Do not fear the thorns in your path, for they draw only the corrupt blood. ~ Kahlil Gibran

It is a surprise, how in the moment of hurt, we see only that which has been hurt and we totally ignore that which has been not. And both are always there. That’s the thing about humanness.

Never would come a time when a thorn would fail to prick you. Even your most impenetrable armors are vulnerable to be at least scratched by the impact of thorns and such things. One would always be susceptible to hurt, always. Prakriti (Nature) wants you to react to stuff. Prakriti wants you to take care of your physical and psychological self. And taking care includes in Prakriti’s language, getting hurt and reacting to hurt. As long as the body is there, there is bound to be at least a remnant, the faintest shadow of the psychological self as well. They are actually one, for the sake of discussion, we call them two. Whether one or two, what is certain is that they do get hurt.

Prick a thorn and the body bleeds, prick the ego and the mental body bleeds.

Why do we look only at the happening, why do we look only at changes? Why don’t we look at that which hasn’t changed, even after billions of awful and billions of awesome experiences? But there is something about our apparatus of perception. It is designed to perceive only change. So, you were feeling alright about yourself before you stumbled and injured your knee. Your apparatus of perception would register that. You are feeling alright about yourself till you saw something on social media and you are agitated. Again your apparatus of perception would register the change in your mental state. These would be registered, acknowledged, seem as happening, something happened. And all happening is a change, something happened. Equally, there was a tremendous something that did not happen. We fail to register that. And then we say, something bad has happened to me. I got hurt. Only the outermost, flimsiest skin of yours gets hurt. The rest of you didn’t. And beneath the thin skin, you are deep and deep and deep and unfathomably deep. All of that never gets hurt.

But since we look as the skin, all that we look at is the skin. So, skin gets hurt, you feel as if only hurt prevails. In your eyes, hurt becomes all-pervasive, there is nothing but hurt. It’s almost as if a small blade of grass has been plucked from the soil of one of Himalayan Mountains. And the Himalayas start hollering, we have been brought down. Now, what is the real extent of damage, when a great mountain loses a blade of grass? There is no damage whatsoever, but great damage happens when the mountain starts claiming, I am done with, I am gone, I am so badly damaged. Nothing has happened to you, look at your worth, look at your might. Your claim is self-deprecating. You are humiliating yourself by saying that you are wounded or reduced or damaged. And this is not sensitivity to be so concerned with the tiniest blade of grass, it is sheer stupidity. This is stupidity and self-ignorance and lack of gratitude. Self-ignorance because you do not know who we really are. So, the loss of that little thing bothers you to no end. And ingratitude because you are not at all thankful for all that you actually and totally are.

That’s the punishment of the ungrateful man. Because he does not know that he has been blessed with immensity. So, all the little losses and shocks of life totally ruffle him up. Like a billionare who would not acknowledge his billions and start beating his chest at the loss of every two dollars.

Acknowledging the billions he has been blessed with is dangerous. We say there is pride in wealth but there is greater vanity in destitution. We say there is pride in strength but there is greater vanity in acting as a sorry loser, a victim of circumstances. I do not know whether strength inflates a man, but what is certain is that weaknesses do the ego a great service. And therefore, we love to ignore that about us which is never, never hurt. I began by acknowledging that hurt is inevitable. That has to be acknowledged and therefore put aside. That issue is settled.

Hurt is there, it’s a part and parcel of living as a human being. Hurt happens. Acknowledging hurt is akin to acknowledging that the mountain did lose the blade of grass. That happens, yes, of course. As long as there are mountains, there are cattle grazing and as long as there cattle grazing , there are blades of grass continuously being lost. All that is part and parcel of mountainhood. Not only are blades of grass lost, plants and trees are also lost. And when you think of the Himalayas, you also think of hill slides. Don’t you? Relatively big chunks of rocks, soil, and land are also lost. All that happens. And still the Himalayas stands tall. What do you want to look at? The landslides or that which stands tall pointing at the skies?

I am not denying that the so-called bad stuff doesn’t happen in life. It does happen. Cows graze. Why don’t you admit that you are unshakeable, invincible? Why do you want to pretend that you are petty, childish, wimpish, raw, worthless, why? What’s the fun?

Nothing bad ever really happens to you, nothing good never really happens to you. Deep within you are the one to whom nothing ever happens. All the happening is so superficial.

Things are happening but only to the most worthless part of you. Thorns are actually happening, but to whom are they happening, to the corrupt part of you, to the peripheral part of you, to your skin that is anyway constantly getting peeled off. Do you want to focus so much on all that? You want to totally ignore your interiority. If there is skin, there must be something within the skin, do you totally want to discount that?

You are a product of Prakriti , you are a product of change, so things do happen to you up to that extent. But much more than Prakriti, you are something else. And nothing happens to you there.

I am amazed, why nobody comes up and says — really bad things apparently happened to me today, but nothing seems to have happened. I feel as if nothing has happened. All the stuff was happening and I even tried to feel it, but I couldn’t really bring myself to accept that all that was happening to me. All that was happening, alright, and I even tried to convince myself that all that is happening to me. But I failed. There was no surge of passion. There was no identification with the happening. The happening kept happening, it didn’t happen to me.

Even when you are totally drenched in melancholy, you are able to cry only because you are still healthy. Even when you say that there is something tremendously wrong with you, and you are weeping buckets, you are able to weep buckets precisely because there is nothing wrong with you.

When you say there is something wrong with you, to which state are you comparing your present state to? You know your right state and therefore you are able to call your present state as wrong. So, you are just pretending, it’s a bad pretence. Had you gone totally wrong, you would have not been able to say that you are in a wrong state. A man who goes totally mad does not even know that he is mad. He will not complain anymore. How do you complain? You are able to complain because you are not mad. And if you are not mad, why are you complaining? If you complain that you are mad, then you are able to complain only because you are not mad. Because mad man do not complaint about their madness. And if you are not mad, why the hell are you complaining?

But that’s the fraud. That’s the big scam. The big scam is you are perfectly alright. That’s the biggest scandal and nobody exposes it. Even in the middle of your deepest misery, you are still perfectly alright. And you are cheating everybody, first of all yourself, by declaring that you are being duped or incapacitated or wronged or hurt or whatever.

It is such a wonder that the one to whom no problem can ever occur has to be educated or deconditioned to live without problems. Otherwise, your biggest problem is that you do not know that there can be a life without problems.

To you, life is a problem, the mother problem. So, when you do not face problems, you feel you are lifeless. In order to feel lively, you dream up problems. No problems, no life, and I don’t want to die. To stay alive, I need problems and problems really don’t exist, so I manufacture them. A problem does not exist, situations exist. And in the middle of all situations, you are never problemed. The moment you say there is a problem, I will ask to whom? And if there exists a problem to you, you are problemed. And if you are problemed, you have lost yourself. You are finished. Is the situation bad? Yes. Are you problemed? No. That gap has to be maintained between the situation and your identity. All situations are for the skin. No situation is with respect to your real identity because you are not situated anywhere. There has to be an insulation, a clear separation between the world of happening and the world where you reside, the world of non-happening.