If you feel that life is unfair to you, just imagine Bharata's plight. Bharata is out for a pleasure trip to his Nanihal, and Kaikeyi asks for two boons from Dashratha. Bharata not only loses the company of his dear brother for 14 years but also feels guilty for a crime he was never a party to. For the next 14 years, he repents for a fault that he never committed. It is because his mother, Kaikeyi, lost awareness for a few moments. Greed and ignorance took over her existence for some time. What she thought was the greatest welfare for her son turned out to be the greatest punishment for him.
Where did Kaikeyi go wrong? She did not understand that each human being is different. She thought that material possessions and rulership are very important in life, and his son will be deprived of these because Ram is the elder son. She never realised that her son was quite different from others. She did not realise what mattered to her son. Probably, she never connected with her son that deeply. She could never enter into the soul of her son, and that's why she demanded the biggest punishment for her son in the name of his well-being. Similarly, when Suparnkha was humiliated by Lakshmana, she went back to Ravana and told Ravana about the beauty of Sita. Ravan gets tempted to see Sita and have her as his wife. He kidnaps Sita, and that becomes the biggest reason for his death. Sometimes our well-wishers fan our desires, and we get trapped in the web of those desires.
Often, we try to do good to the people around us and end up doing them harm. Why does it happen so? It is because we are all at different levels of consciousness. For Kaikeyi, being the ruler of Ayodhya is the greatest pleasure. That's why she not only demands the coronation of Bharata, but also 14 years of vanvaas for Rama. She feels that this will make her son Bharat happy. While Bharat is at a different level of consciousness, he feels pained by this. His consciousness is one with that of Rama, and therefore, the fact that he has become the cause of Rama's vanvaass is more painful to him than any other pain in this world.
On the other hand, Suparnakha is driven solely by revenge against Ram and Lakshmana for rejecting her marriage proposal. She fails to realise that the act of kidnapping Sita will actually destroy her entire family. She is unaware of the consequences of her decision. Thus, sometimes we harm others because we do not understand that they are spiritually so mature, and we make decisions for them from a low level of consciousness, and they suffer as Bharat did. Sometimes, we fail to understand that their level of consciousness is so low, and we make certain decisions for them that they are unable to carry with maturity, and they have to suffer like Ravan.
That's why we need to be very mature in our relationships. Sometimes we allow freedom to weak souls, and they mistake freedom and become adamant and destructive. Often, the boons given by the Gods become the cause of the world's destruction. Sometimes, children are very free and mature, and we end up passing on our fears to them. Since we have never thought of anything beyond "settled life", we want to get them "settled" fast and, in the process, kill their dreams. Since we have never thought beyond family, we want to confine them to that narrow concept of family, even if they have a larger cause to fulfil. The problem is that, unless we have learned to observe our thoughts at arm's length, we are so immersed in them that we never get to see the gaps within them or their relative importance. That's why the most important life hack that parents can help their children learn is "witnessing their thoughts".
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