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Satsangh, in its ultimate sense, means that you surrender the wall that you have built. This wall does not exist, but you believe it exists. All that you are surrendering is your illusion, not reality. Reality is not something that you can create. Reality is that which contains you. It holds you. It is in the lap of reality that you exist. If you surrender the illusion, reality happens. It is not that it happens: it already is, but it happens to you. It comes into your experience. Right now, in your experience you have become a whole world by yourself. What you call ‘myself ’ is just a bundle of impressions, a whole garbage bin of impressions that you have gathered from everywhere around you. With all these multiple impressions you have built a world of your own, and this world is not the reality. Every moment, even to exist here physically, you have to communicate with the rest of existence. Even your breath is a communication on the physical level. If you break your communication with existence even for one moment, this being cannot exist. But you go about believing that you exist separately by yourself, and that you have got nothing to do with anything else. But every moment, even in the physical reality that you are in touch with, you cannot exist without this communication.
As I mentioned earlier, without a certain presence, which seems to be much larger than yourself, dropping your identifications becomes difficult because it is like jumping into a void. Once you feel something, which is bigger than yourself, it becomes a little easier to keep yourself - or what you think of as yourself - aside. That is what satsangh is.
You go to all those places to manifest your exclusiveness. Satsangh is to drop your exclusiveness.
Sadhguru: You cannot become willing. Only when you have no will of your own you are truly willing. When you have a will of your own you stand up like a stone. It is just that this world, the people around you, and your education etc have always tried to teach you how to conquer. You can conquer stones. You can conquer patches of land. Maybe you can conquer physical bodies, but you cannot ever conquer even a single person. Now, if knowing the ultimate is what you want, then the only way is to surrender, not to conquer. But for the logical mind surrender is disgraceful. Surrender is one thing that you do not want to do, because in surrendering you will come to an end. This whole need to conquer comes from the fear of losing yourself. The very need to conquer something or somebody has come to you because there is a deep fear of losing yourself on many levels.
You want to acquire more and more - wealth, people, power, relationships etc - because otherwise you feel inadequate.
This inadequacy has come not because you are made that way. It has come because you have identified yourself with little things, and when you look at the vastness of the existence, you feel so small and lost.
It may take you a whole lifetime to release yourself from the next level of identity unless there is a live guru around you who constantly keeps breaking you.
“How aware you are is how alive you are. From life to death this is all the difference.”
He is seen as a destroyer because the idea is that if god does not destroy you, he is not a good god, because all your problems, your suffering, and your struggles in this world have come only because you have constructed yourself as a person, unconsciously. You are an unconscious construction.
So in Indian culture, the divine was never seen as a savior. He is not there to save you; he is there to destroy you. So, the ancient prayers were not, “O God, save me,” or “O God, give me this or give me that.” The prayer was just “O God, destroy me! Please destroy me the way I am so that I can become one with you.
AI Summary
Don’t Polish Your Ignorance…It May Shine by Sadhguru presents key insights from the contemplative tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.