Why do We Self Sabotage Ourselves?

Why do We Self Sabotage Ourselves?

Today I’d like to talk about a subject that frequently rests under the title of “Self Sabotage.” People frequently approach me in private sessions with me, private consultations, and want to know, “Why do I do this? Why do I engage in something which, either knowingly or unknowingly, seems to sabotage my speed of forward progress?”

And as you, my listeners, can imagine, this is a very large topic.

And first of all, I’d like to say to anyone who has self-diagnosed that they’re self sabotaging, welcome to the human race. This is, in fact, not a trend that is in any way unique or a unique pathology. Pathological condition means a disease state.

It appears to be, in fact, the defining behavior of the process of evolution. Identifying the ways in which, inadvertently and even knowingly, we are undermining our own progress. And then learning how to minimize, learning how to reduce or avoid the temptation to do this is a lifelong process, and it is, in fact, the only thing that’s going on.

Identification of ways in which I am, knowingly or unknowingly, bringing a delay to my realization that I am one with the Universe. I am Totality.

So let’s reverse engineer this. Let’s look at the most elevated consciousness state known. That elevated consciousness state has a name, Unity Consciousness.

There are seven states of consciousness. From the waking state… the waking state is a very interesting state. It has a vast variety of subsets of states. You can be in a good mood in the waking state of consciousness. You can be in a bad mood in the waking state of consciousness.

[03:32] Mood Changes

You can be in an indifferent mood in the waking state of consciousness. You can change moods many, many times, in a period of an hour or two, in the waking state of consciousness.

There’s the dream state of consciousness, in which, though what you’re experiencing at the time of a dream appears to be reality. You can’t have any shared experience in a dream. No two dreamers dreaming, even in the same room at the same time, are having the same dream.

So in waking state, we can find a few other members of civilization who are having a modicum of experience the same as ours.

If you have seasonally affective disorder, very conveniently, the acronym for that is SAD, or sad, meaning that you are affected by what some people might consider gloomy, cloudy, overcast, or rainy weather.

And you get into a gloomy, cloudy, overcast, rainy mood each time the weather changes like that. You may find others who agree with you that a cloudy day is a gloomy day. A cloudy day is a rainy day, an appropriate day for perhaps playing to yourself some kind of music to cry to.

[05:03] Breaking Free from the Habit of Constant Mental Activity

I remember once when my master Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was traveling the world, and I was traveling with him, and he gave an introductory talk on all of the benefits of practicing his meditation technique, which he had learned from his master, but he had, on this particular occasion, been emphasizing the bliss that could come from regular delving deeply into the inner states of consciousness, where our individuality meets our cosmic status.

There’s a layer, which is, in Sanskrit, referred to as Ananda, and Ananda means supreme, inner contentedness. We call it bliss, but we have to take care that we don’t confuse that bliss with blissfulness, which might mean an ecstatic state of excitation.

This is a supreme contented state where the mind has reached such a level of contentedness that it cannot conceive of anything better than what currently it’s experiencing. And consequently, the mind lets go of its inveterate habit of thinking all the time.

 If you consider what thinking is about, thinking is about, “How can I have an experience that’s better than this?” Whatever state I’m in at the moment. If I’m in a state of absolute contentedness, if that’s what this is, then I’m not going to think much.

I’ll fall mute in my mind because the experience that I’m having is so intrinsically contented that I can’t conceive of there being another state outside of this that is better than this.

[07:08] The Endless Quest for Something Better

But frequently, we find ourselves even in relatively good environments… Perhaps you have a full stomach from some delicious gourmet food. Perhaps you’re surrounded by good company, lively, intelligent, and attentive.

Perhaps you are seated in a very comfortable seat, terribly comfortable, and yet the mind could come up with a thought, as a friend goes off to the bathroom and excuses themself from the table for a moment, “I wonder if there’s anything on my iPhone that is more interesting than this.” And so the thought comes to pick up the iPhone and have a look.

