Thomas Green here with ethical marketing service on the episode. Today, we have Sanel Banu Rajan Sanel, welcome. Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Very happy to have you. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do? I’m a spiritual mentor. Uh I do coaching with people also, I teach in universities. Um and I teach about how to have more um mastery over our own mind and how to influence our mind in such a way that is allows us to create the kind of resource that we want to create with our life. And uh yeah, thank you for, thank you for the introduction. What would you say are the most common, shall we say mistakes if you would even frame it that way around people um using their mind um not taking accountability or ownership for the experiences they are having and um blaming I sent you the uh also creates a lot of disempowerment within the mind in what way like when you are blaming you are renouncing responsibility because, but it does say you are giving away the responsibility led to something else on the external world and the moment you give every responsibility, you also lose power because, uh, power and responsibility, they go hand in hand.
So you don’t have any power. You don’t have any responsibility either. So, in a way you lose power over making any sort of changes or influencing the very experience that you are having, um, by blaming and not taking all of our experiences. Yeah, I certainly, uh, I would be on your, I think I would take your view, uh, in relation to this topic. So we’re on the same page. I am interested to know, um, what you think about the topic of, are there certain things which do merit blame, meaning are there certain things that are out of our control? Um Do you make exceptions there or, and to what, what percentage would you say is in our control and not in our control? Well, in that matter, I am more kind of to, towards the stoic principles of the ring of power. The rings of power essentially is a concept where, uh, anything that’s within the, uh, within the ring, you do have power over it, uh, and can influence it and make differences on the matter and whatever is outside of the ring, you don’t have power over.
So essentially, um, anything that you do not have any power over making any difference right now, uh You would put that into circumstance, you would include that into the circumstance including the very state that you find yourself in. So if you don’t really feel like you have much of an influence over even changing the way you are feeling, so you can even take that uh consider that also as a part of circumstance. And then um once you make a clear distinction between the circum uh circumstances, and now you get to look at what all is your choices in relation to that situation. Uh So you can literally ask yourself with all of these circumstances where about is my choices?
You know, so asking a question like that makes your mind of uh um or creates a certain sort of an orientation within your mind where your mind start looking for choices and the more you find choices, you don’t feed yourself as a victim to the circumstance or you don’t feel yourself powerless in the circumstance because a choice always goes hand in hand with power. Uh And uh the more choice you have, the more power you have. So essentially as you see, choice, you are also uh gaining power. Yeah, I love that answer. Um I do find in some instances there are people who perhaps will tell you that they don’t have any control when perhaps they do. Um Have you got any thoughts around that topic? Yeah. Yeah. When they, that’s why I said when they don’t have any power power over and uh especially when it comes to the way they are feeling in the moment.
They can take that as the part of circumstance and uh maybe they can even gesture it, they can even acknowledge, even put a hand on the chest or something or on your heart. And you can literally say, you know, I see you, I hear you, I acknowledge you. And if there is a wish for a wish inside you, for this feeling to be different, acknowledge that too. And then you can go on into acknowledging the truth of the moment uh by saying something like, you know, there is a part of me that is feeling this way right now. Uh Let’s just say if it’s a um disempowering state like a sadness or a state of feeling um insecure or instead of feeling uh um anger or whatever the feeling is.
Uh so you can and bring about changes um changes within the feeling by literally asking your yourself the kind of questions that will allow you to look at that situation differently. So taking different perceptual positions becomes like a very key um capability that allows you uh to have a different experience of the moment, you know, that gives you different choices uh because you are experiencing different things in the moment. Of course, you see a different set of choices as you have different experience. Yeah. Have you got any um examples of how you’ve changed your perception and how much it’s changed the situation? Yeah. Um Sometimes there is not so much the uh the situation is going to change.
