Day 9
If you ever happened to meet God, do you know what you would tell him? "Oh, I have met you inside." God will dance in our life when the day dawns in laughter and love. The true prayer is laughing in the morning.
Don't just be laughing outside but from deep inside. The laughter comes from the center of our being, from the core of our heart. Our belly is so full of laughter that the laughter permeates and comes out of every cell of our body.
True laughter is true prayer. In nature everything is just waiting for you to laugh. When you laugh, the whole of nature laughs with you. It echoes and resounds and that is really the worth of life.
When things go all right, everybody can laugh, but when everything falls apart, and then if you can laugh, that is evolution and growth. So there is nothing in life that is more worthy than your laughter. Never lose it for anything, whatsoever.
Events come and go. Some are a little pleasant, some are unpleasant, but whatever happens, they all leave you untouched. There is some area deep in you that is left untouched. Hold on to that something that is untouched.
Then you will be able to keep laughing. There are differences even in laughter. Sometimes you laugh just to avoid thinking or to avoid looking at yourself. But when you see and feel within yourself that life is so present every moment, so intense every moment and it is invincible every moment, then nothing can bother you.
Nothing can touch you. Then laughter is very authentic. It is real laughter. You might have observed babies, six months old or one year old. When they laugh, their whole body is jumping and bouncing.
The laughter is not just coming out of their mouths. Every cell in the body is laughing. That is enlightenment. That laughter is innocent, pure, without inhibitions, without any strain.
Someone asked me the other day, "What is your opinion about North America?" I said I had none. They said, "No, you are supposed to have an opinion about everything."
I said I had no opinion. Opinion means you have an experience, you catch hold of that experience and, in the future, you see everything through that one experience. So you don't allow room for a new experience to come and reflect in its purity.
My mind is like a mirror. I see whatever is, and that is what I reflect, and that reflects again and again. The moment the scene goes away from that mirror, the mirror is as it was before. It remains without any impression.
Opinions are the impressions that we make on our minds. If we have one experience repeated four or five times, fortunate or unfortunate, then for the rest of our lives we tend to see the whole life through those same glasses.
What we have not been taught is now to keep our innocence, so that our minds are not imprinted with definite opinions. We need to be able to see things as they are, objectively or totally subjectively. That essence in life, when it blooms from within, allows true laughter in life.
We have all been in that state of godliness. Godliness is a feeling of belongingness. We all belong to one another. See, now what is happening in our minds? "What next? What next?" Back-talk is happening in our mind.
The mind says, "Yes, yes, no, no." Opinions come and go. Are we aware of them? Now observe what is happening in your own mind, this very moment. It doesn't matter whatever I say. You can agree, disagree , it may appeal, it may not, so what.
But are you aware of this process, the phenomenon that is happening within you? Yes? That is very good. That is godliness. Godliness is within each one of us. Laughter opens us up, opens the heart. And anytime we don't feel up to that innocence, what do we do?
That is a question that comes, right? "I feel tense, I don't feel that innocent or free. What do I do?" You can attend to several layers of your own existence. First, the body - see if you have had good rest, proper food and some exercise. Then attend to the breath.
Breath has its own rhythm. Every mood of the mind has a definite rhythm in the breath. By attending to the rhythm in the breath, the mind and body can be elevated. Then look at the concepts and opinions that hover in the mind. Good, bad, right, wrong, should do, shouldn't do, all these could bind you.
Observe the thoughts. And then observe the feelings. Every thought is associated with some sensation, some feeling. Observe the sensation and feeling in the body. Observe the rhythm in the emotions - if you observe, we never make new mistakes.
We commit the same old mistakes. It is simply a repetition. I never say, "Don't do any mistake." I usually say, "Do at least some new mistakes." Have a variety of mistakes. The pattern, the rhythm in the emotion is the same, situations are different.
This is like the same coat, but you hang it on different hooks. You have the same pattern of emotions but you hang it on different causes, different things, people, circumstances, situations. Attend to this rhythm of the emotions.
The peak of any emotion will lead you to yourself. You get to the peak of any emotion, the height of any emotion, then it leads you to space, and you are space. It is like when you take off from the ground in any direction, you will go into space, go up above the clouds.
Any emotion, height of anger, height of fear or joy, whatever, leads you to a place where you
drei vour centre. There is a lot of talk about positive thinking. Positive thinking means - you get a negative thought and you try to think positive.
A thought has already come in us, whether positive or negative. You just observe it. It is already gone. But positive thinking means bringing back that which has gone. We catch hold of a thought and go on like that.
To erase the negative thought, we try to force a positive thought on it. But negative thoughts simply don't go away. They go somewhere deep inside. They remain there.
The more you try to force the positive thought, the more, somewhere deep inside, the negative thought is growing.
A slight fear is happening, and you are hitting a duality, a conflict. Observing thoughts as thoughts, emotions as emotions, opens us to our true self, the godliness within us.
