Speak, do and read only that which is essential to save energy, so that you can channel it towards inner growth. You need to observe three general points, the first of which is the regularity of meditativeness. It is very difficult to create meditation, but it is very easy to lose it. Anything high takes much arduous effort to create, but it can disappear within a moment. To lose contact with it is very easy.
It is like growing a rose flower — just a little hard wind and the rose has withered, the petals have fallen, or some animal has entered the garden and the rose is eaten. It is very easy to lose it, and it was so long a journey to create it.
Whenever there is a conflict between the higher and the lower, the lower wins easily. If you clash a rose with a rock, the rose is going to die, not the rock. The rock may not even become aware that there has been a clash, that it has killed something beautiful.
Your whole past is full of rocks, and when you start growing a rose of awareness in you, there are a thousand and one possibilities of it being destroyed by your old rocks: habits, mechanical habits. You will have to be watchful and careful.
You will have to walk like a woman who is pregnant. Hence the man of awareness walks carefully, lives carefully.
And this has to be a regular phenomenon. It is not that one day you do a little meditation, then for a few days you forget about it, and then one day you do it again. It has to be as regular as sleep, food, exercise, and breathing. Only then will the infinite glory of existence open its doors to you. The second general point: don’t waste your time with the nonessential. Don’t fool around. Millions of people are wasting their time with the nonessential, and the irony is that they know that it is nonessential. But they say, “What else to do? “They are not aware of anything more significant.
People are playing cards, and if you ask them, ‘What are you doing?’ they say, ‘We are killing time.’ Killing time? Time is life! So you are really killing life. And the time that you are killing cannot be recaptured again; once gone, it is gone forever.
The man who wants to become a buddha has to drop the nonessential more and more, so that more energy is available for the essential. Take a look at your life, at the many nonessential things you are doing. For what are you doing them? And how long have you done them — and what have you gained? Are you going to repeat the same stupid pattern your whole life? Take a look, then meditate over it. Speak, do and read-only that which is essential. So much time is saved, so much energy is saved; all that energy and time can easily be channeled toward meditation, inner growth, and witness.
But the seeker has to be watchful. Take more note of what you are doing with your life — because to grow roses of awareness, much energy, in fact, a reservoir of energy will be needed. All that is great comes only when you have extra energy. If your whole energy is wasted on the mundane, then the sacred will never be contacted. The third general point is that you should not rationalise your errors and mistakes, although, the mind tends to do so. If you commit some mistake, the mind says, ‘It had to be so, there were reasons for it. I am not responsible; the very situation was like this.’ The mind is very clever at rationalizing everything.
Avoid rationalising your own errors and mistakes, because you do so only to protect them. Then they will be repeated. So, stop rationalization completely. The reasoning is one thing, rationalisation is totally another. Reasoning can be used for positive purposes, but not rationalisation.
You will be able to find out when you are rationalising, because you can deceive others, but you cannot deceive yourself. You know that you have fallen. Rather than wasting time in rationalising and convincing yourself that nothing has gone wrong, put your whole energy into being aware. These general points will help you block the leaks of your energy. Otherwise existence goes on pouring energy into you, but because of the many leakages you have, it leaks out.