I am very busy, is a refrain one often hears, then i wonder what are they busy with ? I can imagine you are running a big corporation or a county, then it is obvious you do not have time to look for anything. Does the Qatar Airways CEO know what is going through the minds of the workers manning the QR desk in Miami ? Then he has to accept what other people tell him, falling prey to the common belief or individual ignorance.
What if you want to know the truth? As an individual or as a group , regardless of your nationality. Let us forget high fallutin' CEO s or PMs of small o big countries, let us come down to ourselves. Do you want to believe in what every one else believes, and not the rock the boat or become comfortable in your ignorance and continue to run your finance department of the big corporation. I once told a friend of mine working for European Commission, do you think the EC will fold if you don’t show up for work, but she had to believe that she was important, until the day she gets sick and she will be replaced.
There is an old adage, take time to smell the flowers. Don’t be too busy that you do not have time for the beautiful things in life. All good things in life are free say the Indians, sunsets, full moons, little girls smiling, ducklings following their mother, innumerable .. but to do that you have to take time off, you have to explore, they do not come to you, you have to go to them. You have to leave your comfort zones, go to paths that are not explored, it may take you to dead ends.
Be prepared to be bored, i know so many people who are so afraid of boredom or the silence of their own company, instead of exploring their minds and going in some new directions.
If you want to be in the centre of the action, then you are forgetting that a periphery exists, where less secure paths exist. Truth is not in the hands of the CEOs or busy financial managers.
I write this after i heard from a good friend that I admire from Dalian City in Yunnan, China. She was in the corporate world, buying and selling and speculating but three years ago she decided to quit and began traveling. On one such journey we met and spent a day talking and I realized how sacred is her path and formed an enormous respect for her.
Last night she was spending the afternoon with her friends who are established in the society in their respective positions of commerce. She was mad to feel small because she is on the periphery and she is looking and searching.
Her friends felt she was wasting time, considered her marginalized because she is no longer productive (she is extremely productive within herself but she is no longer making money for the financial institution that she worked 10 years for).
None of the people in the centre, will admit to ignorance because they are not searching for truth. As Socrates told us two thousand years ago, the best is to acknowledge our own ignorance.
My advice to my friend , who I am sure would become my teacher one day , is to believe that she is on a circuitous path because she has no guide , many of the Gurus are there to rescue people who are already caught in the peregrinations of the center but not for guiding searchers in the periphery to their destinations.
Spend time in the periphery, get bored, search the paths which may lead you to dead ends. I asked her the question: Do you want to be where your friends are now ?
Secure and less chaos and jobs and family etc.
She said definitely No
Then go on your path
You do not need a Guru
As American Indians say, the knowledge would come to you.
She will leave for Liyang in Yunnan today and then with a small group of people will begin a trek to the high altitude mountains of that region, this region that borders Tibet.
I would wait to hear from her.
Lessons to the young girls in our families all over the world
Be your own master, search the truth while being compassionate to your fellow human being, and select your own path, you don’t have to give into any pre destined paths that the society has set for you
