Silence, Self and Surrender

Live in total surrender and you will live happily ever after!

Yesterday, a well-meaning friend suggested that we try a new form of Vaastu that helps release positive energy in a living space. His point: Vaani and I badly need that positive energy to bounce back in our Life and business. While I don’t deny that we need to bounce back in business, we can’t quite relate, anymore, to any of the methods that are on offer. Not that we didn’t try them before. We did. We wore rings and stones on our fingers, we tried foo dogs and laughing Buddhas and fountains and gem trees, we tried “freeing” up the north-east corner of our home and almost every method that’s available in the public domain. To be sure, we still consult astrology and use it like a dashboard. Even so, with due respect to all the sciences that promise “better living”, I can, through my own personal experience, learnt that the only science that works for intelligent living is the science of silence, Self and surrender.

Simply, when you embrace silence, you understand your true nature, your true Self, and through that understanding you learn to let go and surrender to Life.

I have come to realize that this is the best way to live. Don’t protest any situation. Don’t berate yourself. Don’t be angry, guilty, fearful or anxious. Just accept what is, work to your best ability on changing what is if you don’t like it, and surrender to Life’s ways, to its flow. This is a discipline – like a fitness regimen or a diet or a manufacturing process. You learn to perfect it over time. And you start by being silent for a certain period of time daily – usually 20 minutes is a good start for beginners. Slowly increase it to an hour. During your silence period, you remain silent; don’t try to silence the environment, you remain silent! With diligent practice of daily silence periods, you will awaken to this truth that your trying to control your Life is meaningless drama. You will know that whatever is happening to you is beyond your control and is happening in spite of you and never because of you. Then you will realize that total surrender – saranagati as the scriptures teach us – is what intelligent living is all about!  

Surrender does not mean inaction. It only means that you act knowing that the outcome is not in your control. Not in your hands. So you act, to the best of your ability, and leave the outcome to Life – accepting whatever is! Then you are forever soaking in positivity. You are always happy no matter what circumstances you are placed in. You don’t need any crutches – Vaastu, Feng Shui, superstitions, astrology, gemology – to live. To live well, to live happily, you only need to be silent for some time daily, you will then know who you really are and will realize the value of total surrender!

To not fight petty battles is an intelligent choice

Sometimes the best way to respond to a situation is not to respond at all – not to say anything.   

A friend of mine was recently sacked by his organization. He is yet another old hand in that organization who has been booted out in the last few months. He posted a goodbye message on Facebook where he had many people offering him their sympathies for the ungraceful manner in which his exit was happening. He simply thanked all of them saying, “There are times when you must remain silent and simply move on.”

I liked my friend’s approach to his crisis situation. Offline he told me that indeed he was hurt with the manner in which his 30-year, meritorious, service record in the company was overlooked by the new management. But he explained, “What is the point in talking sense to people who have no ethics and no scruples? There are only two ways I can respond to them – either accept their golden handshake or fight their action in court. I decided to take the first approach. That way, I can be at peace and work on rehabilitating myself elsewhere.”

To not fight a situation or a scheming detractor does not necessarily mean cowardice. It means you have chosen not to expend your precious energy on a wasted cause. Silence is a very strong weapon that most people don’t even realize they have in their arsenal, let alone them knowing that they can deploy it. To not fight a petty battle is an intelligent choice. To remain silent in the face of provocation is also often the best form of aggression.   

Unless we know when we worry, we will never be able to quit worrying.

The key to being liberated from worry is to be aware. Being aware requires only being. Just being. Nothing else.

There’s a perception, as a follower of this Blog commented the other day, that simply being is tough. No, it is not.

