No man is fully accomplished until he has acquired the ability to attend to his life in the deepest sense. Most of the time, our attention is on external accomplishments, such as name, fame and position, is it not?Are we attentive to our hurts, anxieties, inner contradictions and jealousies, which erode the quality of life? They are viruses destroying us. We need to attend to this disorder. This is part of our ignorance; our inner foolishness. We need to observe inner contradictions. Since we don’t observe this, there is lack of peace in us. We go on asserting or denying what we want and what we are. This creates inner conflict and conflict leads to pain.What do you mean by conflict? Why do you think there is a contradiction? When there is contradiction and conflict, there must be a struggle, and in that state, we create nothing but antagonism, friction and bitterness. This is a kind of inner hostility. If we free ourselves from this, there is inner peace.

There is a contradiction to “what is” and “what one wants to become”. This is the basic conflict in which friction exists. “But is this not but natural”, one may ask.By branding it as natural, one stops exploring, and thus suffers. Are we seeing ‘what is’ in the truest sense? One is busy in getting what one wants and has thus stopped truly seeing ‘what is’. There is a hurry to get what one wants rather than rejoice what one has or see what one has. Hence, one does not maximise on what one has in one’s life.

Learn to observe your breath. When you observe your inhalation and exhalation, you will see breathing is joy. Without which, you are dead. Mind has become so gross in ‘becoming’ that you miss seeing the ‘being’. When you observe just breathing, you will experience joy and then your heart will fully breathe. Just this breathing becomes a point of celebration.But we have taken this breathing for granted, and hence we are lost in getting some object of illusion and hoping it will give joy. When you attentively eat, then eating becomes meditation. When you put your whole awareness in eating, then just eating an apple you will see that apple is an ambassador from the cosmos, from the whole. The apple is a result of the tree, and in it exists sunlight, water, air and earth. The whole is in the apple. With this awareness, when you eat, you are in communion with the apple and hence with the whole. A different life opens up in such a living. Then, life is a movement of joy from one point to another point. It is not ‘becoming’ but a movement of ‘being or presence’. Then there is no conflict. Getting your goals is not a conflict or contradiction but a journey of joy. Only here conflict ends, and in that space, there are no inner contradictions. But for this, there is a conflict of the ‘now’ when you do not get what you want and the conflict manifests in the form of hurt, upset, sorrow. This is because you imagine getting what you want is joy. This conflict adds to the chaos.
-Swami Sukhabodhananda

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