KNOWLEDGE SHEET BY SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR

Posted: 22 Feb 2001

PASSION AND SELF-RELIANCE

Passion makes you weak. Dispassion is strength.

For your passion to be fulfilled, you have to depend upon so many things. Passion and self-reliance do not appear to go together. If you are passionate, you have to forget about being self-reliant. If you want to be self-reliant, you have to drop your passion. This is generally so

That which brings together these two completely different aspects in you, is your spirit. The same spirit that wants to be self-reliant is also passionate. It is only in spirituality that passion and dispassion can happen together. This is the rarest combination.

When you are dispassionate, you have strength, and strength is self-reliance. True self-reliance is realizing that nothing is excluded from the Self. And when you realize everything is part of the Self, then you can be passionate about everything! Even to fulfill your passion, you can only rely on the Self, for Self alone is non-changing.

In Truth, there is neither reliance nor passion. In one state, you can either be passionate or you can be self-reliant. But in an elevated state of consciousness, you can be neither, or both!

Jai Guru Dev