Reality Check – 5 Things You Should Never Forget

Given the fast-paced world we live in, life can get overwhelming at times if we do not find ways to stay rooted in reality. Here is a quick checklist of five things you could try not to forget.

#1 There is great intelligence in humility.

Sadhguru: The difference between a fool and an intelligent person is that an intelligent person knows how foolish he is; a fool does not. Noticing the stupidity of who you are is great intelligence. Anything in this existence – a tree, a blade of grass, a grain of sand, one single atom – do you understand any of these things fully? No. When this is your level of intelligence and perception, how should you walk in the world? Gently, with a little humility, respect and love for everything around you.

If not love, then at least with awe, because you don’t understand a damn thing in this world. If you just learn to walk like this, you will not escape a spiritual process. You don’t need any teaching. It will happen to you anyway. This is why in the eastern cultures, always, you bow down to whatever you see whether it is a rock, an animal or a human being. Being in reverence towards the very earth that you walk upon, towards the air that you breathe, the water that you drink, the food that you eat, the people that you come in touch with and everything else that you use, including your body and mind, is a way of ensuring success in every endeavor that we partake in.

#2 Joy is not for saving.

Sadhguru: What you save will never be your quality. What you dispense will be your quality. If you save your joy, at the end of your life no one will take account, “She saved every bit of joy in her; she’s the most joyfully dead.” They will say, “This horrible creature never even smiled in her life.” But if every day you dispensed your joy and love, people would say, “Oh she was a joyful and loving being.”

#3 You are mortal.

Sadhguru: A significant thing every human being has to do is structure their psychological and emotional framework around the most fundamental fact of their life – their mortality. Right now, it takes a lifetime for people to understand that they are mortal; they need a heart attack or the appearance of a malignant lump somewhere to remind them.

You need to celebrate and enjoy every moment of your life because life does not wait for you even for a moment. If you were immortal, you could enjoy a hundred years each of depression, anxiety, madness and misery and then on the 500^th anniversary, you could become joyful. But that is not the case. You are mortal and it is ticking away. So there is no time for frustration, depression, anxiety, anger or for any unpleasantness in this life.

In the ashram I always tell people, no matter what work you are doing, every day you must stick your fingers into the earth at least for an hour. This will build a natural physical memory, a bodily memory in you that you are mortal.

#4 You can create a loving world.

Sadhguru: You can create a loving world in every single activity that you do in your life. Creating a loving world does not mean doing something more or less. If you live your life constantly focused on what you want, it will unquestionably happen in your immediate surroundings, and it will also begin to happen in the larger surroundings.

Creating a loving world is not a service that you do for someone else. Within yourself, is it more pleasant to be loving, or to be angry, hateful and jealous? Which is a more intelligent way to exist? Loving, isn’t it? All I am saying is, please live intelligently. This is not for someone else’s sake. It is pleasant and beautiful for you. It is an intelligent way to exist.

#5 The quality of life is determined by what lies within.

Sadhguru: In many ways, people’s happiness, peace and love are mortgaged to the external situation. So, if the stock market goes up you are happy, if the stock market goes down you are unhappy. The quality of life is not about what is around you. Our ability to live joyfully here does not depend on the size of the house we live in or the car that we drive. These things make your life comfortable and convenient but the essential quality of your life is how you are within yourself right now.

Living joyfully and peacefully is not new to you. You were like that as a child, isn’t it? So, I am not talking about taking you beyond, I am just talking about starting at the square one of your life.