2. DEEPER INSIGHTS INTO INTENSITY🔗

Intensity is not an emotion. When you are intense, one part of it may be emotional. The part of intensity that melts and comes out can be called emotion. But intensity cannot be described as an emotion. It is like heat.

For example, when you integrate yourself with intensity, one part of you melts. Let us say the heart melts, then that can be called emotion. Along with your heart, your intellect will also melt, your being will also melt. The side effect of intensity is emotion.

Do not bother about what your intensity should be about. Do not bother about 'towards what'. It should become a quality. Anything you do, whether you touch something or somebody or some object, let the intensity be there, even in that touch.

If you are talking, let the intensity be there. In your relationships, in your decisions, in your memory, in your thinking, in your desires, even in your fears, be intense without escaping from this moment. That is what I call intensity.

Understand, intensity is not seriousness. Intensity means deep passion and deep patience, and strong will and strong prayer. Strong will is passion. Deep prayer is patience.

If you understand intensity as just will, passion, you become serious. All seriousness is a sickness! I have seen many so-called spiritual people who are very serious. Indian spirituality is suffering with this one constipation: Long Face! Yogi means a long face. If you see a yogi or some spiritual guy or someone who claims to be a spiritual guy with a long face, you don't need to pay your respects to him; he needs medicine for constipation!

Really, so many times seriousness is associated with intensity. No! Intensity is sincerity but not seriousness. You will be intense and be relaxed.

If you have only passion without patience, it will raise the number of your thoughts. It will lead to outer world-success, but never to inner world success.

Same way, just a deep patience and acceptance, without having thoughts, may lead to inner-world success, silence, peace, but not to the ultimate enlightenment itself. If you have only patience, you will deeply accept everything, you will be successful in having peace in the inner world. However, you will not have the ultimate success, the enlightenment itself, which gives you the outer and inner world fulfillment.

So enlightenment is the totality of the passion and patience. Intense number of thoughts, with the deep silence – means, your very frequency will be different. In intensity, you do not have just passion, but you will have patience also. You will become complete. You will become fulfilled. You will just radiate the truth.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Dancing is a powerful form of meditation for experiencing intensity! Both formal dance and free dance can be meditation techniques.

Free dancing is also a great cathartic technique. Here, the idea is to lose yourself in the dance. A seasoned dancer will be able to do this even in formal dancing, because he or she is no longer conscious of the rules. Just like we speak correctly

without feeling grammar as a hindrance, the seasoned dancer will dance naturally, even when the dance form is formal. But if you are an amateur, then it is better to enjoy 'free dance', or you will feel restricted by the rules.

Free dancing means that there are no steps, no rules, nothing. Just let your body move as it pleases. Let the dance flow freely. Be playful and enjoy yourself.

Become part of the tremendous energy of dancing.

There are two stages in free dance: dancing and resting.

Step 1 (21 minutes)

Close your eyes and begin to dance. Don't bother about the steps. Let your body be free to move as it wishes. Play music if you want.

Don't be concerned about how you look, how your clothes look. No one is watching you. This is not a performance.

As you continue to dance in this fashion, more and more energy will surge inside you, and you will keep going. The more you dance, the more energetic you will be! You will not feel tired at all.

Enter deeply into the dance. Dance as fast as possible, as freely as possible. Forget yourself totally. Just become the dance.

Step 2 (10 minutes)

At the end of twenty-one minutes, wherever you are, in whatever position you are, just drop down on the floor. Lie down. Be silent and still.

In the sudden change from frantic motion to sudden stillness, you will experience a moment of blankness. There will be no thoughts. You will experience a deep silence.

In a few moments, the thoughts will start coming back. Watch the thoughts calmly. Don’t fight with them, don’t get lost in them. Just remain aware. You will become aware of a lasting peace inside you, a great silence that remains even after the thoughts return.

Carry this peace, this silence with you throughout the day. Carry the silence into your sleep. You will wake up feeling new and refreshed.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

This is a beautiful, natural meditation to center your energies. It is an ancient and powerful technique, drawn from Sufism, a mystic sect of Islam.

This is as simple as a technique can get. All you have to do is whirl, turn round and round and round – the way you used to do as a child.

Whirling is a powerful centering technique.

The beautiful thing about this technique is that your body will be whirling, going round and round – but your Being is right at the center, unmoving – like the unmoving center of a moving wheel.

INSTRUCTION

Do not have any food or drink for at least three hours before this meditation.

Some people may experience a sense of nausea during this meditation. This will disappear after a few days of practice. If it persists, discontinue the meditation.

The meditation has two phases: whirling and resting.

Step 1: Whirling

DURATION

Minimum 21 minutes

INSTRUCTION

Whirling is usually done in an anti-clockwise direction, with the right arm held higher, palm facing upwards, and the left arm lower, palm facing downwards.

If you are uncomfortable whirling anti-clockwise, switch to clockwise.

Whirling can be practiced for hours – for as long as you feel comfortable. But you will need to whirl for at least one hour to experience the 'energy whirlpool'.

Start with whirling slowly, let your whole body be soft and unresisting. As you whirl, the passing images will become blurred. Let them flow past. Don't try to focus on anything – it will make you dizzy or nauseous. For the first ten minutes, go really slow. Then build up speed over the next ten minutes. After twenty minutes or so, you will feel as if the whirling has taken you completely over.

There will be action and movement on the periphery of the circle, but at the center will be certain stillness. You will feel as if you are a witness to all this action, not a participant in it.