“I wonder if there might be a position I could assume that is any more comfortable than this.” This being seated in a very comfortable chair, but one might naturally have the thought, “I wonder if lying down would be better, but there doesn’t seem to be any place to lie down around here.”

And so a thought might come about making arrangements to get horizontal as soon as social etiquette makes it permissible to do so. Or perhaps the demands on one and expectations one has from others, which typically we would call work.

“Will work allow me to get horizontal? Will social etiquette allow me to get horizontal? Will my natural responsibility allow me to get horizontal?”

We can see from this that the mind will start generating lots of thoughts if one is not experiencing, in fact, absolute contentedness, absolute contentedness.

So, in the waking state, absolute contentedness doesn’t exist. There’s always some question about, “Could there be something better?” Could there be something better?

[09:16] Dreams as Stress Release

And the dream state, typically, our dreams are filled with content that’s bubbling up as stresses are unwinding in our physiology and provoking our brain into near wakefulness.

But our brain has a trick. In order to stop us from waking up, it will take some of the material that’s coming from the release of stress, and it will turn some of that material into a story. And typically, the story is a story of some kind of a quest.

You’re trying to get a thing done, and the thing just can’t quite get done. Because if it does get done, you’ll arrive at a level of satisfaction where that story, that dream, comes to an end, and the provocations of stress release might wake you up. But your brain wants you to stay asleep, and so it continues on with the story and on with the story.

The feeling of faint frustration or very strong frustration are some of the most frequent content identifiers in a dream. Whatever all the rest of the content is about, contextually, dreams typically are almost always about feelings of frustration.

“I can’t quite get to the place I need to go. There’s somebody lost that I’m trying to find. There’s a thing I’m trying to do, and I can’t quite get it done,” and so on and so forth. Dreaming consciousness.

And if on the other side of a wall in an apartment different to yours, or a house different to yours, there’s another dreamer dreaming away at the same time as you, let me assure you, you’re not having a shared experience.

[11:02] Dreams and Realities

Each of you, meeting for coffee the next morning, sharing your experience of your dream, which by the way is a champion feat. Being able to tolerate listening to someone else’s dream is one of those champion feats of the human race. And to demonstrate that we might even be vaguely interested in what somebody else is dreaming.

Because. In order to really be fascinated by someone else’s dream, you kind of had to be there, and you weren’t there. If you’re the person listening to the other person’s dream, you’re simply being told what their dream was.

And having that degree of politeness that you’re able to actually get through listening to another person’s entire dream is one of the proofs that the human race is, in fact, a race of high evolution, that we have that degree of politeness.

Anyway, one of the things we discover very quickly, if we’re brave enough to ask somebody what their dream was, after having told ours is that their dream, though had at the same time as ours, perhaps on the other side of a, of a wall separating us, that they were dreaming something utterly different to what we were dreaming.

So, no shared experience in the dreaming state of consciousness.

And then the sleep state of consciousness. Well, no experiencer, no subject, no self, no I, and no object. If there’s no subject, if there’s no Knower, or there’s no Known in sleep consciousness, there’s no shared experience in dream consciousness — there’s no shared experience, though there is experience.

[12:48] Dreaming Within Dreams

And waking state of consciousness, there may be a modicum of experience from time to time as far as we know. If you say, “I love you,” to somebody, and they look happy, and they say, “I love you too,” then we like to convince ourselves of the idea that they’re having exactly the same experience that we’re having.

But one of the misfortunes of the world of love is that we don’t actually know, or if they’re actually experiencing the same thing as us, when we use the four-letter word love.

So those three consciousness states and they rotate around and round and round and round. Waking state is a product of how well you slept and how well you dreamt. If you deprive somebody of dream state, then within a matter of days, they start experiencing dreams during the waking state, a kind of psychosis caused by dream deprivation.

If you deprive somebody of the sleep state, then the body will rapidly go into states of extreme fatigue and a difficulty to continue being healthy. Within about three days of sleep deprivation, bodily systems will begin to break down.

