CHAPTER-20 Live as If It is Your Last Moment LESSON: The core spiritual teaching that Vivekananda stressed was to Live as if every moment were your last. He considered this the very root of all excellence. Imbibe this dynamic lesson deep within, making it part of your personal life and leadership credo. Vivekananda used to advise people to live with a clear awareness that death can come at any time. Hence, we are to make complete use of the moment, of whatever time we have left! Living in this urgent, intense yet spiritually established manner allows one’s hidden potential to surface to the maximum, In mote recent times, Steve Jobs of Apple Inc, beautifully echoed this core spiritual teaching > 1G < 1 @ scanned with OKEN ScannerLive as If It is Your Last Moment during his speech to students at Stanford University: he considered it the very root of all excellence! The consciousness that our time on carth is limited, truly puts things in perspective and focus. Man’s greatest illusion is that he has a long time to go before he dies. But the person of spiritual understanding knows that life is very transitory. It moves very fast. In order to be whole in your energy, there must be a sense of urgency. Urgency gives rise to dynamic action. Vivekananda lived a very short life. In fact, he had predicted for himself that he would die before the age of forty. And that’s exactly what happened! He was not even forty years of age when he passed away. Yet he lived his life as if his work was extremely went. And that is the only way to harmonize your energy into a great laset-like force, and harness its power in such a way that you are totally focused on what you need to achieve. It is all about bringing utmost passion and energy to the moment that you are living, because then comes teal insight. Then comes a harnessing of your innermost depths of consciousness and energy. The problem with religions—throughout man’s history—is that they have lulled him into a sense of the ‘hereafter’ (heaven, ‘birth, and so on). This has made humanity restrict its Sonsciousness, because the only true way to live is to ‘sorb and to express as much consciousness within @ scanned with OKEN ScannerY as one can. ‘There is no better Way of; as ent the mome " b h—and outer growth—than to realize that 7 growl Lyre h : ; . must be done in the moment! : has to be done, must b That iat vout best qualities. way of awakening Y It is a waking up and a bringing et focus al] the clearnessand clarity of yourself to that which you ate doing nom, And it’s very inter sting that if you can transceng the worry of | death at every moment in your life, only then dy you live truly blissfully, joyously. Only then do you live a the maximum. You don’t put things off for the future, Rather, you allow your energies to move with wholenes; and totality. And in the process, bring your authentic nature to radiate through your actions. It is extremely important to look directly into the situations which confront you and to bring such alertness to them, so that your. subconscious worries and fears automatically melt away. That is what dynamism means. Otherwise, we keep repeating the same patterns of life. What we did yesterday, we do today. It’s only when we realize that life is like a tightrope walk, within which we aie to be continually balanced every moment, that we attain the greater truth of our self-potential. Noun ie eal of living which matters eventual nee cas spent on earth. Therefore, make va i to hee circumstances and situations. YO" 118 we | @ scanned with OKEN Scannerie Live as If is Your Last Mom oment would have noticed that people who have a truly radiant personality seem to hi sin the f the most dangerous situations, That is the one ave a sense of fearlessn face 0! quality which that is what the code of the warrior is all about, As the samurai in Japan say, the whole of life is a ent towards a glorious death. It is bow yom live all of us human beings can admire, And move that matters, and not how Jong you live. That is the most ultimate and profound mystical teaching, because then only do you have gratitude for what you have in the ent, Otherwise, you're constantly in a complaining mom ’re either moving backward or forward— mode. You’ backward into the past or forward into the future. You do not work with a wholeness of yourself, because your mind is divided between’ past and future. Essentially, to really appreciate life means that you begin shaping your destiny with an openness of heart and mind to the very fact of death. That is the greatest teacher, That is the wartior’s way. And only then does death become truly irrelevant. This is the secret of strength, And through this, you can transform yourself toa situation where you are able to live and function to the maximum, ‘Maximum living’ demands a maximization of focus on the present moment, Every leader worth his or her salt knows this. The opportunity to live life in a great manner me 119 @ scanned with OKEN Scannerhe present moment, and not in th. ists in the exists imply a way of postponing the Ssentiay ne ‘That is simy y the normal state of your “OMScion. | eae Z in the illusion of the future, Rather > which Be what you have now is aj that jg, You understand " - be able to expeticnce this again, Ing, may of may i concept of fesurrection—o¢ being bon Vedanta, it has been used in Christianity, in Budahig Vedanta, td of = death. And that implies bringing enough Courage inty the leath. 4 Present moment, so much so that you feel Dothing coq stop you! and so on, It is really all about getting and value into usly move Nd success, aA what they are doing ivity, toward Sreater productivity They SPontaneo, cellence @ scanned with OKEN Scanner