Pour all that you have into a worthy cause

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Acharya Ji, you say, “Watch your cup of tea, watch your ugly modesty. Watch the tree, watch the bird. Liberation is there instantly.”

(The above lines have been taken from a poem penned down by Acharya Ji during the Myth Demolition Tour).

Acharya Ji, for me, the one who is watching everything, there is constant unrest. The unrest is the same no matter what the object is. The unrest is bothering, hurting. In the name of surrendering this unrest, am I holding onto it instead of letting it go? Maybe I do not even know how to surrender.

I do not even know what I want, all I know is this unrest.

Please help me understand this.

Acharya Prashant (AP): You have a lot of energy. Where do you find a lot of energy — in a still ocean, or in a bellowing ocean? Who requires more energy — a man sitting still, or a man running hither-thither?

Unrest implies a lot of energy, and that is being utilized to run from here to there, from pillar to post. The matter is quite simple, you need not be so bothered.

As long as you have spare time, spare space, spare energy, it will turn against you.

You have to devote every bit of yourself to something very sublime, far bigger than you.

This devotion is called — ‘Surrender’.

What else is ‘Surrender’? To give that up which you have.

But just can’t give up something to anybody or anywhere.

It has to be given to the Right One.

In fact, ‘Devotion’ is a more self-explanatory word than ‘Surrender’, because Devotion sometimes sounds like letting-go, dropping, and that almost is like dropping a wasteful piece of plastic in the waste-bin.

Here we are talking about your life, not waste plastic.

That which you are to drop is your command and control over your time, your energy, your resources, your space. Can you just drop it like plastic? No, it is not waste, it is not valueless. It has value. So it has to be given to someone who deserves it.