As we navigate through life, our minds can become overwhelmed with introspection and overthinking, resulting in mental and emotional struggles. But what if there is a simpler solution to discovering our true potential and finding clarity in life?
Questioner: Sadhguru, my introspection has led me to various thoughtful conclusions in my life, but how do I know when it starts shifting towards overthinking or even procrastination?
Sadhguru: Your conclusions do not mean a thing because your thought process is not life – it is something that you make up in your mind. Suppose you are driving. If instead of looking through the windshield, you keep looking in the rear-view mirror, you should be in reverse gear, not top gear. In this country, we do not believe in introspection. Trying to analyze your own mess is not going to work. If you hold it at a distance, you will clearly know what it is, and you will not have to think about it.
Let’s say you want to fly from Delhi Airport tonight. Your flight time is coming, but there is a huge traffic jam. How do you experience the traffic jam? You may be sitting in your dream car, but it is still deep suffering. Somehow, you get to the airport, get into the airplane, and it takes off. Once you are up, you look down. The traffic jam is still on, but it suddenly looks so beautiful with the white and red lights in a string. This is because once there is a little distance, it is no longer a problem.
Or if I asked you to walk up and down the stage and determine whether this planet is round or flat, you would experience it as flat. The argument whether the earth is round or flat only got settled because we started traversing the oceans, and we could see that the planet has to be round. Then we started flying, and the shape became obvious.
Later, we stood on the Moon and looked down, and it was 100% clear. Something so simple, we could not see when we were walking on the planet. The same goes for the body and mind. In Yoga, we do not see body and mind as separate. Essentially, we call something “mind” because there is a certain volume of intelligence and memory in it. Every cell in your body carries more memory than your brain can ever process. You do not remember what your great-grandmother looked like five generations ago, but her nose is still in your face. You do not remember how your forefathers were half a million years ago, but your epithelial cells remember what their skin tone was. This intelligence and memory is spread right across your body.
At least you can see that your neurological system is spread right across. So, the mind is not in one place. If you only look at one part of who you are and try to meddle with it constantly without knowing how to make the other things function, it is like trying to drive with a handbrake on. A lot of people do not realize this; they think that if they press the throttle, it will go. If you drive a car with the brakes on, it may catch fire.
Right now, many people are like this because they have gone to school or college, and a little bit of intellect has been fired up with all kinds of outside information. With this, they are doing all kinds of things, such as introspection. These ideas have brought enormous suffering to human beings.
Psychological process is a consequence of the type of data that you have gathered and how you process it. If you keep it aside, it has no impact on you. When you want, you should use it. When you do not want, you must keep it aside. Right now, people are thinking all the time. I do not intend to insult you, but what you are calling introspection is a kind of mental diarrhea, going on endlessly. Essentially, thinking should mean you consciously use your thought process to go in a certain direction. If it is simply running all the time, it is mental diarrhea.
It is important to differentiate between the two: is this a conscious thought process, or is it running wildly? Introspection is a rear view of life. If you are young and do introspection, you will already feel as if you have lived a long time. Shakespeare came up with, “To be, or not to be” – this is supposed to be the most intellectual question. If you are blissed out, will you think, “To be, or not to be”? Only if you are miserable and find life to be burdensome will you think this.
Introspection, whether it is in small or large proportion, could be the basis of mental illness. You are trying to find solutions in the garbage bin of your mind, which only holds what has come to you through your five senses. Your computer cannot function beyond the data that you have fed in. The same is true with your mind. If you know the data and have written the software, you know what it can do and what it cannot do. There is no need to overthink or introspect. You need more clarity of perception. If you can see everything clearly as it is, then there is no need to introspect.
We are trying to fix life with introspection, morality, ethics, ideas, philosophies, opinions, role models, and so on. That is not what is needed. What is needed is that this life happens in the highest, most exuberant way. If you spark all the time, you will physically be fine, your genius will fire off; everything will happen. Does this mean that in the world, everything will happen the way you want it? No. The world will never happen 100% the way you want it.
Because you are young, many of you have this dream that you will find the ideal, perfect person in your life. I am not trying to destroy all the romance; I am just telling you that you will be deeply disappointed. In the very nature of existence, no one in this world will happen just the way you want them. But there is one option: You can make yourself happen the way you want. That is what you need to do.
