Perception

…contd…..

As you continue your climb, you meet few youngsters climbing down and you ask them ‘how much more to go?’ (enkentha dooram?) and they reply ‘oh, its easy ahead. You can do it’.

You don’t realize till long that they didn’t tell you the time you would take to make that climb or how long it was! They just gave words of encouragement and you moved ahead enthusiastically. You ask shop-keepers, fellow-climbers, check on internet and realize they all have their own calculations and that they didn’t add up. Same hill, same journey. But, each one completed it at his pace and each had his or her own experience to fall back on.

Think about it. If a simple pilgrimage can be so varying for each one, then what about the journey of soul which is going on since aeons of time. Just as people are there at every juncture of pilgrimage and many even returning back, won’t it be same for the journey called ‘life’. When you view, from every point, the city below and the mountains and the entire nature looks different each time. As we ascend the scene keeps changing. The way we look at distances change, our state of mind changes. So it is as we descend. If the same Nature looks different to us from different altitudes, how different should it look for different people? Lost?

Well, here it is. Our most common complain, observation and cause of irritation is that others are way different from us – in ways of personal habits, priorities, belief systems and perception or clarity of thought. We get irritated, angry that others don’t get our point of view – however right we are. Give it a thought. Take a pause and please be with me. If climbing few hundred steps can set different pace for different people – boy this is ‘life’ – what with its multiple facets problems, desires, possibilities, temptations. Each one of us is exposed to all of these. So, you can imagine its effect on our ‘soul journey’. Now what’s this ‘soul journey’ that we so much talk of! It’s simple. It’s the lessons that we learn during the journey that spans through thousands of janmas. And this learning is ‘practical’ unfortunately or fortunately. Here by just with theoretical knowledge we can’t get through learning a lesson. We need to know it practically only. And what is the lesson – it’s what we are capable of! Looks simple right? But it is not so. What you are capable of means even if you take one quality like that of you being capable of forgiving well it takes janmas to just master it or experience it in all its grandeur. Because to experience my capacity to forgive would mean I reach heights of my Divinity and for that I should put myself again and again in such of situations that would force me to forgive. This doesn’t happen so easily – so I need to forgive all at various levels and at varying degrees. This takes janmas. Because, once having taken birth we associate ourselves with this body, mind and intellect and then to forgive even a small act looks impossible as seems a very big act of wrong on the part of others. So, just to forgive one person we end up taking so many janmas. Imagine how many more we need to take to forgive all – not because we are good but because each one is me and I can’t hate myself however bad the pain inflicted. It’s something like my head is angry at hand for giving ‘chat’ (spicy food) to mouth which caused acidic headache. How can one part of me be angry at other?

…contd….