Put your life on fast-forward

One aspect of getting into the spiritual process is to put your life on fast-forward. At one level what spirituality means is that you are not willing to wait for the normal process of evolution to happen; you want it fast. Once you put it on fast-forward, your joy, pain, suffering, everything becomes intense in life.

Your energies are always on the path of the ultimate, but once you start doing certain aspects of spirituality, it is on fast-forward. It was going slowly with the natural process of evolution, but now it has been hastened.

There was suffering even when it was going slow, but you did not feel it much because it was travelling at snail’s pace. Now it is moving fast and it is just like your vehicle — if all four wheels are in one direction, it moves smoothly. If one wheel turns the wrong way, there is struggle and the damage is more because it is travelling fast.

So, once you set your energies on this path, it is very important that your mind, body and emotion cooperate and align themselves in the same direction. Don’t try to entangle your emotions and mind in little things because if your energies are going one way and you want your mind and emotion to go some other way, it will create a struggle. It is up to you to put your mind, emotion, everything in that direction. If you do, you will travel joyfully; if you don’t, you will still travel, but you will be crying.

Set your energies for the ultimate; set your mind and emotion in the same way. Does this mean you have to leave your family, etc. Not at all. You have to live somewhere, isn’t it You live wherever it is conducive for you, in a family, an ashram or the forest. If your family is not at all conducive, go to the forest. If the forest is not conducive, live in the city. What is suitable for you, wherever you are comfortable, you live there. It has got nothing to do with your spirituality. It has got something to do with your choice of habitat.

If your pains, joys, if everything has become intense, don’t ever think that grace is not there. Grace does not mean that you are treated like a sweetie pie all the time. Grace just means hurrying you up constantly and not letting you sit anywhere.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an internationally renowned spiritual leader, is a visionary, humanitarian, author, poet and speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org