Take Off All Your Labels!

Excerpts from Gurudev’s discourse on the Narada Bhakti Sutras

In the beginning, it may be just like a small wave, a ripple, but when you associate yourself in bad company continuously, it will become like an ocean. Don’t think, “Oh, it is just one party there, just one little thing that I’m doing.” No, that one little thing can just rip you. That is how alcoholics who have recovered from being an alcoholic get sucked back into it. It starts out as just one party, one peg - these justifications they give; they go for one little party once in a while and that’s it! Finished! And they end up in the rehabilitation center.

As you associate with it, it will cloud your whole mind, your intellect. The same happens when some people irritate you. Observe that irritation. What happens? You get irritated, but somehow you manage to suppress. The more you suppress your irritation, one day you will just blow it all off. It all becomes so unbearable, it comes flooding out. Don’t keep such a company.

You know, you always keep the company of someone who is similar to you, or who you think is on your wave-length.or equal to you.

When someone is above you, you honour him, you respect him, idolize him. When someone is below you, you don’t bother to take any notice of him, you brush him off. The company that you long for, or you want to keep, is that which is on par with you. And that is where all the anger and frustration start arising out of you. You become very small and keep everything above you or you become so big that you see everything as insignificant.

Then, who crosses this ocean of illusion, this ocean of unreality? - One who shuns the company.