If you deprive somebody of the waking state, keep them asleep and let them dream, but just don’t let them wake up by giving them a drug, then atrophy and gross bodily suffering will follow suit very quickly, and neurological damage, brain damage, will also be a product of that.

[14:29] The Relationship Between Consciousness and Suffering

Deprivation of any consciousness state causes suffering, and yet, knowing that, regularly we deprive ourselves of very useful states of consciousness. We can’t stay alert and clear in our head unless we sleep. And during sleep, we have to dream in order for the sleep to be productive of that purification and normalization process.

But I have a television program that’s streaming. And I’ve been waiting for a year for it to come back online after they finished with season one and they’re starting season two. And I’m about to do this thing which everybody talks about, binge-watching.

And I know that day person, that’s tomorrow, the person I’ll be when I wake up, is not going to like what night person did to day person. Night person is the one who’s just about to allow episode one of season two to flick into episode two of season two, which will take you until one in the morning or two in the morning.

The two persons, night person and day person, are going to be at odds with each other. The day person of the next morning is going to say to night person, “What were you thinking when you stayed up until three o’clock in the morning? Why couldn’t you have decided to watch that next episode on another night?”

[16:11] It’s All Part of a Learning Curve

So here’s a great example of opening up the subject of self-sabotage. Though knowing that a certain amount of rest is not just desirable but absolutely essential, one nonetheless keeps oneself awake. And why is it? Why do we do it?

What is it about our human condition that allows this kind of self-sabotage? Very dramatic words, self-sabotage. These are very dramatic words being given to simple human experimentation.

It’s all part of a learning curve.

There is a part of us that wants to learn from the phenomenon of the suffering that we arrange for ourselves.

The Vedic worldview, without any drama whatsoever, takes all of these phenomena to another whole level, and it makes a bald-faced statement that all suffering is brought about by, either knowingly or unknowingly, violating the laws of Nature. Either knowingly or unknowingly.

In other words, suffering is not possible without the individual who’s experiencing it having, in some way, violated how the laws of Nature function.

Well, what are these laws of Nature? They are the intelligible processes of the methods by which progressive change occurs. These are intelligible processes. They are identifiable. They’re perceptible patterns in the way that evolution, progressive change, occurs.

Evolution means the movement from a less knowledgeable status to a more knowledgeable status. Evolution means an ability to be less adept at living life free of suffering, to being more adept at living life free of suffering. This is what evolution means.

[18:40] The Interplay Between Capability and Suffering

There always has to be a less-than state moving into a more capable state. Less capable state moving to more capable state. Capability here being the capability of not arranging suffering for yourself.

From the Vedic perspective, whether we know we’re doing so or we don’t know that we’re doing so, we’re designing a future. A future might be immediate, it might come in 10 seconds, or we might be designing a future that’s not going to come for ten years.

We might be, to varying degrees, conscious of what we’re designing, from very conscious to moderately conscious, to hardly conscious at all, to absolutely unconscious. Nonetheless, every moment of our future is being designed by us right now. This is the Vedic perspective.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, we’re designing either happiness or suffering. And this design comes as a consequence of either knowingly engaging in behaviors that violate what we already know to be the patterns of evolution, the laws of Nature, or unknowingly violating them, being completely caught by surprise.

In the being-caught-by-surprise arena, we have to have a scientific approach. When we experience an outcome repeatedly, and we begin to wonder what’s causing this outcome.

[20:41] Pursuing Happiness Amidst Discomfort

“Every morning I wake up,” supposing, “every morning I wake up with a belly ache, and I just can’t figure it. When I go to the kitchen, as I discard the box that previously was filled with a dozen donuts, and very responsibly put that box, having cleaned it of all of it sugar crumbs and glaze materials, having very responsibly put the box in the recycling bin and the belly ache assailing me at every point of the movement from the kitchen to the recycling bin.

