LIKES AND DISLIKES
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Alibag, India 17 December 1989 (Excerpt)

Then second problem is, “I like.” Now, “I like to eat a cake.” But there is no cake, what to do? Now whatever is there, enjoy it as a cake. But if you go on thinking like that: “I like whatever is not here,” you can never be happy. As simple as that.

You have to say, “I like whatever is there. I enjoy whatever is there.” That’s the reality. Whatever doesn’t exist, if you like it, so what can anybody do about it?

It works out in so many ways, in so many facets in life, that advantage is taken by people. Because we become so vulnerable to our likes and dislikes that the entrepreneurs take over and they create likes and dislikes in our heads and put ideas, every day. I’ve seen it now, how they do it. Through television, through newspapers, through this, that, so then you say, “Now I like this.”

But from where this liking has come, is the conditioning which is put into your head. So you are a slave of that conditioning. “I only like roses, and I don’t like any other flower.” But why? Why you don’t like any other flower?

And for such things, whatever we have, we miss the joy.

So the second part should be that, enjoy everything. “Why am I here?” It’s not a very comfortable place, by any chance. “So why am I here?” To enjoy each other. To enjoy your own being.

The more divergence you have outside, appealing to your ego and conditioning, the more your mind is busy with that, then you cannot enjoy anything.