We have taken so many blessings for granted that we rarely feel gratitude. It's not so that there are no occasions in our life to realize our blessings but we keep missing the opportunities to look at the reality and be grateful. Each time we go to visit a friend or relative in the hospital, we realize the value of a well-functioning body but that gratefulness lasts only for a few minutes. Each time we look at a beggar, we realize the blessings of God and that we are in a position to share our resources with others. However, that too lasts only for a few seconds and soon the feeling of being a giver takes over. When we go to attend the funeral of a friend or relative, we feel grateful for being alive. However soon after the ceremony, the worldly demands take over and we get back to our greed and ambitions.
I really do not know why we behave in such an insensitive and unintelligent way. It seems as if the entire society has hypnotized us not to see the reality. There is no denial to the fact that our health, money, relationships, positions, jobs, organizations, etc, have a functional utility in our lives. But we need to first understand what life is and then place all these things in the right place. Shoes have a utility in our lives. They help us walk and run. But it does not mean that we will keep them on our heads. Everything that has a functional utility in our lives has a functional place and not beyond that. Unless we contemplate the meaning of life, we can not put all these things in their right place.
Our understanding of life decides whether we live a narrow life like the frog in a well or live a life open and wide life like the frog in the open field. When we disconnect from the sunshine, we keep entering deeper and deeper into our self-created well. We keep growing more and more insecure and keep making more and more mental stories that take us deeper into the well of our own minds. So deeper that there is no iota of reality and sunshine there. The reason is that we never question. That is what happened with Karna. He wanted to be treated like a prince and since society treated him otherwise, he developed an inferiority complex which was exploited by Duryodhana. He bought the loyalty of Karna by addressing his complexes and finally, Karna ended up fighting the battle of Kurukshetra against Dharma.
That is what exactly happens to all of us. First of all, we start believing in the false stories that are being told everywhere in society that we need money and power to be happy. We never examine the truth behind these stories. Our parents, relatives, friends, leaders, and everybody around is tell the same stories. Even if some so-called "spiritual leaders" and "babas" are telling the contrary, in their own lives, they have amassed huge wealth and power. Thus, the entire society conspires to make these stories look real. The poor child, who has not yet developed the mental strength to reason out the falsity, gets trapped in these stories and starts believing the same. He starts deriving the meaning of life from achievements and ambitions. He goes to the temple every day to beg fulfillment of his desires and ambitions completely ignoring the fact that Jesus, Mohammad, Rama, Krishna, and Shiva all are so fulfilled, contended, and happy because they realized the futility of all the material possessions. If a parent realizes the futility of something, would that parent ever buy those things for his kids? We do not bring garbage for our kids.
We all have free air, water, and sunshine. We all are born free. We do not realize the value of freedom and we get trapped in the 10-6 routine and happily sell our freedom for money. We do not realize the value of air and water and therefore pollute to fulfill our never-ending desires. We do not realize the value of sunshine and choose to stay inside our dark chambers artificially lit. In our journey towards darkness, we stop feeling grateful to the Almighty for giving us freedom, sunshine, air, water, and at the top of all these the feeling of love that is intrinsic to all of us. Greed and ambitions make us blind to all these blessings. We fail to recognize the wonders of the human body and in fact the entire nature. How everything is so well arranged inside and outside so as to enable us to explore the wonders of life. We gig our own well and then become fearful and insecure comparing our well to the others. Why don't we just come out of the well and connect to the sunshine?
The moment we connect to the sunshine, we feel gratitude in each moment. We feel grateful that God has given us the capacity to read and write. The magic of light could be understood by a few intelligent scientists, who could connect to the wonders of nature, and invented optical fibers that connect us to each other through the internet. We feel grateful and like to explore the forces of nature and play with them. Our fixation on the darkness inside our well fades away as we connect to the sunshine outside the well. As we connect to that sunshine, we regain the freedom to explore nature in the open sky. We feel empowered. We feel grateful looking at nature, the birds, animals, mountains, rivers, and valleys. We feel like exploring the wonders of nature. We feel like exploring the same wonders inside us. The little human brain is more powerful and wonderful than any of the machines in this world. The human body, is full of so many wonders, some of which are known and most unknown yet.
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