Sanjam means giving direction to life. Sanjam means giving a goal to life. Without sanjam you run in all directions. There is so much in life. You cannot get everything. You have to choose what to take and what to discard. You have been granted the boon of choice. The ability to choose intelligently is sanjam. In life, when you choose something, you have automatically rejected many others. For instance, if you choose to go to the temple, you have given up your desire to go to the club or a party automatically.

Sanjam means not heeding to the mind. The mind pulls you in all directions. The mind misleads you. The mind weakens you so that its supremacy remains intact. If you are strong and determined, it is the death of the mind. It will fight against you and try to weaken you. It will give all sorts of justifications and rationalisations to convince you. Its existence depends on your indecision, your confusion and your insecurity.

Don’t listen to the mind. It makes a lot of noise, but it conveys nothing. Don’t run away from it also. Don’t try to distract yourself to drown the noise. On the contrary, face it. Look at it right in the face. Look at it in full awareness. It will begin to dwindle, and soon it will dissolve.

Then you will encounter the witness hiding just behind it. Listen to it. This is your inner voice. It will remind you of the purpose of your life. Sanjam means giving up the non-essential for the essential. Sanjam means the ability to give up the worthless in order to hold on to the worthwhile.

Sanjam is basically the ability to choose judiciously. What you make of your life depends upon the choices you make. And, you need to make a choice at every step. Even when you don’t choose, you have made the choice of not choosing. Sanjam means the ability to choose the essential at the cost of the non-essential. What is non-essential. That which is worthless, that which does not lead to anything, that will not take you to the space where you can experience any bliss.

Sanjam means the ability to make use of what life has given you. It is up to you to turn difficulties into opportunities or you can turn opportunities into difficulties. You can step on the stones and reach the temple or look at them as obstacles and discard them. Nothing in existence is so useless that it cannot be used. All you need is the ability to use it. The stinking manure can become a huge impediment if it is stored in the house. But, it is the manure out of which the fragrance of the flower comes. How does this magic happen day after day? Obviously, there is a secret. There is an alchemy that transforms the stench into fragrance. That is sanjam. It is the ability to use things intelligently.

Take pain, for instance.

Guru Nanak says:

Pain is the medicine whereas pleasure is the disease.

The pleasure that does not pass through the fire of pain is a malady. And, then pain becomes the remedy. It is only after you go through suffering that you find bliss.

Sanjam means the ability to look at pain dispassionately, without identifying with it or denying it, without suppressing it or getting carried away with it. When you go through pain in full awareness, then you accept it wholeheartedly. Then you make it a path to walk on. You accept that it is as it is. You accept it as necessary for your growth. Then it becomes the alchemy that will change you. Just as gold has to pass through fire to get purified, you go through pain. If you go through pain in full consciousness, you will go beyond it.

Sanjam means the ability to make pain a remedy, a means to attain your goal. It is easier to look at pain than to look at pleasure, because pain is the natural reminder that takes your attention inside. On the other hand, you are more unconscious when you are happy, because you identify with pleasure. If you can use pain as a reminder to become aware, you have learnt the art of sanjam. Sanjam is an art that can be perfected with practice. Life provides you with opportunities where you can practise it on a daily basis.