Just look around you. Observe what everyone is chasing in their life.
Your friends, your brother or sister, your colleagues – everyone wants more money, more power, more appreciation for the work they do, more popularity.
And when you switch on the internet, that too forces upon you the need to run after all these things.
It’s a shame.
Our society frowns upon that person who wants to live a simple life, who isn’t ambitious, and who is content with what he has.
Even your own family will frown upon you if you told them you don’t want more money, you don’t want more possessions, and you don’t want this or that in life. Because for many of us life is about getting more and more.
And that is the problem.
When the whole world around you is screaming at you to be more and more, to have more and more, you, too, feel that that is the way to live your life.
Then you, too, feel that a better job, a bigger house, a better school for your kids, vacationing all over the world, are the only things worth aspiring for in life. These are the only things that can bring you happiness in life.
And then, those are the very things you focus and work upon for all your life, without ever stopping. And the reason you never stop is, the moment you do achieve that “better” thing in life, you see there is something even better than that.
What seemed “better” earlier, seems normal once you get used to it, and then you start to seek something even better than what you have.
And this feeling of lacking something in life unless you have those better things in life, never ends, though your life itself may come to an end.
And if you ever decide to stand up and say that you are done with this race, and don’t want to live your life like a never-ending chase, the whole world will fall upon you.
How can you be without any ambition? Without any passion? Why can’t you think bigger? Why are you acting like a loser? Why are you acting like a fool? Hove you lost your mind?
No one will support you. No one will have any good thing to say to you. Everyone will think, and discuss among themselves, that you have gone crazy. And every time they meet you, whether tomorrow or a decade from now, they will try to convert you towards their way of living a life.
And this stupidity goes on forever.
The society looks down upon anyone who is fully content with what he has, with where he is, with how things are in his life.
They think of you as a weak person as you don’t have any ambitions, any goals in life.
But is that the reality?
No.
A weak person can NEVER let go his attachment to all things in life. Only a strong person can do that.
Tell me who is weak? The one who is a slave to money, or the one who doesn’t care for it; the one who keeps thinking of having more and more, or the one who is free of such thoughts, and is the master of what thoughts he wants to pay attention to; the one who is never content, never happy, and never at peace, or the one who is fully content, happy, and peaceful; the one who never stops chasing something, or the one for whom the chase has ended permanently; the one who always and always looks at a future happy life, or the one who is already happy right now, at the present moment; the one who becomes restless and wants to possess something new as soon as he sees it, or the one whose state of mind isn’t affected at all by any new thing; the one whose mind always keeps fluctuating with one desire or another, or the one who has a steady mind, which no power on earth can shake; the one who chases lies that will only get destroyed one day, or the one who seeks the permanent truth; the one who is a slave of his senses, or the one who is a master of them; the one who identifies himself with only his body, or the one who identifies himself beyond the body; the one for whom his body is the God, or the one for whom the highest form of consciousness is the God; the one who has lost the awareness of who he really is, or the one who is perfectly aware of who he is.
See, letting go is the most powerful thing you can do in your life. As soon as you let go a thing, you instantly become a master of it. Then that thing loses all its control, all its power, over you. Then you become the one in control, the one in power.
And we can apply this practice of letting go to each and every thing in our life, no matter how small or big.
It’s only when you begin to let go things in your life, do you realize how much dependent you were upon them. Even those little things you do every day are difficult to let go, once you consciously make the decision to let them go.
Just try to give up your habit of drinking tea or coffee every day, and you will know what I mean. Just give up checking facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, youtube, or whatever it is that you spend most time on daily, and see how hard it is to ignore them even for a day. Just give up eating tasty meals, and eat simple tasteless food, and see how soon you begin to crave for eating something good. And just give up this practice of doing something all the time, thinking something all the time, and you’ll see how hard it is to just sit and think, and do, nothing.
Letting go isn’t an easy thing, that’s why almost no one does it. But know this, what you can’t let go from your life, owns you and is your master. And as long as there is any such thing, any such habit, any such activity, any such person(living or dead), whom you can’t let go from your life, you will never be free. You will never move towards enlightenment. You will never be at peace. You will never be one with your consciousness.
And just so you don’t misunderstand it, letting go doesn’t necessarily mean giving up your association altogether only with an object/activity/person or whatever. Letting go means giving up all your attachments to all things in your life.
Letting go means to understand that you can’t control the world around you, that you can’t control even your own body – you, too, will die one day. And so there is no point in trying to control what can’t be controlled and what will eventually get destroyed one day.
Letting go means accepting the ultimate truth of life, that whatever is created, will destroy one day; whatever borns, will die one day; what rises, will fall one day.
And the deeper this truth syncs within you, the more and more you get detached from everything in your life. And once you fully let go all your attachments, all your thoughts and desires, all your ideas and philosophies, all that you identify yourself with including your body, your own name, that is when you begin to live a true life; that is when you become the highest form of being it’s possible for a human to become; that is when you begin to feel oneness with your God – be it with Buddha, Ram, Krishna, Shiva, or whichever God of whatever religion you believe in.
Letting go makes you independent, free of all your miseries forever, free of all your delusions forever, free of all your bondages forever, free of the cycle of birth and rebirth forever, free of all your sufferings and pains forever, free of any impurities forever.
And then after everything is let go, what remains is the purest form of consciousness that exists, the highest form of consciousness that exists, the permanent form of consciousness that exists, the only form of consciousness that needs to exist.
Letting go is the most empowering thing you can do in your life.
Start with the little things in your life first, if you find it too difficult to let go the bigger things in your life. Start with letting go only one thing first, before you move on to other things.
Little by little, step by step, keep letting go one thing after another from your life. As you let go first thing, you gain power. As you let go one more thing, you gain more power. And so, the more things you let go from your life, the more powerful you become. That’s why, while today it may seem that it’s impossible to let go your attachment to such and such thing, with time and practice of letting go, you will gain the power to even let go that impossible thing.
It won’t happen in a day, a month, or even a year. But it will happen one day. And the day it happens, the day you win over your biggest attachment and let it go, is the day you become enlightened.