VBT – Week’s Meditation 36
Unoccupied
If you are unoccupied, suddenly you become aware that without you the world goes on beautifully. Nothing is changing. You have been discarded, you are thrown on the junk pile, you are not needed. The moment you feel you are not needed the ego becomes uneasy – because it exists only when you are needed. So all around the ego goes on forcing this attitude on everybody: that you are a must, you are needed; without you nothing can happen, without you the world will dissolve.
Unoccupied, you come to realize that the game continues. You are not an essential part. You can be discarded easily. Nobody will bother about it, nobody will think about it. Rather, they may even feel relieved. That shatters the ego. So people want occupation – something or other, but they must remain occupied. They must continue the illusion that they are needed.
Meditation is an unoccupied state of mind. It is a deep retirement. It is not just a superficial retirement like going to the Himalayas. That may not be a retirement at all, because again you can get occupied in the Himalayas. You can create fantasies there that you are saving the world. Sitting in the Himalayas meditating, you are saving the world from a third war; or because you are creating such vibrations that the world is reaching toward a utopia, a peaceful state of society. And you can enjoy this occupation there. Nobody is going to argue because you are alone. Nobody is going to dispute the fact that you are in an illusion or a hallucinatory state. You can get really involved in it. The ego will assert itself again in a subtle new way.
Meditation is not a superficial retirement. It is a deep, intimate, real retirement, a withdrawal – a withdrawal from occupation. Not that you will not be occupied; you can continue whatsoever you are doing, but you withdraw yourself and your investment in occupation. Now you start feeling that this constant hankering after being needed is foolish, stupid. The world can continue quite well without you. And there is no depression in it. It is good. So far, so good – the world can continue without you. This can become a freedom if you understand. If you don’t understand then you feel you are being shattered.
So people continue to be occupied, and the ego gives them the greatest occupation possible. Twenty-four hours the ego gives them occupation. They are thinking how to become a member of parliament, they are thinking how to become a deputy minister and a minister and a prime minister, and how to become a president. The ego goes on and on and on. It gives you a constant occupation – how to achieve more riches, how to create a kingdom. The ego gives you dreams continuously, inner occupation, and you feel much is going on. Unoccupied, suddenly you become aware of inner emptiness. These dreams fill the inner emptiness.
Unless you are ready to be empty, unoccupied, unless you are ready to be nobody, unless you are ready to enjoy and celebrate life even if you are not needed, ego cannot be dropped. You have a need to be needed. Somebody must need you – then you feel good. If more and more people need you, you feel better and better. That’s why leadership is so much enjoyed, because so many people need you. A leader can become very humble. There is no need to assert his ego; his ego is already so deeply fulfilled because so many people need him, so many people depend on him. He has become the life of so many people, so he can be humble, he can afford to be humble.
If you can remain unoccupied, if you can remain satisfied without being needed, the ego can drop this very moment. But these ifs are big. Meditation will prepare you for these big ifs. The happening will happen in a moment, but the understanding will take time.
Tags: Unoccupied
