Intensity - Vol 4

The Sufi mystic Junaid, was taking a walk one morning when a man came up to him asking, 'I need to reach the capital of this kingdom. How long will it take?'

Junaid just looked at the man and continued walking. The man was going

in the same direction. He followed Junaid thinking maybe he did not hear him properly.

So, he asked Junaid again, 'Can you please tell me how much time it will take me to reach the capital of the kingdom?'

Junaid continued walking.

The man gave up trying to ask further. After some distance, Junaid said, 'You will have to walk at least ten hours.'

The man was surprised and exclaimed, 'You could have said that before!' Junaid replied, 'How can I say before? I needed to watch your speed first. Then only I could tell you how long it will take to reach the capital.'

In the same way, the time it takes to realize also depends on your intensity. If you are intense enough, it does not need time to reach the Ultimate. Where you are, who are you is irrelevant. You can reach here and now.

If you don't live any moment intensely, what happens?

Your mind looks for repeating the action in that moment.

Why? Why does your mind pull you to the same experience again and again? You may crave for a particular candy or you may be addicted to something. Why?

You cannot feel fulfilled by offering sense pleasures to the senses. Living intensely does not mean fulfilling your senses, pouring pleasures into your senses, or living as you wanted. Eat intensely. When you are eating, only eat. When you are sleeping, just sleep. When you are drinking, only drink. When you are making merry, just be merry.

Actually if you look deep you can see it is because you never eat the candy or cater to the addiction completely with full involvement. You hold back from throwing yourself into the action fully. Maybe you feel guilty about it or you have too many confusing thoughts at that time. So you decide to just do the action ignoring your thoughts and feelings that are coming in the way of your pleasure.

You see, part of you wants to indulge in the action. Another part of you argues why you should not. You are caught in too many thoughts, many of them self-contradictory. You lose energy in fighting with yourself. Finally, you are not integrated whether you do the action or not. You are not intense. So the desire is not completely fulfilled and leaves behind its memory in your inner space.

Engraved memories of desires that are not completely fulfilled are called samskaras. These engraved memories have the power to make you return and travel in that same path. Whether it is coffee or champagne or smoking, whatever engram you create will have the power to make you do the same action again and again, till you feel completely fulfilled with that habit or with that enjoyment or pleasure.

If you enjoy your addiction intensely even once, only once, you will be completely liberated. That engram will never ask you anymore to travel in that path. It will liberate you.w of life! It is a law of life!

Karma is nothing but unfulfilled engrams and desires, which are inside your being, which constantly make you again and again to travel in that same path, trying to give the experience of fulfillment in your inner being.

Unfulfilled engrams are what I call karma. You keep your body alive, you keep your mind alive, because still you have hope that the body can give something to you, the mind can give something to you. Still you have the hope you can enjoy something, or something needs to be fulfilled through the body and mind. That is what I call karma.

You cannot feel fulfilled by offering sense pleasures to the senses. Living intensely does not mean fulfilling your senses. Pairing pleasures into your senses or living as you wanted. Be intense, eat intensely. When you are eating, only eat. When you are sleeping, just sleep. When you are drinking, only drink. When you are making merry, just be merry.

When you live intensely, automatically you will be liberated. If you really want to experience life, if you really want to know the ultimate mystery of existence, then the way into it is intensity. Intense in whatever you do. Let you dissolve in it.

Do not be partial, be integrated in yourself. If you dance, dance so totally that you become the dance. There will be no dancer remaining then, only the dancer remains.

When the ego dissolves, the false sense of identity disappears and you can see the flow of the intelligent and total energy of existence through you. We can achieve bliss when we have intensity in our action, intensity in every moment. Intensity decides age. What matters is not the quantity of life, but the quality, the intensity of living.

• ❖ What does living intensely means?
• ❖ Living intensely does not mean what?
• ❖ What happens when you live intensely?
• ❖ Can we be intense in what we do?
• ❖ What happens when we are partial in doing activities?
• ❖ What happens when the ego dissolves?
• ❖ When we achieve bliss? Which is important in life quantity or quality?

How well they understood the topic by asking multiple questions related to the topic.

Live intensely in the moment and taste the real life. Else you are not living.

Chalk piece Plain sheet

---- Encourage each child to hold the chalk piece and scribble on the paper. Ask them to do the scribbling till the chalk piece is completely over.

Intensity is doing the job completely with awareness.

Copy writing a page looking at it upside down. To make the children unclutch and be in the moment. To make them be illogical. To make them right brain oriented.

Give each child plain sheet, pencil and a picture with few paragraphs, sentences written on it.

Encourage each child to hold the page upside down and copy right the contents give in it by looking at it upside down.

This activity needs lots of concentration and awareness. This writing is a right brain activity.

Children can a debate on the topic of Becoming versus Being

Part 2