It’s so much as changing the relationship that you have with the situation. So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a nuanced aspect there because we, as human beings, we are relate to everything. People price us to things, to situations. Yeah, and do everything. Everything we have a, we form a relationship and our relationship with things shapes our experience of being with those things. So we do have power when it comes to shaping those relationships or influencing those relationships that we have with things. So let’s just say I have, I have a pain in my body and I’m, it’s not so much a matter of uh doing something and stopping the pain or something more about being at ease uh with the pain and being able to sit with it. Um So in that sense, let’s just say, if I have like a relationship where I hit the pain, it’s gonna make my life more difficult to be with it, you know.
So what you gonna be with will not let you be. So there is wisdom in statements like that. So just uh shifting that relationship by going into it by shifting the very concepts, the organization of reality that you have uh around that pain, this very stories that I build around the pain, I can make a shift to that. I can make shifts to that. And that allows me to have a different way of being with that pain. Um, and uh more harmonies, they, I would say more graceful. I think pain is a really good example actually, cos um, if you, if you’re a gym goer and let’s say you have a really good workout and the following day you’re in pain, it’s a very different pain than if you’re say ill. If you’re ill, you’re a lot more unhappy than when you just went to the gym and worked hard. But it’s essentially it could be the same thing. So, uh, you touched upon something which, um, the topic of doing versus being, I think I’m very, I’m very guilty of, of just what can we do about it rather than being comfortable being.
Um, would you, would you mind just for the sake of people who are in the same position as me, maybe just doing all the time? Um, elaborating on that topic? Yeah. So, you know, it’s the way I see it is, uh, the reality is always being created from the inside out. So, in that sense, um, being always comes before doing and because we are always going through states of being all the time at every given moment, we do have some state of being and neurologically speaking, each of the state of beings, the average or the maximum, uh, length of it is anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. But we don’t feel like we experience these days for 30 seconds because we recreate it uh by reflecting on the state as soon as it begins, you know, so it just start over with all the things.
So we keep, keep kind of recreating similar or uh kind of states that gives us the sense that, oh, you know, I’m feeling this emotion for a long period of time, but it’s just not real. Um So, what I essentially came to say is like the model in which I look at things is being doing, having so being is the place from where doing emerges and uh and having is the result that you have based upon your doing in the situation. Yeah. So just to you, it is kind of a profound point for me uh just to reiterate what you, what you said, if there’s an example of, let’s say your, you’ve lost your temper, perhaps something’s happened, you’re annoyed about it. Are you saying that the, the physical response to that is 30 seconds?
But becau if it lasts a whole day, like it messes up the whole day, it is only because you uh what did you say re you’re having that over and over again, you are, you are recreating the experience through participation by reflecting on the experience. You are like, oh I hate the way I’m feeling right now. You know, why am I feeling this way? Why did this happen? Yeah. So you’re just each, each thing, each reflection uh starts over a whole new uh whole new process uh that uh it’s getting. So if you, that’s why uh the mindfulness or vasa, the whole point of it is that you just be an observer and does not engage. So you just see the state arising and the state falling. It’s not so much about the thoughts coming and going, but it’s more so it’s also the states that comes and goes and seeing the temporary nature of it.
Once you don’t participate, once you don’t agitate, once you don’t put in some sort of uh stock on the fire and just make it, uh you know, and also just the state is even more important when it comes to learning too because everything that we learn is all state dependent learning, meaning you are learning something in a certain state then uh and that particular state is the state in which that thing, the real thing that you learn is easy to kind of come to you, you know. So we, we’ve covered the perhaps how you don’t go about it. You, you touched upon mindfulness and how that solves that problem. How often would you say you do mindfulness on a day to day basis? Well, I don’t do mindfulness from a day to day basis.
I do approach it in a variety of different ways. So it’s like all different ways of approaching the thing, you know. So one way of approaching is like mindfulness where you just literally do not engaged with the mind like, you know, so the state is coming, you just simply observe, observe, just witness with no participation and see it slowly just far, right? Or what I do is uh what usually people do is they ask some sort of a question. Oh I hate this feeling. So first they make a reflection and then they would go into saying something like, oh my God, why am I feeling this way? And that makes makes them go even deeper in delivering because the very question kind of like demands them to bring up even more content to defend the very state that they are experiencing.
