by Yogi Bhajan: In the reality of your own structure and existence, the mind is given to you to so you can act, express, and experience your self in this creation. Instead of training your mind and using its power, you have become a slave of the mind.
Your only problem is the misbehavior of your own mind. Neither your body does anything wrong, nor your soul does anything wrong. It is very unfortunate when a human being cannot reach the Neutral Mind. When you cannot reach your Neutral Mind, you are reactive. You act as a beast instead of a human. I’m sorry to tell you this, but it is true. When you cannot reach the Neutral Mind, you never know what is right and what is wrong. You lack the clarity and certainty of your soul.
You are an intelligent person who knows everything, educates yourself, feeds yourself, decorates yourself, wears clothes, and accomplishes great things. But when you cannot speak with a committed language of consciousness, it is very degrading. You seem shallow and look like an idiot when someone asks you, “Did you really say this? Is that what you meant?” And you cannot say yes or no. When you waver and cannot say directly what is true or real, then you fall before your own self. You are belittled. How could you do this to your self? How could you act with so little scope, depth, or reality? Without the Neutral Mind, you protect yourself with diversions, manipulations, and lies. This game of lies catches up with you. When that happens, it brings an end to your personality. It brings an end to your psyche and your projection. It limits you and diminishes you from your trust and reliance on Infinity. It brings an end to the flow of your confidence. Whenever you lie it takes away a chunk from you that is called self-confidence. I don’t mind your lies. It is not a personal problem for me. But it is a problem for you. Instead of lies, practice the art of committed language so you can tap the power and beauty of your mind.
Committed language is very special. It is an innate capacity we all have. Committed language is when you speak directly, with your heart, with all parts of your mind supporting what you say. It means you speak from the Neutral Mind, having processed the thought with all three Functional Minds. Your self is committed to the impact of your words unto Infinity. If you listened to those words after 100 years, you would still approve the statement. When you hear the words, they are full of spirit and not just mechanical or intellectual. They are filled with you, with your purpose, with the reality of you as a creative being. Committed language is direct, truthful, and spoken from your heart with full awareness of the other person, your roles, and obligations.
Normally you do not speak with committed language. The result is your love is not committed, your compassion is not committed, and your relationships are not committed. Uncommitted relationships are very painful. There is fear, no trust, unconscious anger, and mistake after mistake. To get rid of that pain, you drink. You drink so much you can become an alcoholic. If you don’t drink, you find some other drugs. You become a drug addict. You do all kinds of other weird things and damaging habits to avoid the pain. All these negative habits that belittle and subject your life are just tactics to cover over one great pain: your own hollowness. You try to bury the shallowness you feel. You have no depth because you are not committed. Without commitment in your language and actions you feel that you do not know what is going on. You are unsure and lack control. You react by feeling irritation and anger. Then you find lots of ways to let that anger out. One of the worst and most common ways is to harm yourself by lying.
Some people believe they are very clever. They are so clever that they think they can play games, they can lie, they can outsmart their own hollowness and suffer no reaction from all the lies they weave. They are beautiful, wonderful people. I don’t have any trouble with them. They are a certain experience and style of life. But I know, with that belief, they shall be shallow and hollow forever. When you lie you think you can get away from something. You think you can save yourself and harm somebody else. You have the choice to lie for the rest of your life. But each time you lie, you lose a piece of your self-confidence.
A lie is nothing but a habit. It takes away confidence and it comes from a lack of confidence. It is a vicious circle of insecurity and pain. If you don’t want to say something, don’t! You do not have to lie. Instead just speak up, “I don’t want to say it.” It takes courage to say, “I don’t want to say it.” But that courage builds you. It lets you speak directly from your own depth. Instead when you feel cornered you say, “I don’t know.” This is a lie. You do know. It is a common lie which we all practice. Everybody knows where they are and why they are what they are. It is a fundamental sensitivity each of us has.
We lack a simple, clear analysis of why people lie so much when it harms them and limits them. To start just think, “What is a lie?” It is anything spoken with uncommitted language. Any word spoken under fear in which your personality is not clear is a lie. Lying is not a sin. Lying is a habit. It is a damaging habit, but just a habit like any other habit.
