#1 Before you leap, look!

Sadhguru: Once we have chosen to be reborn – to dissolve something and create something fresh – many possibilities will be open. Many possibilities always means trouble. To be able to identify which one of these possibilities you should go with is a certain exercise. The problem is people jump into something and then exercise their mind – no. Before you jump into something, it needs to be looked at with enough attention because once you jump into something, there should be no looking back. If you are constantly looking at the rearview mirror, you are not going to go forward.

#2 Enhance your perception – See life the way it is

If you are talking about a business, to drop something that has failed is easy and inevitable. It will anyway happen. But to drop something that is successful and recreate something else out of that needs vision, courage and a certain level of madness in you. It is a completely different level of looking at life. You must be able to see something that others don’t see.

What you need to look at is whether you are capable of dropping what you are right now – either as an individual or as an organization. And whether you want to “die entirely” and start afresh or you want to “die partially” and recreate it is a judgment one has to make on the spot, knowing the realities of the situation.

If you are born afresh, that means you have no conclusions about anything. You are willing to look at everything like you are just born. If you do this, you will walk through life untouched. Even a little child starts thinking he knows within a few days. Once you think you know, you start fumbling and bumbling. If, every moment of your life, you look at everything like you were just born, you will see everything crystal clear. When you see things clear, you walk through situations comfortably.

If you are able to see life just the way it is, you have the necessary intelligence to conduct it well. If you are not able to see life the way it is, your intelligence will work against you.

It happened once, Sherlock Holmes and Watson went camping in the mountains. Night fell and they went to sleep. In the middle of the night, Sherlock Holmes nudged Watson and Watson opened his eyes.

Sherlock Holmes asked him, “What do you see?”

Watson, lying down looked up and said, “I see clear sky and stars, lots of stars.”

Sherlock Holmes asked, “What does that mean to you?”

Watson answered, “That means another nice, sunny day tomorrow. What does it mean to you?”

Sherlock Holmes said, “It means to me my dear Watson, that someone has stolen our tent.”

You can successfully walk through every aspect of your life only if you see life the way it is. If you want to do anything successfully, it is not your qualification that counts, it is the clarity of your perception. Fundamentally, how successful you are simply depends upon the clarity of your perception of the realities around you.

 

#3 Your ability to pay attention is key

The process of life is very simple. To be born is not your work. Someone else does it for you. If you eat, physically you will grow up. Mentally, there are processes around you to cultivate you in this direction or that direction, but if one does not get entangled with anything, if he just looks at life, everything is wide open. Nothing is hidden really. The phrase “mysteries of life” is a total misnomer because there is no such thing. It is all wide open. It is just that people are going around with eyes closed so it is all a mystery.

If a human being has to break through their limitations, the most important quality is steadiness of attention. Your ability to manage anything is directly proportional to the level of attention and observation that you have.

I was talking to a group of Harvard alumni who are all extremely successful and they were saying, “You know, when we were in college, those guys that we thought would really make it big, did not make it. Those of us who were confused, who did not know what to do with our lives when we came out, we struggled around, and it is we who made it big. They did not make it big.”

So I asked, “What happened?” They were discussing this and the essential thing is just this – these so-called smart ones were just picked up by major companies, they got a very comfortable job and a big salary, they settled into it, and they stayed there. These people who did not know what to do, they went out, looked around at everything, some of them came up with their own brilliant ideas and started their own companies, or they went up the hard way. Because things were not certain, they had to pay attention to everything; they observed the whole world. These people went a hundred-fold more than those smart people who settled and stayed in their nice, cushy jobs.

Your ability to pay attention is the key to how deep you can go into something – whatever that something is. How profound your attention is, is how deep you will sink into it and how much access you get into it. Human consciousness is such, if you pay enough attention, the whole existence has to yield, there is no other way.

 #4 Put your life into whatever you do

Whatever the path you jump onto is not the best thing to do. You can never do the best thing in the world. Whatever you jump into, if you really put your life into it, it can become a great thing. Do not ever try to do the best thing because if you try to do the best thing, you will waste your life trying to be better than someone else.

That is not a good way to go because for all you know the person you compare yourself with may be lame, and you think you are a champion because you run a little faster than him. Whether you are better or worse than someone should not even be a thought in your mind. The only thing to look at is that full utilization of who you are should happen. Whatever you have, are you able to harness it fully? This is what yoga means. Your physicality, psychological realities and the inner energies – are you able to harness these the way you want?

#5 Take charge of your inner situation

Either you allow your destiny to be an accident or you allow your destiny to be your intent, that is a choice you have. Either you allow the situations to make you something or you make the situations the way you want them.

You might be thinking, “Yes, I would like to make my family situation the way I want it but other people are not cooperating with me.” But first, start with your own internal situation. You are not even creating your inner situation the way you want it. So how do you think you will create the external situation the way you want it? With the external situation, there are a hundred different ingredients and forces functioning – it is not all in your hands. But in the internal situation, you are the only ingredient. It is very important that first you learn to create your internal situations the way you want. Then your ability to create the external can be greatly enhanced.

 

 

The problem with most people is their own thoughts and emotions are a huge issue. When you yourself are an issue, how will you deal with other issues? Your psychological drama is taking such a big toll. People are capable of suffering what happened ten years ago. They are capable of already suffering what is going to happen day after tomorrow. They think they are suffering their past and future, but they are only suffering two faculties that are exclusive to human beings on this planet – memory and imagination.

Most people do not know how to handle their memory and imagination. Does what happened yesterday or ten years ago exist right now? No. Does what may happen day after tomorrow exist right now? No. So, in other words, you are suffering that which does not exist. That is called insanity. People say, “This is human nature.” This is not human nature. This is the nature of people who have not taken charge of human nature.

The human mechanism is the most complex piece of machinery on the planet. This is a “super-supercomputer.” But have you read the user’s manual? Yoga means learning to read the user’s manual.

Editor’s Note: The ebook “Inner Management”, contains more of Sadhguru’s wisdom on opening up a new dimension that frees us from external influences. The book is available on a “name your price basis”. Pay what you wish or download for free.

Inner Management