Clear Your Dues Before Checking Out
Questioner: I’ve reached the point where with my friends, even with my parents my sister, I don’t want to talk about who did what, the gossip, go out and just do things that’s called entertainment, because we’ve done it for years and I want to stop doing that. In fact, I want to do zero of it and I heard you say, “You just can’t leave what you’ve accumulated” and what comes up for me is that when I see certain behaviour, I feel disgusted.
So, when I see, say my parents, doing things out of habit or pattern and not being able to see it or even at least to me worse than that is not wanting to go to the fact just believing it out of habit, I feel disgusted and then I feel disgusted at myself for being in that environment and not being brave enough to do something about it and then I look at my weaknesses and I feel disgusted that I’m not compassionate, I’m putting up with things, I’m not doing what feels right and I guess the money example was easy; that only give as much as is needed and that’s quantifiable. How do I do it with family, in terms of attention and they want sympathy and I want to tell them to see things as it is and I would like them to show it to me as well and that’s why I would like to do is just move away, but that feels like an escape in a way and I just heard you say that you just can’t leave what you’ve accumulated.
Acharya Prashant: I said, “You can’t leave before you have cleared your dues.” I didn’t mean to say that you can’t leave at all. You see, till the time the dues exist; you have to pay your instalments and does that mean that the relationship will cease to exist once the loan has been cleared off? No, after that it will be not because of compulsion or obligation, but rather due to compassion. However, you cannot use compassion as an alibi to shy away from your dues. That’s what I meant to emphasize in this particular context.
Are you getting it?
So, it’s not as if you have to indefinitely stay dithered or bonded, not really. At the same time, it does not mean that the relationship has to be so material or so transactional, that once the money has been squared off or once you are sure that I have given them the requisite care, attention and emotional support, now I can just break away and separate them from my life, right?
We are talking of neither of these ends. On one hand, we are talking of very material responsibility and then we are talking of a spiritual responsibility, which is not really a responsibility; it’s much more fun, right?
With responsibility comes the feeling of burden or bondage. But when you give to the other not because you owe him something, but because there is fun in giving, but because it is a part of your life, it is related to your existential project; then there is no obligation really and then there is no disgust in giving then. At the same time, you are not really obliged to give. There can be no obligation in fun, but if you give at all and I prefer we give as much as possible, to as many people as possible. If you give at all, then it is out of your really free will, it is out of your freedom not because of your liabilities.
Questioner: Two questions, what did you mean when you said, “Clear your dues,” in the beginning and the second question is what if I’m giving and the person to whom I’m trying to say, “Watch these videos or talk about it,” the person gets very angry and defensive and say, “I don’t want to talk about this with you.”
Acharya Prashant: Okay. I’ll take them one by one. When I say, “Clear your dues,” the meaning is quite straightforward. You see, when you are three or four; obviously you have no choice in receiving from your parents, relatives, guardians, the society as a whole. We simply take from them, right? But once you are ten or twelve, you do know that you are taking from them, right? You may prefer to act or behave like an ignorant kid, a naive mind, but you know fully well, that it takes material resources to educate you, to raise you, to feed you, to clothe you, to turn you into at least a physically grown up person, you know all those things and then from the age of ten, twelve you keep consuming the resources flowing in from others till the age of let’s say, eighteen, twenty in India, sometimes thirty, right?
So, there is this period of a decade or two when you have consciously consumed from others, consumed material stuff, consumed emotional security, consumed a feeling of identity, a lot of things, a lot of things that have gone into turning you an adult. Now, once you are twenty or thirty, you cannot just suddenly, abruptly disengage. There is a bill to pay, there is a debt to settle, that’s what I mean to say. That was one example.
The other example could be, there’s a woman you have been with since long and just as most relationships are founded on fleeting emotions and cardinal stuff, let’s say, your relationship too was similar and then you have some kind of a spiritual awakening and that’s after ten or fifteen years of relationship or let’s say, even five; you may have had kids, you may not have had kids. If you have brought kids into the picture that makes things even more complicated. Can’t just run away now. There are dues to settle. At the same time, those dues are not infinite. You need not invest your entire life, entire time, entire energy, in just settling dues. Those dues can be managed, in fact can be cleared, provided you do not exaggerate them, inflate them any further. That’s the first precaution you have to take.
Do not raise loans to settle existing loans and be very focused and in a sense very spiritually ethical, in acknowledging and clearing your dues. Be very sharp, very, in fact cunning in realizing how not to allow your debts to balloon further. I know these words will not sound very spiritual, but I’m saying, 'be very calculative.'
Know fully well how you raised those debts, how you allowed them to mount on your head the last time. Do not repeat those mistakes. At the same time, if there is a liability, be very honest in acknowledging and clearing it. Otherwise, you’ll find no peace.
