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Don't be so serious; nothing is too important || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Acharya Prashant

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Don't be so serious; nothing is too important || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Speaker: How many of you feel this way that when the time is there, the opportunity is there, you feel blank? The mind experiences a blackout. Do you understand a blackout? There is nothing. And when the moment is gone then the thoughts arise. In the moment of action, you are unable to act and later there are so many thoughts. How many of you find this happening with you? (Many listeners raise their hands) .

This is a very, very common situation, very common. This will always happen when you are serious about something. This will always happen when the results become very important to you. Whenever you are serious, whenever you think it is a matter of life and death, whenever you give great, great importance to anything, you will find that you have been numbed down, you will find there is a freeze, there is an immobility. You are unable to act. Your seriousness has taken a grip upon you and you can’t move. The mind is not free anymore. If I start taking this conversation very seriously, I’ll not be able to speak. Even if I speak, I’ll not feel light, I’ll not be able to have fun with you. You would have laughed so many times over the last one hour. Right? You will not be able to laugh if I don’t feel light. And I’ll not feel light if I start taking you too seriously. Same is true vice-versa. If you start taking me too seriously, you’ll not be able to laugh. Let every thing be like a game. Enter it playfully. Just enjoy it.

What is so important about anything? You are the most important thing. Nothing is more important than you. Why are you unnecessarily serious? Even now, so many of you appear quite serious. Tell me really, do you dance freely? And why are you alive if you can’t even dance? Why don’t you just die? What is the point of living when life must be boring, serious and heavy? What is the point of living? Are you living to suffer torture? Are you living so that every day is a punishment?

Keep smiling. Nobody likes to see a heavy face, sulking. Are you here as some sort of jailed convicts? Are you? When you are with your friends, when you are light, when you are laughing, do you experience these blackouts then? You don’t. You experience these blackouts on some important occasions. Tell yourself that nothing is important, everything is alright. ‘Nothing is important. I am important.’ Who is important? ‘I am important. Everything else is secondary, I am primary.’

I feel really bad when young, well-educated students like you are unnecessarily suffering. And you keep suffering for the most stupid reasons. What will she say? What will he think? He just glanced at me. What did he mean? Most stupid reasons. You give importance to such rubbish in life, such stupid things. ‘He got 1.3 marks more than me. There is nothing left in my life now, I am finished. Where is the jungle? I’ll leave the city now. My ex-boyfriend has another one now.’ Flimsiest of pretexts we are searching as reasons to tax ourselves, burden ourselves, as if we have been programmed to be unhappy.

We are alright. You are alright, I am alright, everybody is alright. You don’t need to be too serious about anything. Take everything playfully, don’t bother yourself with the results. The results will take care of themselves.

Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant.
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