The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [94]
This variety expresses the diversity of creation. You can’t expect the desert and the rain forest to behave the same. Yet these alterations in personal makeup are superficial. The same unchanging happiness can be accessed in everyone’s awareness. Know that this is true, and don’t use the ups and downs of your personal happiness as a reason for not journeying to the source.
Essence: Happiness is not a unique thing. It is one flavor of essence among many. One time, a disciple complained to his teacher that all the time spent on spiritual work hadn’t made him happy. “Your job right now isn’t to be happy,” the teacher swiftly replied. “Your job is to become real.” Essence is real, and when you capture it, happiness follows because all the qualities of essence follow. Trying to be happy as an end in itself is limited; you will be fortunate just to meet your ego’s requirements for a happy life. If instead you devote yourself to a total shift in awareness, happiness arrives as a gift freely bestowed by consciousness.
CHANGING YOUR REALITY TO ACCOMMODATE THE THIRTEENTH SECRET
The thirteenth secret is about personal freedom. You cannot be truly free if your interactions with the universe are personal because a person is a limited package. If you remain inside the package, so will your awareness. Today, start to act as if your influence extends everywhere. One of the most common sights in India, or anywhere else in the East, used to be saffron-robed monks in meditation before dawn. Many other people (my grandmother and mother among them) rise at the same early hour and go to the temple to pray. The point of this practice is that they are meeting the day before it begins.
To meet the day before it begins means that you are present when it is born. You open yourself to a possibility. Because there are not yet any events, the infant day is open, fresh, and new. It could turn into anything. The meditating monks and the people at prayer want to add their influence of consciousness at that critical moment, like being present for the beginning of a baby’s life.
Today you can do the same thing. Wake up as early as you usually do—ideally you would perform this exercise at first light in a seated position, but you can do it lying in bed before you get up—and let your mind look forward to the day ahead. At first you will probably notice the residue of habit. You will see yourself going through your usual routine at work, the everyday duties surrounding your family and other obligations. Then you are likely to experience residues from yesterday: the project you haven’t finished, the deadline coming up, an unresolved disagreement. Next you will likely experience the return of worries, whatever is hanging over your head at the moment.
Let all this move in and out of awareness as it wants to. Have the intention that you want this tangle of images and words to clear. Your ego is going to take care of all these habitual issues anyway. Keep looking at the day ahead, which is not a thing of images or thoughts since it is just being born. Get a feeling for it; try to meet it with your being.
After a few moments you’ll notice that your mind is less inclined to jump out of bed. You will drift in and out of a fuzzy awareness—this means you have dived a bit deeper than the surface layer of mental restlessness. (Don’t let yourself fall asleep again, however. When drowsiness arises, return to your intention of meeting the day.)
At this point you’ll find that, instead of images, your mind settles into a rhythm of feelings.