Question: How do I explore my passion?
Speaker: I am sure this question is relevant to many others if not everybody. First of all this question has to be asked on a clean slate. Those of us who have already believed some external passion to be the real passion, they are not eligible to ask this question. Are you getting this? When you ask this question you are standing at a point where you do not know your real passion. Right? You are confused. You have come to know that whatever is known to you can be doubted. What to do with those who live in a deep belief that they already know their passion, or a belief that knowing that passion is not important at all?
If today you are given a question that mentions your hobbies, interest or passion. I am using all these three in the same way right now, but they are not. If you were given this question to mention all these three things, all of you will give some answer without realizing the falseness of that passion, without realizing that this passion has nothing to do with me. Even my passions have been handed over to me by somebody else.
Look at the CVs of your seniors, those who are in fourth year. They all have a section in their CVs named ‘Hobbies and Interests’. What do they write in that section? Playing cricket and listening to Hindi movie songs. And they deeply believe in that. Don’t you see that if you are born in India, you would write cricket, and if you are born in Brazil, you would write football? Even your passions come from outside. Is there anything in life which is yours, fundamentally yours, which you found out to be yours? Your passion is borrowed, your love is borrowed, and so you are confused.
(Addressing the questioner) You claim that you are confused but you are in a very blessed situation right now because you can see the falseness of the borrowed passions, and hence you will be able to find something which is true. You will surely find something which is of your own, not borrowed.
How to know what to do? There is no one answer to it and it cannot be predicted and it cannot be constant. When you say, ‘passion’, I will substitute this word with ‘Intelligent choice’. How to find out that I am passionate about? I will rephrase it and say that how to find out what is an intelligent choice? How to choose intelligently? The intelligent choice happens in the understanding of this moment, and the intelligent choice is not a dead choice . Not dead in the sense that it is capable of changing, day-to-day, moment-to-moment.
Today you are capable to choose out of intelligence, it will surely come from your intelligence. You will surely be very passionate about this. Isn’t it obvious? But there is no guarantee that tomorrow the passion will be the same, very same. You are asking me a definite answer assuming that there will be a definite passion. Life is not a monochrome. There are a thousand colours in it, moment-to-moment. Do not restrict yourself to any one thing. Get rid of this concept that there is one passion and I must pursue it all my life. Do today, what is right. Do tomorrow, what is right. Do today what is right for today. Do tomorrow what is right for tomorrow and then you will be acting passionately today and you will be acting passionately tomorrow.
If tomorrow you do what is right for today, can you be passionate about it? What is right for today, will you be able to be passionate about it tomorrow? You will force passion, and that will be a dead passion. There will be no energy, no vitality in it. Are you getting this? So, forget about time, forget about long-term, medium-term, short-term. Just do what is right, right now and give it everything you have.
You are listening, listen passionately. You are playing in the evening, play passionately. Passion is moment to moment. It is a constant thing. Let it change. It must change. You say that you are passionate about playing the guitar. Will you play guitar twenty-four hours a day? You will play guitar for one hour, two hours, four hours. And how many hours are there in the day?
Listener 1: Twenty-four hours.
Speaker: What about the remaining nineteen hours? Do you want to say that you are only passionate about your guitar, with everything else you cannot bring the passion? NO! Passion cannot be object-specific. Passion cannot be activity-specific. Passion is a way of life. When I know that what I am doing is right, my own, then I am passionate about it. I am passionate about this moment, that moment. The activity will keep on changing. The activity will keep changing from moment-to-moment, but the passion will remain intact because you could not be possibly doing the same thing twenty-four hours or seven days of the week.
The activity will keep changing. The passion will be a continuous flow. Does it not tempt you? Then life will be wonderful. Boredom will evaporate. No dull faces, no drooping shoulders, no sitting in the class on the back benches, no cursing the world, no thirst for entertainment. You are thirsty for entertainment because you are deeply bored.
Won’t it be wonderful? Passionate always! Not towards one particular activity, not towards one particular person, not on one particular day. Always! Let the activity keep changing, let the person keep changing. Whatever I am doing, I am into it. And what am I doing? An intelligent choice. Whatever I am doing is coming out of my intelligence and hence there is a natural energy behind it. How to discover your passion? Be passionate about everything. There is no one single passion. If you are passionate right now, it will be easier for you to move into the next moment with passion.
Life is right now. Life is not divided, not fragmented.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
