Sat discusses how to be the peace that we already are.
Sat guides a class through a silence meditation. After a few minutes, She talks.
Sat: Slowly open your eyes. How did it feel?
A man replies: Just blank.
Sat: Thank you! You see, where did the thoughts go? The thoughts are always there when you think you are somebody. You are “nobody;” I am telling you that you are better off being “nobody.” Take My word for it. Don’t insist on being somebody, it creates pain. In reality, we are neither the body nor the mind.
You see that was peace, the emptiness is who you really are, the pictures come afterwards. What disturbs one’s mind are any thoughts that are contradictory, any thoughts that bring any negative emotions, and any thoughts that concern us about the body or our surroundings. Whenever these thoughts come, don’t go with them and watch them as they come and as they go!
By doing that, you gain peace, which is already there. You do this same thing with your body, when it is experiencing discomfort, and the discomfort goes away. The more we do this practice, the less we will live a reactive life and the less we will react to things within our own selves; it is that easy. It really is that easy.
Otherwise it will be difficult to have peace unless we practice by not going with the thoughts. Unless, we give more attention to the peaceful and less to the un-peaceful, life will be a roller coaster, unending until we reach our grave. I know we have some people, even in our own families, who are addicted to worry, concern, and un-peacefulness. They don’t want to be, but they are addicted, and if you tell them about the way to peace, they protect their weaknesses. They say things such as, “But you don’t understand, because ‘that’ happened, and ‘this’ is happening now.” And I say, “Why are you protecting your weaknesses? Come to my side.”
So here we are, and we have a very simple method to realize that the pretense of the world can end in one instant. Then should we not live life in this Truth and try to nourish, and BE the peace that we already are, and try to spread this peace and initiate more and more the appearance of this peace that is already there?
As an example, one of you had your car break down today, and on the emotional level you had an immediate choice. You could have gone with the past tendencies, reacted to the situation, felt sorry for yourself and asked, “Why me? What am I going to do now, this is going to cost me money, etc.” Or in a split second, you could decide that things happen, that this is a part of a life that is temporary and that it is o.k., because it teaches you that what you think is eternal is not. The car is not lasting, the body is not lasting, the home is not lasting, the wealth is not lasting, and the relationships are not lasting. Even the people that we adore are not lasting.
As we go through life daily, from the time we wake up in the morning, until we go to sleep, we become watchful of ourselves. We don’t become curious about the wars that may be happening or what is being reported in the news. If a thought does not give us peace, and actually disturbs our peace, it is no longer worth giving it much attention.
If a thought, word or action we engage in is not actually keeping us in the peace that we are, we drop it. We don’t fight it, we don’t push it away, we just turn the other way. Unless we have this type of a relationship with ourselves, it is very hard to bring joy to another person’s life, it really is! This is because we have to have that joy ourselves, and I am sure we all have it to varying degrees.
I would like to ask you to be ultimately selfish and I’ll tell you why. Of course, I’m not talking about being selfish in the usual sense of the word, where we think of ourselves to be the body and the ego, and we want everything for ourselves. No, I am not talking about that type of selfishness, but rather I am asking you to be selfish for your peace of mind; that is when you are actually seeking the right Self.
In this case, it is o.k. to take some time off and be quiet. While selfishness to the wrong self could create hardship, once you start nurturing and loving your peace more and more, it becomes a selfishness that is extremely urgent and necessary. So take that time off, to sit, to hear the birds sing, to be in quietness, to contemplate and to be at peace with yourself. There is no chance of having peace in the world until we have peace in our own thoughts, words, and deeds.
- From “Peace I and II” DVD, 2005: Sat’s Weekly Class