Slow motion🔗

Very often, we are not even aware of the deep-seated worries we are carrying inside. All our unnecessary talking, laughing, doing, everything is just a desperate bid to cover up this deep anxiety. All our restless movement is just an unconscious attempt to still the restless mind. Of course, nowadays we have become so used to being in a hurry, that we tend to hurry through everything even when there is no need! Next time you are walking, eating, talking, doing anything in a hurry, just watch yourself. Why are you doing this? Are you using the action to distract yourself from something else, some worry deep inside? Are you trying to escape from something? Or is it just a habit? To find out the real reason, just slow down. Start going through that action in slow motion. If you are walking, start walking slowly. Bring your speed down to a stroll. Be aware of each step. Breathe slow and deep. If your hurrying is just out of habit, out of unawareness, just slowing down will make you feel relieved. In just a few steps, you will be totally relaxed. If you are using the action to cover up something inside, the instant you slow down that anxiety, that fear is going to come to the surface. By cutting the action, you are giving the worry no place to hide. Just watch the worry. Face it. If it is a real problem, then by facing it directly you will have the awareness to solve it better. If it is an unconscious worry, just watching it consciously will dissolve the fear. Either way, acknowledging the problem is the first step to solving or dissolving it!

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Our entire personality runs on fear and greed. Whatever we do, we need to be motivated either by fear or greed! For example, to do your work at the office, you need to be pushed by either the desire to earn money, or the fear of losing your job. Of course, usually it is a mix of both! We are so used to moving our body only with either a reward or a punishment in mind, we have forgotten how to do anything for the pure joy of it. As long as you are swinging between fear and greed, you can never enjoy anything for its own sake. You think, how is it possible to work without any motivation? Understand, when you go beyond fear and greed, you start working out of inspiration! Instead of motivation, you run on inspiration. You start acting from your being. Selfless service does not mean making some big sacrifices, it means only this: serving without self, without the goal-oriented ego getting involved. When this happens, not only will you become more productive, your work becomes effortless and the joy of the work becomes its own reward.

It is difficult to suddenly get into the mood of serving selflessly, especially at the office! So just try this simple technique in the beginning. Just for half an hour a day, offer your services in some place where you don't get any monetary benefit or name and fame. Choose a place where you cannot show your arrogance and ego, where you don't have to establish yourself as a great person. Do some small social service without any expectation whatsoever. Especially, do something where your body is involved – do physical labour. It is very easy to give money to a charitable cause, fairly easy to offer intellectual support – but very difficult to bend the body! And don't have the idea that you are doing some great social service! Actually you are doing only a personal service – to yourself. This is your sadhana – your spiritual practice.

Till now, your attention has always been on the object of the work – the goal, the end result. Now, shift your attention to the experience itself.

Take responsibility for the work you are doing - but not a responsibility based on fear or greed. Do whatever you are doing simply because it has to be done. When you work like this, you will find that you can take up much more responsibility without feeling the load. Understand, the work itself is never the load, it is always your expectations and fears which make it a load!

When you work like this, suddenly you will see that your body and mind can run without the fuel of fear and greed. It is a tremendous liberation! A new centre will be awakened in you. A new energy will start radiating in you. Just try this for 10 days; you will experience an expansion like you have never imagined. Once you experience the joy of serving without self, naturally it will become your way of life.