Breakups can feel like the end of the world, especially when you’re young as emotions run high and life feels incomplete without that special someone. Many try to move on by distracting themselves, while others struggle for months or even years, unable to shake off the memories. In response to a student’s candid question of “how to handle breakups,” Sadhguru offers a perspective that goes beyond the usual advice of “forget and move on.” Instead, he unpacks the deeper workings of human memory, emotional investment, and integrity, giving young people the tools to handle relationships, and their endings, without losing direction in life.
Student: We all know that at this age we get into a relationship, then we break up. One of my friends recently broke up, and he asked me to give him some advice on how to move on and how to cope with things. Being of the same age, I cannot advise him because I don't know how to move on. So, my question is, how to move on after that situation? [Applause]
Sadhguru: Well, somebody else has moved on. Even if you stay in the same place, distance will happen. See, let us understand this in terms of life - not in terms of trend, morality, right and wrong, but in terms of life.
Do you remember what your great-great-great-ten-generations ago-grandfather looked like?
Student: No.
Sadhguru: No. But his nose is sitting on your face. Yes or no?
Student: Yes.
Sadhguru: So is it true that your body has a tremendous amount of memory?
Student: Yes.
Sadhguru: This memory is on many different levels. There is an evolutionary memory. There is a genetic memory. There is a karmic memory. There are conscious levels of memory and unconscious levels of memory, articulate and inarticulate levels of memory. But if your great-grandfather's nose has to sit on your face, obviously your body is carrying a very complex mechanism of memory, isn't it?
Student: Yes.
Sadhguru: So, if this body is capable of such a complex sense of memory, you think it is not gathering memory with whatever you touch and feel and relate with? You think so or no?
Student: Yes.
Sadhguru: It does. It is gathering an enormous amount of memory - this is how you know. See, how to go up the steps, how to go down the steps - it looks very simple, but it's not simple; it's very complex. Your body has to remember.
Otherwise it cannot go up and go down so simply. Well, today the sports people are talking abour muscle memory, building memory into their system so that the sport can be execued at a certain level of efficiency. So, this is not only for sports or a specific activity; every day you are imbibing so much memory. If there is a certain kind of congruence and cohesiveness to this memory, it will become productive. If there is a certain level of chaos to this memory, then you may know everything, but this memory will work against you because it's contradictory and conflicting within itself. When your friend asked you this question, the question itself is coming because it matters, isn't it?
Student: Yes.
Sadhguru: If it didn't matter, you could have just forgotten about it and gone on like an old pair of shoes. But it matters, because you invested your thought, your emotion, and maybe even your body in it. Once you invested these three things, there is a profound sense of memory about that. If you create a lot of contradictory memory in your system, you will see life will tell you later - that you have everything, but you feel like you have nothing. Because it's confused and it's joyless, it doesn't have exuberance.
It's very important that young people understand the mechanism of what you have been given. If this was just a lump of flesh, you could have done whatever the hell you wanted with it. But this is a very sophisticated machine. If you treat it sensitively, it can do things in a phenomenal way; otherwise it will do mediocre things. Let's say you know nothing about computers and I gave you an Apple Air. Have you seen this model?
Student: Yeah.
Sadhguru: Very thin and sharp. I gave you this, but you don't know what it is. You took it home and started chopping cucumbers. It works very well. But isn't it a tragedy that you are using a computer to chop cucumber? Nothing wrong with the cucumber but something definitely wrong with you, isn't it?
Audience: Yes.
Sadhguru: Something very fundamentally wrong with you when you do not understand the significance of what you have on your hands - all significant things will go waste. I am saying, before you touch or involve yourself in anything, not just other human beings, you must see what is the level of involvement you wish for. You must see where you want to take this and also see what are the different impacts it will have upon you. You must consider whether this will work well for this life or work against this life. Otherwise you will become a loose life. I am nor using the word "loose" in terms of morality. I am just talking about loose in terms of not being able to fulfil the direction in which you wish to go in your life. Bringing some integrity to your life - intellectual integrity, emotional integrity and physical integrity - is very, very, important. Well, beyond that if something goes wrong, you just have to understand, when you were born you came alone and when you die you will go alone.
Secrets to keep in a marriage
Secrets to keep in a marriage
Secrets to keep in a marriage
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