By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
In this Weekly Wisdom, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar shares beautiful insights on how people grow in spirit and what prevents growth. Find out.
Q: How many people don’t grow in spirit over time? How does one grow in spirit and what prevents this growth?
Gurudev: Listen, in this matter, don’t look here and there. Don’t see who has grown and not grown. You want to grow. You can grow. Let’s stop it at that, got it?
When a sunflower blossoms, it doesn’t look around and say, “How many other sunflowers are blossoming? Should I blossom or not? It just blooms by itself. Like that, you never know. You can never judge other people by their behavior, by their lifestyle. You can’t say whether they’ve bloomed or not.
It’s very personal and very individual, so the lesson is, better not to judge. Move ahead.
Q: I feel I’m born to be extremely famous. I’m 26 and no one knows me yet. What to do?
Gurudev: Well, you still have a lot of time to go. If you have that as your intention and your deep desire, it will happen.
But how do you want to be known? You’d better choose that! Being famous isn’t a big thing, but it has to be fame for some good works, some good things.
Q: I’m 24 and I already feel I have achieved everything, and there’s no motivation except to eat and sleep. What to do?
Gurudev: Well, do that well. Eat well. Sleep well. When you sleep well, then you can’t sleep again. Only when you’ve not slept will you want to sleep.
But when you’ve slept well, how long can you sleep? 8 hours? 10 hours? 12 hours? 24 hours? Sleep! When you wake up, then you’ll want to do something. At that time, your mind will be more fresh, and you can’t but do something.
So do something that is useful to you and to others.
Q: How do I stop the need of being liked by everyone around?
Gurudev: See, it’s up to you to create the lightness. First of all, don’t take things too seriously. We tend to make everything so serious. Even jokes have become very serious jokes. We can’t handle life like that! We make everything too serious. Take it easy, I tell you.
God isn’t serious at all. You take God too seriously, also. You see, in India, the whole world, life, everything is said to be a play, a game. A game is something you don’t take seriously. You say, “Oh, it’s just a game.” That means it’s not serious. There’s nothing worth considering, right? You tell people “Don’t play around with me like that. Don’t play around.”
So, wake up and see. Everything is changing! All that has happened until this moment isn’t there anymore. Isn’t it like a dream? You went to school, you played, you cried, you laughed and you threw tantrums. You did a million things. Then, you grew up.
Look back and see all those years, whatever has happened, it’s not sticking anywhere. It’s all gone. It’s like a dream.
Project your mind into the future and see, okay, another 20 years you’ll be on this planet. You’ll do all those things. Some good, some bad, and one day you’ll kick the bucket and that’s it. You don’t even know where you’re going, where you’ve gone, what will happen in the future. Another 20, 30, 40 years will be gone.
It’s like a dream. Isn’t it like a dream? The curtain will come down. Finished, the whole play is done. So, if you see life from a bigger context, that’s how you take life lighter. You’ll be happier here and now.
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