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What is your investment? I’m talking about this now, so I’ll tell you—three things. Three things. Maybe I’ll add a few more. Three things.

One, “Know the difference between wisdom and knowledge.” Acquire the knowledge. But use that knowledge wisely: wisdom! Without that wisdom—ha-ha!

So, there is a lot of technical knowledge in this world—a lot of technical knowledge—but without that wisdom, it’s being used by people to kill each other. Use it wisely, and it could be there to reverse the effects of global warming. Use it wisely; it could be helping the polar bears, as they’re losing their housing.

The ills that human beings have done, the same technology can reverse it—if wisdom was there. But no wisdom is there and it is used in a stupid way.

So, knowledge is good, but it needs to be used wisely.

Two! Two: “Know yourself.” Who are you? What is your strength? You lie, of course, in this desert, devoid of much color, devoid of any sustainability for anything living—and yet that tiny little seed, if the rain comes—which it will—can transform even the desert. All its monotony, all its problems—gone. “Know thyself.”

Third! Third: Everybody is into social media and this and that; we want to communicate with other people. That’s not what you need. It’s fine; I’m not saying one way or the other way; it’s up to you. You want to use—it’s your time. You know, it’s your body—if you want to throw it in front of a car because you were doing this while you were crossing, walking across....

You see, technology, knowledge, but no wisdom. So they got the phone, but no wisdom. They got the technology, but no wisdom. As soon as the traffic comes to a stop, you know what people are doing? They’re not looking that the car is moving. And so people start honking.

So, the solution, in my opinion, is what you need to garner is empathy. Not sympathy; empathy. This will make you far more sociably acceptable. You want to become socially acceptable? Sympathy isn’t going to give it to you; empathy is.

If something can stop the wars, it is if people could just empathize. They don’t do that anymore. No empathy—to be able to place yourself in the other person’s shoes. That doesn’t mean you agree with them; it doesn’t mean you disagree with them—just to be able to see their viewpoint.

- Prem Rawat

What’s going to cause the divorce between the husband and wife? Expectations. What’s going to cause you to become angry with your own child? Expectations. And you have expectations of everything in this world.

I’m not saying that’s good or bad; that’s up to you. Certainly I have expectations too. I even have expectations of my dogs. Sometimes—and they’re two little Pomeranians, and theydon’t like anybody coming into the courtyard. Like, they’re, it’s theirs.

And sometimes I’ll sneak in, and they don’t know it’s me, and they’ll start barking. And then I’ll say, “What? What?” And then they get very, very embarrassed.

So, it’s not like, one way or the other way, “Should you have expectations; shouldn’t....” That’s not the point. But there is a state of being in which you are free, in which you are happy with yourself without the approval or disapproval of other people, where you recognize truly who you are is not this desert, but the seeds that lie buried in thatdesert.

My friends, the story is not about the desert. It’s going to look like the desert—the desert is going to look like the desert for a lot longer period than the blooming; the blooming is only going to last a few days. Understood, right? It only does—it just lasts a few days and then, ptchk! gone.

How does that seed survive in the desert? It had to work on it. It made an investment. It could be somewhere else where it rains a lot. But it didn’t; it went for the desert, in its uniqueness. This is the possibility; this is your strength! This is what can happen—only if you are willing to invest in it.

- Prem Rawat

We’re going to be talking about seeds. One thing to understand: you work every day. At first, you worked on playing. For this, you needed toys. Hopefully your parents got you toys; maybe you had more toys than you wanted, that you could have a better time with, but at first you wanted to play.

Then you started going to school, and you invested in your education. Your parents invested, but you did too; you had to go every day, carry your homework, do all the things. So you invested in your education.

After that, you came out and you invested in getting a job. And now you invest, every day, in your financial welfare by having a job—by having a job, by taking care of that investment. You come home; you bring the money; you try to invest that—whatever! But you are, one way or the other way, invested.

And your life is how it is. But you know that you need that job to keep that money going. So you invest every day: get up in the morning, go to your job, take care of it, try to do as well as you can, so on and so forth.

So the issue here is that you know you have to invest—in your job, in your friends—well, same thing with your friends,the time you spend on your phone answering all your friends. Your investment—it’s your investment, whether it is energy you invest, whether it is time that you invest, time and energy that you invest—you invest!

Oh, yeah, by the way, we are here to talk about peace. We are here to talk about the possibility of this desert blooming. Aren’t we? How invested are you in peace? You want peace, no? How invested are you? What investment do you make? Every day?

You want clarity in your life? How invested are you in clarity? You want joy in your life? How invested are you in joy? You want understanding in your life. How invested are you in understanding in your life? You want to know yourself. Well, how have you invested into knowing yourself?

How do you invest? What have you done to bring a little peace in your life, bring a little joy, a true joy?

Not that that kind of joy where you go with your friends for a few minutes—and you have your, you know, wine and beer—and whatever they show; they have advertisements of this. And then they have their beer, saying, “It doesn’t get any better than that,” and then everybody wakes up with a hangover.