“And I’m just thinking to myself. I’m a good person. I recycle donut boxes. Why is it that I’m suffering? I heard on Thom Knoles’ podcast, him say that somehow I’m designing my own experiences, but I just can’t figure it.

“And I only have another three hours before today’s fresh batch of donuts gets created by the donut factory, and I want the last of batches because they need to be fresh for tonight’s consumption, while I’m binge-watching my favorite television program, that’s been two years in the making.

“Season two and episodes three, four, and five. I should be able sometime between, once I get the kids to bed at nine, or whatever it is, I should be able to get three, four, or five episodes in before I collapse from exhaustion. And I need the fuel of these donuts.

If only the stomach ache wasn’t assailing me, what could possibly be causing that? I’m a good person? I’m only wanting happiness for myself. I’m not harming anybody. Surely.”

[22:35] Thoughts and Bodily Functions

What is this karma? As ridiculous as I’m making this sound, this is our learning curve. We’re beginning to learn about the subtlety of how all the laws of Nature function. How the laws of Nature function. What are the elements of their function? What are the ways in which these laws of Nature interact with each other?

The laws of Nature that govern interactivity between humans. The laws of Nature that govern the interactivity between your body, and certain substances that you’re eating, whether they’re food or non-food. The interaction between human and the seasonally-changing environmental laws of Nature; autumn, winter, spring, summer.

The interaction between the human body and the five elements, earth and water and fire and air, and space. The interaction between the governing agents of your particular body and your DNA makeup, your genetic makeup from the time you were preconceived, how your body specifically interacts with the changing seasons, with a variety of foodstuffs, of timing of eating, of the presence of certain vegetative herbal things versus the absence of those things.

The way in which your body is a product of the way you’ve been thinking, the way that you’ve trained yourself to think. Getting to know, and getting to understand how the laws of Nature function.

And even when we get to know, and we understand how the laws of Nature function, there’s another thing, and that is, it is only through repeated research that we arrive at a conviction that things are bad enough now for me to make a change.

[24:49] The Deep Inner Workings of the Human Mind

Even if I know, if I discover that eating a dozen donuts while watching three or four episodes of the Indian Matchmaker, actually has some strange connection with these belly aches that I wake up with every morning.

Even if somehow I’ve put two and two together, I may not be a hundred percent convinced until research program number two has happened. Maybe it was the content of the show. Maybe if I switch shows and continue eating the dozen donuts between nine o’clock and 3:00 AM.

“I switched shows. I binge-watched a different show, and I continued having the stomach aches. Maybe it’s to do with, if I reduce the donuts from 12 to nine. What if I reduce the donuts down to six? What if I don’t have donuts at all? Dare I even think the thought? I mean, I’m only trying to make myself happy.

“My cardiologist has told me that my valves to my heart are only about 50% blocked. That means I have 50% more to go. Why can’t I continue enjoying myself in life?”

And you see, here’s the problem. Nobody knowingly engages in an activity that’s going to make them suffer because they want to suffer. Nobody knowingly does this.

[26:28] Enjoyable Crying Episodes

I want to come back to the introductory lecture being given by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the late 1960s. A young woman stood up at the microphone to ask a question, and she said, “Maharishi, I hear what you’re talking about, delving into the deep inner workings of the human mind. There’s an underlying field of Being, and when I touch upon it, it’s going to awaken bliss in me. It’s going to make me so happy.”

And she goes, “And I’m concerned about it because these days,” and she spoke very bravely and candidly, in front of a thousand people probably.

“These days, I’m enjoying a particular thing that I do on certain days. It’s not every day. The weather has to be just right but sufficiently gray and cloudy and gloomy looking. I have a particular window in my living room of my apartment where I can see the weather very clearly. If it’s rainy and a bit blowing and so on, then there’s a perfect setting. I like to put on a record.”

