Words from the Master

A small story:

One man went to the market to buy vegetables for his wife.
He bought ladies’ fingers, came home and showed it to his wife.
The wife saw the ladies’ fingers and said, “Oh! These are so over grown. I will not be able to cook them.”

The man went the next day and bought some more ladies’ fingers, choosing carefully this time, and came home and showed them to this wife.
The wife said, “What have you bought? They are too tender to make the dish I had in mind.”

The next day, the man went to the market, prayed to the shopkeeper and said, “Please give me some good ladies’ fingers that are neither too ripe nor too tender.”
The shopkeeper picked the best ladies’ fingers himself and the man took them home and showed them to his wife.
The wife saw them and said, “What? You’ve bought ladies’ finger today also!”

(Loud laughter!)

Appreciation never comes spontaneously for many of us. When we cannot appreciate spontaneously, it means that we are having a complaining or discontented nature in us. Actually, discontentment is food for our mind.

To be discontented is like giving some food for the mind to chew. The mind will feed on it and keep itself busy. What happens when we feel too contented? The mind becomes starved. It doesn’t know what to do. It starts searching for its food!

One lady went to a shoe store.
She asked for shoes to fit her feet and the salesman patiently showed her many pairs of shoes.
She tried on one after another and felt that none of them fitted her perfectly.
Finally, the salesman showed her one pair and asked her to try them on.
She tried them on and said, “It fits too well, I wonder if this is the right size.”

(Laughter!)

When you are determined not to feel contented, then no one can help you. It is a state of your mind, which only you can help. Most of us feel a certain comfort zone in talking and feeling discontented, because there is always something to talk about; the mind is occupied all the time.

To feel contented always is like losing the mind. This is also why, although we claim that we want to feel contented always, we are not ready when it happens. Our mind plays cunningly because it needs something to chew on.

We feel secure when we run behind the horizon. The horizon is only an imaginary line, but we feel secure running behind it because there is something to run behind! The mind has been trained to run always!

When you are like this, you are actually fooling yourself, that’s all. You are creating self-contradictory results for yourself. For example, you want to feel contented at the bottom of your heart, but you keep deluding yourself of contentment by constantly complaining and refusing to see what has been given to you! You want something but bring upon something else on yourself. And you feel comfortable in keeping on trying to achieve contentment as a lifelong process!

Understand one thing: The moment you create self-contradictory results for yourself, your misery starts. Try to be clear on how you would like your life to be and direct every ounce of energy towards making it that way. When you function with this clarity, you will never delude yourself and you will see that you soon become what you want to be!

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