The self-help industry promises solutions through endless optimization, yet even the most successful often feel just as lost as everyone else.
What if no amount of new protocols can ever solve the fundamental issue? What if we’re mistaking the noise in our heads for reality itself? Sadhguru explains why we exhaust ourselves chasing what is already there.
Sadhguru: What is the purpose of all that we are doing here? Essentially, to know life as it is, not the way you think it is. You can think any way you want, but that is not the way it is. It is very important to get it the way it is.
If you do not know the difference between what is existential and what is psychological, you are lost. Establishing a clear distinction between what is psychological and what is existential does not happen early in life.
You go through so many things that are your own making, but you think they are happening to you. The destiny of your existence lies in the way you experience your life, not where you are placed.
So, how do we experience our life? On one level, it is about how we manage our psychological structure. If we manage that, it does not mean that everything is settled, but you come to a place where you have no fear of suffering. Once there is no fear of suffering, you walk full stride. Otherwise, as long as there is fear of suffering, every step is half a step.
“What will happen to me?” There is nothing that will happen. You come with nothing, and you go back with nothing. There is nothing to gain, nothing to lose – but in between, how much mess you create, because you are misunderstanding the psychological as existential.
Two friends met, and one asked the other, “Aren’t you wearing your ring on the wrong finger?” The other woman said, “Yeah, I married the wrong man.” No one ever married the right man. There is no such thing. Even Krishna’s two wives always complained. Everyone else thought he was the greatest man, but his wives complained because they knew they had not married the right man.
If you know you exist, then there is no issue. You can think, you can emote, you can act, you can eat, you can sleep – you can do all these things only because you exist.
But when you are eating, you do not become an eater. When you are thinking, you do not become a thinker. This is the problem in the world. If you do something – let us say I ride a motorcycle, people say, “Oh, he’s a motorcyclist.” If I hit a ball, they say, “He’s a golfer.” These are all things you do.
You will never experience what you are existentially as long as you label yourself based on the things you do. You can do many things, but they are not you. Existentially, you just are.
You do not know the nature of who you are – that is a reality. When you do not know the nature of who you are, whatever you do is meaningless, existentially. It may be socially relevant, but existentially, it is not relevant.
This is why successful people suffer. Those who are not successful in their life suffer because they compare themselves to others. Then why do successful people suffer? Why do people who live in palaces suffer? Why do the richest people on the planet suffer? Because no matter what you have or what you do, it will not fix how you are within yourself.
Your existential nature will come into your experience only if you settle how you are within yourself. That is not the ultimate, but if you settle how you are, at least you are not in the way. Other things are still in the way, but you are not in the way – that is the important thing. Because once you are in the way, no one else can remove that. If other things are in the way, we can remove them.
Once you are not in the way, life will blossom in its own way. You do not have to do much. If you are not in the way and you sit here, it will happen. Because this is about life. And you are life.
