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Introduction

.... it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together before some of us even get our feet set in the right way.

Louisa May Alcott

It's a wonderful life. Truly wonderful.

But some will screw up their noses and say, "Life?? Wonderful???" And indeed, it would also seem that we are letting down the experienced poet, O. Henry who said "Life is made up of sobs, sniffles and smiles, with sniffles predominating" or Frank ward O'Malley who quoted that "Life is just one damned thing after another".

Well, those who do not subscribe to the wonderful version of life are actually they who are agonized by the cruel presents of life that have made them helpless and hopeless.

Now let's put it straight. Some of us are really happy with what life offers while others are truly miserable. However, the latter feel miserable only because they know what happiness is about. Had we been unaware of pleasure, sorrow would hardly seem to be so. It is just the memory of happiness that breaks us in times that are not too good.

This brings us to face the fact that we all know the taste of happiness because we all achieve that state sometime in our lives but some of us can hang around in that state for long while some just let go of it easily. "Being" in a particular condition is very different from "feeling" a particular condition. And there are times when we can't help the "being" but sure can do something about the "feeling". It would not be true if we said that there are some people who have all the luck while others who are throughout unfortunate. It is only that the latter feel unfortunate more than others.

It may sound strange to hear that we ourselves don't hold happiness close to us and on our own accord, let gloom spread over us. It's true. We are the masters.

Success begins with a dream. But a dream is nothing more than just the seed. How that seed is watered and nurtured, how it gets its nourishment, the quantity and quality of what has been put to help the sapling come out of that dream is what governs the outcome. So it is just up to us to water that dream with the careful toil of dedication and a dutiful feeling of care. Nurturing the dream is in our hands, by giving it the space it needs to grow and become fulfilled, by fencing it carefully so the world does not eat it up, by taking care that other trivial, useless weeds of life do not suffocate or strangle the early, tender sapling and thus deprive it of the joy of fulfillment.

We've all got our seeds and our duties towards them. The Master Gardener watches us from beyond and judges the best of us. Those of us who toil hard, keep guard against the evils of the world, move steadily or even at least try to do so, find His favor. He helps us and while we are away, He takes care of our seeds and saplings and gives them His distinguished touch that makes life glow with the coveted luminescence that's otherwise impossible to be had. And that is when people say, ‘This is good luck, man!' or ‘God is kind!' or ‘You've done it!' 

There are some of us who joyously realize that the Master has been at work with us. But there are some others who get enamoured of the idea of their own efforts and capabilities. Those who admit, admire and adore the presence of the Supreme Force at work with themselves are the ones who actually live to enjoy the fruits of their plants. The others get distraught on their way as it becomes exceedingly blurring at times to move alone, to live alone, to work alone — sans any acknowledgement, thought or hope of a guiding force.

So the end of it is that living with God leads towards living successfully. It illuminates us with hope, justice and love. It lends our lives a purpose and brings with it a true, everlasting taste of satisfaction and joy. Most of us acknowledge the fact that there's no life without God as it is He who is the universal Creator, Nurturer and Destroyer. But none of us pursue a life with God.

But how do we get God in our lives? Church every Sunday? A daily five minute round at the temple? A vermilion or sandalwood mark on the forehead? May be this. But never just this. Living with God means knowing what life is all about, why it started at all, where it's going to end and what is our role in this affair called life. It is also about how well we play that role by making all the right moves. Each step we take, every move we make is important, as God does not let go of His surveillance for even a fraction of a second. Nothing ever happens in this world that goes unaccounted for. In this life, as they say, there are no mercies (courtesy: Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi). And putting it in a revised way, there are no unfair mercies. So why not have a clean slate, so that we may always be in the mercy list.

Actually, it's not as difficult as it seems, for everything begins and ends not with the impossible task of handling our fates, but only our own selves. That's simple! And it gets even easier when we know just what are those moves that help us to get hold of ourselves and move on. Progressively. Not wherever the wind takes us.

The Affair called Life

Life is what happens to a soul when it gets a habitat or an abode to live in — the body. The body could be a human one or a non- human one depending on what the soul deserves. Oh well, and who decides what the soul deserves? Worry not, for it is the kindest of the kind, the most just, the friend and savior of one and all, the omnipotent and the omniscient God.

Yes, our loving God gives us a body so that the soul could use it to reach Him. This body has a wonderful capacity to see, hear, feel, taste, smell and even think! It is through this body that many have perfected themselves (their souls, that is) and reached closer to the ultimate truth, the highest reality, the all-pervading bliss. Indeed, this bliss is nothing but the Lord and He takes care that there is no speck in the world from which He would be absent. It is through our body that we experience this omnipresent bliss or joy — the joy that beats all others in terms of its intensity and its flavor.

 The body, however, is not eternal like the soul is. It is also not pure. Moreover, it is not the true ‘us'. That is, the framework that we see in the mirror is not what we actually are. It is what we have or rather what we have been given. There will also be a time when it will be taken from us. Since we do not know when it's going to be taken away (could be as far as decades away or as close as a couple of moments hence), we would do best to make the maximum possible use of this body for the purpose of experiencing the ultimate.