In those days, we used to refer to music as being played on a record. There were these vinyl things that spun around, and you’d put a needle down the side of it and it would play music to you. It was called a record.

“And I like to put on a record with some particularly sad, and mournful music, beautifully sung. It has to be beautifully sung,” she said.

“And with beautiful instrumentation that’s very compelling. And then I can feel it starting the highly satisfactory sensation of crying. First, it starts in little tiny sobs, deep down to my throat. Then it worked its way up to my face.

“And then, before I know it, I’m having the experience. My whole face is crying. Tears are streaming down my cheeks. I have tissues ready at the ready, and I listen to the sad music and just cry and cry.”

And she said, “I really, truly enjoy crying so much on these special occasions. And I’m afraid if I learn the meditation that you’re teaching, it’s going to awaken the bliss inside me. And I believe you. I believe it will. But I just wonder what’s going to happen to my crying episodes that I enjoy so much.”

[28:58] You’re Going to Be So Happy from Your Sadness

And Maharshi just quietly answered in his own candid way. He started off by saying, “You’ve been very candid, and I’m going to be equally candid with you. You don’t yet know the pleasure of crying while using your fullest potential.

“Right now, the arrangements that you’re making to cry are based on the use of mental potential that you have of a fractional percentage of the brain and a fractional percentage of the mind’s capability to make arrangements to make yourself happy.

“Because,” he said, “what I’m hearing is that your sadness is making you happy. You want sadness so that you can keep on being happy. But I’m telling you that when you’re using your full mental potential, as a meditator, you awaken your fullest potential. You will awaken a much greater capacity to make yourself really satisfactorily sad, and your sadness will make you so happy.

“You’re going to be so happy from your sadness. You won’t be able to imagine it by comparison to the sadness, the happiness-producing sadness that you’re able to get today. As a meditator.\ Your creativity will expand dramatically, and your sadness will make you so happy.

[30:26] Attaining Satisfactory Sadness

“So I still recommend very strongly that you learn Vedic Meditation and learn how to use your full mental potential so that you can really get to that experience of sadness that you really desire.

“And once you’ve fulfilled your mind’s capacity, once you’ve fulfilled your mind’s desire, and you’ve achieved satiety, that means satisfaction, you’ve saturated yourself with sufficient sadness. Then, when you’re ready, you’ll naturally move on from that. But first, you have to make arrangements for the experience you want to have using your fullest potential.

“So come tomorrow and let me teach you how to use your fullest potential. You’re going to be so satisfactorily sad within days. It’ll make you so happy.”

He was a master for a reason and referred to as a master for many reasons, and this kind of ability to speak with people candidly on their own level, but to reveal a deeper layer of what they were after.

What we’re after in life is more happiness. What we’re after in life is not more suffering. We want more happiness. And there are certain experiences that we just simply haven’t had enough of yet.

[31:54] Embrace Vedic Meditation to Seek Happiness

When people learn that Vedic Meditation exists, for many people the idea that Vedic Meditation as a practice, as an art form, indeed, even as a science, a systematic procedure for uncovering deeper layers of the mind, with repeatable results, scientific…

That it exists, that knowledge alone is enough to make that person think, “If that exists and I don’t learn it, I’m going to be unhappy, and I have enough unhappiness in my life, and so I’m not going to add any more by knowing that this exists and not practice it. So let me sign up and learn in Vedic Meditation as soon as possible.”

For other people, there are still areas of life that they’re researching.

 “I’m not yet convinced that donuts, or alcohol, or methamphetamine, or cocaine, or morphine, or suffering from terrible relationships followed by makeup lovemaking, I’m not yet convinced that I’ve explored these things enough.

“I don’t yet have reliable evidence. I haven’t completed my research into what it is I’m already curious about.

“And this Vedic Meditation thing it’s curiosity provoking, that’s for sure. But I still have a few things on my list I need to look into. Whether or not I can be the unusual human who is immune to binge-watching with a dozen donuts in the belly. Whether or not I can get through a fifth of Scottish whiskey in a night and wake up feeling bright and sparkly the next day.

