Lessons living with Mohanji – Day 1

By Christopher Greenwood

Dear family, 

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to live with Mohanji?

Lessons Living with Mohanji 

WhatsApp Group (https://chat.whatsapp.com/KHnbnLbUvHGK5YaVE81lg9)

Since April, I have had the opportunity to live and work side by side with Mohanji. It has been a real blessing. I’m incredibly thankful.

As I work to help arrange Mohanji’s time, appointments and schedule, I’m aware of the many people around the world who’d like to be with him physically but can’t because of the Covid situation.

As a humble and modest gesture to all those who would like to be with him but can’t, I will begin a daily recording of Lessons Living with Mohanji. These will be short recordings of my time spent living with Mohanji, the lessons I’ve learnt and my insights into the Grand Tradition of Liberation. 

Day 1 Lesson – Do what needs to be done today, today. Don’t delay.

Today’s recording is a lesson from Mohanji’s practical way of working with high efficiency and doing what needs to be done today, today.

Mohanji never rests, he is always working, and today the lesson is about efficiency.

I hope you find it useful.

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Hello everybody, my name is Christopher Greenwood, and I’m a Mohanji Acharya. Through blessings, grace, destiny and situations of life, I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to work with Mohanji in very close proximity as part of his office, and more recently spend very close time with him, living with him, working with him due to the restrictions of lockdown and the corona situation, which has been an incredible blessing that I’m extremely thankful for.

One of the things which Mohanji had said to me when I took up this position, and also where I am now, spending time with him at home in India, is that there are many people across the world, who would love and are craving for the opportunity to see him physically and be in his presence. So, never forget that. And do what you can to serve those people, so that you can, through some way of your own, share the experience and give people a feeling and a flavour of what it’s like to spend time with me.

So, this is the first in a series of recordings. It is probably some videos, which is my humble attempt to share some of the learnings and the teachings, which I’ve managed to be privileged to since staying with Mohanji.

Now, for anyone who’s spent some time in close proximity to Mohanji, they’ll probably tell you that his pace is incredibly quick and efficient. And in fact, he said to me, numerous times: “If you could all go faster, then I could be doing much, much more. I have to actually reduce my speed down to about 20%, just so that you can cope and keep up.” And even then, we still struggle. So, the potential is there for much much more. And I’m sure this will come in the future. 

So along with that theme, the first insight that I wanted to share with all of you today, is something that I’ve really been thankful for, which is this idea of efficiency, productivity and doing tasks now, doing them today. Because this is how Mohanji operates, and it’s how he has trained us here to work. And I’m now personally finding a lot of benefit from it. I mean, I get much more self-esteem, because things are completed on time, there’s much less stress because the mountain of activities to complete is much less. And also, there’s movement, a momentum, which, again, creates more motivation.

So, I’ll give some examples soon. But generally, if I speak about Mohanji’s way of working, he has a purpose, without a doubt, and he is completely crystal clear on what outcome he wants to achieve. So, everything for him is driving towards that. And as quick as we can reach that, the better because it’s better for everybody within the family and better for the world.

So, one thing that he does not compromise on is efficiency. So, he is incredibly efficient in his own work. And all the work he’s tasked with within a day, I’m still astounded at what he completes. And he manages to make sure that everything that is pending with him is completed within 24 hours. There are some exceptions, but generally, that’s the rule, any request, any call, any conversation, any message, any activity is completed within 24 hours and moved from his desk, as he says. So, sometimes that might not mean that everything has to be completely finalized. But if you imagine the work that comes into you, the request that comes into you, you’ve at least done some consideration, you’ve done some activity, you’ve transformed it in a way, and moved on to somebody else. So it’s now on their desk. So the idea of creating that movement is something that I’ve observed and taken into my day to day work, which is really good.

And he also does not accept any delay; the delay is not something that exists within his vocabulary because he doesn’t understand why that would happen. Any time there is a delay or ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’, can’t be accepted; there’s no tomorrow for Mohanji, it’s always now. It’s always today. Do what you can now when you have the time and do it promptly because that brings auspiciousness to the activity, generating further movement and momentum. Mohanji does not accept delay or inertia. 

