Look for joy not luck

STRENGTH COMES NOT FROM FORTUNE BUT FROM WITHIN

FOR those who depend on luck, they are always looking for places, things, stones and beads – lucky shoes, lucky soaps, lucky num­bers – all kinds of things. In this process of looking for luck and waiting for things to happen, things they could have easily created for themselves are lost.

With every aspect of life, it is you who has to make it happen. Your peace and your turmoil is your business. Your sanity and insanity is your business. Your joy and misery is your business. The devil and the god within you is your business.

We don’t know whether you can become the richest man on the planet or not, but if you wish, you can become blissful and joyful. All of us have this capability – we don’t need any luck. It is not even a question of capability. It is just a question of being willing and sen­sible and every one of us have that much sense, if we are willing.

We may not have the intelli­gence to build a nuclear reactor, but all of us have enough sense to live joyfully within ourselves. And, whatever other capabilities we have in terms of external action can also find full expression only if you are peaceful and joyful. Otherwise, even your most funda­mental capabilities will not find expression in the world outside.

Instead of allowing your ener­gies to express themselves to their fullest capability, instead of creat­ing the necessary inner and exter­nal atmosphere around us where the right kind of situation can happen, we are always looking for something else which could make that happen for us. Today, from morning to evening, how it hap­pened for you within, is definitely yours. Today, how much friction you had with people around you simply depends on how insensi­tive you have been in understand­ing the situations and the people around you – their limitations and possibilities within themselves. It is definitely not decided by where the planets are standing on this day or what lucky charms you may be wearing. It simply de­pends on how sensibly, intelli­gently, and with how much awareness, you walk and look at life around you.

One day, two men met in the airport. One man was looking truly dejected. So the other man asked: “Why are you like this? What hap­pened to you?” The first man said: “My first wife died of cancer. My second wife eloped with my neigh­bour. My son is in prison because he attempted to murder me. My 14-year-old daughter is pregnant. Lightning struck my house. All my shares went bust in the share mar­ket today, and my medical report says I have AIDS.” The other man said, “Oh, that’s a list of bad things and bad luck for you. Anyway, what do you do?” The man said: “I sell lucky charms.”

On the Shaiva path, people in­vite bad luck. They do not ask for good luck. Shiva bhaktas never asked for good luck. They have al­ways said: “Let the worst things happen to me and let me have the strength to go through all this un­disturbed.” They never ask for luck because people who are living with that level of strength and solidity within themselves know whatever happens around them, it is not go­ing to matter within themselves.

The very fundamentals of a spiritual process is to integrate our energies in such a way that things, people and situations don’t guide our lives anymore. Our destinies are not created out­side of us. Our destinies are cre­ated within us – to become in such a way that the very process of life, death, and beyond becomes a conscious process, it is no more subject to other forces in the exist­ence. You become the very source of who you are. You become the very basis of everything that hap­pens to you and become inde­pendent of external influences.

When I say external, I am not just talking about the world or peo­ple outside, even your body and mind are external to you. When even your body and mind does not influence you anymore, then there is no power on Earth or beyond that can pull you this way or that. Whichever way you wish, which­ever way your being longs, that is the way everything happens.

• Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadh­guru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru has been conferred the “Padma Vibhushan” by the Government of India in 2017, one of the highest annual civilian awards, accorded for exceptional and dis­tinguished service.