Being born in a human body does not guarantee the status of a human being. It is not easy to be human in the real sense of the words ‘to be a human’. A human being stands at the top of the intelligence index and is the only one with something that you call ‘consciousness’, amongst all living beings that you can see on planet Earth.
What kind of ‘manushye’ (human) you develop into depends on multiple factors. Foremost factors being: Your family, the society you are born in and grow up in, your ‘parivesh’ (surroundings) and the culture that you grow up in. The kind of human being you develop into depends on what you learnt since you were born, how you behave, react or respond to your environment and as a result of your actions what you have been giving back to this world. What kind of imprints you created from your actions.
As soon as a child is born, most parents start worrying about this child’s future and what she/he must do for a promising future. Such as, how they should earn more money when they grow up, their kids should have access to medical facilities, security services and they should be capable of surviving well in this world. And so their basic thoughts, regarding their kids, revolve around how to equip their children to survive well on earth. Accordingly, the parents, relatives, kins, and teachers focus on preparing the kids to survive and thrive.
Your Deep Love for Entertainers
On the other hand, the thoughts of each one of you, the original you, deep inside, have a world entirely different from the mere survival-focused plans your people have for you. Each one of you is in love with entertainers. I am not talking about the entertainer on the digital screen. I am talking about the ones who entertain you during the entire span of life on this planet.
You search for worthy entertainers throughout your lives. Take for example, the person you seek in a lover, is the one who can entertain you somehow. And due to this constant need to entertain yourselves throughout your lives, you forget that there is something called ‘Prem’, the true love that the rarest of the rarest have felt. None in your home, your school, your office, your society ever tells you about the sweetness of true love. Because they themselves are completely unaware of Love in its essence.
Talking of entertainment, most of you like to watch news media for example, not just because it tells about what is happening around in the world, but because it is also a source of entertainment for you at a deeper level, along with being the source of knowledge. You like actors-actresses, Hollywood, Bollywood and so on because they entertain you. Your life swings between the need to survive and the need for entertainment. While fulfilling these needs, you
deal with a range of emotions. On top of all this, there are ethics to be followed. You are actually caught in a web of your life. Yet none of you know what you really want out of your life.
You are supposed to trust your father, mother, siblings, uncle, aunts, cousins, relatives, friends and so on. Is it safe to completely rely on them and give direction to the precious life that you’ve got, according to their personal opinions and experiences based on faulty assumptions? I do not imply that they are bad people or untrustworthy people. But it is important to remember that it is not necessarily the best way or the proven way to steer your life completely based on their experiences in life and their opinions about human life. Why? Because like you, even they had and they still have their limitations to grasp the meaning of human life completely.
Circumstances & Surroundings Impact Your Development
Think of the mother of a kid in a remote village. This mother never went out of that village in her entire life. She is telling her kid to be careful about anyone who comes from outside and protect himself from the outsiders. Now this kid understood that whoever comes from outside are all bad people. They will all harm him if he goes near them or allows them to come near him. So don’t go near them at all. On the other hand, think of an educated mother, who lives and is raising her kid(s) in a big city, telling her kid the same thing but in different words. She asks her kid to be watchful of strangers and to be careful. Now this kid understands that she needs to observe and be alert with strangers. There can be people with mal-intentions. So she needs to observe and be watchful. In this case, the kid understands the same thing but at an entirely different level.
Clearly, your circumstances and people around you impact your development. Same advice given in different ways creates entirely different understanding in the kids. The kind of people who surround you and the circumstances you are in, have a significant impact on how you shape your life. Today when you exist in times, where you carry the burden of academics from an early age, you develop the need for entertainment from a young age, you are shown the dreams of making it big in life, be it business, corporate world, on making it big on big screen, becoming the star in life. You are expected to look bold, beautiful in front of everyone and have a competitive advantage in the rat race that has been the norm.
The truth is that you lose actual life in the middle of all these expectations, these dreams of being ahead of others and the urge to keep yourself entertained. The truth is that you can’t learn about everything and everyone that exists in the world. One strong hit on the head against a hard pillar and you can crash, lose it all that you learnt! You can only learn what is necessary to live.
Burden of Memories
Amongst all of this, you experience and you collect many beautiful and some ugly memories. These memories keep piling up and are stored somewhere in your heads while you are completely unaware. Neither do you care about where these memories are actually going, nor do you ever reflect on where all these events that happened in this life have already gone. But some of you can feel that you carry an immense burden deep within your heart. You can’t even express the heaviness that you feel inside. Or rather you don’t get the chance in the race of life to feel it all.
The reality is, that most of you are unaware about your own feelings to the extent that you don’t even know you carry these baggage. In most cases it is easier to give in to a workaholic life, extremely fast paced lifestyle, alcohol, psychedelics, pub-hopping, loud parties and drugs that you rely on to pass the time of life or to what you call as de-stress.
Some of you heighten your ego to the levels that it acts as a drug for you. You carry the air of, ‘Look who I am.’ or ‘I don’t care a hoot about you.’ ‘I am the boss.’ It has a DMT effect on you. Such people think everyone else is below them. They feel as if they don’t care about what anyone else thinks of them either. They are leading an extremely false life in their self-created cocoon of opinions about themselves and about life. They are intoxicated with their own powers, false or real.
Does Happiness Accompany Your Success?
Most of you who have tasted some success in life, or appear successful to others, when you got that coveted job, bought the car that you longed for, have possession of the house/flat that you had eyes on since a long time, have a beautiful or handsome partner by your side, you have enough bank balance, you have assets that make you a rich person, the ones who have earned the material success; yet don’t know what it feels to be happy from within. You are an expert in making faces. You have mastered the art of hiding the ugliness that lurks behind your sophisticated, acquired look. You are cracking from within but your look outside is intact.
It’s like your bones are about to crack under the pressure of the loan(s) that you took from the bank, yet you maintain the air of being the richest person walking around in your circle. It’s like your companies have been in losses for long, are on the verge of bankruptcy, but people know you as the unicorn amongst them. Because you maintain that false position and air of aristocracy around you.
The Truth About Real Success
If you practically study about what I have shared above, if you care to observe and recall from your own experiences in life about the truth that I have shared here, if you make some efforts to see through the life of people around you; you will realise that the value of any kind of success holds only when one is free of baggages from within. You will enjoy every moment in your life, if you let go of the burden that you carry within. For that you will need to understand how those baggage were created in the first place. The Veda, the Purana, the Shastra, Dharm call it ‘Paap’, the sins. Based on the culture you grew up in, you might define sin or ‘Paap’ in different ways. But few things are universal and have been accepted by all cultures regarding sinning that you must find out first. If you understand that, you will know how to let go of the sins of these baggage that you carry with you. That is why Bhagwan Shri Krishna said, ‘’योग: कर्मसु कौशलम्‘ ; that is perform an action in such a way that you do not leave the negative imprints of the same.