Short spoken-word piece by Brian Johnson reflecting on teachings from Indian sages (Yogananda and Eknath Eswaran). Johnson recounts two stories—Yogananda’s guru confronting a ghost and Eswaran’s grandmother using a sour amla fruit—to illustrate that facing fears and persisting with difficult practices (like meditation) makes them less unpleasant and ultimately rewarding.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last one, we talked about Yogananda and his guru's wisdom on what to do with ghosts, AKA how to live fearlessly. As you may recall, the trick is to approach our challenges rather than try to avoid them. The story is so good, we'll quickly review it. Yogananda's guru tells him, my mother once tried to frighten me with an appalling story of a ghost in a dark chamber. I went there immediately and express my disappointment at having missed the ghost. Mother, he says, never told me another horror tale. That's genius. The moral of the story, look fear in the face and it will cease to trouble you. Now, as I read that moral from an Indian yogi, I thought of another one of my favorite Indian sages, Eknath Eswaran. In his great book, you, Life is yous Message, he tells us about a lesson he learned from his Indian guru, who happened to be his grandmother. The short story well, young Eknath was complaining about how hard it was to meditate and to change his habits. He tells us, I complained about it to my spiritual teacher, my grandmother. She was a very plain spoken teacher with none of the euphemisms of the intellectual. So she simply led me to a nearby amla tree. The amla is a beautiful tree, a little like the mimosa, with a small fruit. She picked a fruit and said, here, take a bite. I started chewing. It was pretty awful. I said, I've got to spit it out, Granny. It's sour, bitter, unpleasant. She just said, bear with me, keep chewing on for a while. So I went on chewing and to my surprise, the amla fruit began to get sweeter and sweeter. Similarly, Eknath tells us, meditation and the allied disciplines require sustained enthusiasm every day. Even when it seems icky. Especially, he says, when it seems icky, if you keep at it, you will find those same disciplines become sweeter and sweeter. When meditation comes around, you will find yourself hungering for the inner peace and calm it brings. The time will even come when you want a double helping. Approaching our fears, rewiring our brains as we create new virtuous habits that help us flourish while eliminating the the old vicious ones that don't. Of course, the process isn't always pleasant. It's often painful. It tastes icky. Until we have the wisdom to see that approaching our fears and embracing the inevitable challenges of the journey and doing the hard work to win the ultimate game, that brings us the sweetest reward of tapping into our infinite potential. Let's do that today.