Why do people lie? They lie because they cannot love. Instead of loving and giving love, they seek to be loved. They want validation. They act like little beggars who need the good will of the entire world. They do not rely on the goodwill of God and validate themselves.
Do not seek anything from people. Give love instead, and rely on God. But remember, God is not different than your own soul. There is no such thing as God separate from you. God is in your own soul, and that soul goes through every molecule, every atom of you. Now an average person has over ten trillion cells. All those cells and the projection of the soul changes and renews itself every 72 hours. So you are constantly renewed and given new energy to make choices. If you lied yesterday, and you lied today, but you don’t lie tomorrow, you will be all right. You can rewrite your projection and start to use the power of committed language in your life. This is my main point. It is very ineffective for you to live in falsehood and lies. You will not know who you are or what you are doing, and you will become dependent on something or someone.
When you don’t have the habit to speak directly with committed language, you will create emotional diversions from your own bad feelings. I was sitting in the Albuquerque Airport. I was talking to a mother about her son. She said, “I want my son to come home and stay with me instead of being at school.” I said, “Yes, you are his mother and you want your son. But ask yourself and answer honestly, can you handle him?” She looked at me and said, “I don’t know.” Can you believe this answer? She wants him but she knows she cannot handle the situation. But she says she doesn’t know. So, I said, “Why don’t you try it for a while and check it out carefully. If you find you can handle him, then it is fine with us. If not, then let him go.” She did not know what to do with her loneliness.
This kind of drama is an emotional diversion tactic Sometimes you may feel very lonely. You feel it inside your self. You want to know why you are lonely. You search for the cause. What is the reason? Then you divert your mind. You find a friend or a boyfriend, and you go to a party or put on a party yourself. Anything to involve your mind and divert your attention from the bad feelings. The problem is that you can divert your mind from reality temporarily, but you can never ignore reality. It haunts you. It haunts you because everything is a reality. It is just as the spiritual insight proclaims: God is everywhere.
iehu jgu scY kI hY koTVI scy kw ivic vwsu
Eh jag sachai kee hai kotharee sachay kaa vich vaas
– Guru Nanak, Siri Guru Granth Sahib, page 463
The world is the True Lord’s chamber. Within it the True One resides.
This whole world is truth and only truth dwells in it. Lies don’t. Therefore, the truth will continue to haunt you, and the lies will evaporate. Not only will the lies evaporate, they will evaporate you! Somewhere along the cycle of the lying and the lies to support the lying, you are caught lying. And that is it. You are caught being phony, being jealous, and being belittled. Caught, caught, caught, caught.
And one day, you are just cut. Your lies have cut you off from your self and from reality. They have squandered the power and potential of your mind. Once you are cut out, how can you go back? Where is there to go? You have lied to your self so much you do not know where you have come from. You have lied to your self to not look at or know where you are going. You are scared. That is why you call death “going home to God,” and yet you are afraid of it. Can you understand this? Your lies have made you scared. You even fear the Unknown, which has created and nurtured you. When you separated from God and came into the human form, you were in pain. You came to a very unknown place called the planet Earth. You came to unknown people called parents. You came to unknown environments and food. First your mother nursed you and then you nursed yourself. You grew and then you became passionate to know. You wanted experience and to consciously know. If you guide that passionate self to become the compassionate self, committed and vast, and then experience God, then life is beautiful. It is so simple. Then your mind acts fearlessly with kindness and compassion to express you.
The greatest blunder I have seen that almost everyone makes is to just speak their mind. It doesn’t make any sense. They sound like the squawking ducks in a pond. The mind is not meant to be spoken. The mind is mostly automatic waves of thoughts and sensations from many sources. The mind is meant to know the truth. Know your own mind and use it to speak the truth. Train your mind to speak the truth in a committed language, so it is beautiful and effective. If you speak whatever the mind pushes forward, you won’t make any sense. It will just be duck language.
Who do you think you are? You are not your mind, nor do you belong to the mind. The mind is yours. If the mind is yours, where do you apply the control to direct it? Where do you apply the analytic mind to understand what you have done? That is the use of committed language—where the self is projected in its totality without limit. Instead, you just speak your fears, your anger, your hatred, and your ignorance. You speak your passions and your lust. If that is not enough then you write it. If that is not enough, you imagine, fantasize, and counter-imagine until you are spaced out or depressed.
