You are not under any obligation to be perfect. Alright!
Your incompetencies, your deficiencies are all welcome. They are the part of the game. Just be alive and alert.
And then even out of your own botched up action, something auspicious will happen. Like Shabri, she doesn’t know how to welcome a King. So, all she can do is taste the fruit and give it to him. That’s a very botched up action. Yet something auspicious is happening out of it.
You are imperfect, alright. But then even in your imperfection, there is a lot of perfection. And be sure of that the demand for perfection is a great arrogance of the ‘ego.’
To demand this out of yourself that I must be perfect is a great arrogance of the ‘ego.’ How can ‘I’ be content to anything left than perfection. ‘I’ deserve the ultimate. No, you don’t deserve the Ultimate. You are alright as you are. And that there is perfection.
Getting it?
Do whatever you must and dedicate it to perfection.
Dedicate all your imperfection to the perfect. I could do only this much. The body is limited and thought is limited and the body could move only this much. The words could express only this much. Now, the rest is upon you. Take care! I am imperfect and I know that fully well. For me only, there are twenty-four hours in a day. I have only two hands. I have a mind that can have only this much of information. And I use words that are so limited in their communication. So, I can do only this much. Now, The remaining is upon you. You take care! And this is perfection.
What do you think? You will be perfect and what will you look like in your perfection? Lord Krishna with thousand arms, forty-thousand feet tall. You will be this, not even six feet tall, over-weight, not very pretty, beldam, having bad breath and uncertain mood.
All those things that come with the body and mind, these are the necessary accompaniment of the body, the mind. I am perfect! What do you do the first thing in class, you belch. Mr. Perfect is belching and if that was not sufficient then Mr. Perfect comes up with a loud and incredibly, smelly fart and then you say now I am perfect and now I can teach the students.
This is what you are as a body, a mass of flesh which has his own mechanics, mal-mootr.
What do you mean by perfection? Imperfection will always be there, enjoy it. Live with it! Don’t Identify with it.
Live with it! Don’t Identify with it.
Why should you be so harsh upon yourself, tell me? You were once a rabbit. And the rabbit was always being chased by dogs. The rabbit saw two or three friend rabbits being killed in front of his own eye by dogs. Now, the rabbit always has to be alert that dogs might be around. Suspicion is there as the very substance of the rabbit’s mind, something is wrong somewhere.
The nose is always twitching, the ears are always trying to sense something. And you are once a rabbit. You are carrying forward that suspicion from there. Why are you being harsh on yourself? It’s none of your faults. It’s alright.
The rabbit had some experiences and those experiences have come to you. Here, DNA, what can you do? Why be so harsh?
Listener: But we see even in the name of spirituality, people say, “Want to get rid of patterns and want to work upon those patterns.”
AP: Remember, Ramana Maharshi died of cancer, Ramakrishna Paramhansa Died of cancer. The patterns of the body cannot be broken.
L: So, feelings are also the pattern?
AP: The pattern of the mind.
One can disidentify that can is possible but if you think that the patterns will go away. What? Breathing is a pattern, break it!
L: But this is spontaneous.
AP: Every pattern is spontaneous, ma’am. Show me a pattern which doesn’t appear to be spontaneous. Breathing is a pattern, digestion is a pattern, day and night are patterns. All these are patterns.
What we call as being human is a pattern. You cannot break it. You can stand at a distance on it which is alright.
The Buddha died off with a stomach disorder.
Identifying with anything is equally disastrous. Identifying with hatred is disastrous, identifying with affection is equally disastrous.
L: And what if identifying with bliss?
AP: You don’t identify with bliss, you are in bliss; that is another matter. When you identify with something, it’s always from some center. Bliss is the dissolution of that center. You don’t identify with bliss. You don’t say, “I am identifying with the Truth.” You are in Truth. You don’t identify with the Truth.
~ Acharya Prashant Ji speaking at at Shabdyog session at Advait BodhSthal on 11th February, 2014.
