The deepest teachings are not borrowed from books. They come from lived experiences. Those lived experiences can become wisdom and teachings for others, and that’s how sages have passed on their lives experiences to us.
Among all spiritual texts, the Shiva Sutras remain closest to my heart. It opens with a statement that the entire text exists only to help a person remember. “Chaitanyam Atma”. Consciousness is the self. We don’t have to attain or achieve it. We have to just remember this. The ancient text calls the entire path Pratyabhijna, recognition, using the image of a person who has forgotten their own face and is shown a mirror. They do not develop a new face in that moment. They simply stop mis interpreting the one they already had. This single shift in language changes everything about how the spiritual path is understood. You are not climbing toward something far away. You are remembering something you misplaced it.
Krishna tells Arjuna in Bhagavad Gita something that contradicts what modern productivity culture teaches. He does not say work harder. He says work without anxiety about the result. “Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana”. Most people read this as a license to be lazy. It is the opposite. It is a description of the only kind of effort that does not eventually burn a person out. Effort fused with attachment to outcome creates a particular kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with the actual work. It comes entirely from the mind’s relationship to a future it cannot control. Krishna is not lowering the bar on effort. He is removing the part of effort that was never actually productive to begin with.
If rumours are to be believed I'll be living with a seventh different Prime Minister shortly. If it carries on like this I'm going to stop making the effort to learn their names.
Your resignation being announced by the President of the United States before you’ve even addressed Parliament or told the public. The final humiliation.