Examine yourself. Most of the time you worry without even applying your mind. It is a mechanical affair going on in your head. What will happen to this? Or that? Will I get what I want? Will my child be happy? Will my spouse survive? What if something terrible happens and what I want done is not accomplished? It is an incessant chatter. A cacophony in your head. And one worry sparks off another and another. Often times, this becomes uncontrollable. And you seek remedy. Someone tells you to lean towards meditation. Someone else tells you to propitiate the Gods. Someone again tells you to meet an astrologer or soothsayer or a tantric. Why? Because your mind refuses to listen to you.

Kabir, the 16^th Century, weaver-poet, says this so beautifully in his couplet!

“Maala To Kar Mein Phire,

Jeebh Phire Mukh Mahin

Manua To Chahun Dish Phire,

Yeh To Simran Nahin”

Translation

The rosary rotating by the hand,

the tongue twisting in the mouth,

With the mind wandering everywhere, this isn't meditation

(counting the rosary, repeating mantras, if the mind is traveling - this is not meditation)

Meaning: Control the mind, not the beads or the words.

That ability to control the mind will come only from your awareness. Awareness can be inspired in you by practicing silence.

Spend an hour being silent every day. Just being. Read a passage. Write your thoughts in your personal journal. Do whatever you want, but remain silent and refuse to attend to anything that calls for you to disengage from what you plan to do in that hour. Don’t sleep. Don’t speak. Your hour of silence can make you super productive and aware during the other 23 hours in the day! So, it is good return on investment. This is the practice of ‘mouna’.

To be sure, it will not eradicate worry. Worry will arise, but your awareness will cut off that flow of thought. It will arrest the worry in its tracks. And help you come back to focusing on whatever you are doing in the moment. Practicing ‘mouna’ or silence periods bring you to appreciate the power of now! Remember, there is precious little you can do about what you worry about by simply worrying! You can either act on a situation and succeed, or act on a situation and if you fail, accept that outcome. Or just leave the situation to Life to sort things out over time. Why worry? And then, worse, why worry about your worrying? The bottomline is don’t worry about worrying. Focus on where that worry germinates, sprouts, takes root. Go to that point and stem the flow of worry.

‘Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves’

Take care of yourself. Help heal yourself.

When we injure ourselves, say a nick while shaving or a cut while chopping vegetables, the body heals itself. If there is a deeper injury, with some care, we are back on the road. The truth is when the body is affected, it receives attention. The truth also is we injure our minds all the time but we don't give it the care it needs to heal. Every angry thought, every remorseful thought, in fact every thought that is not centered around love, peace and joy, is injurious. Now, ask yourself, how many such thoughts on love, peace and joy, do you think out of the 60,000 thoughts that occur to you each day? Unlikely that we even think loving, peaceful thoughts for weeks on end!! Consider therefore how battered the mind must be and how much healing needs to happen for it to be 'normal' again. Unless we heal from within we cannot expect our lives to become meaningful.

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Mouna', the practice of silence periods, is the best way to heal our minds, to help it develop focus, faith and patience. The 13th Century Persian poet Rumi couldn't have said it better: "In silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves." Stop weaving here means to stop worrying, to stop wanting to control your Life, to stop the continuous chatter in your head; it means to pause and reflect. So, to make your life beautiful, happy and prosperous, stop battering your mind; heal it by anchoring in silence!

Allow Life to slip into you and touch your soul

Sometimes, it is best not to do anything. No agendas. No meetings. Just hang around. Goof off.

We are so used to a frenetic pace of working that when Life slows down we think something’s wrong. And remain keyed up about the slowness of things. Vacation times such as this season are opportunities to learn the art of doing nothing. Doing nothing here clearly means “not having any business to transact, or schedules to worry about”. But it doesn’t mean being unproductive. In fact, you can learn so much about Life without having to rush through it. You don’t even need to travel. You don’t need a resort. Even if you stay at home this season, choose to do what you would normally not have the time to do. Just examine your street from your window. Watch people passing by. Hear the birds. Listen to the music from the noise vehicles passing by make. Feel the air in your lungs. Spend some time on the pavement. Watch Life playing out in front of you. You will evolve and awaken more than you would while attending a Vipassana Program or a Silent Retreat. You will heal.

