Words from the Master

In some places in India, you can see: There will be monkey trainers who make a living out of training monkeys.

They will carry a stick with them and use it to prod the monkey to do whatever they want it to do.

They will wave the stick and shout, “Dance Rama! Dance!” and the monkey will dance!
Then they will say, “Turn cart wheels Rama! Turn cartwheels!” and the monkey would turn cartwheels.

The monkey will simply dance to the tunes of the stick.

Like this, we allow a stick called comparison to run our lives. We dance to its tunes, doing things that are not our own things but things that are dictated by the stick.

There is no end to comparison, no end to our expectations. We are all the time asking for more, more and more. You are constantly in the rat race. How will you then relax and enjoy and feel fulfilled? And the thing about being in the rat race is, even if you win, you are only a rat!

But somehow, late in life, at some point in time, you understand that even success in the rat race doesn’t give you a sense of fulfillment; even success leads to a deep sense of discontentment. This is because, while you may have fulfilled all the material desires in the outer world, you have ignored your Being all the time.

The call of discontentment is from your Being. When you understand that, you turn towards spirituality even if it is too late. But when you don’t understand that, you turn towards depression, because you don’t know where you are missing; you don’t know where the thread is; you don’t know where you lost it; you don’t know where you went wrong.

I can tell you from my experience – Existence is always showering upon us. There is such abundance! But we are so well trained in the discipline of discontent! We have become so insensitive to what we receive. We always want more because someone or the other has more, because comparison has become an unconscious process within ourselves; because we don’t know how to live a fulfilling life with a center within ourselves.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.