To understand how to use your mind and break the web of lies, you must grasp the nature of committed language. Your common observations and expressions are not realities, and Infinity itself cannot be spoken. This is the normal situation. And there are so many Infinities in our experience. God is Infinity. Love is Infinity. Commitment is Infinity. In every facet of our life we have the potential for the Infinity of our projection. Projecting with Infinity in our speech is the base of committed language.
In old Vedic language the Infinity of your projection is called patantar. Patantar is when this trinity of body, mind, and soul all project towards Infinity. Pa means the total sum of tantar. Tantar means length and breadth. It is a two word sound—pa-tantar. Together the sounds make the word patantar which means our total projection towards Infinity. We use this concept when we say about a very wise person, Baraa patantar hai. It means that person’s projection is great. It is within the reach of Infinity, and Infinity is within the reach of his projection.
Let’s practice speaking with this projection. How do you say, “I am your friend” in a committed language? You meet and just say, “Hey friend!” That is all. In “naad language” it has two strokes to its impact. “Hey” is the projection and “friend!” is the confirmation. Committed language comes from the heart. Language which comes not from the heart but from the head is nothing but a bunch of lies. When the head is subject to the heart you are in ecstasy with the conscious self. When the heart is subject to the head it is too ugly to even speak about.
Now say, using committed language, “You are very beautiful.” Try it yourself first. In a committed language it would be, “Wow, hey you.” This basic phrase has a triple stroke to its impact and accent. “Wow” is the projection. “Hey” expands the projection. “You” is the personal penetration. This triple stroke commands the mind from the heart and reaches the Neutral Mind.
Here is one last example. Committed language captures the Negative and Positive Minds and uses the Neutral Mind. All three are balanced. If you want to give your promise and make a commitment and you say, “Don’t worry,” you have not completed your Projection. You are not well defined within your promise. Any confirmed commitment must contain both polarities. When you speak it, you speak to both sides of the coin—negative and positive. Instead of saying to someone, “I have told you the truth,” you must qualify it in committed language. Say, “This is the truth, take it or leave it.” That is committed language. You expressed that you are not worried because there is nothing but truth, and you know the guy has no choice. You say, “Take it or leave it. It is up to you. Don’t bother about me.” Normally people who speak truth say something like, “Don’t believe me. Experience it.” They do not sell themselves to you. When you speak truth you don’t need to sell anything. It is already sold. It is ever-living. It will never go anywhere.
We who have practiced life consciously know this language of truth. I can also read auras. God has not given me the same eyes that he has given to you. All these things tell me what you are saying and how much truth there is in what you say. It is very fascinating to watch the rainbow of auric colors and see someone talking and lying and still trying to express and communicate. It shows one lesson very clearly: you can not take a garden hose and use it to penetrate through a bulletproof wall. It doesn’t work. That hose is just like your lies. Lies don’t work at all. They cannot penetrate to the heart, and they cannot take your projection to Infinity beyond time. They serve only to satisfy your ego. Your heart, your soul, and the reality in others are not satisfied. Sometimes people will listen to you, even with your lies, and out of compassion they will pretend with you. Later on they realize you are a liar, and then they abuse you. So, it is totally ridiculous to use lies. Talk from your heart. Master the art of committed language, and use your mind to project to the Infinity in every facet of your life.
You all want to be successful. What should your profile be like to be successful? When you want to be successful and very convincing, just feel truth in your heart. Be sure. Be confident. Feel that truth in your heart, then speak that truth from the heart. Don’t try to run it around or manipulate it with your brain or head.
There is a secret to courageousness. There has to be a base from which you speak, a foundation in committed language within you. If your base is your ego and personality, you can fall flat. If your base is only personal experience, you will be very limited. If you form a base on the Guru’s words, you can never be defeated. You will have invincibility in your spirit. The Guru’s words in the Siri Guru Granth Sahib are the perfect committed language where the heart commands the mind to serve Infinity. Once those incantations of the Infinite are in your heart, the truth will always seem sweet and victory in life will be yours.
Sat Naam.