What we do with our body, how we behave with it, all this determines what we deserve after this body is no more ours. So it all boils down to ‘karma' i.e. the work we do, the tasks we perform, the duties we fulfill.

Sometimes, we feel that there are people who have perhaps never once done a bad ‘karma' that would hurt anyone, yet they've had a bad fare. It makes us wonder, "what, after all, is the point in my being good and truthful and kind when this is what becomes of those who are really good?"

What we forget here is that the journey of the soul is like a string of beads, and the present life is just one of those beads. There was one before this and there surely will be one after this.  Since all these beads are connected to one another, what happens in one will influence the next ones too. So if a guy does all good but gets all bad in return, what he is doing is making him worthy of receiving good in the beads to come and what he is getting now is a result of what he's already done in some of his previous beads.

Bead after bead, life after life. But what about the present bead? The present life? What will happen to it? Well, it will end. And aren't we lucky that it will? Whenever we make a mistake, we wish with all our hearts, "Only if I had another chance, just one more, I would put everything just right." But by then it's too late. And wishing is all that we are left with.

But God is kind and He gives us not just another little chance but a whole huge opportunity to set things in order with ourselves. What's more, this opportunity runs right into us irrespective of whether we want to open the door to it or not. That is well taken care of by the loving Master.  And thus He finishes the first bead and puts another one, as glorious as the first, on top of it, with the message — Here you are! The world is in your hand. This life is for you, just for you, to explore the joys and more importantly, the miseries of the world, to understand what you yourself are capable of and most essentially to remember that your ultimate destination is me, my child. Return to me, I wait for you with my gift of eternal happiness. If, by any unfortunate chance, the miserable world supercedes my gift of bliss in your eyes, I will have to give you just that — misery, sorrow and more miseries and for that, another life in the agonizing world because you are my child and I must give you what you desire and rightly deserve. But once again this will be another opportunity to have a tryst with me, your ultimate destination.

Clearly, this is why we get life — to be close to the One who's forever close to us. That's not asking for too much, is it? And He who gives us life is free to take it away too when He deems it fit. We rejoice when there's birth and mourn when there's death. But could it be any other way? We should mourn when we feel something that could never imaginably have happened, has occurred. But is death not supposed to happen? Everything in the world tells us that death is imminent, it has to happen. The very words ‘finish', ‘end', ‘over', in the dictionary, are representatives of the fact that there is always death. So why should we mourn death?

Lamenting over such a situation has never fetched anyone anything. We realize this soon enough and the normal schedule starts setting in. We hear people saying, "Come what may, life moves on" and " The show must go on". Hell, but why? Why should life move on after somebody so close to us is no more there? Why should life carry on as before after the very center of it is gone? How dare life continue without the person without whom the same life had once seemed impossible? Life should lose its charm, its purpose. Life should cease. But it doesn't. That's because life didn't really depend on the lost individual. May be, you thought you were dependant on so-and-so but life was not. It's not really anybody's fault but yours if you imposed on yourself the illusion that some mere mortal be the center of your survival. God gives the spider the ability to weave its web-house around itself but never instructs it to make it so elaborate and complicated that it would itself get entangled, thus rendering life difficult for its own survival.

Thus, life demands positive ‘karma', a clear perception of the ultimate destination, a zest to achieve that goal and abidance to the right means of achieving it. The perceptions and impressions that we have brought along with us from the previous lives also play a huge role in what we are now interested in and capable of. But a very heartening factor is that the perceptions we build up in this life also will go with us for the rest of our journey. Even though the body will change, the actual ‘us' would be the same. So it's only a kind of long term planning for which we need to start working now. After all, when we take a long-term decision (valid for say, the coming ten years), we work in accordance with it every day, no matter where we are (office, home, school etc.) or least of all, what we are wearing! The situation is like a miniature representation of the long-term focus of life's journey, where the body and the whereabouts keep changing but the essentials, the destination, the spiritual landmarks remain the same. This is because the impressions, the psyche, patterned on our insides through the nature of tasks that we repeatedly delve in and our basic abstract attributes are what remain with us throughout the long journey.

Hence, each life, each single bead is critical and every single move taken in life can make or mar the very purpose of life.

Illuminate your life

There are just two things that we, the overloaded human creatures know about — one, relax or go to sleep and two, get up and get to work. The former state is controlled by the element of inertness while the latter is governed by the element of dynamism.

There have been defined three essential elements that exist in the entire world in different permutations and combinations, different proportions to give rise to different types of states of nature. Our body is a part of this nature, but only our body, remember, not our souls. These three elements are inertness, dynamism and the illuminative element — in increasing order of their purity¹.
 
Of the three basic or core elements of nature, we still haven't care to explore the third, the most beautiful one, the element of illumination which is characterized by calmness, inner peace and bliss. Anything we do in our lives is useless without bringing the illuminating element and then trying to increase its relative proportion in our mundane affairs. 
Everything we perform in this world is only a means of attaining the highest truth, the absolute bliss and the real peace. If our daily deeds are not taking us there and have not yet brought us close to a generous helping of the true ecstasy, there's something terribly wrong in our manner of working.

