Just Let Go…And You Can Fly!🔗

I saw this in my days of spiritual wandering. In the forests of Northern India the hunters use a trap to catch birds. They tie a rope between two trees. In the middle of the rope, they secure a wooden stick. The rope is tied at the midpoint of the stick. This is actually a hunter’s trap for birds.

You may think, ‘How can a bird be trapped with a small stick? How is it possible?’ Actually, all they do is just hang the stick between two trees using a rope, that’s all. When a bird comes and sits on the stick, the bird’s own weight turns the whole stick upside down; it turns topsy-turvy. The bird is now hanging upside down, clinging to the stick.

The mom-ent it turns upside down and loses its sense of balance it feels totally shaken and tightens its grip on the stick. It simply holds onto the stick as if its life depends on it. Because it is hanging upside down, it thinks, ‘If I unclutch from this stick, what will happen?

I will fall and die.’

There is no record that any bird has ever fallen and broken its head! But the bird does not have the intelligence to realize this. It keeps hanging on. By not letting go, not only does it lose its freedom, it loses its life too, because ultimately the hunter traps it.

Just like the bird, you don’t realize that if you just drop your mind, at that moment you can become a Paramahamsa^Paramahamsa. That very moment you can be liberated. You can simply start flying.

The same fear that the bird clinging to the stick had, you have now. Your fear and the bird’s fear are one and the same. The bird believes that it can’t let go; if it does it will die. Similarly, you hold on to your mind and feel, ‘I can’t let go. If I start trusting that I am unconnected, unclutched, independent and illogical thoughts, I might be lost.’

The hunter comes leisurely, after four or five hours, takes the bird, puts it in the cage, and leaves. Now the bird neither has the freedom to fly nor the stick to balance. The foolish bird doesn't know that if it had just let go of the stick, it could have simply flown away!

In the same way, you hold on to whatever you think is your identity and security – your education, your mind, your life, your relationships, or your bank balance. Yama, the god of death, ultimately comes to remove the stick – that is your identity. Then you are neither a Paramahamsa^Paramahamsa, a liberated soul, nor are you able to hold on to your identity. You will neither have the freedom, nor will you have the stick of your identity that you are clutching, because the stick itself is an illusion.

Let me tell you, if the bird lets go and relaxes, it may flutter to balance for a moment or two. It may take one or two moments to balance itself, but it will never fall and die. When it leaves the stick, maybe for a few seconds it will fall, but then it will adjust itself and start flying.

This moment, trust yourself. Don't bother about losing your identity. Just trust yourself and let go of your identity. You will immediately become a Paramahamsa and be liberated. All you need to do is trust that you are unclutched - even if you don't trust that it is still the truth!

When you unclutch, there will be some revolutionary changes in your life, in your day-to-day thinking, your decision-making, and your daily routine - your lifestyle. Courageously going through that revolution, going through the transformation that happens in you, is what I call tapas - penance.

On rare occasions during my wanderings, I have seen a bird hanging on the stick. Another bird that was once stuck in the trap, but had the courage to let go and open up, comes back. It pokes the hanging bird and says, 'Hey, let go! Relax! I was like you. I had the same problem. When I relaxed I just started flying. All it takes is just two or three seconds to balance. When I opened up, I never fell and broke my head or died. I only became liberated. I only became a free bird. Come on...' But the hanging bird will not believe it.

Understand that the responsibility of the free bird is to go about freeing other birds. It is the responsibility of the free bird to go and poke the bird trapped on the stick and say, ‘Free yourself.’ I am that free bird and I have created a safety net. Even if you fall, you won’t hurt yourself. Relax! Let go, you will only fly! See, the sangha, the community of the master, is the net. Even if you fall, you will not hurt yourself.

First of all, you will not fall. But just to give you the deeper assurance, the sangha, the spiritual community, is created. So, I invite all of you to come and experience the sangha.

Understand that it’s a free bird’s responsibility to liberate all the trapped birds, to help them, to inspire them to free themselves.

Similar to the bird trap, hunters also have a trap to catch monkeys. They catch monkeys using a small box for a trap. They place some sweets inside a box that has a small opening. The monkey puts its hand inside the box and grabs the sweet. As long as the monkey holds onto the sweet, it will not be able to take its hand out because its fist is larger than the hole!

If the monkey lets go of the sweet, it can remove or slide its hand out immediately. But the monkey is not intelligent enough to realize that. It holds on to the sweet - and just because it is holding on, it is not able to take its hand out. If it just lets go of the sweet, it can take its hand out and be free. If you allow the understanding of this story to happen in you, you will instantly unclutch from your shafts and be free this very moment.