A Zen proverb says, “Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” So, allow Life to slip into you, touch your soul and show you a glimpse of bliss. If you like it, do more of doing nothing. If you don’t, well, it will be so simple__all you need to do is to rush back to rushing!

You can brave any storm in Life if you find its epicenter – which is within you!

Life’s full of storms. Some are personal __ health-related or relationship-focused. You or someone you know is battling a deadly ailment or someone walked out on you, leaving you numb, alone and suffering. Some are professional __ your career just doesn’t seem to settle down, you get laid off or your business keeps making losses leaving you without clients, without cash and with a mountain of losses and debt. You lose someone dear. And you feel you can’t go on in Life. A friend once recounted how he felt when his father died suddenly, when he was barely 19. “It was like the roof over your head being blown away by a raging storm and you are there, alone, drenched to the bone, cold, lonely and scared!” he described.

Maybe you too have felt this way. This feeling invariably leads to anxiety and hopelessness and agitation. You desperately want the reality to change__and NOW! But why? Because you feel you will be destroyed, annihilated.

That’s such a naïve perspective. Let us understand how storms work. In the eye of the storm, the epicenter of a cyclone, there is no destruction. Because there is no chaos. There’s only peace. And the strength of a storm emanates from its core. The epicenter of the storm is also its power center. This is science. Apply the same logic to Life’s storms also. If things are happening around you__you lose a job, your health suffers, a relation dies, you lose money__know that they are not happening to you. You are not your job, you are not your body (and therefore not your health!), you are not losing a relation__you are merely losing the body in which the soul you related to was housed, you are not your money! At the core, you have the opportunity to be peaceful and feel empowered instead of feeling helpless. You are indestructible. So, why flap your wings and kick your feet in distress?

More often than not, we are operating on the surface of Life. The waves are on the surface and on the periphery of the ocean. They are never in the ocean. All that we are experience in today’s world, in this lifetime of running the rat race__protecting our incomes, securing our deposits, saving to invest in real estate and worrying endlessly about our children__are all surface level activities. To find peace__and our true selves__we must brave the waves, we must go beneath__and past__Life’s storms. Dive into the storm. Go deep. Drop anchor by practicing silence periods daily. ‘Mouna’ or the practice of silence periods will take you to your center, and to the real you. And the Life storm you find yourself in the middle of will blow over, leaving you unscathed, stronger, wiser, saner__and awakened. 

The best way to win an argument is to not speak at all

In the face of all provocation, silence is the best weapon.

Silence is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of an astute evolution, absolute mastery and a scientific temperament. But most of us think just the opposite is true. We want to react to every provocation, respond to each impulse and make more noises__that are seen and heard__than take concrete action  on situations that matter greatly to us. Speech, rhetoric and a visible expression of intent seem to be more palatable, more in demand, than a silent resolve and resolute action.

Yet it is those who make no noises that work the hardest and deliver the most. Look around you. In your family, at work, in society. All that is being accomplished is by those that put their heads down than those that shoot off their mouths. Amongst other species too, the ants are the ones that get the most done, making no noise whatsoever. Over the years, I too have transformed from being ‘visible, expressive and overtly charged’ in any situation to now being a ‘silent yet focused soldier’. I rue a conversation__no, it was a monologue, with me alone speaking!__that I once had with my dad years ago, as much as I remain inspired by it. I was angry with my dad for being a ‘silent spectator’ to the goings-on in the family and called him over to ‘speak my mind’. I spoke animatedly, taunting him, accusing him of inaction and ineptitude. I even recall my own words vividly: “Dad, you are making us all victims because of your godforsaken silence”. My dad, predictably, remained silent and refused to respond to my charges or provocations! Today, somewhere in the third quarter of my Life, I hold that meeting with my dad as a beacon, a shining light, of living intelligently. Over the same years, since that monologue, I have seen my dad handle many a Life storm, and he is still handling one at the moment, with silence as his Brahmastra (the sacred mythological all-powerful weapon that can wipe out all evil). I have learnt from his silence.

