Sometimes I forget completely what companionship is! Unconscious and insane, I spill sad energy everywhere. My story gets told in various ways: a romance, a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy. Divide up my forgetfulness to any number, it will go around. These dark suggestions that I follow, are they part of some plan?
Friends, be careful. Don’t come near me out of curiosity, or sympathy.
~ Rumi
Question: Acharya Ji, what are these dark suggestions? Are they part of some plan?
Acharya Prashant Ji: All the miseries, the gloom of life – that is these ‘dark suggestions’.
By ‘dark suggestions’, Rumi means – the urge, the tendency, the motivation, to remain in darkness, to act out of darkness.
And there is a lot of that darkness in our life. We follow that, as if somebody is instructing us, or advising, or compelling us, and we are following his suggestions.
Now, Rumi is saying, “Are they a part of some plan?” And that is also the question here. Are they a part of some plan? Yes, there is a plan. The plan is that – you have to look at those suggestions, and get rid of them.
Somebody suggests you something, by following his suggestion you find that your misery is deepening, your darkness is deepening, what do you do with the suggestion? You dismiss it. Do you dismiss only the suggestion? No, you also dismiss the one who has been suggesting.
And you have been following these suggestions since long. Sometimes you see how much pain comes out of these suggestions, sometimes you don’t that. As a result, you feel that some of your motivations are good for you, and some are not.
You feel some of your actions are good, and others are not. You feel some of your thoughts are good, and others are not. Isn’t it very common to see people distinguishing between positive thoughts and negative thoughts?
We are prepared, at most, to dismiss some of our motivations, our urges. But even when we dismiss them, we dismiss them relatively. We dismiss the ‘bad’, in relation to the ‘good’. Which means every time we dismiss the ‘bad’, we end up accepting something else as ‘good’. Every time you dismiss something ‘bad’, you end up accepting something that you call as ‘good’. So the rejection is never total.
In fact, it has not been the rejection at all. It is a zero-sum game. Something has been rejected, and in it’s lieu something else has been accepted. So the center from where all these suggestions come, all these motivations arise, that center remains untouched, unscrutinized.
Dismiss the very center. For that, you will need to dismiss not only that which appears problematic, but also that which appears auspicious. Then the plan will fructify.
We don’t enable the plan, to achieve it’s results.
The world is a plan. What is the objective of the plan? *That the plan must be seen through, that the plan must be dismantled.***
When you are given a riddle, a puzzle, what is the objective? The objective is not that you remain forever caught in the riddle, the objective is that the riddle must be solved. That is the plan.
The solution is the plan.
The dissolution is the plan.
Let the plan materialise.
Rumi has said, “Dark suggestions,” I will add ‘bright suggestions’ to it. Whether it is the ‘dark suggestions’ you follow, or the ‘bright suggestions’ that you follow, see where are all of these suggestions are coming from.
Suggestion is motivation, suggestion is the motivation to act. See where are all the dualistic, contrasting inclinations arising from. Sometimes you want to eat, sometimes you don’t want to eat. Sometimes you love, sometimes you hate. Is there really dimensional difference between our ‘love’ and ‘hate’? Are they not just two sides of the same coin? Is love always not prepared to quickly turn into hate?
Look at your enemies today. Do you have strangers there? All your enemies are but people who did not fulfill, or could not fulfill the expectations that you had from them as friends. The dark and the bright are not merely co-existing, they are existing as each other. You may even say – ‘because of each other’. Though that is not precise.
But it is not false if you say, “Darkness exists because of so-called brightness. And brightness exists only in relation to the darkness.” They all arise from the same center. And they both remain protected, because they both appear different.
Had they both appeared same, both would have disappeared.
