Benefit of feeling helpless

 

Every parent is a door for a new soul to enter into the world. Nothing more than a door. Every artist is a door for some work of art to flow through them. All your virtues, all beauty, all that is truth spring from the same source - one source.

Love is something that is very fresh. It can’t be stale. You can't practice love. No practice can bring love in you. Love is spontaneous. It is the same with beauty. Beauty can't be practiced. You can't practice appreciation.

That is why I say "I don't know what I speak". Knowing, knowledgeability, limits. The highest knowledge is called the end of knowledge. Vedanta means the end of knowledge, truth. 

It is the same with truth as with beauty, truth cannot be practiced. It can be cognized, recognized, felt, experienced and lived moment to moment, moment to moment. Observing the unpredictability of life, the unpredictability of the world creates an awe in you, a sense of wonder in you.

Every person on this earth feels helpless, completely handicapped, at some time or other whether he is John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi or someone on the street. Everyone feels helplessness, feels that things are ruled by something other than what one can logically conceive. Whatever possible conclusions we make, we still feel things happen beyond that. 

When we feel helpless, we tend to become frustrated, cynical. This is the junction point. The feeling of helplessness can turn into prayer, or it can turn into frustration. Divinity can be perceived in the prayerfulness. In frustration we become more and more disheartened, dejected. Do you see that?

Prayer is not a practice, it is a happening. When from the very core of your heart, your mind, you feel helplessness that is prayer. When you are successful, you Know it. A sense of doership comes.

But when the feeling of helplessness arises, prayer can be very authentic. This authentic prayer can transform life, can bring such a force or power within us. I don't mean that we should all be miserable in order to pray. Gratefulness is very essential. 

When we recognise our helplessness, we need to put a distance between ourselves and what is happening, a distance from every action. I'm talking and yet I am watching myself talk. I'm sitting here, yet I'm not just sitting here. I have entered all the things here-the cushions, the carpet, the walls, the photograph. All over it is me, an expanded awareness living life from that area beyond calculations.

We measure and talk. We calculate, we prepare and we talk. But when we talk of something which we don't know, it is very adventurous. I have never read the Bible, but I can speak on the Bible. Nor have I ever read Buddha, but I can speak about Buddha.

Letting words flow through you when you speak

 

What is the difference between a question and wonder? For a question we seek an answer, in wonder we don’t seek an answer. A question is related to sorrow; wonder is related to joy.

No one ever asks, ‘Why am I happy?’ When we become miserable, we ask ‘Why has this misery come to me?’ No one ever questions why there is so much beauty in the world, in creation. But why there is dishonesty?’

This ‘Why’ comes from that area of our mind that seeks to know, that seeks knowledgeability. Knowledgeability is labeling things. I don’t know what I am speaking. What you know you speak from your intellect, you speak from your knowledge. But the purpose of knowledge is to make you aware of how ignorant you are. The more you know, the more unknown remains. So, in fact, the unknown grows. What we don’t know grows.

We are born in ignorance. When we mature and we go through the process of acquiring knowledge, we again become ignorant. But there is this difference – this second “I don’t know” becomes a beautiful “I don’t know”. It is wonder. “Why this creation?” “I don’t know” “What is happening?” “I don’t know”.

An ignorant person talks and he doesn't know what he says. So also an enlightened person talks and he doesn’t know what he says. If he knows and talks, it is coming from limitation. If he doesn’t know and talks, he allows the words to flow through. He's open. He remains available to that are of the self, the consciousness, from which the words will come. An enlightened person can speak on any subject which he doesn’t know. He can sit and talk, but only if he doesn’t start thinking about it.

If you ask an enlightened person to prepare a thesis, he would fail to do it. Kabir or St. Francis would be unable to write a thesis or to write a poem, but they could sit and let the poetry flow through.

What you have known and you speak is stale. It is not fresh. But when you speak something that you don’t know, it is something fresh, it is something new. It is the most creative thing.

Talking about what you know may be creative, but definitely less creative than when you talk about something that you don’t know. In that very moment that is being created, you allow yourself to be a doorway for the creative process to spring through you. We are all just doors.