The only reason why you cannot involve yourself and throw yourself into every situation is because you are deeply identified — you have become a vested interest. Your involvement questions and threatens who and what you are, so if a situation is not going the way you think it should be going, your very identity is threatened; it becomes a very insecure and fearful situation for you. Once you go through this experience, your sense of involvement will come down; you become subdued, less involved with life. You can truly involve yourself with life only when you are not identified with it. That goes both for thought and the situations in which we live.
Logically, not identifying yourself with something looks like there is a distance between you and what you are doing. But non-identification need not necessarily mean non-involvement. In fact, when you are not identified, you can consciously involve yourself. Once you choose to involve yourself, you can involve yourself absolutely; you can throw yourself into it.
For example, something happened to one of your loved ones, if you are not identified with it, you will do everything to the best of your ability. Your love and affection is not gone just because you are not identified. But if you are identified with the situation, you will not sleep, eat, or do the things that you could have done properly. So if your situations are such that something wrong has happened to the people around you and they need you at that time, which is the best way to be — to retain all your faculties and capabilities or to lose them
It is just that all the ignorant people have always made you believe that if somebody near and dear to you is sick or dead, you must be broken and incapacitated otherwise you do not love them. It is not true. Love does not mean incapacitation. If you are broken, you are broken simply because you are identified, not because you are involved. Love is a capability, an involvement and a commitment.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an internationally renowned spiritual leader, is a visionary, humanitarian, author, poet and speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org
