Question:

Can you please give direction on how do you manage a job, family, personal endeavor, and Seva while not getting overwhelmed? I have a tendency to say yes to many things, but in the end, I’m just playing catch up on my to-do list. How to manage the tasks and yet not be overwhelmed?

Answer:

The answer is knowing [not intellectually but experientially] the difference between Karta bhava and Nimit bhava!

Karta bhava – Doership

One who feels he is ‘the Doer’, usually gets overwhelmed. Yes, Doership is like a swamp. And Doership happens only to the ambitious mind. Ambition indicates a lack of self-confidence! When you know you can achieve something easily, you are not ambitious about it. You are simply confident about it.

Ambition means the thirst to prove, the desire for challenge, the want to get out of an uncertainty, etc. This is contrary to self-confidence where there is no thirst to prove anything, where there is no desire for challenge, where there is no uncertainty.

Ambition is total ignorance of the Self. Confidence is complete knowledge of the Truth! And the Truth is that ‘You are not the Doer, You are not the experiencer, You are just an instrument through which life is flowing’!

Nimit bhava – Non-doership or Being an instrument

One who knows clearly that he is merely an instrument of the divine, never falls into the Maaya of Doership. He has total confidence that if something needs to happen through him, it will. If something does not need to happen through him, it will not. So he works from the ‘Purusha/Consciousness’ being a Sakshi/Witness. He does not work from the “Prakriti/body-mind complex’ being a Doer.

It is next to impossible to have this total confidence without Self-knowledge. With the knowledge of the Self, there is nothing left to achieve, for the entire nature of existence is merely a play and display of one’s own consciousness.

People take pride in being ambitious. The wise man will only smile at them. 

With Self-knowledge nothing is challenging to you, nor do you need to make any effort. Nature is ready to fulfill your intentions even before they arise, giving you no chance to crave or desire. Nature does not allow the wise to have a desire/ambition/doership, and the unwise to fulfill or get rid of the desire/ambition/doership.

How to gain that Self-Knowledge?

Just wake up to the highest Truth! The Truth is that everything is already happening, you are not doing. Whether it is office, family, Seva, it is all but a happening. It is a river of Karma flowing by its own current, let it flow. You float on it like a leaf. Then you won’t be overwhelmed, you will just float with the current. You won’t be over-whelmed even in a whirlpool of situations.

Shanta bhava!