Step 2: Resting

10 minutes

Resting cannot be planned. It has to happen. When you are whirling very fast, you may feel as if your body is going to fall.

Don't be afraid or resist the fall. Also, don't plan the fall.

If your body is soft and pliable, you will not get hurt. Just fall lightly and easily.

Lying down, just feel your body's contact with the earth. Feel your body has become one with the earth.

Keep your eyes closed. Remain silently in the same position for ten minutes.

After this meditation, remain silent and meditative for a few hours.

Intensity is a strong feeling that I should achieve, and a strong prayer that I should achieve. It is like when you put your whole being, you put all your effort, and you know that the ultimate is supporting you.

Intensity is a deep will, a strong will, and a deep prayer. If either of these is missing, it will not be called intensity: a strong will and a deep prayer.

If you understand the Divine is supporting you, the effort you put in even if it is a little, suddenly you will see the success happens. Just by remembering that the Divine is supporting you.

You don’t even have to bother whether it is factual or not, or you don’t even have to measure am I supported or not, or how many hours he stood with me. It just happens!

A small story:

A man asks a boon from God: ‘God, you should always be with me.’ God says, ‘Alright, I will always be with you.’

Whenever he was in joy, the man used to see two sets of footprints, his and God’s. Whenever he was in suffering, he used to see only one set of footprints.

So he calls God again, ‘What is this? Whenever I am in joy, you are following me, but when I am in suffering, there is only one set of footprints. You are not following me.’

God laughs and says, 'Fool! when you are in joy, you are walking and I am following you. When you are in suffering, I am carrying you. So the footprints that you are seeing are mine, not yours!'

So be very clear when you are intense, when you just remember He is there supporting you, even a simple effort, suddenly becomes reality. It will become successful.

TECHNIQUE: LET GO AND LET GOD IN

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

You always feel that you cannot live your life without planning. Planning is a disease of the mind!

You never realize, whenever you plan, you can only succeed to the limit of your planning. You are limited by the known.

When you do not plan, you allow life to happen spontaneously. You enter into the space of unlimited possibilities. Be intense in whatever you are doing and leave the results to God or the cosmos, knowing that He is there supporting you.

DURATION

All 24 hours

INSTRUCTIONS

Just for one day, decide that you will do everything with intensity and surrender the results of your actions at God's or life's or the Cosmos' feet. Just move with whatever life brings.

Decide that you will not use your intellect to plan and judge and make decisions.

After all, it is just twenty-four hours!

You are not going to lose everything you have in just twenty-four hours. If something can leave you, if you don't guard it for just twenty-four hours, let it go. It is not worth keeping.

For one day, consciously decide that you are not going to use your intellect to solve your problems. It is your intellect that tells you that you don't have the natural intelligence to solve your problems spontaneously.

The moment you find your mind planning ahead, just drop the plan. Allow things to unfold on their own. Act from your being, not from your intellect. Again and again, have the courage to remain in the space of not-knowing.

You will find that you have enough clarity, enough spontaneous awareness to run your life. When you drop the thinking, planning, worrying, you will find that a higher intelligence comes into play.

Understand, this higher power is not outside of you. The intelligence that is running this universe is also inside you. It can take care.

Time can make you intense. How does this happen? For example, everyday in the morning from eight to nine o' clock you do guru puja - offerings/ritual to the feet of the Master. So you are intense for that one hour. You do not do any other work for that one hour.

So everyday when your perform the puja, that mere remembrance that at this particular time you have to do puja makes you intense for that one hour.

In the morning when you set aside time to do yoga, you intensely do yoga during this time and not think about anything else. In the same way everyday you eat two to three times a day. Again this remembrance to eat at a particular time makes you intense.

Whether as a concept or as an understanding when time enters it makes you intense. Remember the concept of time. Now you are sitting here. You have to be sitting here till I finish my session. Why not sit with complete awareness, so that the whole benefit happens in you intensely, instead of sitting in a lousy way.

While eating why not be intense, instead of eating in a lousy way. Taking a shower everyday, you have to take a shower so why not be aware of the whole action, instead of being in a lousy way.

You have to eat, you have to do guru puja, you have to do yoga, you have to take a shower once a day, and you have to sleep. Just with these five actions, which are inevitable in you, bring intensity. They are life's inevitable actions, like driving to your office.

When you understand with the boundary of past and present it makes you passionate. When you understand that there is no boundary of past and present it makes you passive. Both are a blessing.

If you are passionate you will achieve in the outer world. If it makes you passive you will achieve in the inner world. Both are a blessing.

Even if you understand time with the boundary of past and future, that understanding will lead you to the experience of boundary-less time. So through passion become passive.

Understand, I am opening another one door. Understanding about time with the boundary of past and future will naturally make you intense in the outer world, for example I am going to be here at this time why not be intense. Let me be aware intensely, fully alive intensely.

Bring time consciousness into all your activities. I have to sit in this office for eight hours, so why just be an engineer's clerk for ten years, in a lousy way. Why not be intense and rise in the ladder. This brings intensity in the outer world and success. The concept of time and understanding time brings intensity to you.

When you decide let me be intense and chant the mantras. Suddenly in a few days you catch boundary-less time: which is not packed by the past or by the future. So the present gives you the opening freedom.

The suffocation-less inner space is what I call the Vedic mind. Which leads you to inner world success. When you understand time with boundary of past and future it brings you the responsibility of being intense. When you understand the time without boundary it brings you the tremendous freedom of in-action.

When you understand time with past and present with boundaries you become responsible in the outer world. When you understand time without boundary you can become free from the inner world.

Intensity without intention!