The human beings have for a long long time been concerned about transforming their minds.What were you looking for? Would it be too presumptuous of me to say that you were looking for help?
Is this man going to tell me something that will help me to change myself so that I will be a more creative and cooperative member of the human race? I would like to improve. If you are beginning to think that what you're doing is very important you need to take a holiday.
Seriousness has come essentially because of your self-importance - you hold yourself as an important person.I want you to see you are like a speck of dust in this existence; tomorrow morning if you disappear nothing will happen in this world everything will happen wonderfully well even if you are not there.
Every human being should be aware of this every moment of his life. It does not matter what the whole world says about you, it does not matter how significant the work you are doing, you must understand that tomorrow morning the world will go on fine without you whoever you may be, isn't it so?
If you constantly remind yourself of this you'll have no reason to be serious. A lot of so-called unhappiness is also a childish way of trying to change things by being as unhappy as you can about them because you believe if you're habitually and frequently unhappy you believe that it has a purpose. It's an underlying assumption, perhaps you wouldn't verbalize it in that way, but you believe that it works for you and of course the opposite is true because the more unhappy you are with something the more you are stuck in the situation.
You approach and you say "all these things are happening to me" and I get so many letters. So many letters from you about these things happening and why you can't do this and you're trying to do this and why is the mind so strong and all of these things. It's Nothing. It's Nothing - all of this.
Whatever is coming up in your mind it's rubbish, it's nothing, it has no contribution to anything. We have grown up too much with the junk food of this kind of culture of thinking too much about life; what we're going to do and where and it's nothing it has never contributed anything here. "it's better for you," "this is a better advantage," "you'll get this" it's rubbish - nothing, nothing, nothing.
"How can I save my marriage?" "What can I do for my children?" "I'm worried..." It's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. So we're always finding a way to be one-up and by the most incredibly subtle means.
So you see that you see? And you say "I realize I'm always doing that, now tell me how do I not do that?" I say "why do you want to know?" "Well, I'd be better that way." "Yeah, but why do you want to be better?" You see the reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren't.
Shall I put it like that?
Let us look at this thing from another point of view which you will at first think highly depressing. Let us suppose we can't do anything to change ourselves, suppose we're stuck with it. So here's the situation you see, the whole idea of self-improvement is a will-o'-the-wisp and a hoax. What happens, if you know beyond any shadow of the doubt that there is nothing you could do to be better - well that's kind of a relief, isn't it? You say "well now what will I do?"
See there's a little fidget that comes up because we're so used to making things better leave the world a better place than when you found it sort of thing. I want to be of service to other people and all these dreadfully hazy ideas. But seeing that there isn't really anything we can do to improve ourselves or to improve the world if we realize that that is so, it gives us a breather in the course of which we may simply watch what is going on, watch what happens.
Nobody ever does this you know and therefore it sounds terribly simple. It sounds so simple that it almost looks as if it isn't worth doing. But have you ever just watched?
Watch what is happening and watch what you are doing by way of reaction to it. Just watch it happen. So could we look at things in that way? Without, as it were, fixing labels and names and gradations and judgments on everything but watch what happens, watch what we do.
Now you see if you do that, you do at least give yourself a chance when you are in this way freed from busybodies and being out to improve everything, your own nature will begin to take care of itself because you're not getting in the way of yourself all the time.
