A few days ago, a friend asked me if I had a favorite quote, or mantra or something I said to myself every day. I thought I’d share my answer in case it resonated with anyone else.
Asatoma Sadgayama is Sanskrit; roughly translated to English it comes out as “from untruth to truth.”
Not a religious text, and even though it originates from the east it isn’t eastern either. If you think about the translation, moving from untruth to truth is pretty much applicable to anyone, anywhere.
It means working on dropping what we’ve gathered; perceptions, ideas, habits; anything that is acquired unconsciously and moving towards living more consciously. Letting go of what we’ve accumulated so far in our lives and moving towards what we really are. Which is a conscious being.
That’s a pretty universal idea, isn’t it? Faced with the question, would you really want to hang on to some automatic behaviors instead of stopping and saying “wait a minute’, why do I think this, or why do I do that?”
There was a song that was popular a few years ago that had a line in it that went “I don’t know why I say the things I say, but I say them any-way”
Reminded me of some words I read recently where the topic discussed was the 28-30 year cycles in life; the idea being that we run through cycles during our lifetimes, repeating behaviours and situations until or unless we wake up one day and stop. And, that we really don’t begin to have an idea what life is all about until we’re in our 70s or 80s, after running through these cycles.
The whole idea of intentionally working on oneself is to shove a stick in the wheel of repetitive behaviors and say “hang on a minute here”, and look a little deeper at what we’re doing (or not doing) and try to see why it all is so that we can make the decision to continue or stop and do something else.
Asatoma Sadgayama. Moving from untruth to truth. Sounds to me like something worth repeating to oneself every day.
#qotd #asatomasadgamaya #clarity #life #conscious #choose
William Schmidt Counseling 