Q. I’ve seen people being blessed by saints and yogis. What is a blessing exactly?
Sadhguru: Anyone saying, “All the best to you,” is not a blessing; it is just a wish, a hope. It is not substantiated by anything. It is just a nice thought. A blessing is not a thought or emotion. It is a piece of energy. If you have made yourself fluid enough – so that you are not a burnt pot – if you are just loose energy, then you can take a little bit of that and give. If you are a properly burnt pot, you cannot take anything out of it because it is crystallized. A blessing is something that hastens you. It is like fuel in the car. If you have to push your car and go, it is a long way home. If you have fuel in the tank, you can get there in no time.
But if you are someone who enjoys a parked car, a moving car is dangerous. A lot of people have chosen to live in a parked car. Morning becomes afternoon; afternoon becomes evening; evening becomes night. Fall becomes winter; winter becomes spring; spring becomes summer; and then autumn again. It looks like you are going somewhere because there is so much change in scenery. You could live there very well. It is just that you do not go anywhere. But if you are a little loony – if you are willing to risk it and go a certain distance, then you drive a car. If you want to go somewhere, you need fuel. And that is what a blessing is.
Q. You were telling us how one can either come out broken or come out wiser from calamities. Can you elaborate on how sadness can be a means of growth?
Sadhguru: Most people do not know what it means for misery to strike in the form of life. But for certain people, when it really strikes, everything that they valued in their life is taken away, and a deep sadness settles. There are many ways to handle this sadness. Some people just sit in a corner and drive themselves mad, making everyone miserable. There are others, who when they become sad, find a way of doing some useful work. Usually, it is people who have been hurt like this who become great karma yogis in their lives.
One can make any emotion into a creative force in their life. When sadness sets in, if you become more compassionate, more caring, and more loving, you have some sense in you. When you get sad, if you get irritable and angry and think that the whole world is wrong, you are a fool. At that moment, if someone meddles with you, your sadness can very easily become anger. Will you make this sadness into anger or will you make this sadness into love and compassion? It is very easy to become compassionate when you are sad.
Learning to use all your emotions creatively is very important. It is not just happiness that is important. If you have not known sadness, you will not mature. Only if you have known sadness and pain, you can be a mature person. Otherwise you will never understand what is happening with you, nor will you understand what is happening with anyone else around you.
Q. Sadhguru, why are we not naturally happy? Why is there misery in our life?
Sadhguru: The problem is, in our minds, we have deviated from the natural order of life. This is why we are so far away from being happy that happiness has now become an achievement for people. Happiness is not something that you achieve. It was something that you were born with. As a child, you were joyous for nothing. But now you have lost and destroyed whatever joy was put into you by this life. Joy is the very essence of who you are. If you just know what the natural flow of life within you is, you are naturally joyous.
We have totally misunderstood life and are clinging in such desperation to people, ideologies, philosophies and gods. This is because we have not made any attempt towards finding anything of true value or substance within ourselves. From the moment you came out of your mother’s womb and opened your eyes, you are busy with the outside world. You don’t see that the quality of life is not about what is around you, but simply about what is within you right now.
(Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author)
