Life is a Crucible for Spiritual Progression

                                                                                    *Saumitra Mohan

            Many of us remain very discontented and disgruntled, whining about everyone and everything around us. Incapable of exploring their own immanent potential and savouring the splendour of a human life, they are busy cribbing and crabbing about anything and everything. Such people don’t spare even the Almighty, cursing Him for all the mess in their personal and public life. Such people remain blind to all the good things around them. But as Mother Teresa said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them”. The truth is if we start looking for joy around us, we would have no time for negativity in our life. So, instead of finding others’ foibles, we should start counting our blessings.

            As they say, life is like ice. We should enjoy it before it melts. But most of us seldom feel joyful and fulfilled by worrying about inconsequential stuffs, thereby sapping peace and pleasure out of our life. Our condition could be related to the story of the indigent man who complained to Swami Vivekananda about the miseries of his life. After his interaction with the Swami, the man was convinced of his riches compared to others. Swami had offered him millions of rupees for parting with different parts of his body which the latter outright refused. As someone said, ‘I was unhappy because I did not have shoes till I met someone who did not have legs’.

            Have we ever paused to notice as to how many bounties the God has blessed us with and how many of our wishes have been granted by Him? Notwithstanding many positive things happening in our life, we stay dissatisfied for the wishes not granted or for the things not available. Mind you, we have our plans but the Lord has His own plans. If things happen our way, we should be happy. But if they don’t happen our way, we should be happier because they are happening God’s way.

            We generally don’t appreciate that the life we lead is much more blessed than million others’. After all, don’t we all have many of life’s goodies including parents, siblings, family, children, friends, relatives, country, education, bank balance, house, cars, good health, wealth et al? We often take these benedictions of life for granted coming as part of a package with the human life. But that is not really the case. There are hapless millions who can only dream about the things we take for granted. Being God’s chosen ones for being endowed with these bounties, are we not duty-bound to care for others over whom we were preferred?

            There are millions of people amidst us who don’t have any or many of these things and who would love to live a normal life with basic creature comforts we take for granted. There are people who are born orphans, have no family or no nationality (read refugees), have never been to a school, who find it difficult to make their ends meet, who are suffering from various ailments or are troubled by the chronic illnesses of their near and dear ones, who are deformed or are born with missing limbs. So, before cursing our situations or moping about our privations, we should count all our blessings we take for granted.

            We often come across people who don’t like their colleagues, neighbours, spouses, children, relatives or the leaders. If you don’t like some, there would definitely be some who despise you no end. Please remember that this is a mortal world and not the Heaven where things are perfect. If we were perfect beings without any folly or foibles, we would not have been born into this world. Our very presence on earth means that we are still not liberated from the divine drama because of our myriad imperfections. Being the fellow passengers on the Spaceship Earth, all the people around us are likewise imperfect in their own ways, born here to get over their imperfections in their onward spiritual march.

            Life actually comes as a package. If there are many pleasant things, there have got to be many hideous and morbid things also. We got to accept them cheerfully as we should all the difficulties and problems. All such things together provide the template for testing our mettle for chiselling away our imperfections to enable us to gradually merge with the Supreme Being. So, all the dramatis personae in our life are inalienable part of the cosmic drama with whom we share the ‘Give and Take’ account generated through present or past lives as per our Karmas. It is completely up to us to make the best of an unpromising situation. If we don’t like the lemon, we had better make the lemonade out of it.

            So whether you like it or not, the so-called crooked and difficult people would always be there in our life as direct or indirect educators to put us through an ordeal to learn different lessons for further progression of our souls. If we don’t like the people around us, we had better go and stay in a jungle or kick the bucket to meet our Maker instead of staying in a society. There would be none to disturb us there, though there is no guarantee of the same. After all, there are supposedly more rabid creatures in jungles or more insufferable spirits in the after-world.

            Trying to have a world completely customised to our likings is like running our race all alone or a race on our terms. This is nothing, but a chimera which does not subsist in reality. Life would actually turn out to be very ‘boring’ if something like that ever happens. The graveyard is full of people who believed themselves to be very important and indispensable in their times, but were instantly replaced by others and soon forgotten. We ought to make the hay while the sun shines, but we often end up wasting our time and opportunity by engaging in acts which impede our spiritual growth than furthering it.

            If one notices, one would find that most of our problems with others arise more because of our misplaced assumptions about others’ thoughts, plans or feelings. More often than not, we presume things and attribute motives to the actions of people in our lives, thereby making our lives hellish. We are often disturbed with others’ achievements or perturbed with their ‘presumed’ plans rather than focusing on the development of our ‘Self’, something which would help us in this or next world. Splurging our energies on machinations, resentments or negative thoughts about others doesn’t get us anywhere as we can never snatch someone’s just desserts.

            We need to look beyond our mundane existence to find out the whys and wherefores of the transcendental scheme of things behind the cosmic drama. We should realize that with some understanding and maturity, we can all succeed and achieve together. We shall actually make faster and superior progress as a civilisation if we learn to love and value each other as we all are different, endowed with different capacities. There is enough in the huge multiverses for each of us. We merely need to identify our hidden talents and assigned roles to play the same successfully in a spirit of peaceful coexistence. As we are not going to last here eternally, we should concentrate on improving our scores in God’s ‘Scorecard’ otherwise we would remain condemned to this mortal world forever.