A Rollercoaster Life

Q: Ever since I started my practices, my pain, my grief, my joy, everything has become so much more intense. Isn’t spirituality supposed to settle all these things? Am I going off track?

Sadhguru: Once you are actively on a spiritual path, some fools might tell you, “Everything will be okay.” Being on the spiritual path is not about making everything okay. If you want things to be okay you have to fix them, and still only some things will be okay, not everything. The significance of being on the spiritual path is not to seek comfort but to put your life on fast-forward. So, more fluctuations than you ever imagined possible may happen in your life. Things that would have happened in ten years may happen in two months. Whether you have the courage, capability and the stability to take it is the question. If you want it evenly spread out and you want to come back for we don't know how long, that’s up to you.

Once you ask for speed, if you ask for speed without stability you are asking for trouble. Sadhana, in a measured way, is created so that on the one hand it creates stability, on the other hand it creates speed. If there is no speed in you, you will feel like a tombstone not going anywhere. If you are very fast, then it feels like a rollercoaster ride. A rollercoaster gives you a feeling of being out of control but actually, it is perfectly safe because it is locked onto the rail on which it runs. A spiritual process is like that. If you have clamped onto the inner rail, everything may be going wild and weird but it does not matter because there is one spot which is steady, so anyway it is not going to fall off. If you have fixed yourself like that with what is internal, then let the outside situations go as weird as you can imagine, still it will be on track. Somebody may think these things are weird but you can also think it is exciting. If you don’t like excitement, if you cannot handle excitement, then it is a lot of trouble. But if you enjoy excitement, a rollercoaster is a good place.

So, the significance of being on the spiritual path is not that everything is going to be fixed. Even if nothing is fixed and everything is going crazy, “I am fixed so everything is fine with me” – that’s all. If you don’t fix the rail and the rollercoaster, then it is going to fly off at the first dip. If the inner rail is fixed, it goes wherever it wants, it gives you all the excitement, but still it does not fly off. All the excitement will be outside. The ups and downs, the flying and falling, everything will be okay.

Spirituality is not about fixing life. “I am fixed.” Then we fix the rest of life to the extent we can, but the important thing is, this one must be fixed. That must happen.

Editor’s Note: Find more of Sadhguru’s insights in the ebook “Of Mystics and Mistakes”, available on Isha Downloads.