Are you getting it?
Now, this was the transactional part of the whole thing. Then comes the more spiritual sounding part; which is, when you start giving, because you are in a position to give, internal position to give. In the first part, you were preparing yourself to come to a position where you can give. Now you have succeeded. Mission phase one completed. Now you are in a position to really give. Now don’t count and don’t calculate at all. Now you are giving from a point of infinity. Now you have so much that you don’t really need to be shrewd and calculative. Now you can afford to keep throwing away stuff and yet find yourself with enough. But that is possible only when you come to that internal richness. If you have not yet come to that internal richness, if you are still limited in your means and resources; then you have to be very calculative, then you have to figure out whether you have to give fifty or eighty, you have to ration your resources.
I hope I’m not confusing you with all this, are you getting it?
So, there is a time to count and then there is a time to just give away unconditionally. Maybe this is not directly or completely addressing what you want to say, or is it?
Questioner: I guess the question, maybe this is my conditioning probably, it’s easier to do with my friends, than it is with my parents; especially when they say, “Oh! you’re becoming cold or don’t talk to me about these things.” If were my friends, it wouldn’t. I would just let it be, I wouldn’t reach out to them, it would just take its course. But with my parents there’s this; maybe feeling of guilt like, you said, “I have to pay back the emotional support.” It’s not so much financial, as it is the emotional support I feel, I took from them, now it’s my turn to give back and I would not like to do it much or if at all but I feel guilty when I just abruptly stop.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah, but then you can really pay back in the spiritual sense after you have come to that point of richness; we talked of, right? One characteristic of not yet being there is, when you feel frustrated or not succeeding with others, getting it?
So, don’t push things. Sometimes in these matters, hurrying may not deliver the right results. Think of this. You said, “You do not feel as frustrated with your friends as with the parents.” What’s essentially the difference between these two categories of human beings? The difference is body. You are not bodily related to your friends, whereas the body is identified with parents.
So, trying too hard with parents probably indicates a lot of body identification within the one who is trying. Else, why would he have chosen to give his parents special attention compared to friends or compared to the rest of the universe? We often say that I try so hard my papa doesn’t listen. But why are you trying so hard with your papa? I mean there’s the man next door, who is probably much more ready and eligible to receive your stuff but you don’t want to go to him, why? Because your papa is your papa. Now, if you are so body identified, what kind of spiritual deliverance do you want to give to the other? And if your papa is your papa then to papa you remain.
How will you ever become a counsellor or a friend, let alone a guru or guide? And which papa wants to take sermons from beta? You can listen to a stranger, maybe, but when the relationships are well defined then you do not want stuff that challenges the very definition of relationships. The son is there to be brought up, the son is not there to be listened to.
I’m papa, here is Sunny. How am I supposed to relate to Sunny? I’m supposed to bring up Sunny. Why am I supposed to take sermons from Sunny? “Sunny come preach,” that challenges the very definition of the relationship. So, this kind of spiritual advisory cannot take place within the established contours of the relationship and that relationship; mind you, is entirely physical. What’s the relationship first of all between daddy and Sunny? Daddy physically gave birth to Sunny. It’s a thing of the body. The very central and primal thing that spirituality seeks to challenge.
Are you getting it?
What’s your relationship with your wife? Did you bring that woman into your life to be preached? You didn’t. She’s there to you know, maybe travel with you, watch movies with you, make babies with you, oh! my whatever, whatever is your definition of relationship. Maybe cook food for you and all those things. So, as long as she operates within her defined domain, which is quite strongly defined by the way; as long as she operates within that domain, you’ll have no problems. What if she attempts to become your guru? No, your inner software says, “Invalid input.” “When you are not supposed to do that. Did I marry you to get preached?” “I didn’t.” “Now, why are you preaching me?” It’s another matter that had you not married the same woman, then you would have had relatively fewer problems in probably approaching her and getting educated, now it’s all right.
The same woman could have been more comfortably easily your teacher, had the relationship not existed in the first place, but now it does and therefore you have to be very mindful. So, don’t push it too hard, till you know that you’re not pushing your papa. It’s all right to try to bring a person up, but it can be very frustrating trying to bring your papa or mummy up. They are not persons anymore; they are extensions of your body identity. You say, my parents, so they are extensions of your ego self. Now there is a problem, the ego is trying to raise its own extensions; without taking care of itself first.
Questioner: Yeah, I can see my frustration is because it’s actually my mother did say, “Don’t lecture me,” and I guess my response to that was to just stop and disengage and then she got hurt and what I’m sensing from this is that it’s my desire that I had an outcome in mind that she would listen to me and maybe go to the facts and I think that was very much more strongly identified versus say it was someone I’d met on a train or a bus and talk to.
