Accept Yourself As You Are

Accept Yourself As You Are

– Anant Sri

In order to realize, in order to know yourself, you do not need anything; you don’t have to increase your concentration, your determination. You don’t need more meditation, more effort. The only thing required is your acceptance of yourself that you are already that. Whatever you desire to be, you are already that but you don’t get it into your system.

And then all the sadhnas are there to make you eligible to accept that no sadhna is actually required. All the efforts, all the sadhnas are just postponing the issue. That which you can accept now itself, you are delaying by thinking, that it is something that will happen in future.

If you accept yourself this moment, then this very moment you are realized and no sadhna is required for you are already that.

Nisargdatt Maharaj Ji, the well known Master of recent times said that when he met his Guru and his Guru said that you are That. He believed and he had no doubt. The disciple had full faith in the Guru’s words and knew that it was the truth but it took him twenty years to get over the conflict in his mind that when that was the truth then why did he not know it.

Lord Mahavir would often say that जो हो रहा है वो हो ही गया, whatever is happening has already happened. One of his disciples Goshalak had great problem accepting this fact. One day on their way to satsang they saw a small plant with buds. Goshalak enquired of the Master- what do you say, these buds will flower. He answered in the affirmative. The disciple pulled out the plant with all its roots and threw it on the ground. How will they flower now? Mahavir did not say anything. A few days later when they were returning by the same route, they found the flowers blooming. Rain had come and the roots in contact with the moist ground started to re-grow and though not straight but the plant got strength and the buds bloomed into flowers.

Existence is all mystery. Now knowing is also mysterious. You cannot know everything. You know something and it opens up multiple doors to what all you don’t know. The more you know the more there is to be known. Similarly cause and effect, there are so many reasons for something to happen and you cannot know all. Therefore there are only two options, either you know all causes or it becomes causeless.

There are three aspects – known, unknown and unknowable. Science is in an effort to make the unknown known. Whatever is unknown today can be known tomorrow. Secrets can be revealed but mystery remains a mystery, that which cannot be known. Spirituality is leaping into this unknowable, this mystery.

The problem lies in not accepting the things as they are, you begin to accept and things begin to happen. And when a minimum number will accept creating a critical mass of acceptance then the rest will easily accept.

Psychologists have something called the 100 monkey phenomenon. The hundred monkeys does not mean hundred monkeys, it means a certain minimum number of monkeys. Once they tried to train monkeys in a different behavior and experimented with a number of monkeys at several places and discovered that when a certain number of monkeys got trained with a particular behavior then automatically the other monkeys in other groups also developed the same behavior without much training.

Likewise when we create a certain level of energy known as the critical mass of energy then things happen on their own. This can be applied to other things as well, as I often say that a critical mass of love can make all the other people loving. For things to happen automatically, we have to initially create the critical mass of that thing.

A critical mass of negative tendencies is already there and is regularly pumped in by the society and that is why wrong doings continue to thrive. Any amount of punishment does not solve the issue because it cannot. We need to create a critical mass of right doings and once the level of that trend increases the energies shall transform without much effort and change is sure to take place.

We keep depleting our energy. We lose a lot of our energy in thought, in desire. When you desire to make something your own your focus is on that thing or person. When you say this is mine your energy focuses there and your level of energy goes down. For example you go to a mall and see a lot of things, you desire to have some things but you don’t buy them and you come back exhausted. Your energy focused on the things you thought about and that is why you felt drained of energy.

There is a story from the life of Bharthari that made him see this truth. Once when he had renounced his kingdom to seek the truth, he was there in a forest hidden by branches and he saw that a passerby unknowingly dropped a shining object from his belongings. Bharthari having good knowledge, immediately recognized it to be a precious diamond. As he had now no interest in it, so he let it be there. He saw two men riding horses come from two opposite directions and both saw the diamond lying on the ground. And as Bharthari had progressed in sadhna he observed something strange, that the vital energy, the life force of both of them had focused on the diamond as both tried to treat it as theirs, and in the process they were as if non-existent and only the diamond remained. And what followed was unbelievable as he saw that soon after both took out their swords and killed each other, with the diamond lying there.

What is yours? Nothing. But you try to make them yours, you try to hold them to you and in the process you lose energy. Everything just exists, whether it is people or objects. Whatever is there does not belong to you or to anyone else, whether it is your wife or your children, or any other person or object; they are not your belongings. They are a gift from nature, you can be with that but do not possess them for they may leave anytime. Make the best use of their company and see how you can evolve with them.

Even your love is not yours, it is a gift, enjoy it while it is there but do not try to hold it back or possess it, you shall destroy everything.