Let’s keep it light today yeah? —
My teacher’s teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, used to say “we have an infinite number of reasons to be happy, and a serious responsibility not to be serious.”
What Maharishi was getting at is that it’s essential we’re able to laugh at the divine comedy that is life.
Elbert Hubbard, and much later, Ryan Reynolds’ Van Wilder, echoed this sentiment: “don’t take life too seriously—you’ll never get out alive.”
Dan Millman’s famous book The Peaceful Warrior mirrors the same in its Peaceful Warrior Rules of Life: “keep a sense of humor about everything, especially yourself.”
When things aren’t going my way, or seem all-too-much, I like to imagine it’s all a TV show, and I’m just a character — like George from Seinfeld.
While the other characters in the show seem able to keep a lighthearted disposition about mostly whatever comes their way, George is seemingly constantly tormented by life, to the point of hilarity.
We can laugh at George’s plights because they’re not happening to us.
And because we’re non-attached to the Plight of George, we can also see the humor in his tightly wound nature; the absurdity of his exaggerated reactions to anything and everything that happens to him; the uncanny knack he has for finding the negative in any situation; and most importantly, the obvious solution to his problem.
Yes, things happen. Life happens.
And when life feels like it’s happening “to me” instead of “for me”, I try to imagine a studio audience laughing along at the comedy of it all—or even a theater crowd gripped by the drama of it all.
It may sound trite, but it’s not.
This is not a gimmick for spiritually bypassing difficult emotions or ignoring uncomfortable realities demanding our attention.
It’s a quick and easy way to maintain a non-attached perspective.
From a non-attached place, we’re able to see more clearly, because we’re less consumed by whatever it is that seems to be getting our goat.
When we can see things more clearly, we can find solutions more effectively—without accumulating as much stress.
George doesn’t know he’s behaving ridiculously—he’s too absorbed by his own perceived problems.
But the audience of course sees the joke.
By cultivating that broader perspective, we have a much better chance of being able to successfully meet life’s demands.
By sitting comfortably for 20 minutes twice daily for Vedic Meditation, we experience non-attachment to our day-to-day worries. We feel good from within, regardless of what’s happening out there in the comedy of life. When we emerge, we feel more rested, clear-headed, and capable of tackling those worries head on—or, depending on the situation, forgetting about them altogether.
And of course, one of the broadest perspectives of all is the knowledge that we’re all just souls temporarily incarnated into different bodies, playing new characters for yet another hundred or so spins around the sun on a tiny rock floating in space, in order to learn a few lessons we didn’t finish learning in our past incarnation, before we leave these bodies and come back in new ones for the next round. Sounds a little like a TV show, doesn’t it?
If you’re interested to learn more about the concept of non-attachment, this episode of my teacher’s podcast elucidates in more detail the difference between non-attachment (never having been attached in the first place) and detachment (an artificial state of mind contrived by mood-makers and posers).
Let’s discuss these ideas and others during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday February 26th at 8am PT / 11am ET / 5pm EU. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective.
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Today, instead of music, I’d like to share a poem from Aldous Huxley’s Island that was recently shared with me by a beautiful soul:
It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.