Divine Choice: To Serve or to Rule

Every moment, work with tremendous intensity, without giving it a single moment’s break. Then a day will come when action is not needed anymore.

Creating what one wants generally has meant visualizing, imagining, dreaming, craving, longing, praying and begging. There is another way to create without asking for anything, without ever thinking about anything, where things just happen.

Before we arrive at that, a little bit of fired-up movement is needed. People who have never been on fire will not know the coolness of water. People who have just lived their life in a half-hearted manner, sedately, can never know the other way.

Becoming intensely active at least for a while can be useful for your energies to reach a boiling point and get moving. Then, to transform them into something else is very easy. That is the whole purpose of karma or action.

Why a sadhaka chooses action is just for this reason. We are going to perform action anyway. Now we have the choice whether we want to perform Hitler’s or Mahatma Gandhi’s type of action. Do you want to rule the world or do you want to serve the world? Ultimately, that is the choice.

Normally, everybody wants to rule the world. It is just that, because a person is half-hearted, they do not get to rule the world, so all they are able to do is rule their family and children. But what they really want is to rule the world. The fool does not have the capacity or the intensity to do it. Otherwise, he would be a potential Hitler.

The choice is just this – either to rule or to serve. Whichever you think is most harmonious, the closest to Divinity and closest to realization, that kind of action you choose. Every moment, do it with tremendous intensity, without giving it a single moment’s break.

Then a day will come when action is not needed anymore. A man who does not know action – real action, intense action – can never move into inaction. If you try to, inaction will just become lethargy. Only if you have known intense action can you know inaction.

People who are always resting in their life must be experts about rest, isn’t it? But that is not the truth. Only a man who works intensely can know what rest is.

By:Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. www.ishafoundation.org