A rich man who lived in a village once lost a bag of gold coins.
Worried that his bag of gold may have been stolen, he approached the village headman to issue a notice. “Whoever finds and returns the gold coin bag to the rich man, will be rewarded with 10 gold coins.”
The day had almost ended when a poor farmer found the coin bag and went to return it to the rich man. The rich man was happy that the bag was finally found. He started to count and it was 100 gold coins total, exactly as it was before the bag was lost.
This meant he had to pay the poor farmer 10 gold coins as promised. But the rich man did not want to pay the farmer.
After he pretended to have finished counting the coins, he looked angrily at the poor farmer, “Where are the rest of my gold coins?”, he asked. The farmer stood there confused. What he thought would be a rewarding day was turning out to be something else. The rich man asked again, “There were 110 gold coins in this gold bag, from which 10 coins are missing now. I counted twice!! Did you take them? You have stolen 10 gold coins.”
So, he grabbed the farmer’s arm and dragged him to the village headman along with the gold bag of coins.
The village headman asked, “How many gold coins were originally in the bag?”
The rich man answered, “There were 110 gold coins, and now 10 coins are missing.”
To which the farmer replied, “But I never opened the bag until I handed it over to this man.”
The village headman understood the matter, shrewd as he was, and so he gave his final decision. “Since your bag originally contained 110 gold coins, and this bag contains 100 gold coins, that means this bag does not belong to you.” Saying this, the village headman handed over the coin bag to the farmer. The rich man had no choice but to go back home, empty-handed.
“We’re too much ourselves. Afraid of letting go of what we are, in case we are nothing, and holding on so tight, we lose everything else.”
~Clive Barker
The rich man held on tightly to what already belonged to him. So much so that giving even a fraction of what he owned was extremely difficult. The result was that he lost the entire bag of gold coins.
We are likely to find fault with the rich man. However, a part of him exists in many people, which is the inability to let go.
And this aspect of holding on too tight stems from the desires that control us. We lose focus as we allow our desires and worries to take complete control of our thought processes. Life becomes a constant race of playing catch up with all our supposed goals. As a result, the mind becomes restless, anxious and scattered.
Our inner core feels displaced and we feel agitated, which is what meditation masters call the Monkey Mind.
This is where a person’s spiritual health is deeply affected.
If you possess a monkey mind, your Spiritual Quotient (SiQ) will be low. This further transpires into your FIT levels, which refer to your spiritual health. In this case, you would be unable to form better and more productive habits as your mind is constantly trying to solve everything like a math equation.
Therefore, to improve FIT levels and enhance the power of SiQ, one needs to learn to transcend from the Monkey Mind to the Monk Mind.
The Monk state of mind is about looking within and focusing on the only thing that one can control – the mind.
The type of mind (monkey or monk) that you choose to nurture will define:
· The way you see things in the outer world
· The way you tell stories to yourself about the events that unfold
· And on what you choose to focus
The key lies in improving your FIT levels. This means your FREQUENCY to implement new and better habits, your INTENSITY to hold on to those habits, and your TENACITY to apply those habits.
So, transform your mind and elevate yourself as a leader, learning to let go of the unnecessary gold coins from your life.
“The Art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.”
~Rebecca Solnit
