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step is become aware while you are dreaming. And then the third and the final step is become aware while you are fast asleep, not even dreaming. When a man is capable of becoming aware in profound, dreamless sleep, he has arrived home.
Anand Narayani. Anand means bliss; Narayani means a goddess -- a goddess of bliss. That's what we are meant to be -- gods and goddesses of bliss. And if we are not it is simply because of our own foolishness; it is simply because of our own misunderstanding of life. We are responsible. Nobody is preventing us from becoming what we are supposed to be except ourselves. We are the only enemies. The whole existence is friendly towards us, but we are not friendly towards ourselves.
We have been taught to condemn ourselves; we have been taught that we are worthless. We have been told in thousand and one ways that we are dirt, and that has become part of our conditioning.
The first step in sannyas is: respect yourself, because if you don't respect yourself you cannot respect anybody else in the world. Not even God can be respected, because even God comes number two; number one is you.
Love yourself. If you can't love yourself you cannot love anybody else. And if you cannot love yourself, who is going to love you either? And when there is no love and no respect for one's being, life becomes a desert, because it is only through love and respect that one makes a garden out of one's being, that one starts learning how to play on one's own heart's harp. Then one starts learning how to be more and more poetic, graceful, aesthetic, sensitive... because life is such a great opportunity, it has not to be missed. It is such a treasure, it has not to be wasted.
So the first step and the most fundamental step is: love yourself, respect yourself. And that does not mean that become an egoist. Loving yourself is not creating an ego. The trees love themselves and there is no ego; and the birds love themselves and there is no ego.
Ego arises not out of love for yourself but out of comparison. When you compare with others, ego arises. Then ego can have two sides: either you will suffer from inferiority complex, that
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