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"Life is not about finding answers to questions, but living the mystery!!!"

I have a friend who is so obsessed with doing everything right and making sure that nothing goes wrong that it has become virtually impossible for him to enjoy his work or have clarity about it.
And mind you, its not that obsession has led him to success or positive results. It is like riding a bicycle - if you are trying too hard not to bump into a pole, you most likely will. Fear of failure draws you like a magnet towards failure. Where does this obsession with being always right comes from?

It may not seem so, but it is the reflection of the ego. The ego is always trying to be right and avoid being wrong. Because, just like the ego, right and wrong are man-made. In nature or in life, there is nothing wrong or right. Everything just is. Sometimes the wind is in our favor out of sheer confidence, sometimes against us. When it is in favor, whatever we do comes right, and when it is against whatever we do comes wrong, even if we thought it is right.

Probably this is what is ‘destiny’. Not that there is someone actually writing the scripts of our lives, but sometimes, by sheer confidence, we happen to be sailing the same direction as the wind blows and sometimes against it. The only solutions are acceptability and spontaneous choice-less ness and to live without one’s own personal agenda.

This agenda is not even aware of us as individuals. Just as we are not aware of the zillions of living cells and the bacteria in our bodies who are born, live multiply and die, never realizing that they inhabit the body. In the same way, we are not aware of the infinite universe in which we are mere cells and bacteria.

Our sages have defined it more accurately as the ‘Unknowable’. Because a part cannot know the whole. The part, however, can become whole by giving up its identity of being a part. Since this identity is not a reality, it is only an illusion contributed by the society which only recognizes the part and imparts ownership of possessions to it, giving it a false ego, a false sense of control. Even the whole idea of knowing the whole begins as an ego trip. Hence, the part ends up not knowing the whole, but knowing that it is unknowable.

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* Contributed by -
S. Karthikeyan, an Automobile Engineer from PSG College of Technology, has worked as Member of Research & Development Team at TAFE Ltd., and is currently a student of PGP1 at BIM, Trichy,
Article published in KRIYA, March 2006 Issue, BIM's monthly magazine.