speaker 2: People say bad and good karma, but karma is actually
48:12
Speaker 2: the action. But unlike a normal bank account, they don't
48:18
Speaker 2: cancel each other off. So in a normal bank account,
48:20
Speaker 2: if I've got $ 10 in the account and I withdraw $ 10,
48:26
Speaker 2: I've got zero in the account. If I've got $ 10
48:32
Speaker 2: in the account and I withdraw 15, I've got minus 5.
48:39
Speaker 2: But in karma, it doesn't work like that. We actually
48:43
Speaker 2: have to go through it all. The sweet stuff, the
48:47
Speaker 2: bitter stuff, they don't cancel each other out. So we
48:51
Speaker 2: have to keep coming to go through it. So it's
48:55
Speaker 2: like you come into this world in this life, with
49:01
Speaker 2: a karmic bank account that says, here are the experiences
49:05
Speaker 2: that your soul, your jivatma, needs to go through before
49:14
Speaker 2: its bank account is cleared and it attains moksha. And
49:18
Speaker 2: you say, nah, I don't feel like it. All right.
49:25
Speaker 2: Come back and do it again next birth. Plus, of course,
49:30
Speaker 2: all of the additional aspects in the bank account from
49:35
Speaker 2: that which you didn't do in this life, which was
49:39
Speaker 2: your dharma. We're given dharma in this life. And acts
49:49
Speaker 2: of omission are just as much acts as acts of commission.
49:54
Speaker 2: So that which I don't do that I should have
50:00
Speaker 2: done is just as much an action as that which
50:05
Speaker 2: I did. If I'm walking down the street and somebody
50:08
Speaker 2: falls in front of me and I don't help them up,
50:12
Speaker 2: That's an action. If people are suffering and I have
50:17
Speaker 2: the ability to help and they don't, that is an action.
50:25
Speaker 2: So however many days you have left, and if you've
50:30
Speaker 2: got days left, you can be sure that you've got
50:33
Speaker 2: work left to do because there's a really, undeniable way
50:43
Speaker 2: that the universe lets us know when our work on
50:46
Speaker 2: earth is over. We leave the body. That's how to
50:54
Speaker 2: know when your work in this life is over. As
51:00
Speaker 2: long as there is prana in your body, you've got
51:08
Speaker 2: work left to do. So whether it's a day, a week,
51:12
Speaker 2: a month, use the time. Yeah, you're going to die. Well,
51:19
Speaker 2: the body's going to die. You're not going to die.
51:25
Speaker 2: You don't die. Just the body dies. So that's that piece.
51:35
Speaker 2: And then in terms of being afraid of death, you know,
51:39
Speaker 2: On the one hand, it's the most natural thing in
51:41
Speaker 2: the world. Everything is afraid of death. Try to kill
51:45
Speaker 2: a mosquito that's buzzing around your room.
51:49
Speaker 7: Right?
51:50
Speaker 2: Where it was sitting just calmly on the wall, not moving,
51:55
Speaker 2: the minute you decided you were going to smack it,
51:59
Speaker 2: what does it do? Everything. Everything wants to live. Nature
52:10
Speaker 2: is amazing. If you look even at the plant kingdom,
52:14
Speaker 2: what plants have to prevent themselves from being eaten, whether
52:19
Speaker 2: it's a poisonous taste, whether it's a smell, whether it's
52:23
Speaker 2: bristles on it, whether it's thorns on it. Everything in
52:28
Speaker 2: nature is created with something to help it not die,
52:38
Speaker 2: not be gobbled up And yet, the nature of the
52:46
Speaker 2: universe is every plant, every animal, every human, everything dies.
52:53
Speaker 2: To date, there has never been an exception to the rule.
52:59
Speaker 2: And yet, we all live like we are the exception
53:02
Speaker 2: to the rule. Don't be afraid of dropping your body.
53:09
Speaker 2: It's the only guarantee you have in life. Be afraid
53:15
Speaker 2: of not living. Be afraid of getting to the point
53:19
Speaker 2: where you are dropping your body and you say, oh
53:22
Speaker 2: my God, I missed the whole boat. That's what we
53:29
Speaker 2: should be afraid of. Oh my God, I spent this
53:32
Speaker 2: whole time focused on things that don't actually matter. I
53:43
Speaker 2: focused only on money. I focused only on power. I
53:47
Speaker 2: focused only on grudges about what other people are saying
53:52
Speaker 2: or doing. Be afraid of no longer having the opportunity
54:08
Speaker 2: to sit in the beautiful wind on the banks of
54:12
Speaker 2: Ganga Be afraid of no longer having the opportunity to
54:18
Speaker 2: offer yourself in love, in service to another. Be afraid
54:28
Speaker 2: of that. That's going to happen. Anyway, nothing you can
54:35
Speaker 2: do about it. So fear of it is just handicapping
54:41
Speaker 2: you now. Be afraid of dying while there is still
54:48
Speaker 2: prawn in your body. This brings to a close this
54:55
Speaker 2: hour of inspiration and transformation. Thank you so much for
55:01
Speaker 2: joining me. I'm so glad to be together with you
55:06
Speaker 2: all each week. And I look forward to being together
55:10
Speaker 2: again next Thursday, same time, on OM Times Radio.
55:35
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you.
56:34
Speaker 7: Thank you.