JOIN USThe head worries and the heart feels. They cannot function at the same time. When your feelings dominate, worry dissolves. If you worry a lot, your feelings are dead; you are stuck in the head.
Worrying makes your mind and heart inert and dull. They are a rock in the head. Worry entangles you. It puts you in a cage. When you feel, you do not worry.
Feelings are like flowers, they blossom and they die. They rise, they fall and then disappear.
When feelings are expressed, you feel relieved. When you are angry, you express your anger and the next moment you are all right. When you are upset, you cry and you get over it.
Feelings last for a short time and then they drop, but worry lingers for a longer period of time, and eventually eats you up. Feelings make you spontaneous. Children feel, so they are spontaneous. Adults put brakes on their feelings and they start worrying. Worrying about anything obstructs action while feelings propel action.
Worrying about negative feelings is a blessing because it puts the brakes on those feelings, preventing you from acting on them. Usually one never worries about positive feelings. Worrying takes away your energy; you cannot think clearly.
Offering your worries is prayer and prayer moves you in feelings. When you think you are feeling too much then you start worrying about your feelings.
The nature of mind is to waver, similar to how the nature of water is to flow. And there is a Big Mind and a small mind. Sometimes the Big Mind wins over the small mind and sometimes it is the other way around.
When the small mind wins over, it is misery and when the Big Mind wins, it is joy. Small mind promises joy and leaves your hands empty. Big Mind may bring resistance in the beginning but fills you with joy.
Now how do you reduce this wavering nature of the mind? It is through practice (abhyaasa) and dispassion (vairagya). What is dispassion? Sometimes, when you are disturbed, you say, ‘I don’t want anything. Enough is enough (suffering)!’ This is one kind of dispassion which you experience when you are disturbed.
It is called Smashana (cemetery) Vairagya. The second kind of dispassion is when you say with awareness, ‘I don’t want anything. I have enough (contentment)! Everything in the world changes; nothing is permanent. I don’t mind if I have or don’t have something.’ This is the second type of dispassion, and is called Gyana (knowledge) Vairagya.
We need to have Gyana Vairagya and not Smashana Vairagya. The mind always moves towards pleasure. If we have knowledge and dispassion, all the pleasures will come to us. It is also said that the pleasure that comes out of Abhyaasa (practice) is the highest.
Everyone has to experience at least one of the two types of dispassion. So it is better to say, ‘I have had enough’, out of awareness and contentment. That is the higher kind of dispassion.