Towards Godliness

So now we know that you and I are the lucky creatures to be cast on this earth and be born as human beings and are gifted with certain amount of intelligence hence you are reading this article which is written here. We "humans" are so entangled with our sense of resposibility that we forget to enjoy the gift of life. We are overcome with grief on failure, guilt and being unsuccessful in gaining our materialistic or emotional goals that we passionately longed. And on the other hand we are over the moon and feel above all the other mortals who are less fortunate than us and have not achieved what they desired for in this life. This sense of imbalance throws us off our otherwise boring and routine life- don't you think so? Well, if things go in our favour who is to complain, but on the other hand when we are faced with disappointments we grumble, curse others and question if there is anything or anybody called as god and if he is there 'is He deaf' or why is he bestowing "us with troubles" while showering happiness to others?

We all suffer from one main problem called 'ego' (and believe me, I have the biggest ego). Let me tell you about my "ego-trip" - I like to associate everything as being 'mine' my house, my car, my father my brother everything as being mine. As a consequence I get hurt very quickly if 'my people' do not react in the way that 'I' want or think they should react. The consequence being I lose my peace of mind, I worry, lose my temper, yell, abuse and later suffer with guilt and shame and waste another week overcoming this guilt and then repeat something new the very next day the guilt of the previous incidence is forgotten. So I weave an ugly life of misery and ill feeling towards everyone around me. This effect was not just restrained to me but I generously passed it on to my family members making them equally unhappy.

I consider myself to be a staunch believer of Sai BABA (yeah, funny isn't it considering the above behaviours). Once while I was doing the Saptaha of Sai Satcharita, I thought, why not surrender everything to 'HIM' for these 7 days. So this was the beginning of change in my outlook, though, mind you, it was not an overnight change, it is taking its time while I still pass some days of agony and pain. You see, the secret is very simple - At work I do not take responsibility of anything, I do the task assigned to me and pass the buck on to some one so does the person,(s)he passes it on (sounds familiar!!). So the whole organisation is involved in a job and anything should go wrong the organisation is involved but not the person.

I adopted this principle to my life, so for the whole saptaha, I had the usual routine of yelling, thinking bad about others and the usual 'I' feeling. But the only difference was I assigned all my actions to 'HIM', and oh boy, what a relief it was !! What a nice feeling, I did not feel guilty (not for long time anyway). As soon as I did something to displease others or was hurt I said - 'well YOU made me do it, so YOU are responsible for it' so the buck was passed on. The result - I am developing a sense of indifference to other's outlook, not taking things personally, moving away from the ownership of 'others', their thoughts and actions and being slightly considerate towards others (hopefully). I am spending more quality time with my family able to laugh more and be happy for most of the time.

I have not become a recluse, no, far from it, I am enjoying my life, seeing funny side of things, and have developed an attitude of - what has to happen will happen (my anxiety level has no limit). Most of all I have become dependent on HIM. I reflect on my life events so far and marvel at HIS care in nurturing me, rescuing me from embarrassment, from calamities. And I am grateful for planning my life to be so beautiful, and being with me at every stage. I realise that things could have been worse off if it was not for HIM. I consider HIM to be my father, so how could a father see his child be unhappy, especially HIM? No way, He would go to any lengths to see HIS child be happy and prosperous, and plan everything that is best suited for the child. So it is upto HIM to keep me happy all the time - it is HIS responsibility to mould the child to be a better person in the society and be noble and develop spiritually. That is HIS job and I merely do as HE is making me do.

Try this out for a day and see it and see the result - just put the responsibility of all your actions good or bad on the Supreme Being somewhere beyond the life and death and enjoy the results! Hope you share your experience with us.