To lose the race
 The very word 'spirituality' fundamentally means that you are not trying to be like
anybody else. It doesn’t matter what you want to be in the world, in some way you are always trying to be like somebody or be better than somebody in whatever you may be doing.
When you want to play music, you think of a certain kind of music only because you have heard it before. If you like someone’s music, like Elvis Presley’s, for example, you either want to play like him or one step above him, whatever your standards maybe. Whatever you do externally, you are always trying to either be like somebody else or better than somebody else.
The inner journey is to lose this race, to be out of this race within yourself, because you are not trying to be like anybody, nor are you trying to be better than somebody. You are coming to a state where being ‘myself’ is more than enough. The very process of spirituality, the whole of spirituality is to become in such a way that, 'I am complete by myself. I don’t need to become anything or to make myself into something. If I simply sit here, the entire world is within me. I am so absolute, all existence is within me.'
The ultimate goal and the process itself is such that it is not necessary to be like anyone else. Each individual can be in his own way and still be progressing.
Now the problem is, you keep evaluating yourself by your own standards as to whether you are progressing or not. This evaluation should not be done by you. When you were in school you didn’t do the evaluation, isn’t it? Though it would have been quite simple to do it, it was somebody else who did the evaluation for you. You just wrote the exams. Somebody else evaluated you. Even with a simple teaching in school, like rudimentary science, mathematics or whatever, even with that you did not evaluate yourself; somebody else did it for you.
When even that is so, then walking on the inner path, why do you struggle by evaluating yourself? There is no need to evaluate yourself. The thing is to simply do what’s needed, that’s all. The evaluation and what needs to happen will happen in a completely different dimension. You can’t 'do spirituality'; you have to allow it. If you allow it, it will happen. To allow it, you need a certain level of maturity within you; otherwise, all the time you want to meddle with it; you can’t keep out of it.
 The sadhana is just to mature your energies in such a way that if you sit down, you don’t need to do anything. You’re willing to allow whatever happens to happen. If you want small, petty things to happen to you, you can do it but if you really want something enormous to happen to you, this ‘you’ is not needed. If you know how to keep yourself aside, it will happen.
'How do I do that?' You can’t do that; you just have to allow it. Yoga means to bring your energies to that level of stability where you can just be. You are not trying to do anything, not trying to get somewhere, simply allowing it to happen. It doesn’t matter how much you aspire for it, if you don’t do the right thing, what has to reach you will not reach you. It doesn’t matter who is around you. Even if your guru is sitting right next to you, your mind can be somewhere else.
For somebody else, who is sitting a thousand miles away, just a thought, the very thought of the master can be so powerful for him that it can burst him, but you may be sitting right next to him and missing the whole point. This is very much possible because it’s not a question of distance; it is only a question of your willingness to allow it to happen. Unless you do the right thing, help will not come. So, doing the right thing is just allowing it to happen.
This is not a race that you have gotten yourself into. This is a way of settling back into yourself.
Extracted from the
book ‘Mystics Musings’ – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
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To lose the race