Fortunately, by your very nature, you can have only one thought at a time. The moment a new thought comes inside your system, it means that the old thought has lost its power or influence over you. If the new thought has entered you, it means the old thought has been renounced because you can’t have two thoughts at a time. You can have only one thought at a time. If you say that the old thought is also there, it only means that for that moment, the new thought has been renounced!

There is a beautiful story by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa:

A king who was inside a huge fort, was once attacked by an army that was two

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa - Enlightened master from West Bengal in India. His chief disciple was Swami Vivekananda. million strong. The king only had two or three people around him and got very frightened. He told his advisor, ‘Two million people, and I am all alone. They will kill me!’

The royal advisor said, ‘Don’t worry, King. Open only one door. Surely through one door only one person can come in at a time. As they come in, stand on this side of the door and kill them one by one. Over! Do not try to fight with the whole crowd.’

If you think all your enemies are gathered together, you will start having unnecessary fears. You cannot have two thoughts at a time. You can only have one thought at a time. This means that every thought is replaced by the next thought.

I’ll repeat: the first thing is that you can have only one thought at a time.

The second thing is that unless the old thought is pushed out, the second thought cannot come.

The third thing is that if somebody can push me out and sit here, he is surely more powerful than me! Any thought that comes in and pushes the old thought out is more powerful than the old thought. This means that any thought that is coming now is rooted in the present moment. It has more power than the thought that is being renounced, whatever that thought may be about.

By your very nature you are renouncing. You don’t need to learn renunciation. Every moment you are renouncing. What do I mean by the word ‘renouncing’ here? I mean that at every moment you are letting go of one thought after another. Only then is it possible to allow new thoughts to keep entering your system. Every moment your inner space is getting cleared of the old thought.

Thoughts are constantly getting renounced by themselves. The only issue is that when you create the belief your thoughts are connected, you have the problem of linked suffering, the shaft. Your belief that you have some problem is your only problem.

Every moment your inner space is purified by the new incoming thoughts. If you allow this process to continue, it will happen by itself and clean itself also. There is no need for you to clean your mind. All you need to do is just get out - just get out of the system so that the system can proceed on its own.

One important truth you should know is that even if you want, even if you try consciously, you cannot possess or hold onto your suffering for long.

Even if you try to hold it, you cannot hold your suffering because continuously, your thought that creates suffering is also replaced by newer thoughts! In fact, to hold onto suffering will require a lot of effort on your part because thoughts are continuously flowing.

Be very clear, your power to bring on a new thought itself proves you have the power to drop the old thought. The problem is, instead of just watching the new thoughts flowing through you, you try to bring back old thoughts into your system. It is like picking up your trashed emails and bringing them back to the inbox. Is there any need to bring back trashed emails? No! If you constantly look to bring back the old thoughts, you will create only suffering.

Understand that if you nurture the fact that any suffering can be replaced by a stream of fresh thoughts then that becomes reality for you. And there is no suffering. If you are nurturing the thought, 'No, however much I allow replacing, the suffering comes back,' you will make that into reality. If you mother the thought that the suffering is going to come back, it will come back. If you mother the thought that it is going to go away, it will go away.

All you need to understand is that if even once you can replace a thought in your inner space without returning to the previous thought, you will get the confidence, 'I have replaced it once. I can do it again.' Then you can tell yourself, 'If the old thought comes back ten times, let me replace it ten times!' that's all. Soon you will see the old thought will stop coming back.

There is a very beautiful incident in Buddha's life:

Buddha says, 'Whenever I said in meditation, 'I am going to get up after a few hours', I never became enlightened. Once I decided, 'If I am not going to become enlightened, I am not going to get up from this seat. Let this body dry up in this very place. Until I become enlightened, I am not going to move.' Buddha says that the moment he created that strong clarity, the authentic sankalpa^\* - vow, the next second, he became enlightened!

When you sit down to replace your suffering and think, 'Today I will replace it ten times. If it comes back the eleventh time, I can try again tomorrow,' then nothing will happen. No transformation will take place for you. Decide very clearly, 'Until it stops coming, I am going to replace the negative thoughts.' That is what I call courage.

When we unclutch, the first thing that will happen to us will be an inner healing effect - a deep silence and peace in us.

Second, that inner healing will start radiating as physical wellbeing, which is our health.

Third, naturally it will start radiating in our relationships also.

Fourth, because these three are going beautifully, we will be creative and productive!