When Everything Has Failed You
You have grown up
With so many messages.
Tenets,
Quotes,
Aphorisms,
Old wives tails,
Fantasies,
Popularized propaganda,
Bumper stickers.
Don’t worry, be happy.
Do your best.
Work hard and you will get it.
Put your mind to it and you will succeed.
Do unto others.
Give others the benefit of the doubt.
On and on and on.
How many of these bumper stickers
Have actually worked.
How many of these bumper stickers
From society,
From experts,
From talking heads,
From spirituality,
From best-seller books
Have ACTUALLY WORKED.
When you have practiced your final hour of meditation,
Done your final minute of mindfulness,
Burned your last stick of incense,
Written your last sentence in your gratitude journal,
Spoken your last positive aphorism,
Performed your last hack . . .
And you STILL have not found what you have always been seeking . . .
What will you do then.
That ‘then’
Is actually Now.
But you probably still have an appetite
For several more thousand hacks.
Many more lifetimes of prescriptions,
And shenanigans.
What are you going to do,
In 5 years, or a hundred thousand lifetimes,
When everything you have tried
Has failed you.
When all the promises
Have been turned out to be empty.
When all the best-selling authors
Have run out of their tricks.
When all the spiritualists
Have no new wooh-wooh technique.
What will you do
When you have meditated your brain into mush,
Mindfulness’d your psyche into vapor,
Aphorism’d your lips into stone . . .
What will you do,
When a million lifetimes from now,
You discover
That it was all a scam.
That it was all lies
Dressed in lovely wrapping paper.
That the best-selling books
Turned out to be fantasy novels.
That the bearded mystic
Was spewing lovely spiritual nonsense.
When everything has failed you,
What will you do then.
When the books have rotted away.
When the motivational speakers’ mouths have gone dry.
When the guru’s sermons have ended.
And when everything you thought was good,
And proper,
And helpful,
And nice . . .
Turned out to be
An entertainment.
On that day,
You will have to become Serious.
On that day,
You will dismiss every prescription On Sight.
On that day,
Will you realize that you have wasted
Millions and millions and millions
Of lifetimes.
On that day,
And only on that day,
You will at last be Ready
For The Truth.
Namaste.
Kapil Gupta is a personal advisor to Kings, Queens, CEO’s, Professional Athletes, Celebrities, and Performing Artists around the world.
His books include:
Atmamun: The Path To Achieving The Bliss Of The Himalayan Swamis. And The Freedom Of A Living God
A Master’s Secret Whispers: For those who abhor the noise and seek The Truth about life and living
Direct Truth: Uncompromising, non-prescriptive truths to the enduring questions of life