You know, so the moment you ask, why am I feeling this way? You start going even further? So what I do instead is the moment I’m experiencing a state that I can feel it kind of instantly as a disempowering state that um the state for me is any kind of state that where I’m struggling or suffering in the way I’m handling the moment, the way I’m handling the situation. Yeah. So if I find myself in a, in a state like that, my first question wouldn’t be uh why am I feeling this way? But I would be asking myself the question. OK, what am I creating right now or what am I choosing to create right now? So the moment I ask a question like that, the question creates a certain orientation because every question has hidden presuppositions within it. So it, it creates a certain sense of direction or an orientation for you, you know, and from where you find all sort of possibilities and opportunities and ideas coming in that particular direction.
So when I’m asking the question, what am I creating right now, it instantly puts me in a position of power because it presupposes the fact that I am the creator of whatever it is that I’m experiencing because I’m asking what am I creating right now. So the question is presupposing that I am the creator. So the question is posed from there, you know, so the question creates and instantly puts me in a place of power or I would ask myself the question. OK, what is it that is happening right now? You know that um immediately dis myself me from the experience that I’m having. So allows me to go me on my experience and uh take care bird’s eye view of what is going on. Then I’m looking OK, what is it that is happening here? So when I’m asking that question, I’m not really necessarily looking for the facts of what is happening outside of the external world.
But I’m looking at essentially the processes that are processes that are responsible for me having the experience because I’m taking 100% ownership of my experience if I see myself as the creator of my experience. So, and I’m asking myself the question what am I creating right now? That person already is also take in ownership in there in that way. So I’m holding my experience fully, I’m, I’m not blaming at all. I’m not looking for any reasons outside that is responsible for whatever experience I’m having. I’m not thinking, um, my experience has anything to do with the reality because usually it doesn’t, otherwise we would all be having one reality, uh to one particular thing. But thankfully, we don’t, I love the answer.
Uh And I think it is applicable to the previous example that you gave about someone recreating uh their experience over and over again. Um But it does segue into something which I was gonna ask you about, which is inferences because you did a video which I checked out on um essentially people presupposing certain things. Would you mind sharing that for people who haven’t seen it? Oh Yeah. Yeah, of course, it’s a, it’s a principle that I took from the field of general semantics by Alfred uh Kominsky. So, uh the idea is that the chain of inferences, the chain of inferences that we make in order to make sense of the situation, how we uh make one inference and from that influence, we make a further inference and we make a further influence and further further. And the thing is the more inferences we start making, it’s easy to make things really personal, they’re really, really personal. And uh you start to think it has something to do with you, you know, start reading into the situation and you start to assume and it’s all, it’s some of the principle from neural program where um it is also from general semantics, the principle of mind reading, where people consider themselves as mind readers.
They think uh when they see something that they know something about what that means. And uh if instead of going through that chain of inferences, instead of making reading into that, if you stay just with the information that you have, whatever the person is uh showing uh whatever expression or gesture or uh facial expression is happening, instead of reading into it, you stay with the information, stay on the level of information and curiosity. So now curiosity is a beautiful thing because it’s, it’s, it doesn’t, it’s a very open ended thing, you know, but the assumption is more of like a closing and sort of thing we are trying to close in and conclude. Um Whereas curiosity is like, oh, whatever it would be.
So you’re kind of open for a variety of different possibilities to emerge um with it, you know, and you’re not really biased so much, you know. So you like being like a scientist there. So if someone is making an expression, you’re like, hm, they made an expression like that. I really wonder what it could mean, you know, just staying there, it allows you to be a more dynamic better communicator than the person who is making inferences and making things personal and losing their grounded and poorly engaging with the situation. So, so, yeah, thank you for the explanation. Um I think it’s probably a um versus the, what I’m about to ask you about is it’s a preferable option in the sense that we’re flawed creatures and therefore asking good questions is gonna be preferable. But what do you think about the people who speak about intuition?
