If life is calling you, you must go toward it with utmost passion and involvement, not with hesitation and calculation. This is not the ego's problem of wanting to do something different; it is about living to your full potential. And if you are truly passionate about every aspect of your life, you will realize very easily what you are good at.
It could be that you are good at something that has never been done before, something completely new. But even if you are not a complete original and are doing the same, age-old things, when you do them with utmost passion and involvement, they will raise you to a new dimension of experience.
Problems come when people are passionate about only one thing, or when they are passionate in an exclusive way. This often leads to isolation; living an exclusive existence with very limited involvement will only lead to frustration and pain. What I am talking about is all-inclusive passion. One must be in touch with everything that the five senses can perceive in a given moment and be absolutely and passionately involved. This is true compassion. Compassion is not an attitude of kindness but an instrument of unprejudiced involvement.
The way life happens is first being, then doing and then having. But right now, because people are trapped in their minds, they are always thinking first of having. For example, you may come to a stage in life when you want to have a certain kind of life that includes a certain kind of mate, house or car. Then you think, "How can I have all this?" The moment you start thinking how to get it, people around you start advising you.
So then you start thinking about becoming a doctor, lawyer, software engineer or whatever. Once you are in one of these professions for a period of time, you think you have become something and that is when you start moving against life. You are going the "having-doing-being way," which leads to an endless pursuit of having. This is the basis of an unfulfilled life. You must first establish your way of being. Then, whether you get to have what you desire or not, you will still be wonderful. The quality of your life is decided by your way of being, and what you get to have is only a question of capability and situations that are conducive. If you make this simple shift to "being-doing-having," then a large part of your destiny will be by your will.
Now, I want you to get this right: there is no life's calling, but life is calling, both from within and without. Only when you truly respond to the call of life will you know life in its entirety. Only when you know unprejudiced and absolute involvement with the universe, with every atom in the universe, will you explore, experience and know the full scope of who you are. And in being absolutely involved, you need not be limited by your past experience and capabilities -- you can imbibe and have access to the great storehouse of knowing that is the very nature of the universe. It is also through this absorbed, unadulterated involvement that one can know the true nature of the self, which is boundless. The way we are is more important than what we do and have.
This article has been excerpted from the book "Midnights with the Mystic," which is listed below.
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Sadhguru will teach Inner Engineering programs in Los Angeles (October 15-16, 2011), New Jersey (Nov 5-6, 2011) and Toronto (Nov 12-13, 2011). Isha Yoga programs are based on tested, scientific principles. They offer tools for optimal health, emotional well-being and professional excellence. To participate, visit: www.InnerEngineering.com
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