Does Charm Always Feel Easy?

Does Charm Always Feel Easy?

[00:45] The Path of Least Resistance

Jai Guru Deva. Welcome to my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. Thank you for listening. I’m Thom Knoles.

I’m asked the question frequently: if I find something charming, is it also going to be easy? That is a very, very interesting question because sometimes we’re charmed to do something, and charm means, charm is the Vedic meditator’s way of ascertaining that which is evolutionary for one, and that which is not evolutionary for one, for oneself.

Our advice for meditators to lean into that which Nature is making charming as their navigational tool for what is evolutionary, is really for people practicing Vedic Meditation who transcend or step beyond thought twice a day, whose conscious mind is in contact with the home of all the laws of Nature on a daily basis.

Otherwise, somebody who is an addict who is sitting on a street corner, hoping for donations to their substance of addiction, might find it very charming to have the next injection and obviously, following charm, is not a universal prescription for everybody on Earth.

It works when we are in contact with Being, our own least-excited state, the simplest form of awareness. That puts us into contact with that layer of the Unified Field that is bringing into being all the laws of Nature that will go into creating the evolutionary process. Once we have that in place, then it’s natural for us to use our inner navigational tool.

That is to say, that which we find charming as a means whereby we make a decision about in which direction to go.

Is charm always easy?

I would say no. It’s not always easy, but it is always something else, and we’re going to really give this some emphasis in this little talk on the subject. It is frictionless.

It may not be easy to go straight down the mountainside on the snow when you’re skiing, however, it’s the path of least friction, the path of least resistance.

It may be easy. It may be very easy to be in the middle of a river, floating in the river, allowing the medium of the water, which is carrying you. You’re not moving through water. You are one with the water, which is moving, and therefore there’s no friction, compared with having to swim through a still body of water where your body is a moving force that’s moving through the non-moving water; swimming in a swimming pool or a lake is like that.

[04:25] Unsustainable Formulae

Allowing yourself to buoyantly tread water or float in the middle of a big river and go downstream with it, there’s a surprising experience. Your body and the water are one. The body isn’t moving through water. The body is one with the water, which is doing all the moving.

And so, without having to expend effort, without having to experience the friction of water against the body, one finds oneself moving downstream at whatever pace the river itself is moving. And this is a wonderful way of thinking about where we want to be.

What can be the case is that when we have been habituated to living life, on a daily basis, in ways that are not going to ultimately be sustainable, and there is no lifestyle that is a hundred percent sustainable formulaically.

That is to say, “I’ve found the formula. I wake up every morning. I do my little exercises in front of the window, breathe the fresh air, sit down, meditate, go downstairs, eat some scrambled eggs on toast.”

 And then, “That’s my protein for the day. And then I hop up and get my exercise done and then take off and go to work and do a great job.” Beautiful formula. It’s not sustainable.

[06:05] A Higher Level of Function

There’s going to be something about that that you will be called into another kind of action. You’ll be called into a higher level of function. Your body will make demands on you for different levels of exercise, in different ways, in different places.

Your digestive capacity may tell you to stop eating scrambled eggs or might tell you to eat something else instead, or to eat more scrambled eggs than what you’ve been eating.

In other words, the entire relative world, of which your body is a member, is a world of flux, F-L-U-X, which means flow. It means change. And because everything in the relative world is changing, then what it is that you are meant to be doing at any given time, given your ever-increasing sophistication of talents, given your ever-increasing capability as each passing year goes by, you will be called upon to do something different to what you’re in the habit of doing.

And when, sometimes, we get into a little bit of rigid habituation, “I’m not in the habit of this, but I’m finding it charming to change,” there may be some sensations involved in the process of making change.

Change, whenever change is occurring, we are changing habituation, there are always some sensations involved. If we decide that these sensations, if we want to refer to them as pain, then pain is the word that we use when I’m having sensations that I don’t want to have, and I want these sensations to go away, then we call that pain.

[08:15] Embracing the Sensations of Change

If we embrace the sensations of change and allow the sensations of change to inform us about where we can be going versus where we should no longer be, then, suddenly, these sensations are the sensations of change.

They’re the sensations of you having a different relevance to the world than the relevance that you’ve had in your formulaic living. And so change can be experienced as discomfort, or change can be embraced enthusiastically.

I love the word “enthusiasm” because I’m informed that it comes from the Greek “entheos.” “Entheos” means “in God.” Enthusiasm is an experience, an exhilaration that is God-like.

To take the largest point of view about the sensations I’m having with regard to a change of expectation is to embrace change enthusiastically, an enthusiastic embrace of change is the divine way. It’s imbued with divinity.

So here we are. Will charm always yield an ease of experience? Not necessarily. Because though frequently it does, though frequently it is more easeful to flow in the direction of greater charm, sometimes the process of making a departure from habituation will be sensation-laden, and we need to learn how to feel those sensations and understand them and interpret them as the sensations of evolution.

Evolution means constant change. Evolution is, it sounds like a continuum, but it means moving from a less-sophisticated state to a more-sophisticated state. It means moving from a state of being and doing that is less useful to a state of being and doing that is more relevant socially, that is more helpful to the entire process of evolution.

[11:13] The Sensations of Evolution

And sometimes, some attention-getting sensations may appear, and we are into it. “Bring it on” is the attitude of the Vedic meditator. Bring on all the sensations of evolution. I’m moving in the direction of charm, and evolution is, there’s a beautiful word in the English language, one of my favorites, evolution is inexorable. What does that mean? Uncompromising, unavoidable. You can’t stop it. It’s inexorable.

Evolution is inexorable. It’s uncompromising. Once we have learned Vedic Meditation and we practice it regularly, then change is going to be an inexorable part of our experience. And though we are embracing the field of non-change, the field of non-change is actually the source of all change.

The field of non-change, the unmanifest, unbounded, Unified Field that we touch upon when we meditate, the field of non-change. But it’s the source of all change. Source of all change.

[12:37] The Art of Following Charm

If you’re finding this whole concept fascinating and you want to dive into it further, I strongly recommend that you look on my website and get yourself registered for a course entitled “Charm,” through which you’ll learn all the mechanics of charm, what role charm plays in the evolution of a meditator, and how to harness it to make your own evolution happen at the most frictionless pace.

If you’d like to learn more about the subject of charm, we invite you to take Thom’s popular course, The Art of Following Charm. This course will help you to overcome indecisiveness and to understand the nature of your intuition and desires.

You can find out more at thomknoles.com/charm.