Develop Self Confidence

Even if you are going to be defeated, provided you accept and follow the right path, you will have a chance of joining the game once again. If you swerve from the correct course and if you play a foul game, then you will create a situation by which you will have no place in future in any of the games.

You may have committed, knowingly or unknowingly, some wrong. Having committed a wrong, to go and tell an untruth would not be the right thing. On the other hand, having committed a wrong, if you go and tell the truth to your father or mother or guru, you will be getting their grace. On the other hand, with a view to cover up the wrong that you have done either knowingly or unknowingly, if you want to hide it from your father or mother or guru, then you will simply harm yourself for all the future.

The first thing, therefore, to do is to acquire confidence in yourself. Today, a situation has arisen when self-confidence has completely disappeared amongst the students. An individual who has no self-confidence cannot achieve victory in anything whatsoever. It is only when you have self-confidence that you will attain self satisfaction. When a small bird goes and perches on a small plant or a small branch of a tree, on account of the weight of the bird, that branch moves up and down. But the bird is not going to be upset by such a movement. What is the reason? The bird that is sitting on the branch is not depending for its safety on the branch. It is depending on its own wings. Even if the branch moves up and down or even if the branch breaks, because the bird is depending on its own wings, it can fly away. It does not worry at all. Even the small bird that is sitting on the branch has got so much confidence in its own wings and in itself that it is fearless.

On the other hand, a youth of today, who claims that he is very well educated, who claims that he is highly clever, who claims that he has got all the good qualities, is having no confidence at all in his own capacity. When he wants to do something, he gets into terrible doubt whether he should do it this way or that way. One who has no confidence in himself, whom is he going to trust? His whole life will become a bundle of doubts. He is not going to blossom into a complete, integrated and sound personality. Therefore, we should follow the path by which we can get rid of doubts and not enter the path by which we accumulate all the doubts in our hearts. So that you may get rid of all these doubts, you should cleanse your mind and your heart.

From Summer Course 1972