Know Thyself: A Snippet of Wisdom From My Vipassana Journey | #621

Welcome to Personal Development Mastery Podcast episode 621. After the last episode where I shared my experience of returning to a 10-day silent vipassana retreat for the second time, I felt drawn to do something a little different today. It is a snippet of wisdom coming from episode 267. 

It was when I first discovered vipassana meditation and I shared the teaching behind it. Why we react the way we do to life's difficulties, why the usual ways we try to find peace don't fully work, and what really does work. I felt this snippet deserved to stand on its own. 

So here it is, exactly as I shared it back then, in 2022. You see, we all seek harmony and peace in our lives, but from time to time we all experience agitation, irritation, the so-called miseries, and when we suffer from them, we don't just keep them to ourselves. More often than not, we spread them to others, to the people who are around us. 

So anyone who comes in contact with a person who is unhappy, who is agitated, who is miserable, also becomes, to some point, affected. And of course, we understand that this is not the right way to live our life. So the question there becomes, how can we remain with inner harmony? Not only for ourselves, but also for the other people around us. 

And in order to answer that question, we first have to know the basic reason why we're suffering in the first place. And we realize that when we start generating negativity in our mind, that's when we become unhappy and become agitated. But how do we generate that negativity? How do we start generating it? That's really the next question. 

And the answer to that is quite simple, really. We become unhappy or agitated when something happens or someone behaves in a way that we don't like, or when something that we want to happen fails to happen. So having defined that, we ask, how can we solve this problem? And one of the ways which is purely theoretical is to arrange one's life in such a way that nothing unwanted happens, that everything goes according to our desires. 

Of course, that's purely theoretical because it is impossible. No one can live their whole life without where everything happens according to her or his wishes. The real question is how we can stop having these automatic reactions when something unwanted happened to us or when something that we want to happen doesn't. 

How can we stop automatically reacting to those situations? And one solution that has been offered is as soon as you realize that you are reacting and you are generating fear, angers, negativity, then divert your attention to something else. For example, go out for a walk or take a cold shower or go for a run or start counting one, two, three, four, or repeat a mantra or something like that. And to some extent, this works because the attention is drawn away and to some extent, again, this negativity, whatever it is, anger or fear or whatever else, it subsides. 

However, this solution only works at the superficial level, at the conscious level, because when we divert our attention and do something different, what we really are doing is pushing the negativity into the subconscious. So the negativity remains there. And whenever another situation, another opportunity like that arises, this suppressed negativity, like a volcano, it erupts violently and suddenly, and it causes us to behave in the same way again and again and generate the same kind of negativity. 

So we realize that diverting our attention is not a real way to solve the problem. It's more like running away from it rather than actually solving it or dealing with it. So another solution that has been offered to this is to actually face the problem.

So whenever negativity arises or anger or fear, observe it. And this is a marvelous solution, but anyone who has ever tried it probably knows that it's not very practical. And the problem is that when, for example, anger arises, it very quickly overwhelms us and we go into it without even having a chance to notice it. 

And even if we are able to notice it and we start trying to sit down and observe it, the problem is that because anger is an abstract concept, instead of observing the actual emotion, we tend to start observing the stimulus, the external stimulus, the cause of it. So rather than making the negative emotion subside, when we do that, it actually multiplies it. However, someone who reached the ultimate truth found a real solution to this problem.

And the solution comes from the discovery that whenever this negativity or this impurity of the mind, as they call it, arises, there are two things that happen in the body physically, and they happen simultaneously. The first one is that the breath changes its natural rhythm. It loses its natural rhythm and becomes heavier. 

And that is something that, if we practice, it is easy to observe. And the second thing is that inside the body, a biochemical reaction happens, resulting in some sensation of one or the other type. So with proper training and practice, one can observe the respiration and the sensations that are happening in the body.

And this is the foundation of the Vipassana meditation, to start observing the breath and observing the body's sensations. And once we are able to do that, then the negative emotion quickly passes away. And the more one practices this technique, the quicker these negativities will dissolve. 

What many of us do is look at reality only outwards, externally. But there is also an inner aspect of reality. And when we are ignorant of that, we don't understand that the real cause of our suffering lies within. 

We always are blaming and trying to change the external reality. So Vipassana meditation is this technique of self-observation, of experiencing our own inner reality. And one of the wisest, most profound pieces of advice that has ever been given is, know thyself. 

And that's exactly what it means, observing this inner reality, our own inner reality. And when we experience that, then we learn to stop reacting automatically to negativities and gradually we become liberated from them and we can experience true happiness.