The more you trust in your intelligence, the more your intelligence blossoms. In the crowd there is no need for any intelligence; in fact, in the crowd intelligence is dangerous. The crowd does not want intelligent people at all. It wants believers, it wants faithful people, it wants loyal people – loyal to the crowd, to the nation, to the race, to the church, but never loyal to themselves. All these loyalties are nothing but beautiful names of slaveries. And a slave cannot attain to his destiny, that much is absolutely certain.

If you want to be free, you will have to start your first step in freedom. The last step can be of freedom only if the first step has been taken in freedom. If the first step was taken as a slave, your last step cannot be anything other than slavery – absolutely confirmed.

You say, “I find myself in conflict.” What is the conflict? The conflict is between ideals, between moralities, between ideologies: to be or not to be, this way or that way. The conflict means you are trying to choose, and until you drop choosing you will remain in conflict.

I teach you choiceless awareness.

Stop choosing and conflict disappears.

Be spontaneous, don’t decide about the future. Then there is no frustration, no failure, no feeling that you have missed. All these feelings are born because you are deciding about something which is not in your hands. The future is not in your hands.

The old saying is, man proposes and God disposes. There is no God to dispose. In the very act of proposing you have disposed yourself; the very act of proposing means you are trying to make the unknown certain, you are trying to make the living flow of life a frozen pond.

If you live choicelessly and if you live spontaneously, moment to moment, responding to every situation that arises in front of you, your growth will be in leaps and bounds, and you will never for a single moment feel frustration. Each moment will bring greater joy and greater fulfillment. Instead of feeling despair you will feel a great gratitude: “Existence is so compassionate that it goes on giving to me each moment new opportunities to grow, new opportunities to flower, new spaces to discover, new mysteries to experience.”

But if, out of your fear, you start disciplining yourself for a particular ideal in the future, you are going to be a failure. And on each step you will see that things are not happening according to your visualized concept, visualized future. Naturally frustration sets in, conflict becomes even bigger and bigger. On every step you think whether to take it or to take some other step. And as every step goes on failing, you become settled in sadness, in gloom, in a state which is not healthy, which is spiritually sick.

You say, “I find myself in conflict between a part of myself that tries to be clear and intelligent with others and a part that is emotional, unpredictable, very unclear and somehow unconscious, but perhaps more real.” Listen to the real. However unpredictable, however dangerous, but listen to the real. It may not be rational, it may be emotional, but still, listen to the real, because only the real can lead you to a more authentic life, to more real spaces, and ultimately to truth.