Following up on the previous post on, ‘Be contagious’ I wanted to add another talk Master gave recently. This time He called it, ‘Availability’.
When I thought of the word available, many thoughts came gushing forth. As a trainer, being available for the practitioners who were seeking meditation sessions is a prerequisite. What else could be part of my being available, I wondered.
The dictionary meaning of being available is, ‘able to be used or obtained; at someone's disposal.’ If I took the word literally it felt as if the word was asking me to make myself free for one and all. Signing up to be a trainer I had committed to ‘be available’ to my Master and in His service. Which in turn implied that, anyone who came to me seeking a meditation session, I needed to be there for them, irrespective of time, events, and my personal commitments. How was that possible though? To be at others’ disposal always? The over-creative monkey mind started spinning a yarn of its own, creating stories about the impossibility, impracticality of being ‘available’.
And till that point in time, Master had not given the prefix, totally, to the title. He added totally later, asking us practitioners to think, and introspect if being totally available was a possibility. The ideal goal for abhyasis’ and trainers’ is to be ‘Totally Available’.
The talk goes on to say, ‘Availability suggests an openness to serve the Master and to be worked upon by him…In psychology, there is a concept known as “availability bias.” Availability bias is a cognitive bias. We tend to favor information that is recent, easily accessible, or that is otherwise “top of mind.” Our tendency is to keep our full availability in reserve and instead lend our availability to those things that are nearest to us. Ephemeral phenomena become our priorities—palpable objects of thought and senses that are most vivid to our daily experience—capturing our attention and motivating our actions…The cognitions that contribute to availability bias constitute not only our recent memories but our entire individual creation—our samskaric impulses, our wishes and aversions, our network of thoughts, emotions, and tendencies, and, of course, our sensory inputs. All these seem near and urgent and become distortions in our awareness, resulting in contradictory priorities and confusion of purpose…Pratyahara’s essence lies in enhancing inner awareness and dedicating full attention to the inner world, for that is where one meets the Master. Availability to this inner presence is possible only when one remains in a state of pratyahara.”
We are entangled in a web of daily life which is dominated by relationships, goals and events driven by them. The time we give to ourselves gets superseded by the time our worldly goals and relationships demand of us. My self-availability is compromised for every situation that is unplanned, and yet demands my attention. If I could find a way to be totally available to my Self, listening to the inner voice, then availability can become Natural. Being totally available to the inner Self, helps me be available to others’ also.
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