FOUR STEPS TO WISDOM
The first thing you need to do is get in touch with
negative feelings that you’re not even aware of. Lots of people have negative
feelings they’re not aware of. Lots of people are depressed and they’re not
aware they are depressed. It’s only when they make contact with joy that they
understand how depressed they were. You can’t deal with a cancer that you
haven’t detected. You can’t get rid of boll weevils on your farm if you’re not
aware of their existence. The first thing you need is awareness of your
negative feelings. What negative feelings? Gloominess, for instance. You’re
feeling gloomy and moody. You feel self-hatred or guilt. You feel that life is
pointless, that it makes no sense; you’ve got hurt feelings, you’re feeling
nervous and tense. Get in touch with those feelings first.
The second step (this is a four-step program) is to
understand that the feeling is in you, not in reality. That’s such a
self-evident thing, but do you think people know it? They don’t, believe me.
They’ve got Ph.D.s and are presidents of universities, but they haven’t
understood this. They didn’t teach me how to live at school. They taught me
everything else. As one man said, “I got a pretty good education. It took me
years to get over it.” That’s what spirituality is all about, you know: unlearning.
Unlearning all the rubbish they taught you.
Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. So stop
trying to change reality. That’s crazy! Stop trying to change the other person.
We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances,
trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and
everybody else. We don’t have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you.
No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on
earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you. No event, condition,
situation, or person. Nobody told you this; they told you the opposite. That’s
why you’re in the mess that you’re in right now. That is why you’re asleep.
They never told you this. But it’s self-evident.
Let’s suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is
feeling negative? The rain? Or you? What’s causing the negative feeling?
The rain or your reaction? When you bump your knee against a table, the table’s
fine. It’s busy being what it was made to be—a table. The pain is in your knee,
not in the table. The mystics keep trying to tell us that reality is all right.
Reality is not problematic. Problems exist only in the human mind. We might
add: in the stupid, sleeping human mind. Reality is not problematic. Take away
human beings from this planet and life would go on, nature would go on in all
its loveliness and violence. Where would the problem be? No problem. You
created the problem. You are the problem. You identified with “me” and that is
the problem. The feeling is in you, not in reality.
The third step: Never identify with that feeling. It has
nothing to do with the “I.” Don’t define your essential self in terms of that
feeling. Don’t say, “I am depressed.” If you want to say, “It is depressed,”
that’s all right. If you want to say depression is there, that’s fine; if you
want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But not: I am gloomy. You’re
defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your
mistake. There is a depression there right now, there are hurt feelings there
right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes,
everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with
happiness. Those are the swings of the pendulum. If you seek kicks or thrills,
get ready for depression. Do you want your drug? Get ready for the hangover.
One end of the pendulum swings to the other.
This has nothing to do with “I”; it has nothing to do
with happiness. It is the “.” If you remember this, if you say it to yourself a
thousand times, if you try these three steps a thousand times, you will get it.
You might not need to do it even three times. I don’t know; there’s no rule for
it. But do it a thousand times and you’ll make the biggest discovery in your
life. To hell with those gold mines in Alaska. What are you going to do with
that gold? If you’re not happy, you can’t live. So you found gold. What does
that matter? You’re a king; you’re a princess. You’re free; you don’t care
anymore about being accepted or rejected, that makes no difference.
Psychologists tell us how important it is to get a sense of belonging. Baloney!
Why do you want to belong to anybody? It doesn’t matter anymore.