Silence, therefore, is not a sign of giving in or giving up. It is action in its purest, all-pervasive form. Silence is our native state. The entire Universe is cloaked in silence. And this is from where all energy manifests. So, by choosing to be silent in any situation__in public debates, in mud-slinging campaigns, in the face of allegations and accusations, amidst rabid, verbose, flaky points of view__you are demonstrating enormous will and are conserving precious energy to deploy into action than dissipate it in unnecessary word-fare. Here’s what Greek philosopher Xenocrates (396~314 BC) confessed to: “I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.” When you are silent, you connect with your deeper Self, your real Self. That’s where all the energy that created you lies. When you tap into that energy and harness it, all the actions you pursue will yield results and ensure the outcomes you want. The best way to win any battle is not to fight at all. The best way to win an argument is to not speak at all__but to always and only act on what you believe in.

Anchoring in Silence is a matter of Practice

Silence leads you to peace. Once you touch peace, you will be transformed.

This is the same peace that you seek but you don't get to it because you are on the wrong road. The road that you often take has the following milestones: Better job, better pay; work harder so you can retain this job better or get a better job, so that there can be better pay, and then you work harder and harder hoping things will get better and better. Nothing wrong with this road. Except that you will spend an awful amount of time just hoping things will get better and that one fine day you will find peace. On the other hand, when you practice silence, you WILL find peace. Peace WILL lead you to the right priorities and those WILL lead you to success, happiness and more peace. Silence heals you. It uses peace as a mold to make you who you are totally capable of.

Just like you learnt your two tables as a child, just like you learnt to ride a bicycle, just like you learnt to use a fork and knife, you can learn to be silent. Anchoring in silence is not a matter of Faith, it is about Practice.

‘Nirvana’ Demystified

Is it possible to do nothing? Doesn’t doing nothing amount to inaction? So, when you don’t act, when you don’t do what you must, aren’t you failing in your duty? And if there’s nothing to do, nothing to achieve, what’s the purpose of Life?

Any seeker will encounter these questions. They are perfectly normal, logical questions. The answers to these have to be understood at two levels: at the spiritual, inner awareness, level and at the everyday action, practical, level.

First, let’s view it from an inner awareness angle. Rinzai, the famous Chinese mystic, considered a Master in Zen Buddhism, has said famously: “Sit silently, doing nothing, and the grass grows by itself.” By this Rinzai does not mean you should do nothing forever. He calls for a deeper level of observation – every day. Everyone’s in a tearing hurry to get things done. There are the dishes to be done, groceries to be fetched, the kids to be dropped and picked up, meetings to go to, deadlines to be met, targets to be achieved, bills to be paid, mortgage dues to be settled….and on and on…you go. From one commitment to another. From one small crisis to another. Hours, days, weeks and often months have gone by rushing until you realize that you need a break. Phew! But a break has come to signify again accomplishing a set of things you always wanted done. Go to the spa, change the upholstery, get the air-conditioners serviced or have the whole house re-painted! And just in case you managed a vacation, it is always about “seeing” whatever you can in the “limited” time that you have. Again it’s a rushing of a different kind. Rinzai says, drop everything, and sit silently. Just observe. See how Life goes on. Be silent. Thoughts will come and go. Let them. Bring your attention back to your present – to the now. You can sit in your balcony and see the crowded street below or the clear blue sky above or you can go to the park or you can go to the beach or even to mall. Go somewhere. But you be silent. You be a witness. Then, says Rinzai, you will see the beauty of how nature works on its own.

