So bad habits are like weeds and we need to get rid of them
No one can get rid of them for us, not even a Guru, not even a Master, not even God
If we create it, we have to remove it ourselves.
Adopt this cleaning process every evening
But there is no harm if you feel
now and then, during daytime or night again,“Oh, let me do my Cleaning”.
We can do it for a few minutes ten minutes, fifteen minutes.
There are also moments when you feel weak, and you might feel
overwhelmed by emotions
Before they burst
like a volcano coming out,
before that happens, you can sit for a few minutes and clean
adopt this method of Cleaning. I will give you my personal example also
When I was returning back from the pharmacy to home
and just before leaving the pharmacy had a call from home, spoke with wife
She was arguing perhaps and then reaching home you feel, “Okay,
she argued with me like this today and is still making such statements.”
And you seem to enter with a lot of anger, “Today I will show it to her.”
But then if you can remind yourself, “Okay, let me sit quietly and do my Cleaning.
So all that irritation and anger will disappear and the moment you enter the house,
your wife's face will drop and say, “Oh, he is not angry at all today”
Sometimes you know our spouses play really really bad tricks on us and
somehow, we can get out of these things in a very masterful way without hurting anyone in the process.
So you have avoided confrontation. Had it been there you would form more impressions.
So Cleaning can be done in many ways. Every evening it is a regular affair, doesn’t matter
Second thing is when you happen to anticipate an emotional burst
you can do it before only so that you can salvage the situation
you can prevent the catastrophe
Third situation is where,
you know, this example comes to my mind again
You go to an Italian restaurant,
and you have lunch with your colleagues and some business people
and somehow the tomato sauce gets onto your shirt
Would you walk around with a white shirt with tomato ketchup or tomato sauce on your shirt and show to the world,
“Look I had this lunch in this Italian joint”? No
And if you keep it long enough you will not be able to clean it well, the stain will remain
But if you clean it immediately
the stain can be removed, and it will not last as a permanent mark.
The same thing happens to our psyche.
You know, only yesterday I was listening to the Panchatantra story for my granddaughter
There was once a very rich man,
and he had a son who was a brat. He was not working out at all,
an extremely lazy person. Most rich people have this problem lazy children.
I mean there may be exceptions, so I am sorry if I hurt anyone. But this is in general.
So he took his son to a wise man and this wise man said, “Okay
send your son to me, I will fix him up”. So he did.
The son goes to the wise man and the wise man says, “Okay
go lift this plant, uproot it”. It is a small shrub, so he could do it very easily.
Then he sends him to a little bit more grown-up tree,
Why don’t you pull this one out?” He had difficulty pulling this one out and he says
“Now you try your best” and he spent almost the whole day
but finally he was able to remove it from the roots.
The third day the wise man tells this boy “Pull out this tree which is almost fifty years old”.
That boy tried but he couldn't succeed.
Then the wise man asks him “Does it make any sense to you?”
He says, “Somehow I understand that the small plants I am able to remove but the big one I am not able to remove”.
That’s when the wise man says to him, “This has been there this very sturdy tree
whose roots are so deep, like that your habits have gone so deep inside that they are difficult to remove.
So if you have any bad habits just coming in like a fresh one, a fresh bad habit,
cut it before it becomes a tree.
Cut it while it is younger and manageable.
It also means, don’t look into bad habits because they can become your
permanent weeds and will not let you personally grow.
We try to remove weeds from our vegetable gardens,
why not these? We are trying to create a better, spiritual garden for us and for our loved ones.
So bad habits are like weeds and we need to get rid of them
No one can get rid of them for us, not even a Guru, not even a Master, not even God
If we create it, we have to remove it ourselves.