It's very easy to follow blindly and become yet another insignificant individual in the world full of aimless wanderers. But like they say, achieving is not about doing different things, it's about doing things — the same things — differently.
All of us live in the world like milk in water. Milk is not water but once it is inside it, it merges completely in it. Both become one, no distinction can be made. If, on the contrary, the milk is worked upon, churned thoroughly, it gets converted to butter. This butter now when descended into the water-like world, does not get lost in it. It floats. Remains away from the invisible depths that hold misery.

This is what we've got to do with ourselves — work upon and churn ourselves thoroughly. Live like the floating butter or like the beautiful Lotus flower that unfailingly grows in the mud but stays over it, never even touching it.

Working upon ourselves only means that we should refrain from following blindly just to please the world. We need to use our own grey matter and think, contemplate and speculate. Instead of sitting to wonder about and analyze the fate of all these people who are desperately struggling to make sense out of their lives, we also join their league.

We need to thoroughly figure out our places and our roles, as also the methods of playing these roles to perfection. For this, the methods need to be perfect too and for perfection we need to give serious thought to the element of illumination.  It's urgent to come out of the sheer instinctive routine of working and relaxing. Working, by the way, includes not just our offices but also our daily chores and weekly rounds to the stores and markets; relaxing, once again, encompasses not only the several hours of sleep on weekends but also freaking out and our useless gossips. We must, by all means, take out time for reaching out to our spirits, our souls. It's imperative to behave intelligently and immediately to illuminate our lives.

The next question is how do we go about the task of working upon ourselves? Deep inside us, we all know it. There have been times in each one's life when we have felt good and comfortable and satisfied after having kept a clear conscience or having helped a needy or expressing contentment at our acquisitions. My husband once returned a single day's extra wage that he had receives accidentally and the satisfaction of honesty makes him feel glorious even today. Virtues are rewarding in themselves. Surprisingly, the same error was repeated after a few days and when he went to return it, the employer let him keep it. And that's how a well-accomplished task got fixed in his mind for all times to come.

It's a well-known psychological principle of operant conditioning that rewards, punishments, re-inforcements lead to the selection and acquisition of certain forms of behavior. But first comes practice. Consistent and whole-heartedly. We've got to practice the habits of perfection. These include² discipline (social as well as personal), physical exercises, breath control, keeping control over the senses, focussing attention, meditating and communion with the Lord. Social discipline holds in itself – hurting nobody, speaking the truth, abstaining from stealing, continence and refraining from avarice. Personal discipline includes cleanliness (internal as well as external), contentment, austerity, regular study of books that guide or scriptures that are authentic and lastly a loving and dutiful surrender to God.

Each one of these is so important that if we resolve to master even one of these, results will start ensuing. Fortunately for us, all of these are intricately related and in most cases, if we are sincere and mean well, one would lead to the other.

At times, we don't feel much inclined towards practicing any of these essential steps towards the ultimate. Slackness in the path is taken by us as a reward. One says, "Awright, ten minutes of harmless fun doesn't hurt. I'll start being good again after that."

We forget here that whatever we do and in fact, even see, leaves an impression on our souls or what we refer to in common parlance as the subconscious mind. If somebody does a bad thing once, he will be inclined to do the same again as soon as the situation or opportunity recurs. And the erring humans that we are, we re-succumb to the temptation, thus spoiling not this life but many more to come.

Indeed, it's all very easy to think of, say truth, as the highest virtue. But when it comes to actually carrying it out, we fail miserably because we fail to see that such a thing as truth is needed at every moment of life. Even while sitting idle and thinking, one needs to be truthful. Or for instance, if we consider complete and loving surrender to God, it is monstrously hard to abide by it. After all, you are the manager, how can you surrender your life to somebody else like God. What does He know about your work?

This lack of faith and dedication takes us down, down, down. We think we can do anything and get away with it because who's there to question us? Fooling other people is actually indicative of fooling ourselves because the time we tried to indulge in that sort of "fun", we were far from truth and God was watching us, nodding sadly and making a note of what we deserve as a result of this deed of ours.

The tungsten filament of the electric bulb lights continuously and brightens up the environs. The moment it tires and fuses, illumination ceases. Our case is no different. The moment we lose control over our actions or allow the less befitting of our tendencies to creep up and overpower the worthy ones, we fall in the clutches of darkness, far away from illumination.
It, therefore, becomes very important to keep guard over ourselves and not to digress from our equanimity and purity under any circumstance. We need to be very particular about what we do. So immaculately particular actually, that there would be complete conformity to the true knowledge and that our lives would be ideal examples for others who are today, only looking for means to subdue their tensions and anxieties. Our life would then be filled with the real peace and each moment would be a moment to savor.

So the next time you're about to forge a signature or lie that you're sick and want a leave or want to see a dirty movie or say something spiteful to somebody, stop! Light that bulb and think where this little action can take you. Illuminate yourself with the perseverant and consistent attempt to bring in the illuminative element in life.

² As has been well stated, understood and practiced by highly accomplished great men who succeeded in reaching the ultimate in life.