Day 11
When we feel high, we have no problems. The problem comes when we feel low. No one wants to feel low. When one feels low, then the more one tries to feel high, the more the low feelings persist.
This seems to be the biggest problem. Vat is important about the reelings? They never stay the same. Feelings are fluid. See, you feel good now, later you don't feel good.
Then again you feel good. This continues in life. If we base our life on our feelings, we will be ruined. You feel good about something now and a little later you feel bad about the same thing. Then those feelings change yet again.
Have you noticed feelings changing? Many people are unaware of the nature of feelings. Everywhere you will hear people say, "Follow your feelings, go by your feelings, do what you feel like," etc.
What will you do? Be independent? People misinterpret what independence means. They think it means following your feelings. They think, "I do as I feel now, I do as I feel tomorrow, I do as I feel the next day."
Then there can be no stability in life. We are unhappy if we follow our feelings. When you feel low, jump into the lowest. Be like water. That is your real nature, inside you, it is like water.
The coconut is the symbol of the whole human life. The coconut has a husk. That is the environment. And then the shell is the body. The mind and the inner intellect is the white membrane inside. The water is the innermost part.
Your true nature is like water, fluid and not hard inside. What is the nature of water? Humility. It always goes down. Stiffness is the problem. Stiffness is ego. Water can take any shape.
Whatever glass you put it in, it will take that shape. Water means acceptance of the present moment. You put the water in a bottle and it will take that shape. Our innermost Being agrees with nature.
In water, the slightest movement makes ripples. It is dynamic also. It is not simply acceptance with fatalism, it is acceptance with motion, with dynamism, with readiness to jump up.
A little shake, and the water is ready to jump up. The ocean is the lowest. How has the ocean become an ocean? It has accepted the lowest. Can there be anything lower than an ocean? All rivers from the mountain tops flow down to the ocean.
The ocean is full. The humblest is the greatest. If you agree to go low when you don't feel good, you will become the richest person on earth. Have you ever loved your low feelings? You have always fought with them.
When you don't feel high, just close your eyes and go into that low. "Okay, today I shall agree with my low feelings and I shall go as low as I can, without acting."
Do not do any action but just agree, "Okay, I am going down, down, down" How far will you go down? You will find the ocean there. You will start rising up in no time. Depression and low feelings cannot touch you.
They can do nothing to you. However big the clouds are, they cannot overshadow the sun. It could be the darkest day, but still it will remain day, and those clouds can never make it night. So, when clouds are there, you don't have to shiver.
Just go deep, observe and you will see a lot of sensations rising up. Some fears come up. What is fear? Just a sensation in the body. Agree to it, "All right, let it be. I will dive into it today." An amazing thing happens within you, a phenomenon.
Psychiatrists will be out of jobs. Everybody can look into this aspect. This is very, very beautiful. What is the nature of water? Water, when it reaches the ocean, does not always remain there. It rises high as the clouds and then comes down again as water.
Feelings and water are synonymous. There is an aphorism on love by Rishi Narada. He says, "The nature of love is extreme anquish." If you have not had extreme anguish, then you have not had supreme love, either.
Then your love is also shallow. So, the higher the capacity to love, the greater the anguish of separation. That is synonymous. That is the other side of the same coin and it is fine. It is a painful pleasure. This is a stage, and only when this stage is transcended, then bliss stays.
Then such a peace dawns that can never be shaken. If you try to fight with your feelings, they take a longer time to clear. There is only one way, "Let go" or " Surrender". Why is surrender stressed so much?
Always, in all religions, in all enlightened spheres, they say, "Surrender." Surrender means that which you cannot handle, keep it on a plate and offer it. What is it that you cannot handle?
You cannot handle your own feelings, you cannot handle your own thoughts, your own contusion. If you are confused yourself, how can you clear your own confusion? Is it possible? Your trying to clear your own confusion causes much more confusion.
What can happen is that you can find yourself in confusion. Many people do not know that they are in confusion. The lucky ones find themselves in confusion. When we are aware of our confusion, we offer it.
That is what is called surrender. Surrender means having trust in love, saying, "Oh, this is too much for me, I feel so bad, please take care of this. Relieve me of my". You leave it to God. Then you relax.
In a subtle way, surrender is happening to you every day. Otherwise you cannot sleep. Before going to bed, all that you did, your thoughts, your desires, your hang-ups and all that - what did you do?
You just dropped them and dropped yourself on the bed and your head on the pillow. Someone said, "Every night I surrender, in the morning I take it back." So, every night everybody surrenders to some degree.
It is in everybody's nature. You leave everything for a few hours. Then you are happy and peaceful. You sleep well. In the morning, when you wake up, you feel light and again you carry the basket on your head.
