It takes a lot of effort to fill a balloon with air. The more air we fill in the balloon, the more effort we need to put in. It is probably because the skin of the balloon resists change. It wants to come back to its original shape and we have to make an effort against this resistance. However, once it is filled with the air, its market value rises due to that. However, no balloon can hold air for long and comes back to its original shape after some time and dies its natural death. Moreover, it can expand up to a particular limit, crossing which it bursts.
Aren't human beings also like the balloon? They resist their growth. Whenever there comes an opportunity to grow, they resist such opportunity, and once they take the challenge their ego gets inflated with the experiences they have passed through. If the challenges are above a threshold, human beings burst like a balloon with sadness, anger, and frustration. They run around to babas and astrologers to find solutions to reduce the challenges. However, if they are somehow able to face the challenges, they own up to these experiences and become quite arrogant like a balloon filled with air failing to realize that time is moving at its own speed and each one of us will die at our destined time.
Is it too difficult to understand that air in one balloon is no different from the air in the other balloon? We create artificial boundaries of the ego. Consciousness is like air, giving life to all human beings, just like air is giving value to all the balloons depending upon their stretchability. The more challenges we take in life, the more air we will allow in our balloon and the more valuable this human life will become. The resistance comes from the ego. Human balloons keep changing. I feel that certain human beings have a basic tendency to be egoistic and inflexible while many human beings develop such inflexibility as they get more and more money, powers, and materialistic pleasures in life. The skin of the balloons becomes thicker.
Probably, ego is a reality till we stay in this world. There will always remain a sense of separation till we stay in this world. However, it does not take much intelligence to realize that the air in all the balloons is the same. This very realization does something magical to us. It makes us humble and grateful to the divine for whatever He has given to us. We feel grateful to the Divine for blessing us with whatever we have. That gives us immense capacity to connect to everybody around us. We do not want to tie a knot to contain the air that we have inside, rather we develop a willingness to share the same with everybody around us. We become human beings, taking oxygen-filled air from the atmosphere to breathe and returning carbon dioxide-filled air to the atmosphere that is used by plants. Not only air but every other resource is shared with everybody around.
The tendency to hold on makes us limited, even if we hold on to quite a huge amount of wealth and power. This limitation creates stress and that stress creates many physical and mental disorders. On the other hand, the realization of the fact that all balloons share the same air makes us stress-free and we become open to life. Such openness gives us opportunities to explore higher dimensions of life. We may live life like an inflated balloon tied tightly boasting our possessions, however, any sane person knows that life can puncture the balloon anytime. When air is freely available to everybody, it makes no sense to accumulate the same and remain tense always. Rather, any intelligent person should use this opportunity to utilize the grand opportunity for exploration and explore everything around.
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