Why do people feel so disturbed despite having so many things in life? People have money, resources, family, relationships, and travel the world, yet still feel so miserable. Even if one of their desires is not fulfilled, they keep searching for someone to cry to or to blame for their miseries. If they get none, they don't mind blaming God for all their miseries, failing to appreciate that it is the same God who has given them so many things. Not so that they pretend, but they actually feel so. How come people get so deluded? This phenomenon has been troubling me for so many days.
You see bureaucrats who have held whatever position they desired throughout their lives, yet they don't mind cribbing about not getting what they deserved. You see industrialists who have got so much money, yet they compare themselves with others and don't hesitate to say the others have got much more than they do. You see so many people who have so many loving people around them, yet they will irritate everybody and keep complaining that they are not being loved. That seems to be quite inexplicable. Why would somebody create a mental story of being unhappy despite having everything?
Happiness is always a product of love and freedom. It is because love and freedom are the two most fundamental expressions of consciousness. Consciousness is one field that is spread all around. Every other phenomenon, including time and space, takes birth from consciousness. That's why there are two fundamental attributes of consciousness: love and freedom. When we love somebody or something, we feel connected to that person or that thing. When love grows, we feel one with that person or thing. When a child falls ill, the mother naturally keeps awake throughout the night. The child's pain is transmitted to the mother naturally. That's because the mother feels one with the child. Similarly, people like Mahatma Gandhi feel a sense of oneness with the entire nation, and that's why they sacrifice their lives for the people of their country.
Similarly, consciousness is free and not bound by anything. When a scientist explores the deepest secrets of nature, he wants to experience freely. An astronaut wants to walk freely in space. All of us have a fundamental drive for freedom, and we have been sacrificing our lives for it since time immemorial. Socrates decided to drink poison rather than give up his freedom of speech. Meera decided to leave the family rather than giving away his freedom to love Krishna as her husband. People gave their lives for India's freedom struggle, and their sacrifice inspires all of us even today.
Now, coming back to the fundamental question: why do people crib despite having so many things in life? I feel that the answer lies in the nature of consciousness and the nature of "self". All of us are the same consciousness. However, when we enter this body, we feel separate. We develop a sense of separation or an illusion of being a unit. Just like a drop of water. This separated self, which may be called "ego", feels unsafe. Naturally, because this sense of separation is based on illusion, it is very fragile. Darkness, however dense it may be, needs just a ray of light to disappear. Similarly, since the ego is a creation of ignorance, it feels vulnerable, and that's why it wants to get more and more. It feels that by accumulating more and more, it will be safer, but the fact is that it can never be safe.
The fact is that happiness comes only when we stay aware of our real nature. That's why whenever our actions are driven by love and exploration, we feel happy. We may do a very short experiment with ourselves. We may close our eyes and recall the moments when we felt really happy. These would be the moments when we either experienced love in one form or another or when we explored. We will have happy memories of spending time with friends, family, and kids, and of having deep conversations with the people we value. We will have happy memories of the explorations in the mountains when we trekked or tried to solve some complicated problem for days, and suddenly a solution would arrive from the no-man 's-land. The more time we spend with love and in a state of exploration, the more satisfied we feel in our lives. It is because when we do something with love or explore something, we feel connected to that consciousness, and in that state, we feel complete. We feel happy.
All of us do the things we love to do, and we love to explore in our childhood. We are designed like that by nature. That's why all the children are generally curious. They like to know about everything. However, as we grow, our minds are contaminated by the people around us. Generally, people around us are unhappy; however, over time, they have learnt the art of covering their sad faces with masks of happy faces, creating an illusion of happiness. The poor child, who has no exposure to the world, cannot distinguish. That's why he gets trapped in the game people play with these masks. They make the poor child realise his vulnerabilities. He feels unsafe and joins the race to accumulate the modes of being safe. In the process, he gives away love and exploration. The more forcefully he runs that race, the less time and energy is left for the activities centred around love and freedom. That's why he gets more and more depleted. The poor ego keeps running the race throughout life, hoping to feel fulfilled after winning. However, the more desperately it runs the race, the more depleted it feels, and the more dissatisfied it feels. It is because the more time and energy it spends winning the race, the farther it moves from love and freedom. At some stage, it gets so exasperated that it starts blaming others. The problem is that if someone tries to show the mirror to the ego, they become the biggest enemy. That's why so many people in this world keep running this race all through their lives and die under an illusion that happiness lies ahead on the next Milestone!
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