[33:55] The Suffering Experiment

“I want to see to what extent I might be unique. I want to see to what extent I might be immune to some of these provocations. I want to learn more about, maybe if I have a special hangover sauce, Tabasco mixed with lemon juice, mixed with hot water, mixed with this and that, and the other magic potion, that I can recover from a hangover quickly.

“That followed by a few hot yoga sessions, wearing my special super lucky lycra, followed by a nice stiff coffee, and then a day of meaningful work. I can get over the effect of having a fifth of scotch in the middle of the night. Maybe I need to do more research and just see.”

And so until we have exhausted the research that we’re doing, we’re not really going to decide to dive into another body of knowledge that’s going to make us aware of certain things that have become very dear to us.

 Our experiences that we’re experimenting with, that we’re still doing research on, that are repeatedly, repeatedly, and repeatedly producing reliable results again and again.

We haven’t yet had a level of research that makes it convincing to us. That somehow, in this particular area, I’m making arrangements for my own suffering, designing my own suffering.

[35:27] Don’t-do-it Lectures Don’t Work

And so what do we have to do? We have to continue. We have to continue doing our research. No amount of, “Don’t do it,” lecturing is ever going to convince an addict or an alcoholic, or their equivalent in relationships, or in TV watching, or any other kind of compulsive behavior, not to carry out the compulsive behavior.

Don’t-do-it lectures simply don’t work. What happens is someone has to reach a level of satiety. Satiety is just a fancy way of saying, “I’ve satisfied and saturated myself with a level of experience that it is undeniable what cause and effect are. What is it that’s causing these certain effects?

“And then, I’ll be open and curious to add to my knowledge base and see if something else I can do might cause something that will produce a different effect.”

With Vedic Meditation, we rapidly learn that, as a result of meditating twice each day, we can evolve out of the ever-repeating three consciousness states, waking, dreaming, sleeping, waking, dreaming, sleeping. Each one of them dependent on the other.

Enough waking state will produce enough sleep state that’ll produce enough dream state to give us a clear waking state, which will then tire us out enough to make us sleep again, to make us dream again, to make us wake again.

These three relative states, that are related to each other, can evolve once the symmetry breaker arrives, the fourth consciousness state, transcendence.

[37:17] Feeling Good All the Time

When, in Vedic Meditation, we experience that state that has in it moments of supreme inter contentedness, when we experience that state that has within it moments of absolute bliss, and then we see how that bliss persists outside of meditation, having awakened the deep, inner, silent state, its resonance, and vibration continues to echo throughout the day.

And then we sit for another session in the late afternoon and early evening or early evening, and do give ourselves another dose of the bliss, the pure contentedness, and it awakens that even more. And then, after year one and year two, and year three of continuously meditating twice every day, we start to notice that we’re feeling good all the time.

And then, we begin to notice that we can come to conclusions about our other research with greater speed, as we have the greater clarity, the release of stress, the improvement of the waking state, the improvement of the dream state, the improvement of the sleep state.

As a result of having the fourth state, the transcendent state, introduced into our routine, we start with greater clarity to arrive at conclusions about the sustainability of certain elements of our research into what’s going to make us happy.

[38:51] Letting Go of Suffering

And then we find that if we make a decision to let go of something, just as research, just as an experiment, to let go of some element that we suspect may have been causing suffering, that the ease with which we can do that when we’re meditating twice each day and receiving that inner satisfaction, that inner satiety, through our meditation, the ease with which we can really bring our experimentation and our research to a head and eliminate those aspects of life that clearly were unconscious designs of unhappiness.

That speed is phenomenal of arriving at those accurate conclusions from our research.

Then we become encouraged more and more, and then we begin to notice that from morning meditation until the afternoon or evening session, we have that deep inner silence is gradually beginning to vibrate. It’s awake.

