“Can you find a problem when the desire to attain anything is given up?”

In our search for happiness and fulfillment on the spiritual path, we usually imagine it will be found in some desired state or experience or circumstance that we apparently lack. We may tell ourselves many varied and different stories about who we are, but as this conversation reveals, it is only who we think we are. What is possible is to examine the stories you are telling yourself and recognize that true fulfillment can be effortlessly discovered in an instant of stopping, of conscious rest. Fulfillment is realized in “nothing happening at all.”

“There is conditioning in our mind streams, but what we are drawn by, what has brought us here, is closer and deeper than any conditioning.”

How is it possible to penetrate the conditioning of our minds, the play of ego and superego, and discover our true identity? What if we just give up the game entirely? In this exchange, Gangaji deconstructs the egoic habits of judging ourselves and others, demonstrating how an egoic trap can become the open door into consciousness.

“The real challenge is to include all, every aspect of yourself. Even the aspect that hates can be loved.”

When we take a spiritual path, we may be seeking our enlightenment or our awakening. But perhaps what is truly wanted cannot be discovered in any spiritual technique or acquisition or achievement, but rather in surrender, in the surrender to love one another.  As Gangaji shares in this episode, “If we are beginning in love, then there is really nowhere to go but here.”

This small framed picture sits in the entryway to the Gangaji Foundation. It was the inspiration behind the meeting featured in this month's podcast.

“We have overlooked what was actually innocent and was called stupid. We lost our stupidity and in that we lost our heart. Yet, we are haunted by the fear that we are still actually stupid.”

We fear being stupid or foolish and try to be brilliant and clever. It is an aspect of our human drive for survival. In this episode of Being Yourself, Gangaji speaks to the unnecessary suffering that can be created through the mind’s power to distinguish, delineate, and classify with ever greater subtlety. Without making that power wrong or bad, what if for just one moment, we give up that power and embrace our stupidity? What might be discovered?