Although as passengers we may not realize, but an airplane almost never follows its predetermined flight path. About a thousand times a second, the autopilot calculates the difference between where the plane is and where it is supposed to be. The autopilot then issues corrective action to the pilot, who is always hyper-alert. The same analogy can be used for driving. Even if it’s a straight road, if you doze off or take your hands off the steering wheel, even for a millisecond, you can drift out of the lane and risk an accident.
Our life path mirrors that of a flight. We try to set up everything for the future perfectly — education, career, marriage, kids. We arrange fool-proof plans and expect that life will unfold exactly how we envision. But the truth is our lives are continuously exposed to turbulence, and we are thrown into unexpected situations. As we age, our perceptions and understandings of the world constantly change and evolve. Just like how our thoughts and body change, so do the experiences life throws at us. When we recognize life doesn’t happen according to a pre-set plan, like airplanes, our focus should be on staying relevant to the existing situation rather than being right.
As Sadhguru probes us to think, “Is it true what you thought was absolute at the age of 12, today is not true? Are you sure that whatever you think is “this is it” right now, will be “this is it” in another 3 years’ time? If you know it won’t be, you will walk carefully through life. But if you think you are absolutely correct, then you will do stupid things, and blunder around the world.”
“So, the most important aspect of your life is, you’re relevant, not right – you’re just relevant. To the existing situation, you’re relevant. If you have to bring relevance into your life, you must extinguish your confidence and bring clarity. Clarity means you see things the way they are. Knowledge means that you have fixed information about everything. If things change, then you will not see it the way it is. That’s as good as being blind. People think owls are blind, but that is not true; their vision is far more sensitive than humans but because of sunlight they are blinded. When the light goes down, owls are able to see very clearly—not because they are blind —because their eyes are super sensitive. So, it is important that we bring clarity to our lives, not knowledge, because knowledge is the conclusions we gather. Knowledge is okay when you are trying to do something physical, or material, in the world—but not with life.”
“If you know you are not seeing properly, will you walk carefully, or no? If you were asked to walk through a dark room, suppose we turn off all the lights, make it pitch black, suddenly we become super alert and conscious about where we are going. But when the lights are on, we just go unconsciously, bumping into everybody. So, if we learn to walk every moment of life like there are no lights, and you are looking at everything absolutely carefully, then what you see clearly, you go through it, what you don’t see clearly, you hesitate. Some places you take a little bit of a chance. But if you are just confident, you can blunder through life.”
Just like how there are systems in place to build muscles, there are many systems, such as Inner Engineering, that Sadghuru teaches to help us develop clarity so that we can ultimately be able to effortlessly handle anything that comes our way. Mastering these tools may help in turn naturally increase the confidence we have in ourselves.
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