You Choose

Who are you? If you don’t know who you are, how do you know how you’re supposed to be? How are you supposed to be? Because we don’t know who we are. We don’t know who we are.

What is a human being? A human being is the vessel that is capable of feeling peace. If you are capable of feeling peace, what do you do in your life every day so that you can feel peace?

You, in your life, have the possibility of learning the fundamental thing—this is all I say: “Learn about yourself.” Look at everything you have learnt. You will find that the only thing you haven’t learned is about yourself. Because it’s not taught in schools; it’s not taught in universities. There’s nobody who teaches you about you.

And if you don’t know about you, if you don’t know about yourself, you will be a stranger all your life—to whom? To you. You know about your friends; you know about everybody else, but you don’t know about you.

You are a source of incredible knowledge, and you are a source of incredible ignorance. Ignorance is darkness; it will bring you confusion; it’ll bring you pain. And knowledge is the source of light. It’ll bring you joy; it’ll bring you hope; it’ll bring you understanding. But you have to choose—not one day, but every single day.

The peace you are looking for is inside of you—always is, even in your moments of pain, even in your moments of sorrow. I don’t care how far high-reaching you are, how successful you are; you are still capable of feeling joy and pain. And what you feel with the joy or pain does not depend on anybody else—but on you.

And that’s wonderful if we understand, fundamentally, to improve the quality of life does not only take education, does not only take prosperity, does not only take dignity, but it takes understanding of who you are.

And then? There can be a whole world that can appreciate what peace is. Your choices make a difference. But you have to choose.

– Prem Rawat