We’ve wakened up that layer of consciousness, the fourth state, which, once upon a time, required us to be in an eyes-closed, seated position. Now we can experience it, both eyes closed and seated, but we can also experience an echo of it, even with the eyes open, in the fifth state of consciousness beginning to develop.

The state where the fourth inner condition is persisting, along with waking, dreaming, and sleeping.

[40:24] All That Is

Not only just in meditation, but outside of meditation, we’re entering into Cosmic Consciousness. And then in Cosmic Consciousness, when that is consolidated to a certain satisfactory level, sensory perception becoming more and more acute, more and more developed, and we begin to investigate, using our five senses, into the reality of the relative world around us.

And we begin to see the thematic behaviors of all of the elements of the laws of Nature, working in perfect integration with each other to generate the evolutionary force, all of which is able to be seen in a personified fashion.

Now we’re entering into God Consciousness. The ability to experience the supreme level of the relative world and the play and display of creative intelligence at every level, a sixth state of consciousness, has been attained to.

And as we grow and grow in our practice, and in our daily life, just living daily life, we begin to notice that, actually, all of this relativity is issuing forth from the same one, indivisible, whole consciousness field from which I, the Knower issue forth from.

I am the unbounded Unified Field of consciousness. This has always been my reality. But now the shade the scales have been removed from my eyes. And now, even further, I can see through my senses that the ocean of consciousness is here in its moving relative form.

In all of these forms and phenomena, all of these environmental phenomena are actually one with the Knower. I am That. All of this is That.

[42:25] Breaking the Cycle of Self-Sabotage

And then, at this point, one no longer has an interest in doing research into unsustainable behaviors. Research into unsustainable behaviors has long become a thing of the past and what we might call self-sabotage, which I simply call research.

Self-sabotage really is just research repetition. You do a study, and you want to see if when you lie to match and put it to the end of your finger. It burns. “Well, that was interesting. I wonder if it’ll do it every time.”

And second time, burn. Third time, burn. Probably, you’ve had enough research. And you don’t need to light any more matches and put them on your fingertips. But you may well have done it at least three or four times in your life, before you realize that there’s a connection between cause and effect.

If you want the desirable effect, you don’t engage in the obvious cause. Until we have attained to enough research conclusions, until we’ve exhausted our personal research, we’re not really going to arrive at a state where we’re able consciously to design happiness for ourselves.

Learning Vedic Meditation is definitely the means whereby we can speed up that process. But we may not even be ready to learn Vedic Meditation until we have demonstrated for ourselves that knowledge of life without the fourth state of consciousness, until we’ve demonstrated to ourselves that knowledge of life without that fourth state, is simply a repetition of the, of the Known, the ever-repeating Known.

The cyclical behavior of attempting to get happiness through making sensory arrangements just doesn’t work out.

[44:21] Expose Yourself to a Deeper Understanding

And that’s when the hunger for greater knowledge, the hunger for transcendent knowledge, will grow to a sufficient level that we will actually get up and go and learn Vedic Meditation.

Or if we’re practitioners of it, and yet a little bit sketchy in our regularity, then starting to become more regular in our practice, starting to really pay attention to the details of doing it accurately, being in contact with one of the approved qualified teachers of Vedic Meditation, who can give you guidance and how to refine your practice and eliminate effort, which is really the primary goal of having your meditation technique checked.

How to minimize and reduce and completely eliminate effort during the practice is really what that’s all about.

Participating in greater levels of knowledge and exposing yourself to a deeper understanding, coming away on retreats, and ultimately making your way through all the prerequisite knowledge by which you can then become a teacher of Vedic Meditation.

These are the paths of progress that also have appended to them, the verifiability of the research done, not just by you, as you’ll experience for yourself, but done by many other people whom you respect.

And to build that reliability, understanding, and importantly, capability to be an agent of change, to be a designer of happiness, not just for yourself, but for all those who are surrounding you and who are concerned with your daily life.

Jai Guru Deva.