Sri Annamalai Swami
Q: Is the ability to remember 'I am the Self' part of one's destiny?
AS: If you are the Self, no destiny will affect you. If you tear your shirt, does that mean that you are also torn? No. Something has happened to something that is not you. Similarly, the body and the mind will experience pleasure, happiness, misery, and so on, all according to the karma that has been brought into this life. But the Self has no attachment, no detachment, no happiness, no unhappiness and no karma. The body is not the Self; the mind is not the Self. The real "I" is the Self, and nothing ever happens to or affects the Self.
Thoughts will come as long as the potential for them is inside you. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, they will all keep coming. There is nothing you can do about this flow, but at the same time this flow of thoughts need not be a problem. Be the Self, be the peace that is your real nature, and it will not matter what comes up. Walk, eat, drink, sleep, meditate, but never think that you are the one who is doing these things. The thoughts that you are doing something is the thought that is poisoning your life. Because once you think that you are doing something, you will start to think that you need to be doing something else to put yourself in a better situation. You don't have to do anything to experience the nectar of the Self. All you need to do is drop the idea that you are doing anything at all.
You need to change your vision, your perspective. When you live in the mind and see the world outside you that is separate and apart from you, you will make plans, you will worry, you will have doubts such as the ones you have been telling me about today. These doubts keep coming up in you because you are not dwelling in the source, the substratum. In that place there is oneness, a oneness in which all distinctions, all separation is absent.
Thoughts will come as long as the potential for them is inside you. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, they will all keep coming. There is nothing you can do about this flow, but at the same time this flow of thoughts need not be a problem. Be the Self, be the peace that is your real nature, and it will not matter what comes up. Walk, eat, drink, sleep, meditate, but never think that you are the one who is doing these things. The thoughts that you are doing something is the thought that is poisoning your life. Because once you think that you are doing something, you will start to think that you need to be doing something else to put yourself in a better situation. You don't have to do anything to experience the nectar of the Self. All you need to do is drop the idea that you are doing anything at all.
You need to change your vision, your perspective. When you live in the mind and see the world outside you that is separate and apart from you, you will make plans, you will worry, you will have doubts such as the ones you have been telling me about today. These doubts keep coming up in you because you are not dwelling in the source, the substratum. In that place there is oneness, a oneness in which all distinctions, all separation is absent.
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