Try to remember this joke whenever something is bothering you. Immediately try to connect with the joke and see with awareness what is bothering you. Go deep down and see whether you are really having a problem or you are simply allowing your mind to play. You may just laugh at the end of it.
One lady was traveling on a long-distance flight.(Laughter!)
The airhostess came serving food for everyone. She found the lady fast asleep and so she moved on to the next person.
The lady woke up after a while and asked for her food.
The airhostess brought her food for her.
The lady touched the food and flared up, “What sort of an airline are you running? The food is not warm. I have paid through my nose to take this flight and I can’t even get warm food!”
The airhostess apologized saying, “Ma’am, please excuse us. The warmer is not working. The rest of the people also had their food this way.”
The lady said, “Is that so? Then it is alright.”
See, the food remains cold even now, but the lady is no more unhappy because she knows that everyone else also had the food that way! This is what I mean when I say that everything is a play of the mind, everything is an adjustment of the mind. The mind keeps switching its stance and playing on you, because you have allowed it to take over. You have not centered yourself on contentment and so you sway according to your mind.
So as I was saying, if you are not able to laugh at the end of the day, it means that you are still serious about the whole thing; you still feel that you are shouldering the whole world and that it is because of you the whole show is running.
You see, deep down, the Truth is, we belong to Existence, which is the ultimate and all pervading Energy which is controlling the whole show. Our inherent nature is also to find that connection back with Existence so that we flow without a problem. But somewhere, we miss this understanding and disconnect ourselves from Existence and start running behind material things thinking that that is what we are searching for.
If you have visited the zoo at least once in your lifetime, you might have noticed that the longest queues are in front of the cages of the lions and the tigers. Always, you will find people standing for a long time in front of the lions and tigers and admiring them with awe and respect.
We do this because, without even realizing it, we are strangely reassured by seeing things that are bigger or stronger than us. It gives us the comforting feeling that we are not the ultimate power. We know that we are not the ultimate power. Our Being is actually searching for an encounter with any such grandeur that reminds us of our real role in this macrocosmic universe.
People go to the temples only for this assurance that they get, when they see the idols. Those who don’t find this kind of assurance in the temples find it elsewhere. But somehow, deep within we know that we are not the ultimate power. This feeling should become an experiential reality for us. Then we will know for sure.
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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.
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