How to overcome hesitation? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Question: How to overcome hesitation?

Acharya Prashant: Anurag (Name of the questionnaire), you see this fan, the moment I switch it ON, it has no hesitation at all in starting, no hesitation at all. Its life is very very hesitation free. Here you press the button, and there it goes. A flash of a second. You take a stone and you throw in whichever direction you want to, and it will just go. You pick up a gun, and with that gun shoot whosoever you want to, the gun will not hesitate, the gun will not come and say that this is right or wrong or improper. That is the lowest level of mind.

You have said, “Why is there Hesitation?” I am starting it by saying that absence if hesitation is not necessarily good, the gun never hesitates, the fan never hesitates. When you are not at all conscious, completely mechanical, then everything is totally automatic. There is no conflict, there is no confusion, there is no conflict, there is no confusion. You are operating from the bottommost level of mind, which is purely mechanical.

Then, there is a higher state – Level 2. Here you are semi-conscious, you are not completely like a machine, but you are also not fully human. You do have a glimpse of free will, yet it is only a glimpse, just a little bit, you are still a slave to many others. So, you need to take a decision and what happens? There are so many others that are dominating your mind that the moment you move in one direction, some other thought prevails. And all of these thoughts are of course external, others, just as the master of the fan is external.

So, you want to move in one direction, you can’t. Because then the opposing thought will arise and you give credence to that thought, you move in some other direction, you can’t go long. You go a little distance, and something arrests your feet, you can’t move. There are ten thousand voices, that are filling your mind and that are all pulling you or pushing you in different directions, this is called hesitation. I want to do something, the moment I get up, the moment it comes to act, an impeding thought comes. This is hesitation.