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in you be a discontinuation with the past. Unlearn all that you have learned up to now. Forget your past, disconnect yourself, don't look back. Look in the moment, in the present, and be in a totally relaxed state, available. That availability makes you worthy. God comes only to those who are available to him.
To be available is to be prayerful. To be open and receptive is to be really religious.
Praise is one of the most difficult things to do because it goes against the ego.
The ego wants to condemn, the ego is always negative, it always looks at the darker side of things. It counts the thorns in a rose bush, it ignores the roses -- and if you ignore them then they don't exist for you.
Praise is difficult because of this, the ego finds it almost impossible to praise. It can't look at the positive side of things.
Life has both, the negative and the positive. They can exist only in a togetherness, they are interdependent. Now, it is up to you what to choose. If you choose the negative you become irreligious. Then your life is a condemnation, a condemnation of everything, and that creates misery. You are surrounded by a condemned existence. And nobody else is responsible for it, it is your own doing. You could have chosen the positive, you could have counted the roses, you could have ignored the thorns. Then naturally praise arises. If you can see the beauty, the joy of existence, the sheer poetry of existence, the music of it all, it is impossible not to praise. But the first barrier has to be dropped.
So my message for you is: if you choose to be with me you will have to risk finding yourself, you must risk finding yourself. And the only way to find oneself is to risk the ego. It is painful, it hurts. You have lived with the ego for so long, you have become almost one with it. But being a sannyasin means that you are choosing the path of egolessness. You will have to drop all that is implied in the ego: all kinds of jealousies, possessiveness, hatred, anger, all that is negative and dark, all that creates hell in you. The ego is the source of all hell. Once ego disappears you are in paradise again.
And by being a
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