Be willing to be annihilated by Life so that you can live on!

When you find yourself in a Life-and-Death situation, don’t agonize. Just experience the moment. That moment has a beauty of its own. If you agonize, your suffering will take you away from the present. When you are not in the present, you can’t lead the situation effectively, you can’t think with clarity and you can’t act with focus. Panic may well be a normal reaction in such situations. But if you are present in the moment, your awareness will help you immensely in dealing with it.

But how can anyone be calm in a Life-threatening, crisis situation?

Good question. I recall an Urdu couplet by a unknown poet.

mita de apni hasti ko agar hazaar martaba chahe, ke dana mitti se mil kar hi gule gulzar hota hai!  

It means let go of all your attachment to worldly possessions__including your desire for power and position__and allow yourself to be annihilated – to be razed to the ground. For only when a seed becomes dust, and is buried, does it germinate into a new plant!

Why do you or I resist a crisis in the beginning? Because we fear that something grave will happen to us__or to those who we love. Now if our fears were to indeed become true, what is the worst that can happen? Well someone, perhaps even you, can die. But we all have to die someday – sooner or later. So, let go and accept that eventuality. When you do that, more often than not, death does not come calling. As the poet says, a new beginning often follows. Such is the nature of Life. For something new to begin, the old has to end, it has to perish. Once you understand this truth about Life, you can not only face, but endure and last any situation, however scary, dark and grave it may be, in Life! Be willing to be annihilated therefore! For that’s the only way to live on!!