And the topic of like going with your gut on things, which is essentially making assumptions. Yeah. No, I would say induction is also kind of way of being informed. Intuition is in my, in my, we have an internal representation system within uh in simple words, we can call it a map, you know, uh which we use to make sense of what is going on in the moment, you know. So recognizing that is a map that we have that allows us to make sense of things in a however particular ways we make sense of. And if you don’t mistake the map of the territory now that gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to when it comes to moving through life because you can look into the map and you can say, oh, you know, the map is not so good when it comes to moving through this kind of scenarios and this kind of life situations.
So I can make some sort of an enrichment of the update within the map, transform, transform the map and enrich it so that um I, I can uh move through with more harmony. So that’s a completely different direction as opposed to you looking at the, the life situation like, oh, you know, I’m, you know what I’m done with it. That’s not for me. Uh I’m not gonna be able to, I’m not that kind of person and uh I, I, I’m not gonna be able to handle that kind of situation and all that, you know. Yeah, I know what you mean. Um, I wanna ask you more about uh kind of a macro question more than anything, a little thought experiment. If you could have a magic wand and you could change society. Uh What, what’s the one thing you’d choose? Well, I would choose to the condition some of these ideas that we have regarding, oh, what will happen at the end, you know?
Do you mean that? Yeah, exactly. So we do have a lot of ideas that we gain about what’s gonna happen at the end. And uh some of these ideas, we have taken it for a fact and we just stop being curious and we move through life with much less of a wonder and curiosity for all what all this is, you know, and who you really are and all of this and the wonder uh and the curiosity getting lost around that instead of coming to this conclusion that I am this, I’m that I’m so I’m nothingness and uh just staying open because nobody has ever gone back and come and go like, hey, this is the day or something. So we all uh we can all read through, from the subjective experience.
We have um through meditation through many things. But yet at the end, that’s uh yeah, I, I consider that still uh something that we make sense of it and it’s kind of like a map again and uh not mistake the map of the territory and uh that allows you to move through life with the more excitement for and wonder and magic for all that is waiting for us. I guess it’s very interesting that you chose that. Um Can I ask why, why is that the thing that you uh if you could change one thing? Why did you choose that? Because uh that made like a huge difference for me because I, I personally was, had a lot of conditioning around what would happen. And uh it’s not that it basically was creating a lot of suffering or a lot of struggles inside me with it, sitting with it.
I have no struggles with any of it. But the fact that when I was completely, I came to that place of like, you know, but whatever there may be, I don’t really know. Do I really know 100%? Absolutely. Uh For sure that is the whole truth. No, I don’t really know. And I’m ok with that, I’m ok with not knowing. And there’s, and uh for me that is kind of brought in a lot of beauty to life which uh sometimes with spirituality, we kind of lose because there’s a lot of this truth addiction that we develop with spirituality. Like, and so much of these truths that we take us, uh you know, swallow it all and just makes life extremely boring, you know. Yeah. No, thank you for the answer. I appreciate it. Um And I think the other thing that I wanted to ask you about was just your thoughts on the ego. And if you’ve got anything that you would want to share there, no.
Well, ego, ego, in my opinion, um is more of a simplistic term for what we call in psychology as the autobiography itself. So autobiography itself is the, it’s basically the stories that you are telling to yourself about yourself to make sense of yourself in the world. So it’s through these stories that you understand yourself. Um So for me, ego is um not just thoughts, not just I thought or something, but it’s a collection of horror stories, you know, and uh we can make changes to it, we can make changes to it, but ego, whosoever we are, we do tend to get attached to the stories that we kind of settle with and start to share with people and we start to mistake these stories for the truth of who we are, you know, and it kind of takes away a lot from us in life.