From my perspective, the examples of what I’d sort of share is how I used to work would be: if there was a request for Mohanji’s time, a task which I needed to complete, something which had come in unexpectedly, I would begin writing my list, and I’d be like in my mind ‘Okay, I can do that tomorrow, or I can leave this for tomorrow’. I soon realized that the pace of work means that you’ve got a mountain for tomorrow if you leave it for tomorrow. And if you leave that for tomorrow, the mountain grows, and quickly you become under this absolute burden of tasks and activities.

So now, as an example, if somebody says or Mohanji tells me: “Someone would like to meet me, can you arrange a time?” As soon as he says this to me, I’ll be on my phone; I’ll contact that person. I’ll look in the calendar, suggest the time and then pass that on to them as a suggestion. So straight away, it’s come from Mohanji to me, and then it’s gone to the other person. So, it’s off my desk. The same if I need to make a phone call, or the same if I need to make just a general conversation with somebody, as soon as I can, it’s done. If possible, the same for tasks is completing a document or completing a draft, sending them to be reviewed and updated.

So this might be an insight which you may not consider as so spiritual. But I’ve started this first talk because Mohanji quite often says that he’s more practical, before being spiritual. And when we’ve got activities to complete, a whole variety of platforms, activities to progress and strengthen, build up what we’re doing in the world, this momentum, this efficiency, and being practical before being spiritual are incredibly important. And that’s a general theme, which we have day to day working here. There’s a morning routine where we come together. We’ll have a conversation about the activities that completed yesterday, what needs to be completed today, discuss what has to happen. I’ll take that away and work on it so that everything needed to move today has moved by midday or by afternoon, and there’s momentum.

So, I hope that was useful insight for you; there’ll be more to come. You can send me questions or comments. And if there’s anything I could orientate towards or any questions which anybody has about being with Mohanji, living with Mohanji, I’d be happy to answer them as well. Have a great day.

Answer to a question about the delay:

Today, I was asked to clarify what no delay and procrastinate means and how to overcome this. So, I’ll share my experience and also the original message from Mohanji. So, no delay. That means no postponement, no tomorrow. It’s now. As simple as that. And if we can take that teaching into our life, we can become incredibly powerful. And if we take it to another level and look at Mohanji’s larger work, which is to take people to liberation – What’s he liberating us from? It’s this cycle of birth and death in the world. This karmic cycle. And what is karma? Unfulfilled pending desires. So, if to be liberated, we have to exhaust our karma, then there is no postponement, no tomorrow, there’s only now. That’s how he sees it. If he is taking us to the highest, finish it now, complete what needs to be completed. And that’s another dimension to the message. 

The second point about procrastination is that I also had to come out of it recently here. For me, I had a little bit more encouragement, because Mohanji is here, and he definitely doesn’t allow people to sit idle, you have to move, so there’s an extra motivating force. But if we think of ourselves as a bundle of habits and patterns, we have essentially trained ourselves to be lazy and procrastinate. And the most predominant force is gravitational, to pull us down into a comfort zone. Suppose you take exercise, for example, when you’re trying to work out, increase fitness, increase strength, or increase muscles while doing the activity and having the momentum. In that case, it’s very easy to maintain. But once you stop, you quickly slip back into poor, unhealthy eating, not much movement, and it’s very easy to do that—the same with procrastination. You have to combat it with the opposite, which is action, and the activity of just doing it—getting on, getting moving. And do it now. And that can be cultivated. And I find that once I start just putting myself into action, looking at the task, don’t let my mind think ‘okay I’ll do that later’ or ‘I can do something else’, I just push through it. It’s an effort to rebuild and retrain to start activities. Once you start the activities and keep moving, you generate some momentum, which then brings results, which then brings motivation, which then brings satisfaction. And so it’s almost like you’re starting, pushing a big, heavy boulder. But once you start moving it and it starts rolling it’s much easier. So, it really is just taking that effort to achieve a purpose. And if our purpose is liberation, as for many people connected to Mohanji, then it is that message of no postponement, no tomorrow. It’s now.

|| JAI BRAHMARISHI MOHANJI||

Edited & Published by – Testimonials Team, 14^th January 2021

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