Sometimes, when an old miser dies, at the funeral people wonder: “How much did he leave?” And I smile, because I always know exactly how much he left … well, he left it ALL!
Aren’t we born naked, and that’s how we’re also leaving? Like everyone, he also left naked, (and in his case) consumed by the anxiety to accumulate, and by his-now-useless struggles to have always more; perhaps his last thought was about ‘his’ things, and not about his Creator … Oh what suffering he would have – if after death his spirit could linger to see what happens – and how others will use his beloved ‘things’, wasting money and properties born from a lifetime of greed. And how would that being suffer in the impossible attempt to take care of them without being able to do anything?
What a great mystery how, even with loved ones and strangers who die near us leaving everything, we humans – the most intelligent and evolved among all – continue to be attached to things and people, and sacrifice ourselves to get and keep them, things that remain to remember a distant past, a lifestyle of non-living … And what more of those who lie, steal and kill to have more and more things?
Desire, our most dangerous enemy, binds us; and when we satisfy it, we cling to its fruits; and those fruits fatten our ego, and we always identify more with what we have; and suddenly, sometimes without realizing it, we ‘become’ our things, our things … pure matter we call “ours” – which can never be ‘ours’ and also makes us crude like her!
Because everything comes from Him, in this universe nothing is bad; Mother nature and everything else, seen and taken in a correct and detached way, can help us to ‘understand’ the Essence; everything can make our lives happy: a child, a couple, some old and comfortable shoes, sharing with real friends … The problem arises only when we get attached to such things and people, and when ‘it seems’ that we can no longer live without them, thinking that they are ‘ours’ and that they will be with us ‘forever’.
… AND I KNOW, in the sweetest and deepest part of my Being, that each of us comes, lives as passing through, uses everything and goes, leaving forever what he has created, touched and used… that nothing is his but it is borrowed for a while, and it will stop at some point, maybe very soon.
Look at and enjoy your loved ones and things, but NOT as if they were ‘yours’, but as companions on the Path. In this universe, nothing is ‘yours’, nor your body, because whoever created it and gave it to you, can take it when and however He wants… and without asking permission.
You rarely think that other things and people, just like you, arrive, exist for some time, using and being used, and return to the Source, cleaning and getting dirty again and again, slowly evolving, without even being aware of that almost infinite and painful returning.
One day, when you are ready, you begin to feel more and more something like a discomfort, like a desire for ‘something’ that no material wealth, worldly success, or popularity can satisfy…
For the first time in your life you are feeling the Attraction of the Great. Questions obsess you – Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do I go? Why do I exist? Is there a Cosmic Entity and, if there is one, how can I approach it? – and so you start the Path to ‘understand’…
When will we understand that we are Divine Beings living a human experience, and not just human beings who are looking for the Divine? When will we understand that, although still in the dark, we want to ‘Go Home’?
… Live in the present! Every moment we look at the present it is yet past; life happens, but life is NOW, at this moment, and there is nothing more than the ‘now’. Do not cling to things and people! Each attachment is a chain and a thorn in the future, an obstacle that without fail one day you must break or eliminate.
Why wait for a distant future – which may never happen – and continue useless suffering?
Why not start now?
…Think about it,
You are still in time … Now …
About The Author: Dada Japamantra
Motivator, meditation teacher, humanitarian leader, mentor and spiritual advisor. I focus my activities and existence on the motto “Self-realization and Service to Humanity.” As a monk and missionary, I dedicate myself entirely to the mission of helping people develop their inner potential Infinity and contribute to universal well-being.
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