A friend had posted this status message last evening on his facebook wall: “The pigeons who made a home of my sit out have flown away with their babies. It was interesting to watch how the momma pigeon and her boyfriend cajoled the younger ones to fly as they started growing. In the last four days they got the first of the baby pigeons flying while the second one preferred the comfort of the nest behind my flower pot. Today the mom-pop combo persuaded the other one to fly too. It was a heart-warming experience to see those babies born in my backyard flying”. This is what sitting silently and doing nothing can help you with. It will help you experience the magic and beauty of Life. It is through being silent that you realize what inner peace is. It is through inner peace that you become aware of the true nature of Life. That Life goes on not because of you, but in spite of you. When you have realized this, then everyday living becomes stress-free and, in fact, meaningful!

Next, at a practical level,  you must never abdicate your responsibilities. You have to continue doing what you are doing. You may have a job, you may have a business, you may just be a home maker, you may be a student – whoever you are and whatever you have to do, keep doing it. If you don’t like what you are doing, change it. Do something else. Philosophy and spirituality cannot pay your bills. You have to earn an income. But don’t earn to pay your bills. Earn from what gives you joy. Then you won’t think of your Life as a drudgery. And if someone’s earning for you, do something with your time that makes you joyful. Don’t sit and complain about Life and say you are bored. So, from an everyday action point of view, keep doing whatever you must do. Just don’t complain. Don’t hanker for results. This is what sitting silently for a while each day can help you understand.

When you combine spiritual practice and everyday living, then you learn to live intelligently. Completely at peace with yourself and your immediate world. In this zone, you become the most productive and whatever you do works out just great. And whatever you need, the Universe always provides you with. Because your rhythm’s in harmony with the Universe’s.

This is the state that the Buddha called ‘nirvana’. ‘nirvana’ is often misunderstood as enlightenment, and worse, as enlightenment that’s got under a tree. ‘nirvana’ is downright simple, easy to attain, anywhere, anytime, provided you are ready, you are tuned in!  In Sanskrit, ‘nirvana’ literally means ‘blown out’ as in a candle. “Just as the candle ceases,” the Buddha says, “I will cease.” So, ‘nirvana’ does not really mean ‘moksha’ or liberation, it means a cessation. When a candle ceases to burn, the flame disappears, but it is still there in the cosmos. Because nothing can disappear from the cosmos. Similarly, the metaphor of the extinguished flame means that your desires have ceased to be. So ‘nirvana’ is the state where all desires cede. When all desires are extinguished or expunged, there can be no agony, nothing to worry about, nothing to grieve over. In such a state, what remains is just you, doing your daily bit diligently, often sitting silently, and watching the grass growing!

Ridding yourself of comparisons and envy

Comparing yourself with others is what ruins your inner peace. Drop all comparisons. You are unique. Just as everyone else is.  

A participant at one of my workshops recently asked me, “How do you not envy someone who has everything that you don’t?”

His question was as profound as it was candid. To compare, and often times, even subconsciously, feel jealous of someone is a normal human quality. But if you are aware, you will find that jealousy does not help in any manner. In fact, it ruins your inner peace. It is only through your awareness that you can drop comparisons and stop feeling jealous of someone!

I remember reading a story. A man was sitting peacefully on a mountain top. He was taking in the scenery. It was a beautiful morning. He had had a very rough time in the past few weeks. So, he had decided to trek up the mountain just to get some quiet time to himself. His girlfriend had deserted him. And he had been heart-broken over that incident. But coming here, up the mountain, had helped him greatly. He must have been sitting there for over four hours. And he did not once think about his ex-girlfriend. He did not feel anger or grief. He was able to see how beautiful Life was – just as it was, despite whatever he was going through. Around noon, a young couple arrived at the mountain top. They were happy to be with each other. The man saw this couple and his thoughts went back to his girlfriend and he started pining for her first. Then he was soon angry with her. And in some time, he was jealous of this other man for being able to have a girlfriend when he did not have one himself! The scenery and nature’s pristine beauty did not matter to him anymore. He was angry with Life. He left the place in a huff.

