Today I watched the India – Sri Lanka one-day cricket match off and on. For the record I was working or making calls. But I was absorbed in the match, to be honest. The work I was doing was an excuse to convince myself that the day was not being wasted.
India thrashed Sri Lanka. They made 321 runs in about 36 overs. Unbelievable stuff. From big time losers they became champions and performed legendary stuff overnight.
Harsha Bogle’s analysis was very interesting.
He said the Indians were so much in the pits that they could not descend any further. They had reached a point when all the clutter they had accumulated over the past in their minds just vaporised and they had a clean slate to begin all over. Their minds were clutter free and they performed from that zone and that made all the difference. He said it was as if nature took over, swept the cob webs in their minds clean and that made all the difference.
What I inferred is that they entered the zone of quietness – without the chatter of the mind, without the ego interfering with the flow of the game, in a spirit of surrender. They were in the vortex, in communion with the energy of the universe.
I got the feeling that became what they are capable of becoming – strong. They stretched to the extent possible and they made a case for the highest and the best in them.
I observe myself caught up in so many other inconsequential things.
This evening when I came home late in the evening I noticed how my mind wanted to switch on the TV to get away from the loneliness of being alone. I remembered then how the news, the views and the debates filled my being with chatter, clutter and kept my mind fully occupied. And thus those fringe activities somehow became the centre pieces of my life and took me away farther and farther away from my goals.
I see today that everything I did in the office were without focus – my mind occupied as it was with endless debates and serious preoccupations of ‘changing the world’. So, my work was performed from a position of weakness and not strength.
The results I have reaped for myself so far – especially during the past few years – reflects the weakness of the roots and efforts.
Neal Donald Wasch’s message to me was about doing things from weak and strong actions.
Babu, I believe God wants you to know…
…that every action is either strong or weak, and when every action is strong we are successful.
Wallace D. Wattles said that, and he was right. You know when the action you take is strong, and you know when it is weak. You can tell in your stomach. Endeavor to take no weak action whatsoever. Run away from it. Reject it. Go for the strong action, the strong choice, every time.
You know, by the way, what is meant by all of this. You have been weak in some of your choices and decisions, and you have been strong. You have been both in your life. But no more, right? Only strong from now on, yes?
And you know exactly why you received this message today.
Yes, I know why I received this message today. I knew it when I got it.
For a change, today I will use this message to straighten my life for good.
This evening I remembered how I gave up smoking. And it occurred to me that I have to give up the news papers and the TV News and debates just as determinedly as I gave up smoking.
I know this time the change will happen and that will be the beginning of my turnaround.