It doesn’t, um it just kind of makes you lay low and hang back in situations where you probably should be rising up and striving forward and taking action and uh you know, going for those opportunities, uh which uh taking those chances uh which that sometimes we don’t because of this really disempowering stories or narratives that we hold about ourselves. So for me, it’s about, it’s about finding these stories, uh especially the habitual stories of description that we have about ourselves that we have gotten so used to just carrying along with us and just telling everyone. What do you think about? Um I cos I, I am 100% on board with what you’re saying that the, the thing I wonder about is whether or not some of some of those stories are obviously false. But what about the stories that are true?
Is it OK to tell yourself a story if it’s disempowering but also true, you see that’s the thing. There is no story that is true. The the thing is what your description uh about. Uh something is never what you are describing. That’s why it’s essential to remember the map is not the territory. So however, you describe it, that’s never going to be the truth of the truth of it because reality is not made of words and concepts. So as a literal representation is impossible, what we get to have is a perception of the situation, you know, and uh that’s, that’s all we ever get to have. And the very perception um forces us to delete and take away a lot of information, the totality of all the information to create that perspective, right?
So the truth is truth is not there, truth is kind of like the actual land which we do not get to have in the hand, you get to have a map in of the land in our hand. And that’s, and the point is not whether is uh is can it can my map is my map. The true map. No, the question is, is the map useful. It’s a very simple question. How useful it is the map that you have. And so the question is, is the stories useful, not whether the stories are true or not. It’s, it’s about is this useful for me in life? It’s just taking me forward in life or it’s just, you know, making me lay low in my eyes. Yeah. So that’s the question. So you just like uh whatever you believe, you can choose to um bring about a different story into your life.
You know, you can commit to writing a different story, you can commit to not saying those disempowering stories anymore and choose to say the empowering ones because you can always look into those same situations and ally with your strengths and shift those narratives and make it empowering ones. All you have to do is just take a fresh look, taking a fresh perspective on that same situation and you get to didn’t find it. Yeah. Well, I love the answer. Um But my literal brain can’t help but come up with examples that I want to ask you about. So um and I think it’s totally true uh what you said, but I, I’d still want to ask you about certain examples and get your thoughts on it. So, um for example, like if you went out one day and someone kicked you in the leg, like you’re walking down the, down the street perfectly normal and someone comes up up to you and kicks you in the leg. Is it true to say that someone kicked you in the leg or is it just a matter of using that as a potential interpretation?
Um I mean, somebody kick in the leg and that is OK, you know, there is nothing about that that is going to really make me struggle and suffer unless I just make up a whole bunch of stories about it. But why, why did they come and kick me? What did I do? You know why me? You know, now I, I am starting to create stuff, you know, would you say it is true that someone did that? But it’s uh not necessarily true if you make a bunch of stories up that are disempowering. Yeah, I mean, things happen, you know, things situate, things happen all the time. There is no rule in the universe that says nobody can kick it on your leg. You know, it’s just like anything can happen. We, we cannot stop uh stop all our life because something random happened, right? It’s just a but usually those kind of things are not what really eats, eats away or happiness.
It’s usually more of, more of psychologically heavy stuff. You know, more comes back to what you said about people recreating their own experience. So you go into the past and a lot of stuff and you bring up a lot of stuff from the past to the present then. Yeah, that’s the way. Usually we tend to be a lot of internal struggles and suffering in the moment sort of thing, we can agitate but unless we, but it can just also kind of disappear pretty fast. You know, it’s like more like the drawing on the water kind of stuff, you know, it’s not, not everything leaves Mr Well, I, I love the conversation and I had no idea. I was gonna ask you about kicks to the leg today. But uh is there anything that I should have asked you about? Well, you could have asked in ge you can ask me in general um in relation to what we were just speaking right now. Uh Whatever story it is that you are having a disempowering one, you can simply shift it by simply align with your strength by looking at it from the perspective of you handled it, you your, your, your, your own competence in handling those situations.
