Drop All Diplomacy – In Gita Verse 16.20 Attaining repeated birth amongst the species of demoniac life, O son of Kuntī, such persons can never approach Me. Gradually they sink down to the most abominable type of existence.
Krishna says that the person who is not interested in self-knowing, can never approach Me. In their ego and unconsciousness they sink down. He says become alert, create courage to be with yourself and die as a river so that you can become ocean.
The courage to change, to risk something, is the essence of let-go. In fact, it takes trust and not courage. Let me explain: courage has something of the ego, seeing a situation as something to be overcome. Courage requires alertness and resources.
Trust, however, is deeper than biology; it requires not only alertness, but awareness too. Trust is rooted beyond the body-mind, in Existence itself. It is wider and deeper, it allows an individual to face a situation knowing that although it is happening to you, in reality it is happening for you.
Facing fear, any fear, no matter its cause, in my opinion, creates an instinctive biological reaction.
Trust with awareness is not primarily biological, it is not about winning or losing, it requires acceptance and surrender. But that does not mean it is passive or without resources. Trust goes beyond the fundamental biological programme of survival; it surrenders to the rhythms of life knowing death is included too.
Learning the art of let-go encourages us to face each event with awareness and courage while simultaneously recognizing that life is not an enemy but a gift, no matter what the situation. Sooner or later courage, along with the body, fails, and in that moment it is trust and awareness that allows death to come dancing onto the stage of life.
Trust is the antidote to fear, not courage; trusting myself, trusting own clarity, trusting life itself, these are the basic qualities of Conscious living. Speaking of change in terms of courage and risk misses the real issue, which is Fear, fear of change, fear of the new.
Change is not a matter of choice, it is a constant presence, a moment to moment conscious recognition of life as it is happening. Our choice is whether to flow with the changes or try to resist or deny them.
Authentic change first arises slowly – it has to push through so much crap – as an inner upsurge of new clarity. The changes emerge from an unknown inner place, an unknown inner self, and begin to organise new templates of consciousness, offering new views of reality that open new ways to live. Initially the old ideas, fears, tears, attitudes, beliefs and opinions, and other assorted consolation-and-distraction teddy bears, had to be recognized before being discarded: for the new to happen there needs to be space. Letting go of those old ‘friends’, old habits really, is not easy.
The real question is not of courage; the real question is that you don’t understand that the known is the dead, and the unknown is the living. Clinging to the known is clinging to a corpse. It does not need courage to drop the clinging; in fact it needs courage to go on clinging to a corpse. You just have to see… That which is familiar to you, which you have lived – what has it given? Where have you reached? Are you not still empty? Is there not immense discontent, a deep frustration and meaninglessness? Somehow you go on managing, hiding the truth and creating lies to remain engaged, involved.
The man of understanding dies every moment to the past and is reborn again to the future. His present is always a transformation, a rebirth, a resurrection. It is not a question of courage at all, that is the first thing to be understood. It is a question of clarity, of being clear about what is what.
Krishna says a religious person has to drop all diplomacy. He has to be authentic, sincere; he has to be as he is: no pretensions, no false personalities, no facades; just being utterly nude as you are, utterly naked in your reality. The moment you can gather that much courage you will be so filled with joy…you cannot believe right now, you cannot even conceive right now, because it is our falsities which are like parasites on our being; they go on sucking our blood. The more falsities you create around yourself, the more miserable you become, the more you are in hell. To live in falsities is to live in hell: to live authentically is to be in heaven.
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