Once you begin to understand and realise the limitations of your existence, there will naturally be an urgency on the spiritual path. Only people who have glorified their limitations have no urgency.
Once you begin to understand and realise the limitations of your existence, there will naturally be an urgency on the spiritual path. Only people who have glorified their limitations have no urgency. If you do not glorify your life, if you just look at it in its bare form, you will realise, “Okay. This is just a piece of flesh.” There is a different dimension to it, but right now you see it just as it is. If you simply do this, you will understand what kind of terrible limitations you are living in. The moment you realise this, there will be urgency. You cannot help it.
Otherwise what is the urgency An eternity lies ahead of us. But you do not have that kind of time. Existence has the time, but you do not.
Gautama the Buddha was a prince — he had everything that anybody would want in the world. He had a loving wife and an infant who was very dear to him. A sensitive man like him would definitely have had immense love for his wife and child. He was certainly not callous. But the moment he realised the limitations of his existence, there arose within him an urgency that did not even allow him the time to awaken his wife and convince her about his ideas. The prince left his palace like a thief, in the middle of the night.
The moment you begin to see the limitations of your existance, the urge to go beyond the limits is natural because there is something inside you which cannot exist within these constraints. And this is your biggest fortune.
By glorifying their lives, people are tranquilising this fortune. People are driven by their hormones, their chemistry, or something else, but they have to glorify it in so many ways, otherwise they won’t feel good about their lives.
But it is neither dirty nor beautiful. It is just life in its bare form. If you are willing to embrace it for what it is, you will see the beauty of life in its true form. People have added so many frills to their lives now that they cannot distinguish the real from the ephemeral.
That is why they are afraid and so terribly self-conscious all the time. If you cut down all the frills, you will see the truth of your existence in its nakedness. Your will see the confines that chain your existence. And once it all becomes clear to you, you will experience a great sense of urgency to change and break free.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an internationally renowned spiritual leader, is a visionary, humanitarian, author, poet and speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org
