सबको पता है। सबको पता है — सही क्या है, गलत क्या है। लेकिन इससे क्या होता है?
कोई चाहिए जो तुम्हें चलाए।
मंज़िले-राह-ए-इश्क़, उसको कोई ख़बर नहीं।
राह दिखाए जो तुझे, उसको न रहनुमा समझ।
जो दूर खड़े होकर राह बता दे, उसे रहनुमा मत समझना।
रहनुमा तो वह होगा जो वहाँ तक आए जहाँ तुम हो, और वहाँ तक ले जाए जहाँ तुम्हें होना चाहिए।
Everyone knows! Everyone knows what is right and what is wrong. Yet it means nothing; it changes nothing. You need a companion who will make you walk.
Don’t call him a guide who only points out the road to you. Don’t call him a guru, who stands far on the hill and shouts directions.
The true guidance (Rehnuma) comes down to where you stand – lost, trembling, stuck. He meets you exactly where you are and walks with you all the way to your true potential.
-Osho
You see an indisciplined child and casually throw, “You should wake up early. You should be more disciplined. You should behave better.” As if one sentence, one nagging, will magically transform him from tomorrow. People do this all the time. And strangely, they feel they have done something great by giving this advice.
In fact, this is one of the main reasons relationships fall apart – because you want the other person to be magically something else than what they are right now from tomorrow morning.
Parents keep giving life advice to their children, advice that mostly didn’t even work in their own lives. Later, the grown-up children return the same favour to their old parents. Partners do it to each other every day: “You should be like this… You should not be like that… This is wrong, that is right.” Self-help books, podcasts, and therapists are all filled with what one should do and should not do. Hundreds of research, thousands of techniques.
Yet you will find that genuine transformation is rare. All this information, advice, changes nothing, absolutely nothing. In fact, most advice is truly a condemnation of others, a form of nagging, a form of hate. In relationships of all kinds, people continuously nag each other – by giving advice, thinking somehow randomly that by tomorrow, the other person will be different. When we give advice like this, we are not really seeing the other person. We are rejecting where they are right now. We want them to magically become something else by tomorrow morning. This is not love. So many parents, men, and women complain that their children, their partners, don’t listen to them, even when they keep telling them what to do.
And so many people who give advice to others, nag others, condemn others – parents, friends, partners justify their behaviour by saying they are doing it because they love the other person. They care for the other person; they want what is best for the other person. This is one of the subtlest forms of emotional abuse – in the name of love, you condemn people for just existing as they are. That is why it changes nothing.
Someone who points to the road, or gives directions to you standing on top of a hill – don’t consider them a companion, don’t consider them guidance. Most people become confused – they read self-help, they listen to podcasts, they understand intellectually what is right, what is wrong. They think transformation is easy, just mental gymnastics. That is why the books, podcasts, and therapy sell so much because people assume that if they find the right road, the right direction, they will change. But don’t consider the road as guidance.
The true guidance (Rehnuma) comes down to where you stand – lost, trembling, stuck. He meets you exactly where you are and walks with you all the way to your true potential.
Rehnuma, or loosely translated to Guidance, is someone, a person who walks with you on your path, holds you where you are and takes you where you are supposed to go. Who celebrates you wins, soothes your losses, and remains a constant when you are vibrating between life’s duality, and in that continuous, relentless presence of someone, you actually grow to your true potential.
People who give you advice show you the road – wants you to become immediately. Your rehnuma, your guide, continuously waters you till you grow from a small seed to a big tree that you can be.
One of the most beautiful things about the real spiritual process is this: you have to absolutely accept where you are, to go to where you are supposed to go. There is such a deep paradox to this, such a profound paradox that your mind can’t solve it. You have to be both logical and illogical to even understand it.
That is why Rehnuman – your guidance meets you where you are, without judging you and takes you where you are supposed to go. That is why a real Rehnuma is so rare and so precious. He does not give you a map. He becomes your companion on the road.
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