76. Awareness melts down Addictions🔗

When you live in the cycle of negative abhyasa, unconscious ideas start attracting you more and more; unconscious actions become your practice. This becomes a vicious cycle in society. Understand: your parents don't have hatred towards you; your teachers don't have hatred towards you; society doesn't have hatred towards you They themselves are acting unconsciously, so they don't know that conscious abyasa can be taught.

I can clearly describe how the negative abyasa gets settled inside your system. You may think that negative abhyasa is very easy to pick up, while positive abhyasa is difficult to pick up. No! Your system always has a resistance to move into something new, something unknown. It doesn't know the difference between smoking and meditation. First time you smoke and first time you meditate, both times you will face difficulty!

Listen: how difficult you find it when you first start meditating, you will find the same difficulty when you start drinking or smoking also. Your system will go through the same resistance. The only difference is that when you start smoking or drinking, you have so many enthusiastic friends and companions to encourage you and guide you! You are surrounded by 'non-enlightened masters' who will help you overcome the initial difficulties and become an expert! But when you start meditating, very rarely you will find an enlightened master to take you beyond the initial struggles. That is the difference,

Actually I cannot imagine - how can you put something inside your system which will make you dull, dumb, paralyzed, idiotic? Your system will naturally resist it! But you have many people around you with that bio-memory, whom you are already in tune with. Their presence influences you.

I can say that negative abhyasa is the ultimate conspiracy done against you; it is the ultimate crime done against your consciousness, against your being.

When I travel and take the classes, I can see that people find it difficult even to close their eyes for a few minutes! Forget about meditation; even to close eyes they feel frightened.

A person wrote me a letter just a few days ago, after attending a weekend meditation camp. He said, 'Swamiji, for the first time in my life, two days have gone by happily without watching TV!'

I just said, 'Oh, God.'

But the good news about abhyasa is this: if you manage to remain aware at the moment when the abhyasa is rising in you, it will start melting down! It will just start melting down.

Do not allow unconscious abhyasa to happen to you. Be aware! More and more, be aware! Whenever suffering comes, do not allow the suffering to stay inside you. Just decide to entertain yourself with something else. Not with TV, of course; not with any other suffering! I'm not asking you to shift from one suffering to another suffering. No. I'm asking you to change the very energy of suffering that you are carrying.

Today, try to be aware at the moments when a negative abhyasa is rising in you, and see it start melting down.