Will a greedy person become magnanimous with the acquisition of more wealth? He will spend money to buy comforts, and the more comforts he gets, the greater will be his dependency on money and the greater will be his greed for money. Will a power-hungry person be satiated as he gets more power? The more power a person gets, the greater will be his fear of losing control and becoming powerless again. Will a possessive person become less possessive as he enters into a relationship with the person he tries to possess? No, he will become more and more possessive and try to control more because his fear of losing the relationship will be greater. Will the inferiority complex of a person reduce as he gets attention? No, it will, in fact, increase as he gets attention because he will be more afraid of losing the attention.
It appears to be contradictory, but it's true. We can relate this very well to our life experiences. But why does it happen? It's because the external possessions are just escapes from reality. The reality is that we are hollow from the inside. That hollowness makes us fearful, and we look forward to money, powers, relationships, and attention to fill that hollowness. What we fail to realise is that none of these things fit into that space. All of us have heard the story of a person with a golden touch. Whatever he touches gets converted into gold with the boon he gets from God. He jumps with joy, just to realise within hours that whatever he touches to eat also gets converted into gold, and he can't eat anything and dies due to hunger. That's what we do when we crave external possessions. These external possessions do not fit into that inner space that makes us more and more hollow.
Some people try to fill that space with knowledge. They read thousands of books. The more they read, the more hollow they feel. Why? Because knowledge too does not fit into that inner space, and the more knowledge we acquire, the more hollow we feel. But why don't money, power, knowledge, relationships, and attention fit into that "space"? Because that space requires something that is not divisive to fill it. Something that is undivided, like love, compassion, freedom, exploration, and wisdom. Something real. Something that is not bound within the domain of time and space. Something whose meaning does not change with the passage of time.
It is almost impossible for a divisive mind to understand the value of love, compassion and freedom. That divided "self" wants to become big and bigger like the universe, oblivious to the fact that a unit can never become larger than the whole. The whole of the universe is expanding, and that's why its unit, an individual ego, also wants to expand. It wants to possess material wealth, power, relationships, and knowledge. It fails to realise that the more it possesses, the more it gets disconnected from the universe. The most knowledgeable people are often most disconnected because of the ego of knowing. The most powerful people are most disconnected because of their sense of being powerful. The wealthiest people are most disconnected because of their strong sense of superiority.
When we live life with love, compassion, and awareness, all the divisions between wealthy and poor, powerful and powerless, knowledgeable and stupid, etc, disappear. We merge with the universe like a spec of dust, and there is no separate identity. How will a spec of dust have fear? The individual becomes an actor to perform the role assigned by the divine director. He does the best of his capacity. Not so that he will be lazy, just leaving everything to destiny. Rather, he will play the role, as an extension of the divine, as if exercising the free will of the divine while performing that role, like Arjuna played his role, exercising the free will of Krishna. Arjuna, before the Bhagwat Geeta, was being ruled by his social conditioning, and therefore, there was no free will. Post Bhagwat Geeta, what happened? Krishna made him aware of reality, and with that awareness, he shed his social conditioning, and Free Arjuna could make decisions freely without inhibitions, and therefore, his decisions were guided by his free will. We all can live life with complete free will if we are ready to shed our past conditioning.
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