The student approached the master and queried, “Master? When I was young, I desired for my family and loved ones to be proud of me. Were you ever the same way?”
“Yes,” the master answered.
“Why did you desire this?” the student asked.
“So that they would feel they had more reason to love and accept me,” said the master. “And the reason I desired this was so that I in turn would feel I had sufficient reason to love and accept myself. That was what was at the root of it. But then one day, I woke up and realized, ‘What if I bypass all of that and learn to unconditionally love and accept myself, without requiring anyone else’s love, acceptance or approval in order to feel good about myself? Then my happiness will no longer be dependent on outer circumstances, but will be as constant as my own heartbeat resounding strongly within my chest.’ Thus began my quest for Self-realization.”
“And you never desired them to be proud of you after that?” asked the student.
“My ego did, but I no longer completely identified myself with my ego as I had. And I no longer cared what others thought in the same way. I respected it, and honored it, but no longer gave it so much weight or paid so much attention to it,” the master replied, smiling. “And never had I felt so free, as when I finally released myself in this way…”
Be Courageous
From the story Self-Realization we all realized that everyone of us has the same thoughts but how we direct ourselves makes a difference. Not only thought but all of us have the same circumstances but how we take the circumstances that creates our reality. We are creators of our destiny.
It depends on you how you look at life; it totally depends on you. You are the creator of your life.
You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don’t know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is.
Create yourself: give shape and form to your being. Paint your life, sculpt yourself. Whatsoever you will be, will be your work. It is not fate – you are responsible.
And people DON’T want to be responsible; they are afraid of responsibility. They want somebody else to take care of them, they always need guardians. These are the people who are getting neurotic – because guardians are no more there. In fact they were never there; you were only believing in them – because you believed in them, they were there. Now the belief has disappeared, they have disappeared. They were created by your belief.
Man has to learn to live alone on his own. This is a great opportunity – DON’T take it negatively, otherwise you will be in madhouses. Take it positively, accept the challenge, and you will be the first real human beings on the face of the earth.
The moment you accept your total loneliness you become a Yogi and transcend society. This is the only meaning of leaving society: it does not mean that you actually leave society – no one can leave society – wherever you go, you will create it. Even with the trees, even with the animals, a family will be created and there will be a society. Society is something that follows you like an individual space: wherever you go, you create a space to live, and that space becomes a society; all those who are on the boundary of that space will become members of your society.
But a single moment of knowing the realization that you are alone – alone to tread the path, alone to create the path, alone to be committed to living, alone to be involved in the moment – can penetrate you and society vanishes. You are alone.
Learning from the story Self-Realization: Be Courageous
Experience Learning
In the beginning there is no big difference between the coward and the courageous person. Both have fear. The difference is, the coward listens to his fears and follows them. The courageous person puts them aside and goes ahead. The fears are there, he knows them, but the courageous person goes into the unknown in spite of all the fears. Courage does not mean fearlessness, but going into the unknown in spite of all the fears.
When you go into the uncharted sea, like Columbus did, there is fear, immense fear, because one never knows what is going to happen and you are leaving the shore of safety. You were perfectly okay, in a way; only one thing was missing – adventure. Going into the unknown gives you a thrill. The heart starts pulsating; again you are alive, fully alive. Every fiber of your being is alive because you have accepted the challenge of the unknown.
To accept the challenge of the unknown is courage. The fears are there, but if you go on accepting the challenge again and again, slowly, slowly those fears disappear. The joy that the unknown brings, the great ecstasy that starts happening with the unknown, makes you strong enough, gives you a certain integrity, makes your intelligence sharp. You start feeling that life is not just a boredom. Life is an adventure. Slowly, slowly fears disappear and you go on seeking and searching for new adventures.
Courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, the comfortable for the uncomfortable arduous pilgrimage to some unknown destination. One never knows whether one will be able to make it or not. It is a gambling, but only the gamblers know what life is.
And holding back is also a subtle fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the strange. By and by you will start living a very dead life, because the unknown is what life is, and each moment one has to take the risk again and again of living. Each morning one has to take a risk again. It is very risky, and there is no security. One never knows where one is going, so that the mind holds back. The mind is a safety measure. – A key to the known, to the familiar. Make a definition – don’t go beyond it. Make a boundary. But all boundaries are imprisonments. And then one suffers.
Man is made in such a way that unless the whole sky is his boundary he will be miserable. Less than that won’t do. One needs to expand, and one has to become the expansion. Then there is enthusiasm and there is zest and there is juice. Because each moment is a new victory; you expand. Each moment there is a new challenge. You accept and you go on the unknown journey. Each moment God knocks on your door and calls you in such a way that he has never called you; in such a language he has never used before; onto such paths which you have not even dreamed about, and beckons you to come and follow him.
That’s what I call a religious life: to always be ready to go into the unknown, the un-chartered, with no maps, with no past experiences. Of course there cannot be any past experiences of it. Such a being grows and such a being has a movement.
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