Think the Unthinkable, Be Natural, and Be for Others

STUDENT 1
I mentioned how my work was a really intractable place to bring my practice. And I've been feeling very, just, like, overwhelmed by what I put on my plate. And you had mentioned that you had some ideas of ways I could bring my work onto the path, and I was hoping you'd speak a little bit to that.

SHAMBHAVI
Well, you're just too busy, right?

STUDENT 1
Yeah, totally. [laughter]

SHAMBHAVI
Well, one thing that I learned from my mother, and that I probably just have a karmic propensity for in addition to what I learned from my mom, was that there's always out of the box ways to get around obstacles.

And that usually involves locating where you have some conviction that something can't change and letting yourself entertain the idea that it could. Recognizing that as a concept.

In the Zhouyi, it's the same as the Yi Jing and the I Ching, the whole premise of the Oracle is there's always a way to move even in very unstructured situations. What I learned from my mom wasn't that you can always find a solution that's perfect and you get exactly what you want.

But that there's always some way you can move if you're willing to to identify where your stuck concepts are. And then just use your imagination to entertain any possible idea about how you could move, even once that's flying in the face of your conviction.

That's an immovable obstacle. I have this narrative that certain things are intractable. Just throw that out. They're not. [laughs] And then start to think the unthinkable.

And what will happen is you'll come up against some of your fears. For instance, if we're dealing with a work situation, and one of the unthinkable ideas is that we would tell a client that we have to change their schedule because you overbooked and you're not able to handle everything.

Of course, right away you encounter the fear that you'll lose the job, you'll get a bad reputation, the person won't like you. Whatever it is that you have that fear. And yet the fact of the matter is that you're not functioning the way you're supposed to be functioning at work because you have too much work.

So you have to tell somebody that you can't do all that work. And you can't just hold on to this idea that there's no solution. That everyone is going to be so angry that it's going to ruin your life.

You have to really think more clearly and strategically and less conceptually about who is there? Who are these people? And which one of them and which one of their projects is going to have the least possibility of blowing up in your face if you are honest.

So it involves honesty, and it involves taking a risk, but it's not intractable. People are, or some people anyway, are much more forgiving than you might fantasize about, especially if you're very honest. Tell them the truth.

You want to do a good job for them, but you can't do it when you're this overworked, and it's your fault, and you'll give them a financial break. Thinking the unthinkable, you're going to lose a little money.

The person might be temporarily upset, but they also might respect you for being honest and really wanting to do a good job and trying to figure out how to do that. And then enlist them as allies, whoever you choose to set on a different schedule.

Enlist them as allies. Say, I want your help to figure out how to do this. And that also always gets people more on board with you. You might end up with a better relationship with them than you have now. I don't know. I'm just guessing.

But all I'm saying is you have to start thinking the unthinkable thing. That you might give away a little money. That someone might be temporarily upset with you. You have to get out of your fantasy about how it's not possible or it's going to be terrible or something like that.

We think we have these intractable obstacles to get creative, start thinking the unthinkable. Find out where you have hardened concepts about things, about what's possible and what's not possible. Or where you have unreasonable fears about what the outcome might be of something.

My mom just did this absolutely gleefully. She loved being presented with obstacles, especially with difficult people. She loved softening up difficult people and getting them to do exactly what she wanted them to do. [laughter]

And she just went about it like with such—it was joyous, almost. She was like, oh, I get to work with this very difficult thing. I'm going to make this better. [laughs] People are so reluctant to ask ask for help. It's just pride.

Almost everybody I meet is either chronically or at times afraid to ask for the help they actually really need. Or too prideful to do it. Or too afraid of the intimacy and vulnerability that comes from asking for help and working with people.

All kinds of things come into play there, and I don't really know anybody that's not affected by that. Because we think, oh, God, I have to ask for help. There's something wrong. Well, next time I I won't. [laughs]

And I, oh I've said this so many times, but anybody that thinks they're doing anything on their own is full of shit. [laughter] Let me just put it that way. You can't take a single breath without a whole planet supporting you and helping you. There's nothing about any of us that's independent. Nothing. [laughs]

Not only are we completely dependent on nature, but we're completely dependent on other people. Are you out there growing your own food? [laughter] No, I think not. [laughs]

I mean, maybe occasionally there's someone that does that. You grow a little kale in your garden or something. Is that all you're eating is kale? [laughter] There's bazillions of people helping you already. So this little like, oh, no, I don't need help gesture is just utterly ridiculous.

There's absolutely no value in this fiction that we are doing things on our own. The Buddhists have a good word for this, interdependency, right? Everything is interdependent. Completely, utterly interdependent.

Even a guy who lives in a shack, never talks to anybody, off the grid. Somebody made the nails that he nailed his shack together with, right? [laughter]

STUDENT 2
It's like the valorization of this. If I feel lonely, then I'll be the best at being on my own. I'll only do everything on my own or something. I'll be the most different because I feel different or shunned by people or something.

SHAMBHAVI
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people on this planet, right? How different could you be? [laughter] The range of difference. I can just tell you because I know all of you, at least to some degree.

If this is like the infinite scale of how different things could be from each other [gestures], the difference between humans is like this wide [gestures]. [laughter] It's not like you're a toaster, among humans. [laughter]

STUDENT 3
I wanted to ask the meaning of there being a tendency to travel the road which is less traveled.

SHAMBHAVI
Well, being attached to an identity of someone who wants to do things differently is just an ordinary conventional karma. [laughs] If it's important to you to be unconventional and you announce that to people regularly.

And you think it's very wonderful to simply be unconventional, then you're like going out towards being unconventional, and you come right back to being very conventional. Because it's just another karma.

