Many people love the thrill of an action-packed movie or novel. Why are these imaginary moments so popular? Is it because these types of media stimulate intense emotions that makes us feel temporarily more alive? We don’t need to go to the cinema or get absorbed in a book to observe intense moments. Nature is constantly providing its own shows of intensity: an ant carrying ten to fifty times its body weight with immense determination as it travels towards its goal; a weed working its way through a tiny concrete crack in a driveway; a cat poised and waiting to pounce upon a bird as it grasps a wiggling worm previously securely embedded in the lawn’s roots; a lightning and thunderstorm during a warm summer’s evening.
We often forget about how intense life on a daily basis is until an event knocks our attention into a “Wow!” situation. It can be the sudden death of a loved one, news of a debilitating illness, a surprise birthday party, winning a race, an unexpected raise, a total solar eclipse, or an enchanting sunset.
But we don’t need to wait for or try to create intense moments in our lives. Sadhguru relates how intensity is a 24-7 event, and how to experience life that way.
Sadhguru: Life is intensity. Do you see the life within you does not slacken even for a moment? What slackens is your mind and your emotion – sometimes on, sometimes off. Watch the breath, does it ever slacken? If it slackens, it means death, isn’t it? When I go on telling you in so many ways to be intense, I am just talking about you becoming like life. Right now, you have given too much significance to the thought and emotion that happens within you, not the life that is happening within you. Is your thought more significant than you being alive?
The great French philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” Most people believe that they exist only because they are thinking. No, because you exist you may think, or you may not think, isn’t it? Your aliveness is far more fundamental and more significant than your thought and emotion. But you only listen to what your thoughts and emotions are saying. If you go by the process of your life, it is intense whether you are awake or asleep. Is the life within you slackening when you sleep? Otherwise, you will not wake up tomorrow morning (if it slackens). No matter what you are doing, whether it is something that you like or not, is your life slackening? No. It is only your mind that says, “I like this, so I will do it with passion. I don’t like that, so I will not do it with passion.” But your life is not like that; it is always intense.
If you are constantly aware that all the other things are passing things and I am fundamentally life, you will remain intense. There is no other way because life does not know any other way to be. Life is always intense. It is only thought and emotion which is deceptive.
When it comes to looking at the nature of your thought — or your emotion for that matter — any number of times in your life it has made you believe so many things and after a little bit of time it makes you feel like a fool for what you believed yesterday. Today your emotions tell you that this is the most wonderful man, then tomorrow your emotions tell you that this is the most horrible man, and both seemed 100 percent true. So both your thought and emotion are tremendous instruments of deception. They can make you believe just about anything.
Just look at your own beliefs – none of them will stand any kind of investigation. If I ask you three questions, your whole belief system will collapse. But your mind will make you believe different things at different stages in your life and firmly believe that is true.
So intensity means just going by the way of life. If you just exist here as life, pure life, it will naturally go to its ultimate nature. You are creating a huge hurdle in the process of life reaching its natural goal by becoming a thought, emotion, ideas, opinions, prejudices, anger, hatred, and so many other things. If you just remain a piece of life, you will very naturally reach your ultimate nature. It is not something that you have to strive for or struggle for. This is the reason I have always been saying “just maintain your intensity; the rest will happen.”
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