Some people tell me, ‘Whatever you say is right, but please make me do whatever you say.’ What do you mean? Should I have two or three people continuously watch you and make you do things? Drop your cunning game, then automatically you will start doing what I say. Cunningness is a pure hide and seek game that you play with yourself. You can’t play it with me. I straightaway know where all you are hiding. I don’t need to come to you to find you. So understand that you are just playing with yourself. Just take a strong decision to be completely sincere and authentic to yourself. Only then you can drop your cunningness. When cunningness dissolves, authenticity and sincerity happen and you will enlighten quickly. Also, with authenticity you will not indulge in any kind of gossip.

Gossip is a pure expression of cunningness. When you are so cunning that you can’t tell a person anything on his face, you talk behind his back.

Intelligence plus innocence is spontaneity. Intelligence plus cunningness is calculation. Spontaneity is nothing but a flowing expression of your innocence.

When I tell people that they need to become tired of cunningness to come out of it, they ask me, ‘How come I know and yet I don’t know? How come I can’t stop being cunning?’  

You can’t stop because you are secretly nurturing it. It is your creation. You never miss a chance to nurture it. That is why you pretend that you want to stop and you urge me to stop it for you. You can wake up a sleeping person but you can’t wake up a person who is pretending to sleep. Until you are only pretending to sleep, you will never find the burning need to wake up. Straightaway stop cooperating with it, that’s all. That is the only way and it is so straightforward. When you know fire burns, will you beg me to stop you from touching it? No! Then when you know you are cunning, why can’t you just drop it?

Intelligence is fluid and creative. It is of the present moment. Conclusion is a foregone thing. It is of the past.

When you drop cunningness, spontaneity flowers. Spontaneity is the opposite of calculation. Intelligence plus innocence is spontaneity. Intelligence plus cunningness is calculation. Spontaneity is nothing but a flowing expression of your innocence. It is a non-calculating state of mind. It is called sahaja, being yourself without any burden. The burden is the burden of constant calculation.

Understand this, with cunningness, you may think you are gaining a lot of things, but the truth is that you are losing your innocence. Losing your innocence is like losing your entire life. You can afford to lose anything but not your innocence. With cunningness you miss your state of sahaja , the spontaneity that is your own. In being cunning you are constantly trying to be someone else. When you pretend to be someone else you are not only cheating yourself but you are also in danger of missing your own fragrance. Like all other creations of Existence you have your own beautiful fragrance. It is the fragrance of sahaja, your natural spontaneous state that is unique to you.

Existence never repeats patterns

When you are spontaneous, you are without any conclusions. There is no need to function out of conclusion all the time. Intelligence is fluid and creative. It is of the present moment. Conclusion is a foregone thing. It is of the past. With conclusion the juice of spontaneity is lost. Society has taught us to be with conclusions all the time. There are some standard conclusions, which we quickly try to fit with anything that we see. We are afraid to drop our conclusions and be open because the mind is always comfortable in repeating patterns. It finds security in it. Existence never repeats patterns. Every day is different. Every night is different. Can anyone say it is the same day or same night? No. It is an event that happens everyday and yet it is never the same. That is the sheer beauty of Existence. Then why should we look for patterns? There is no need. The very joy of spontaneous living can be very well experienced.

Children are open and spontaneous till the age of seven. Then society starts creating an impression on them. Children are not afraid. They just express, that’s all! No one can predict what the child is going to say the next moment. That is his specialty! The problem is that we are ready to handle spontaneity with children, but we are not ready to handle it with grownups. With a child, we mentally give him the space because we accept he is from a different plane. But with adults we perceive them as being in the same plane as us and so we cannot tolerate it. Children get away with so many things like even hitting you. You actually enjoy it! Can you imagine feeling like this if an adult hits you? The innocence of the child makes even the act of hitting beautiful. The innocent energy of a child is completely behind his action. In an adult, his mind is behind the action. That is the difference.

A teacher was speaking at a meeting when a critic shouted, ‘Listen to him! And his father used to drive a wagon pulled by a donkey.’ The teacher replied, ‘That’s right. Today, my father and the wagon are no more, but I can see we still have the donkey with us.’ You can imagine the state of the critic!

source: Living Enlightenment