But everybody has a different and unique bundle of characteristics. So everybody is—most people are conventional in a lot of ways and unconventional in a few ways.

Some of us have more ways that we step outside of whatever our birth culture is. Or the country that we live in's culture. Or our religious culture. And then, of course, we're not unconventional to everyone.

We're only unconventional to people that we're different from. So being conventional or unconventional depend on each other. You can't claim you're unconventional without you also labeling someone else as conventional.

Because unconventional doesn't even show up unless there's someone there to act as your foil. Your straw person that you're being unconventional in comparison to.

There's another way in which being attached to being unconventional is also very conventional, because it can be competitive. [laughter] We have to be very careful about that stuff.

And generally, whenever we're not just being ourselves, but we're also announcing how we are. In general, there's some karma mixed up in there. You can't actually be unconventional just by yourself. Someone else has to tell you, you're unconventional, or you have to see yourself that way.

And it's always in comparison to something else. But if I were the only person on Earth, nothing I did would either be conventional or unconventional. I mean, those types of binaries only mean anything in comparison to each other.

That's the whole problem, [laughs] right? They're locked into a war with their opposites. So just be yourself. And don't worry about how you are. And certainly don't try to be unconventional.

I mean, that always flops. [laughs] It's the artificial. You can always tell when someone's trying too hard to be something. Not necessarily unconventional, but anything. Someone's just trying very hard to be seen as something in particular.

And then there's this anxiousness behind it. And it always shows. Not to everybody, but to somebody. [laughter] See, this is the thing you learn. This is the thing you learn when you have a teacher who has some vision.

And of course, I encountered that in Ma. And in a couple of other teachers, too, but mostly Ma. You really can't fool any of the people that matter. [laughter] So if you're doing something for karmic reasons, the people that matter are going to see that.

And of course, that's a great relief if it happens to be our teacher. Scary, terrifying, perhaps, but also a great relief. Because then the possibility of not trying so hard comes into view.

Of just being loved without trying that hard. So don't try so hard to be anything. And also, particularly because sometimes we have an experience of pain. Maybe we're bullied for being a certain way. Or we're ostracized in some way for being a certain way.

And then we can do a few things with that. We can not care and just continue to be ourselves. That's one option. [laughs] Not very many people choose that option.

We can start to feel really badly about ourselves and be traumatized by that. Or we can defiantly become what everyone says we are. We can defiantly be as much of what we're being bullied and teased for as possible.

We can take that on as an identity. And that is a less traumatic stance. [laughs] But it has to be overcome at some point anyway. Because it's still way too much effort. It's just way too much effort to try to be anything other than just be natural. Anything else just is too much effort. [laughs]

STUDENT 4
I just wanted to know your thoughts on climate change and how there's just a lot more complications with green energy than we thought. Just like, mineral-intensive solar panels and wind turbines actually take a lot to produce. It's very possible we could be living in a world where we consume less energy. And what does that look like?

SHAMBHAVI
Well, if we had collectively, the countries that are on this gravy train at the moment, if we had the will, the desire, we certainly have enough creativity and know-how to come up with better solutions. Better than the ones that are now all called green solutions.

I do think there are solutions, but we just don't have the desire to do it collectively. That's what I would warn. If we here end up only having internet seven hours a day or something. I don't know. It's like, boo-hoo.

We created that situation, [laughter] right? And I don't believe we have to have that situation. It's just that our desires are not liberated enough. We don't care enough about ourselves or others.

That's the real thing to grieve, because I think we have all the intelligence and we have incredible creativity. And we could come up with solutions. I mean, maybe that's overly optimistic, but that's what I think.

I mean, the basic solution to all of this stuff is we have to actually care about other people and ourselves and animals. We have to actually care. That's the only way we're going to solve this.

Those of us that are doing some kind of practice and trying to open our hearts more and be more in our hearts. To be thinking of more than just how you're not going to have internet or something. [laughter]

To be thinking more, to include more beings in your thinking, in your feeling. This is what this practice is about. And the more people that can do that, the more we're headed into a different yuga. I mean, I just use the yugas as a metaphor, but I think that they do describe something.

The yugas are eras, and they are defined by how little or much people can make contact with wisdom. We're in the Kali Yuga, which is the era when there's least capacity to do that. So it's an era of destruction.

And boy, that's the era we're here in right now. It's hard. But the thing is that unless the sun blows up, Earth is going to continue. And there will be beings here. And hopefully, there'll be some human beings who have more ability to care and to make contact with wisdom.

That's one of the reasons to do sadhana, is to be the thread that is drawing through the Kali Yuga into the next yuga for whoever is there. Obviously, it's not going to be you, [laughs] right?

But we're keeping that river going. It's actions like that that bring the next yuga. That bring the Satya Yuga. But you have to care about that. If all you care about is your internet and how many hours a day you're going to have power, you will suffer.

And there's really not much I can do about that suffering. [laughs] Any ordinary medicine for that is not going to work because there's always something to worry about.

Like, well, I'm not going to get to live this way or that way or with this person or that person. Those kind of worries and griefs just go on and on and on and on.

In so many spiritual communities, nobody really ends up caring about anybody else. Even people with great teachers. They have these marvelous teachers that are exemplars of compassion and caring and concern and kindness.

And a few people kind of get it. And then everyone else just carries on. Don't be that one that just carries on. You'll suffer so much less if you care about other people.

It's just an algorithm. Reduce self-concern, increase other concern, equals less suffering. [laughs] Widen view. [laughter] Get out of your neighborhood. Think about what's going on everywhere, equals less suffering.