You need to focus on something, but instead you find yourself getting tense, anxious, and stressed out. Have you been in this situation? In this article, Sadhguru answers a student who asks, “how do I concentrate better while studying?”
Sadhguru: You are lucky that you are unable to concentrate. If you concentrate too much, you will become like a concentration camp; you will become a torture. You will become a suffering, within yourself. What I am telling you is, just relax into life. For example, whether it is a schoolbook, college or the university textbook, it is fundamentally not made for a brilliant person. It is made for a person of average intelligence so that everybody can grasp it. Even when you concentrate on this, and even if you read the book ten times, it is still so difficult to remember and grasp it. But if you read a suspense thriller or a love story lying down on your bed, you finish the whole book in just one night. Suppose they give you an examination on this book, you top the score. You remember everything; you know everything. The same is the case in a cinema theatre while watching your favorite movie. You sit there relaxed but intense.
Are You Awake or Asleep?
Right now, the problem with you is that if I say “be intense,” you will become tense. If I say “relax,” you will become lax. The very fundamental of yoga is to teach you how to be intense but relaxed. Meditation means learning to sleep when you are wide awake or learning to be wide awake when you are sleeping — you are sitting here, you are in deep sleep physiologically, but you are wide awake. When you are like this, your ability to grasp things is very natural.
Anything and everything that your five sense organs perceive is naturally recorded in your mind, you have no choice about it. Every sound, every smell, every taste, every sensation, every sight that you have perceived in there in your mind. The question is just your ability to recall it when you want it. For example, you meet someone you know well, yet when he is in front of you, you don’t recollect his name — such an awkward situation. Later on, at another moment, his name comes to your mind when it is of no use. Yes? Have you seen these things happening to you? When you need it, it does not come. When you don’t need it, it comes. That means your mind definitely has the substance, but it is just disorganized. It is disorganized simply because you are handling everything in a chaotic way.
Relaxing into Life
When I say chaotic, the most chaotic way to live is to be anxious. Don’t be anxious to be focused. Learn to relax into life. If you develop a love for what you are doing, you will see that you will naturally grasp everything that you need to grasp. Rather than trying to concentrate on your study or work, if you see the usefulness of what you are doing, if you enjoy what you are doing, you will see that grasping things will come naturally to you. Everybody has the capability. When you try to concentrate forcefully, you will miss the most obvious things. When you are in anxiety, you have your car keys in your hand, yet you search for them all over the house. Has it happened to you?
The moment you create anxiety, there is chaos in the mind. If you go to a library with a million books piled up in one heap, can you find what you want? But if everything is catalogued and kept in the organized way that it should be kept, you can probably go blindfolded and find the book that you want. This organization is needed for your mind. Chaos has come to your mind only because of anxiety. You are anxious and you cannot help it because right now, your happiness is dependent upon what will happen in your life today. If you are happy, if you are a joyous person, there is no anxiety for you because you know that no matter what happens today, you are still going to be the same within yourself. Then, it is only your concern for the external which makes you do work. You are not trying to make your life through that.
So if anxiety has to go, first of all you need to learn how to be a peaceful and joyful human being by your own nature and not because of something outside of you. When you are like this, your mind is a beautiful instrument; it is a great friend of yours.
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