Not that kind of joy; I’m talking about a joy that emanates from your heart, as a human being—as a human being—where you get to a point in your life where you just start enjoying life, not what’s happening in your life.

You see the difference between the two? Where you actually just start enjoying life itself—the coming and going of this breath, you being on this earth, you being alive, you being able to see, you being able to feel—not what you feel, but enjoying feeling; not loving somebody, but enjoying the love; not enjoying listening to a record, but enjoy listening. Enjoy listening….

I’m not talking about enjoying a particular thing. I’m talking about enjoying being alive.

- Prem Rawat

So now let me tell you about the good and the bad. The good is like this—like a pyramid. Just a little bit at the top, and a lot the further down you go. The bad is like an upside-down pyramid. You see all the consequences; you see all the problems; you see all, “Oh, this is terrible, oh....” But if you get down to the bottom of it, it’s just one little thing.

And the good is the same way, but upside down. You hardly see it, that it’s good. It’s so little on top; you hardly notice there is anything good. But keep digging; it gets better, and better, and better, and better, and better.

Next time, look carefully—because that’s how you keep missing the good and falling into the trap of the bad—because the bad is huge. It comes with its problems blaring right in your face. And how does it resolve itself? It turns out to be a little thing, tiny little thing.

Tiny little thing. The good? Inversely? All you get to see at first is this tiny little thing, but if you accept—and most of the time you will overlook it, what is the good.

Let me give you an example; this will maybe clarify the two pyramids. You wake up in the morning—you wake up in the morning, right? You come to your kitchen or family breakfast area, and there is your family. And you notice that one of your kids, he’s just angry.

“Dah-deh-deh-deh-deh-deh, dah-deh-deh-deh-deh-deh, this is wrong; that’s wrong; I don’t want to go to school; I’d, I’d, I’d, I’d, I hate school; why do I have to go to school, Dad?” You’ve seen all this. Get to the bottom of it: “I didn’t do my homework.”

The good? You come downstairs and that child says—now in good mood because you let them stay out of school, so they could finish the homework, and then they can—“Good morning, Dad.” There is your opportunity, in that “good morning, Dad.” If you took it: “How are you today?” you have just converted raw strings into metal chains of relationship, of love.

But most of the days, you just, “Yeah, good morning.” You missed it; you have missed it. Somebody says to you, “I love you.” And what are you good at? “I love you too.” You, you just missed it. Just missed it.

And here comes a breath into you, and maybe you took that one minute, sat down somewhere, and you went, “Hmmmh, hmmm....” Just that one breath—you missed it. You missed it, because now you’re thinking about this and you’re thinking about that. But you just could have sat down, as you are, as you did and understand you have the gift of life.

And you keep going; it’ll get more and more and more and more and more and more and more, and you will begin to fill with gratitude. And from then on, it’s like fireworks. “Vvrr-vvrr-vvrr-vvrr, vvrr-vvrr-vvrr....”

The bad, we go for; good—we have not learnt how to detect that little, little, little thing of good. So, your dharma, or dharm, begins to be that duty that you have to the self, to not miss those little things in your life—the opportunity to fill your heart with gratitude, the opportunity to acknowledge what you have been given.

Aren’t you good at knowing when the problem is coming your way? “Aye-aye-aye-aye!” Are you also that good at knowing when the good is coming your way? Because if you were, you would realize, it’s so much good just keeps coming, and coming, and coming, and coming, and coming, and coming. That’s life!—the gift that you have been given.

- Prem Rawat

And so under this circumstance, in which there is so much greed, there’s so much pain—and the pain isn’t created by anyone else, but people around us and us—to understand the idea of, "one day would be enough" for anything is hard to imagine. What would be—where one day would be enough when a lifetime isn't enough?

But you haven't given your life a chance to show you the possibility it has. You have given the world a chance. You've given this world many, many chances. "You're fired." "Eww!" "You're hired," "Aaah!" "You're fired," "Euuuh." You’re hired again, "Aaaah!" You're fired again, and, "Ewww." "Sorry sir, you've missed your flight." "Euugh."

I mean, there are these shows, and airport shows, where the people, you know, showing the airline thing—it’s like, "Wow. Wow!"

But have you given your life a chance to show you what it has? What does the world of joy look like? What does the world of understanding look like? What does the world of answers look like? What does the world of clarity look like?

Where you can rest and fade away your tiredness—to become excited about, indeed, every breath that comes into you: "Wow, what a gift!" To embrace reality that is not born of ideas or discussions—but a reality that you feel, that is tactile!

Not just empty promises. Don't you see the difference between empty promises? And what your life wants to show you is not empty promises.

- Prem Rawat

Every human being is a seed.

I’m not a philosopher, because a philosopher would talk about... the philosopher would talk about the potential of the seed. I talk about the realization of that potential.

I am not a philosopher. I’m much closer to a gardener. Prepare the field of your understanding and then take this existence that you have and sow it in this field.

Give it the water of knowing—not believing, knowing. Give it the light of clarity and watch this seed bloom. This blooming is called peace.

- Prem Rawat