You can relax now

Filed under Notes on 3. March 2007 »

During one of his later talks, J. Krishnamurti said to his audience, some of whom had been following him for over a decade and not yet grasped the essence of his teaching: “You want to know my secret? I don’t mind what happens.”

Simple as that. Not minding what happens.

When you don’t mind what happens, we could say that you have seen that nothing can change except the surface layer of your experience. Things may go well or go wrong, according to the judgment of the world, but none of it can really affect you; in other words, none of it has the power to disturb your peace. Not minding what happens is to have gone beyond the world, a state of being in the world but not of it as the saying goes.

You can still prefer certain things and attempt to make situations work out, but you will have a deep knowing that none of it really matters. It is a game of form, something to be honored and played with, but the outcome of which matters only in a relative sense. In the same way as you can experience a videogame: it does matter whether or not your character gets injured or killed, but not absolutely. You enjoy playing, but what happens in the game doesn’t effect you all that deeply.

Nothing important can happen in the future, because all that is important has always been and always will be. Nothing can happen in the future that makes you more than you are right now, and neither can anything happen in the future that makes you less than you are now.

Nothing can be added, and nothing can be taken away. When you realize this, you will no longer mind what happens.

Tags: pointers , surrender

Comments:

#1 » Xavier Shay Mar 4, 18:45

That is a beautiful articulation of my approach to life.

Trackback: http://blog.rhnh.net/2007/3/5/it-doesn-t-matter

#2 » Demk Mar 6, 05:52

I’ve found that simply saying yes to every life circumstance, feeling, sensation, thought, etc. is a great way of training yourself to accept. I’ve really got the idea of resistance recently and I had an epiphany where it really sank in. I laughed out loud (and continued chuckling for about an hour) when I realised how ridiculous it is that we actually resist what happens and we think that our resistance will change things.

I was wondering recently about what we can actually do, moment to moment, to increase our consciousness and it seems to me that the only real choice we ever have is to say yes or no to our experiences. We can choose to be aware and present or we can give in to the habitual urge to avoid reality. What do you think of this? What choices do we actually have other than to be as conscious as we can be at any given moment?

#3 » Helgi Mar 8, 14:10

Xavier: Yes, it’s a great realization to make that distinction between life and your life situation, that what happens doesn’t have anything to do with your inner state. And also, when you don’t mind what happens things seem to just work better all of a sudden.

Keith: This is so true — and the beautiful thing is that when reality becomes this simple, so simple that everything just is as it is and couldn’t be otherwise, the ego is made redundant.

Have you read Byron Katie’s new book, A Thousand Names for Joy? It’s the kind of book that would make most people cringe — basically it’s just her talking about how wonderful reality is, and how she experiences everyday life. Completely aligned with what is.

Highly recommended, especially the audiobook version.

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Everyday Wonderland is a weblog on the subject of spiritual awakening, creativity, enthusiasm, inspiration, and generally everything having to do with the higher levels of human consciousness. The author is Helgi Páll Einarsson, 24 years old and currently living in Iceland. He likes books in the morning, making things, and taking long walks.