Willingness

The whole process of yoga is just to give yourself. When I say, give yourself, people may not know how to simply give themselves. People need some kind of means to give themselves. Whatever you may give in your life to anybody, you may give money, you may give food, you may give something else, all the things that you actually give do not belong to you, including your body because you gathered the body from this earth. When you go, you have to give it back and go. You cannot take one cell of this body and go.

So whatever you have today with you is something that you have borrowed from this planet. It is not really yours. You can use it, you can enjoy it, but you really cannot own it. You believe you own your house, your clothes, your children, your husband, your wife, even people, you own them these days! But you don't really own anything. They are here, you can enjoy them, you can use them, when you have to leave it, you have to leave it and go. So nothing really belongs to you. What does not belong to you, you cannot give.

So, there is really no giving. I take and give you something that belongs to somebody else. There is no value to this kind of giving. But you need a means to give. Fundamentally, the only thing you can give is yourself. But you do not know how to give yourself simply. So you give through your money, your food or something else. You are using a thing as a means to give, you are using activity as a means to give yourself. Whatever you give, the only thing you can really give is yourself. If you are not aware of this, then giving becomes a great problem.

If you don't make yourself willing to give yourself, giving becomes a very painful process. When you understand giving as giving only things, then naturally fear will come into you. "If I give away everything, what will happen to me?" People have become stingy and miserly with their love, their joy, simply because they only think in terms of "giving means things." Because of this economy, slowly, we have become less loving, less joyous, less peaceful.

You can give only yourself through whatever you do. But unless there is activity, people don't know how to give themselves. They need action to give themselves to something, towards something. So volunteering is a tremendous possibility in that direction that you can give yourself, you can really offer yourself through your work.

So volunteering is a way of learning to make our lives into a process of just giving. Volunteer means one who is willing. Not just to do this or that. He is simply willing. He is willingness. No spiritual process will happen to any human being unless he becomes willingness.