Because whatever we have in common right now is that we are alive, that means we have handled whatever it has come our way until now. So the efficiency or the uh you know, the comparison of how well you have handled it and this and that can kind of uh go on in your head. But regardless of all of that, the fact that you have handled it is indisputable. I mean, otherwise we wouldn’t be here right now. So you can always look at those, you can narrow in on that you can always look at. OK, what are the strengths that I brought into the table that allows me to cons consistently handle whatever challenges and situations that life is throwing at me seems like I’m still here, you know. So how am I doing this or how, how did I learn these skills? You know, what made me become good at those things? So that’s how you can tune in and focus in on the strengths and look at yourself through the lens of competence instead of looking at yourself through the lens of incompetence, for example.
Yeah, in seven, thank you for that first uh empowering a shift to the latitude. I appreciate that. And um I, uh I think you got a lot of great content which people should go and watch. Um And it’s not very often, often, it’s the case that you see people who are, they’re sort of like you can put them in a category of things that they do. But with yourself, I think you, you’re putting out a lot of information which is um very intelligent and um well worth looking at. So thank you for doing that. Um If people do want to uh go look at the videos or perhaps connect with you, where do they go well and they can go to Masterclass dot Spiritual logic.com. So that is SPIR I two Tual spiritual logic. So with one l so spiritual logic, so Masterclass Lords Spiritual logic.com people can put in their email there and can go and watch uh one hour the 20 minutes of a Masterclass and uh also can go and check out my website www dot Spiritual logic.com and learn more about how this methodology works and that the people who have um be who I have coached with this framework.
Um And the results they have had the case studies with people or you cannot find it in the website and my time in India in uh teaching in universities, you see some skippet uh snippets of videos of that. And uh plus also the people who are watching the podcast right now. Uh I would um I would like to offer them a gift so they can go to check over, go over to the website www dot podcast gift now.com. Uh And uh you can put in their email and can get access to eight or nine hours of promotion. We recorded videos of talks I have given here in life. Yeah. Well, that sounds great. So thank you for, for doing that as well. Uh Do you have any closing thoughts for us today? My closing thoughts would be to have congruent in life, to have congruence in life allows us to move through life and get a lot of things done with the least amount of energy spent for it.
You know, it’s kind of like a laser, laser beam as opposed to a fire wall bulb. You know, when there’s congruent, uh you need valuable energy to uh get things done. So to bring about confidence in life, it’s uh it’s all you need is just three things. You just need to know, what is it that you want out of life? And what kind of person, how would you be as a person when you have this outcome, you know, connect to that energy, connect to that state, you know, and see what adjustments that you can make right now to enhance and grow that state even further, you know, and um also knowing what’s really important for you to being this person moving forward in life, what that means.
So being clear on this value, being clear on the person that you want to be. And also being clear on the outcome that you want, having, knowing, having clarity on these three things allows you to have a congruity inside out. Which um, so that’s uh many of the reason for most of the people feeling tired. Um Most of the time and uh not getting things done is because they lack this, they lack the conclusion. They are not really connecting to the state, you know, and it’s easy to connect to the state if you know, something that we really want, if you can go into your imagination and connect to, you know, how would you be as a person when you get that outcome done? You know, you can really start to feel that feelings and you can do things to make that feeling even grow further and the more you are having that feeling, that guess what you’re gonna be moving, moving through like a laser, it’s like that, you know, that’s, that’s what’s gonna happen.
Um I just feel relaxed talking to you. So, uh thank you for that. Um And so now thank you for being a great guest today. Yeah, it’s been, uh it’s my pleasure to be here and uh I really enjoyed the procreation that we had with this podcast, the costumes and everything because I can also only say based on whatever the question is bringing about also and it’s not like I’m saying, it either. It’s all, it’s all kind of emerging in the moment. It’s not really, there’s no way to exactly linearly but know what exactly I’m going to say or something. Right. So I’m happy that it just flew beautifully. Yeah. Alright, thanks. So now.