Acharya Prashant: A general little bit of advice, home is the last place to practice spiritual activism. You’ll get badly frustrated.
Questioner: This was around animals and veganism and I said, “I don’t want to have a meal at your house if there’s animal products,” and she got very upset about that and I guess for me there’s part of me that says, “I want to stand for what I believe in,” and then this part of me that says, “There’s this other voice that says, “Am I doing this just to get back at her for all the things she did to me as a child.”
Acharya Prashant: You’ll have to be very, very patient and you’ll have to realize your home, it’s the entire world really. You may succeed with unknown people, unknown audiences. It is extremely difficult to succeed at home in spiritual matters, very, very difficult and that’s why the home is so important and that’s why the home must not be left.
The home prevents you from slipping into a misplaced confidence that you have won it all. You might be a great winner in the world. Home is the place that will repeatedly loudly and forcefully bring defeat to you and remind you daily of your defeat and that’s why the home is so important, so that you don’t become complacent. Forty-thousand people may say, “Wow! Darius wow!” Mom will say, “You go wash your face and take some food.” She will tell you that the world is still in darkness and mind you mom or dad or siblings or they are all products of evolution and society. You say you are frustrated, let’s say with your sister. Where does the sister come from? Sister comes from biological evolution and social conditioning, right? So, her ignorant ways serve to constantly and repeatedly remind you, of what evolution and society have done to each one of us. Else, you can become needlessly complacent.
Are you getting it?
Home is prakriti, home is the nest, right? Where are nests found? In prakriti, home is prakriti. Prakriti is maya. Home is maya. Home will tell you there is so much work still left to be done, home will tell you, you have a great battle left to fight. Your mother is not just your mother, your mother is very similar to the neighbour’s mother, isn’t she? Right? Don’t we even talk this way? You know mothers, you know how they are. The moment you say, “Oh mothers! you know how they are.” Haven’t you already acknowledged that all mothers are similar to a great extent? Where does this similarity come from? Evolution and conditioning because their bodies are similar, because they grew up in similar societies, therefore all mothers are similar. So are all sons and daughters and fathers and husbands; because they are bodily similar in the first place and because they are being educated in the same way, more or less, if not the same then similar ways.
So, when you look at your mother and find her behaving in a particular way, it’s not her; it’s the entire world, but you look only at her because you are still identified being a son. You think it’s between you and your mother? It’s not between you and your mother; it’s between you and the universe. If you want to blame, blame the universe and the moment you start seeing that your mother is the world’s mother; that’s when you take the fight beyond the boundaries of your home, that’s when you realize that you need to be an activist on the road, not in your living room. Because you cannot change your living room till you have impactfully changed the world.
Your mother is absorbing stuff from the tv screen. How really do you hope to change her till you do something about what is flowing in from that screen? Tell me please. But that’s how we are. We have limited concerns, we have personal concerns, we have concerns within our boundaries, the boundaries of our home. We want to keep things all right and clean within the boundaries. Now things won’t change within the boundary because the boundary itself is illusory. Your parents, your wife your kids, they’re all organically related to everyone else and everything else that’s happening everywhere else. But to everything else and everybody else and everywhere else, we don’t feel so connected, why? Because there is no bodily relationship involved there. That’s the problem.
So, when you encounter your defeats at home, let those defeats remind you of the task at hand. It’s not your mother talking, it’s a collective subconscious ignorance of entire mankind talking. Do you see this? Are our parents persons, individuals in that sense? Are they? Are we individuals? Where do we come from? Do we have an integrity as oneness? Do we have something solid and composite within? No, where do we come from? A bit from here, a bit from there, right? We are like a, like a snowball in a flux, collecting something from here, leaving something behind, constantly changing its shape size weight everything, depending on the situations.
So, if you find something deplorable in the snowball, why challenge the snowball? The snowball has no atman, no originality, no authenticity really, you will be talking to a collection of items. It’s like you have moved into an inventory room. You have moved into a storage room or godown and you find a mess there and what are you doing? You are yelling at the room. Is there anybody there to respond? There is a lot of stuff there, but all of that stuff has come from here and there. Who will respond to your desperate plea? Who will answer your frustration? Nobody, because there is nobody there to answer or let’s say there is somebody but who is sleeping, fast asleep. Fast asleep and everything else is immaterial; everything else not material, everything else is purely material. Your stuff there, stuff right? Stuff that we take in from the society, from the markets, from everything that we come across.
Can you visualize this man who’s yelling inside a godown and expecting packages to respond to him, they won’t, because they don’t exist consciously in any way, they can’t answer you. So, it’s pointless getting frustrated. So, if you want to do something about the mess; what do you do? What do you do? You figure out where the mess really comes from and it comes from? It comes from the world, so don’t be so obsessed with this little godown called home.
