We are all slaves of yesterday, my friend.
Choices are laid before us
as our preferences, tastes,
conditionings, hatreds,
they are engraved in us by our society’s
violence, stupidity and madness.
We are incapable of wise choice!
Many things make so much sense,
yes, we’re nodding and agreeing,
yes … but then the momentum
of all our past choices
grabs us and drags us
to whatever it already chose.
We are not free-floating boats on the ocean,
we are a fixed chain of wagons on the rails.
We are all slaves of yesterday.
We “choose” denial, we “choose” ignorance,
lying, depression, self-abnegation,
we rationalise, philosophise,
our culture holds us inprisoned
by our collective bias and prejudice.
Such choices are the heritage
that we are bound to pass on
to our own children,
like we would a genetic disorder.
So, we do no choose, my friend.
But don’t worry!
There is not much you need to choose
to achieve lasting joy, anyway.
Just drop your reactions to what is!
Become an observer and enjoy the ride!
You are not what you think you are, anyway.
You don’t need to choose for yourself,
you need to take up what you have been chosen for.
Sit back and open your eyes!
So, now you see!
You were a slave of yesterday!
You still are!
But it doesn’t matter.
You are a slave of your past choices.
So what?
What difference does it make?
The world is going down the drain …
Who cares?
Worrying won’t help.
It won’t help anyone.
Seeing the truth
without holding back
is the only thing
that can help you
to make the first choice
you ever made in your life.
Seeing the truth is the most arduous thing
that a human being can undertake.
Seeing the truth liberates you from the past.
That’s the scariest thing in the world!
You have to embrace the paradox of
doubting everything
and yet loving everything.
You have to love what is.
The change you choose
must come from that love,
not from violence and illusion.
This is dreadful!
Because you will invariably end up alone.
The path of the enlightened is always lonesome.
But this won’t matter to you.
You’ll know that it was not your choice.
Your fate brought you there — fate, not belief!
Fate is total openness to whatever
life brings you, and allowing
the truth to differ from your beliefs.
Then you pick the truth, no matter what.
The fear of death is nothing
compared to the fear of truth.
When you pick the truth for the first time,
you do it timidly. You look around,
you doubt yourself. You doubt your choice.
Why doesn’t anyone else choose this?
They even claim your choice makes sense.
But they don’t choose the same!
They keep running in the other direction.
You call them: “Hey!
You said this is the right direction!
How come you’re running the other way?”
They’ll reply: “Ehm … yeah, we run
a thousand steps that way, and then a few
steps this way. We need more time …”
“There is no time!!” you yell back.
But they are already too far to hear you.
As you become accustomed to picking the truth,
the dark side of your soul rises above you.
You didn’t pay attention to it.
You were too proud, you felt superior.
You thought you were enlightened.
Ha!!
The shadow grabs you, slams you,
dismantles you, humiliates you …
It makes you suffer as hell!
It stares you in the face and says:
“We are all slaves of yesterdays …
of the dark days long forgotten.
You have them in your blood.
Suffer, now, suffer, suffer!!
And face this truth if you dare!”
You breathe in the truth,
you embrace the harsh suffering.
You smile … it doesn’t matter anymore.
You pick it up modestly, knowing
that the dark side of your soul
will always be there, lurking at you
only to grab you when you least
expect it and slap you in the face.
You have no choice but to accept this,
and dance on — alone, but not lonely.
In a flash you become liberated
from your own “liberation”.
There is no liberation.
This truth kneads you
and you’re yielding to it softly.
Your covenant with the truth is inconspicuous,
you become immensely attractive,
you become lovable.
Nobody knows what they see in you.
Even if they do, they revere it,
they can’t express it in words.
It doesn’t even matter.
They all know:
We are but slaves of yesterday.
They hope that mere hanging around you
will somehow, almost magically,
open up some invisible crack
on the wall of their inner “truth”,
their inner illusion, really.
They know this, but they can’t grab it.
They hope something will rub off of you
and infect them with the most attractive
fruit of pristine truth-loving:
being at deep peace with yourself
and the world, as it is.
Being at deep peace with preferences,
tastes, conditionings, hatreds,
with our society’s violence,
stupidity and madness.
In this peace lies the potential
of choosing to choose.
In this peace lies the kind of leadership
that Gandhi described so well:
‘There goes my people. I must follow them,
for I am their leader.’
The lover of truth is the lover of life,
the lover of people, the only true leader.
All other leaders are nothing but tamers.
People intuit there is something pure
in the leadership of the truth lover,
there is no force, no violence, no “truth”.
They can’t hold onto anything.
There is nothing to follow.
Your choice is the only thing
that defines your fate,
your fate is the only thing
that defines your choice.
There’s nowhere to go,
there’s nothing to change …
and you know what?
The best news of all is:
joy is always at our feet,
joy is the golden pavement
on our path, whether we love it or not.
There never was a time
when it wasn’t under our feet,
and we are the art of our yesterdays.