This story is very relevant. For it helps us understand the sequence of events that lead us to feeling miserable about any situation in Life. When the man was “present” in the moment, when he was taking in the scenery, he had no problems. For several hours he had no problems, no thoughts about his past. But the moment he allowed thoughts of his past, of his ex-girlfriend to creep in, he first started feeling uncomfortable, then angry and finally, miserable. This is the way the mind leads you to misery. When you are in the Now, when you are present in the moment, it is actually the state of no-mind. This is when all you are doing is that you are engaged in whatever is happening. If you are watching a movie, you are “in” it. If you are singing, you “are” the song. If you are reading a book, you “are” the book. There’s no past. There’s no future. There’s just you – in the Now!

The mind comes into play only when your attention wavers. Now awareness cannot stop your attention from wavering. But awareness can help you rein in your mind and bring your focus into the present moment. How do you build a higher level of awareness in you? Simple – by constantly training the mind to not interfere with the present. The mind thrives in debilitating emotions like guilt, grief, anger and worry – in the past or in the future. It is powerless in the present. To be sure, you too can train your mind through daily practices like meditation or mouna (observing silence periods).

So, don’t worry about your tendency to compare yourself with others or feel jealous of them. Those are the effects. Go to what’s causing the effect. Which is the mind. Work on training your mind. The more you train to not let your attention to waver, the more you will be present in the moment. And as long as you are present, no painful past or anxious future, can ever touch you. When you reach this state, through repeated practice, your Life will be blissful. Untouched by the scourge of comparison and envy!

Silence is a great option

Walking away from a futile, distasteful argument, which is unnecessary in the first place, is not cowardice. It is intelligence.

Sometimes, being silent, and walking away, is the best response. People trying to prove each other wrong, which is what arguments are all about, leaves no one any better. Let’s remember that people do things their way only because they feel what they are doing is right. To an observer, or to someone who is at the receiving end of any action, it may well be possible that the action is questionable or inappropriate. When an argument follows, reviewing the merits of the action(s), it will always be a case of who was right than what was right. So, in all such contexts, when you find yourself in the midst  of such an unwelcome, pointless debate, exercise your option to not say or do anything. Just let things be. Don’t even opinionate in your mind. Don’t even console yourself or justify your actions. Just choose to be silent. And that is not an act of cowardice.

This does not mean you must not fight for what is right. It does not mean either that you must not make your point strongly. What it means is that if belaboring what is evident and must be understood upfront is going to cause people to experience each other badly, then such a reaffirmation or reiteration is futile. Silence is a great option. Try using it! It always ends the spiral of negativity and suspends hostilities even if it immediately does not deliver a resolution.

                                                                      

Silence can help you live a better Life!

Silence brings you to yourself.

 

In the midst of a rushed day, try being silent. Don’t try to silence the environment. You just be silent. Peel off the sounds around you. Remind your mind that you cannot hear the sound that’s coming to you. As you peel off each sound you will attain the point of ‘shunya’ or nothingness. It is like peeling off layer after layer of an onion. What you are left with is nothing. Similarly silence can take you to nothingness. When there’s no worry, no grief, no anxiety, no guilt, no great, visible high-energy fist-thumping joy, when there’s no exulting, when there’s no unwanted thought, there’s simply you, floating in nothingness.

 It is in this sphere of silence, in nothingness that you will find the reason for your creation, the meaning to your Life. You will see how beautiful Life can be without all the mental chatter that goes on in your mind. You will then see the oneness is all creation and find that all your suffering is about things so transient, so impermanent.

The mind, like the body, can be trained. But the mind, like the body, will resist the training. It will fight you. But you have to be dogged. When you anchor in silence, having silenced and overpowered your mind, you will see that Life is really lived ONLY in the present. No matter what your circumstance, you will be blissful living in the now!   

