Drop out of the race
‘DOING THE RIGHT THING MEANS ALLOWING SOMETHING TO HAPPEN’
IT DOES not matter what you want to be in the world; in some way you are always trying to be like someone or better than someone.
If you want to play music, you think of a certain kind of music only because you have heard it before. If you like someone’s music, you either want to play like them or perform better than them. Whatever you do with what is around you, you are always trying to either be like someone else or better than someone else.
But the word “spirituality” fundamentally means you are not trying to be like anyone or better than anyone. The inner journey is to lose this race, to be out of this race within yourself. You are coming to a state where being “myself” is more than enough.
The spiritual process is essentially to become in such a way that, “I am complete by myself. I don’t need to become anything or to make myself into something. If I simply sit here, I am so absolute, all existence is within me.” The ultimate goal and the process itself are such that it is not necessary to be like anyone else. Each individual can be his or her own way and still progress.
The problem is, you keep evaluating yourself by your own standards as to whether you are progressing or not. This evaluation should not be done by you. When you were in school, you were not the one who evaluated. Though it would have been quite simple to do it, it was someone else who did it for you. Even with a simple subject in school, you did not evaluate yourself. Someone else did it.
When that is so, why do you struggle with evaluating yourself when you are on the spiritual path? There is no need to evaluate yourself. You simply do what is needed. The evaluation will happen in a completely different dimension. You cannot do spirituality; you have to allow it. If you allow it, it will happen. To allow it, you need a certain level of maturity within you. Otherwise, you will want to meddle with it all the time.
Sadhana is just to “mature your energies” in such a way that if you sit down, you don’t need to do anything. You are willing to allow whatever happens to happen. If you want small, petty things to happen to you, you can do it, but if you really want something enormous to happen to you, this “you” is not needed. If you know how to keep yourself aside, it will happen. “How do I do that?” You cannot do that. You just have to allow it. Yoga means to bring your energies to that level of stability where you can just be. You are not trying to do anything or to get somewhere. You simply allow what has to happen to happen.
In life, no matter how much you aspire for something, unless you do the right things, what has to reach you will not reach you. It does not matter who is around you. Even if your guru is sitting right next to you, your mind can be somewhere else. For someone else sitting a thousand miles away, just the thought of the master can be so powerful that it explodes within him. But you may be sitting right next to him and missing the whole point. This is very much possible because it is not a question of distance, it is only a question of your willingness to allow it to happen. Unless you do the right thing, help will not come. Doing the right thing means to just allow it to happen. This is not a race that you have gotten yourself into. This is a way of settling back into yourself.
■ Ranked among the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru was conferred the “Padma Vibhushan”, the Indian government’s highest annual civilian award, in 2017, for exceptional and distinguished service.