Diffidence is something that lowers the scale of life when life can happen more beautifully. Confidence is a scourge, it is a disease. Over-confident people are invariably tyrants on different levels. What we need is neither confidence nor diffidence — awareness, consciousness is what is needed.
Whatever I face, any kind of situation, any kind of people, the moment I sit, I just look at them and I don’t even have to think, I just see them as a part of myself, I speak to them as I would speak to myself. To speak to yourself you don’t need confidence. That’s required only when you have to talk to someone else. When you speak to yourself, you can say anything you want. There is no difficulty in it, there is no greatness about it. If you just behold everybody as yourself, there is no need for confidence or diffidence.
Once there is a sense of inclusion, awareness and consciousness comes naturally. And you just do what needs to be done.
Life is awareness. There is no other way to be. It is only because of exclusion that awareness has to be practiced. People are trying to be aware simply because they have excluded themselves from everything. Most of your exclusiveness, you have created unconsciously. A part of it you have created consciously because you thought that this is the way to get attention from the world, by trying to be special. Especially in Western cultures, children are trained to be special. Trying to be special is the worst of all diseases because once you get this disease, there is no salvation for you.
Wherever you go, you have to do something stupid to prove that you are special. Isha Yoga is not about being special. It is about being extraordinary. In the old brochures, we used to say “Isha Yoga — Ordinary to Extraordinary”. People thought if they come to the programme, they would become very special. After they arrived, I would tell them, “No, you will become more ordinary than others. Extraordinary!”
When there is no effort to make yourself special, you are simply ordinary, and you will stand out as extraordinary. All inclusiveness is extraordinary. It is just a way of life. When I say inclusion, it is not my philosophy, it is not something that I have made up — this is the way existence is. It is only in inclusiveness that existence is functioning.
If you are so exclusive, why are you inhaling what I exhale? Try to breathe separately and see; you will be dead. It is only in inclusiveness that life is happening. When we talk about inclusiveness, we are not teaching you a new philosophy. We are talking about falling back into the way life is, just ordinary as it is. It is ordinary but it is magnificent.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an internationally renowned spiritual leader, is a visionary, humanitarian, author, poet and speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org