I chose the practice of silence during the most anguishing period of my Life. 10 years ago, I had no clue what was hitting us. Our business was falling apart. So were our lives. When I was advised to be silent, I laughed at the suggestion. I thought it was an act of cowardice. How can you be inactive and pretend to be unaffected by your crisis? But after a myriad attempts to fix things I chose to grudgingly accept our reality and began to practice daily silence periods. The effect was magical. It took me several attempts and over 90 days to perfect the art of remaining silent. But eventually I managed to conquer all the hurdles that came my way. Today, our problems remain aplenty. But my ability to deal with them has increased phenomenally.

You too can benefit immensely. Just start with being silent. For some time daily __ maybe an hour. Investing an hour daily can help you get on top of the remaining 23 hours! Makes good business sense, doesn’t it? If you think it does, try it! Feel the magic of silence in your own unique, special way!

Speak Freely .... after the three Gateways have been crossed!

In Life__in a marriage, in business, at work, in everyday living__never say anything that you cannot take back; especially so, if it doesn’t concern you!  

Words are easy to spill. And so very difficult to gather back again. And words come over us easily too. Most people who make baseless statements about others, in the end, are as much affected as the victims of their verbal assaults are.

In social circles and in business workplaces, such loose talk is called gossip, at its most banal level, or called politics in its vicious avatar! Either way, the damage it causes to the fabric of relationships is the same __ it is immense! Because when you gossip or indulge in politicking, it is virtually condemnation without trial of the subject(s). In a context involving two people too, it causes irreparable damage. For instance, in a fit of rage, however justified your reasons may be, if you scream at your companion, “I wonder why I even met you in my Life in the first place?”, then, consider that relationship as over. Words so spoken maime the soul. They cannot be taken back even if you spent a lifetime apologizing. You may be forgiven, eventually, but the memories of the words you spoke will never be forgotten.

There’s a way to check such, perhaps even unintentional, indiscriminate and irresponsible use of words. Spiritual thinker and my Guru Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999) advises us to remember the Sufi principle of the “three Gateways of speech”.

The Sufis advise us to speak only after we have managed to pass through three Gateways, or checkpoints, first:

1.  At the first Gateway we ask ourselves, “Are these words true?”. If yes, we let our words move to the next Gateway.

2.  At the second Gateway we ask ourselves, “Are these words necessary?” If they are, we let our words move to the final Gateway. If not send those words back without uttering them!

3.  At the third Gateway, we ask, finally, “Are they kind?”. If yes, speak them. If not, make those words kind and then speak them.

Every encounter or event in Life is an opportunity to invite ourselves or be tricked or provoked into saying something. At times it is an opinion we like to share. Or an advice that we insist on giving. Or a judgment that we wish to pronounce. Or we want to flatter someone to get something in return. Or we simply say something for the sake of making our presence felt.

There could be a zillion more scenarios tempting you to speak. To throw words out, mindlessly, meaninglessly, unsolicited at most times, solicited too at some times. It is pertinent to remember that you don’t have to speak every single time there’s an opportunity or a provocation though. And the few times you must really speak, say it after you have applied the Sufi Gateways Test.

Everybody on the planet is a sinner. Everyone’s made mistakes and is making newer ones all the time. There really are no saints. Gossiping is a tendency to compare one’s own follies with those of others and say that I am less defective, a lesser sinner. It’s a free ego massage at the expense of someone who is naïve or meek or, hopefully, too thick-skinned. A person, who is at the butt of all the loose talk, but who’s seen Life and understands its true nature will choose silence and will never hit back with the same weapon__which is gossip__because she or he understands the futility in such a rejoinder. If the person, on the other hand, is sensitive or aggressive or both, she or he will fight back. She or he will grieve, but will not go down without a fight. Either way, using words aimlessly, gossiping, opining, passing judgment, is sure to mark  the end of what could have been beautiful relationships.

The next time you are beginning to say something, that doesn’t concern you directly, remember what someone has so wisely said, “Words can make a deeper scar than silence can heal.”