Stop procrastinating
In life, you keep postponing everything. You postpone your enjoyment, you postpone your work, you postpone everything for tomorrow. You have to understand that 'tomorrow' also comes in the form of 'today' only! When it comes as today, you say 'tomorrow' again! It is a game that you play with yourself.
Finally, when death comes, you are so unprepared! You feel there is so much to be done. You feel cheated by life itself. The truth is, you have been deceiving yourself all along. But you land up blaming life for everything. That is why a clear understanding of death is necessary for you to live. Then there will be no delusions and you will be ready to die any time.
Procrastination is the mentality by which we lose out on life itself. People ask me, 'Swamiji, how are you able to do so many things in such a short period of time?' It is amazing for them to see my calendar for the year! They are amazed to see the various things happening throughout the year across the world. I tell them, 'It is very simple – I live totally in the present. I don't procrastinate like you.'
In our meditation programs, we take people through a guided meditation wherein they are told to visualize that they are going to die in just 24 hours time and that they should complete all the things that they would like to complete before they die. It is a beautiful meditation technique. They are even made to visualize their own death ceremony.
Once after this meditation, a young girl shared her thoughts.
She said, 'Swamiji, I saw a poster in a shop which said, 'When you plan, plan concretely taking into account the future years to come. When you execute, execute like you are going to die the very next minute. After doing this meditation, I understand what it really means!'
You see, when you plan, you have to have a futuristic plan, so that too many things don't have to be re-structured for at least a few years. But when you execute, you have to execute in such a way that every sub-task that you take up in the master plan is completed successfully without any loose ends.
Even if you are going to die then, up to the point of what has been executed, everything will be perfect and the master plan will still be there as a reference for people to follow or amend as the situation demands. This can be achieved only if you work without procrastination in every sub-task that you take up.
Guaranteed Solutions
Often, procrastination is what takes you to poverty. Poverty is your own choice. When you defer decisions, you take steps towards being poor. But you are blissfully unaware of this. You feel you have not been treated rightly by God and that life has been too short for you to realize your dreams. If you had used all your energy in the proper channel and with clarity, you would not feel this way and you would be ever ready to die.
If you just look at the mirror everyday and tell yourself that today is the last day in your life, you will stop procrastinating. You need not tell yourself this all your life; just a month will do. Automatically, you will start living your life without procrastination. Not only that, your fears about losing your prestige, embarrassment, pride and expectations will all dissolve, because you will know that you have nothing to lose.
People who have had a near death experience in some way like a narrow escape from an accident or a cure from cancer or something like that, will be able to live more fearlessly because they will know that they have nothing to lose! They will also live their lives with greater clarity and more intelligence.
The first lesson that you need to learn from all your education is that you should do the right thing at the right time and move on. Somehow, this is the last lesson that we learn thoroughly! After having gone through all the other lessons, we learn this lesson!
Procrastination is something that you bring about yourself. But the rest of the fears, society instills in you. Society makes you afraid of your own self, of others and of God. It makes you afraid of yourself with simple things like morality, names and forms, prestige and what not.
In the name of morality, it makes you lose confidence in yourself and that is why you are so unsure of yourself when it comes to morality. When you start following morality out of fear, there will be no chance for your inner intelligence to guide you.
Morality always instills fear
In our lives, morality is nothing but a poor substitute for intelligence. When you act out of your own intelligence, you can be confident of yourself. But when you act out of rules and regulations, you can never be sure of yourself, because you are not yourself to start with! You are not centered in yourself; you are centered on the rules.
If you live out of intelligence, these types of fear will never grip you. People who preach morality are so deeply in fear. That is why they preach about it. They are afraid either because they are unsure of themselves or because they know to be moral only with fear. Moralists can become neurotic with their concept of morality and discipline.
A small story:
Once there was a moralist who normally walked on the streets with carefully measured steps. One day it suddenly began raining very heavily. The moralist just followed the crowd and ran along.
After running for a while, he realized that he was careless about his manner.
He said to himself, 'What am I doing! Running is undignified. A gentleman must correct his mistakes regretfully if he has made any.'
So he returned in the rain to the place where he had begun running, and walked again, with measured steps.
Morality makes you totally dull and dead!
When I tell you this, I am not telling you that this is a free world and you can do anything you like. I am telling you that you have to develop your own intelligence and live so that rules will only be a confirmation of what you already know and feel. This is real intelligence. Any proper rule will only be a confirmation of what the rightly flowered intelligence feels. So drop your fears and try to find your inner intelligence, your inner master.
A small story:
A young sannyasi lived across the road from a beautiful courtesan.
The sannyasi was all the time trying to meditate.
The courtesan on the other hand, carried on with her way of earning money.
Many men came and went from her house.
The sannyasi used to try his best to concentrate on his meditation, but his attention was more on the young woman and he kept cursing her for the kind of immoral life that she was leading.
The courtesan on the other hand, was not even aware of the sannyasi staying across the street.
Despite her lifestyle of offering pleasure to men, the courtesan was immersed in her love for Lord Krishna and spent as much time as she could in praying to Him and playing with His image.
The s*annyasi* and the courtesan died on the same day and reached the gates of Lord Yama – the Lord of Death.
After their records were analysed, the courtesan was sent to heaven while the sannyasi was sent to hell.
The sannyasi expressed deep feelings about the injustice of Yama.
Yama calmly explained to the sannyasi, 'All your life, under the guise of meditating, you were harboring lust for the courtesan. She, on the other hand, despite whatever she was doing, was totally focused on the reality of God.'
Moralists live a superficial, fearing and shallow life. They don't live totally. They are in constant fear of stepping out of morality. Their true intentions are kept well covered under the guise of morality.