Inverse Paranoia, Etc

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This is from Talks by Swami Paramatmananda Vol 5, pg 204:

 

Some people come up to Amma and complain about others. Instead of

looking at themselves and how ugly their own egos are, they always

look at others and other's faults. They're way off the mark, because

that itself is an ugly fault, to be looking at other's faults. What

does Christ say? Trying to remove the dust particle in someone else's

eye, you are missing the log that's in your own!

 

That's not the purpose of coming to the ashram. Try to see the good

thing in others, or try to see God in them. Go from small g to capital

G. That's a big jump for most people. Atleast, see the good, and if

you can, see the God. And if you can't see the good or the God, at

least, don't look at the bad, because that's also bad.

 

There's a way to do this, a very interesting way. You've probably

never heard of this way. It's called inverse paranoia. I'll try to

explain. Paranoia is when you think that everybody's out to find fault

with you, out to get you. This creates a certain kind of reaction, a

kind of behavior and mentality. Inverse paranoia is to think that

everyone is out to make you happy instead of miserable. Think, 'This

person is trying to make me happy.' Just try it. Imagine that everyone

you meet is trying to bring happiness into your life. Then you try to

do the same thing for them. It works. It completely changes your whole

wiring.

 

Some people say, " Swamij i, you're telling all these abstract ideas,

but you never give any practical advice. They are all ideas, but

practically, what do I do with this problem? " Here's a way you can pray:

 

" 0 Amma, " or if you don't believe in Amma, " 0 God, I offer all my

attachments to You. I offer all my aversions to You. I offer my fears

and my false ego to You. Burn all these in the fire of knowledge. Take

these and purify me. Remove all these things which are making me

restless and miserable. "

 

We've created these habits by reacting to people and circumstances in

a certain way-ways that we learn from our parents, from society, or

just from our previous tendencies. These reactions leave deep lines in

our brain. It's not enough to think in terms of philosophy. You really

have to verbalize it, and that's the whole purpose of prayer. It goes

against the grain of these habits on their own ground.

 

Prayer is a very necessary part of purifying the mind.

Mantra japa has its limitations. Prayer takes you right there. It's

like taking an eraser in your hand, and erasing these lines of habits

that are in the brain, but you have to do it again and again. Don't

think that if you pray once to Amma, everything's just going to

vanish. Having drawn a line a thousand times with a pencil, it won't

go away with just one erasing. It has to be done again and again and

again.

 

However, the mind will always find a way to keep those bad habits

alive. That's its job. No bad habits, no mind. The mind doesn't want

to die. It may read Vedanta. It may know that if it just keeps quiet,

bliss will dawn, but it doesn't want to keep quiet unless it goes to

sleep. Before then, it will try every trick in the book to stay alive.

Once a person came to a guru when he was drunken.

 

Don't laugh; I've seen drunken people come to Amma.

The guru said, " Son, whisky is your worst enemy. " The man replied,

" But Swamij i, didn't you tell us last Saturday to love our enemies? "

The guru said, " Yes, but I didn't say anything about swallowing them! "

When you become full of God, then all you can see outside is God. Put

on red sunglasses and you will see a red world. When you become full

of God, then you will see everything as God. But now, we see

everything as separate. We like some things, and don't like others.

But when we become full of God, then we gain equal-vision; we see

everything as That. Then we don't have any selfishness, and will lose

our sense of being a small self. Not that we lose our identity. We

regain our real identity, which is something very big, something

grand. We don't need anything to make us happy. We are happiness

itself. When we don't have a small self, we don't feel anger either,

because anger belongs to the selfish, little 'I'. When its territory

is stepped on, when its desires are thwarted, anger comes. But when

the small self dissolves into the big Self, why should there be any anger?

 

Most people think a Mahatma is a person who has siddhis. They can read

our mind, they know everything, they can do everything. If we tell

them our problems, our problems will evaporate by their blessings. All

those things may be true. But the greatest miracle of a Mahatma is

that they've got rid of their small self; their lower self is gone.