Be Happy! Be Bright! But Be A Little More Youer than You!

“When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.” ― William Shakespeare

Some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper on wrapping a box. He was jobless and out of money and didn’t want any waste. He became further infuriated when he saw the little girl placing the box under the Christmas tree, but he remained silent.

The following day, the little girl with a bright smile approached her father and said, “This is for you, Daddy.”

The man felt ashamed of himself for his behaviour last night, but his rage continued when he saw the empty box. He yelled at her, “Don’t you know, when you give someone a present, there is supposed to be something inside?”

The little girl looked up at him, full of tears in her eye and cried. Sobbing, she said, “Oh, Daddy, it’s not empty. I blew kisses into the box. They’re all for you, Daddy.”

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl and begged her forgiveness.

Within a month, the man got a well-paying job and financial security but sadly lost his daughter in an accident. After her death, the father kept the gold box always as a beacon of Hope by his bed till he died. Whenever he felt discouraged, he would take out a kiss of his daughter and remember the love of the child who had put it there. For he had understood that love was the only thing that mattered. If lost, rest nothing was precious enough!

“You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.” ― John Green

But one need not lose love to gain the light. Light assumes that its voyage is fastest, only to be proven wrong - for no matter how fast it travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first and is waiting for it. That’s the proper temperament of nature; all things in it are dark except where exposed by light or Hope!

Hope is the most potent Samurai of light, slicing the deepest, the darkest and the deadliest demons feeding on our insecurities. Hope is the alter-ego of faith that challenges you to run face-first, full-speed into the dark labyrinth of lost desires knowing that there are many more dark places in it. Probably, there is no secret in it. It is when you know what you hope for and has an unwavering belief in it—clutching it with all your heart like the light within you. You can make things ensue - Let a story unfold almost like an accurate fairy tale!

You can spread the light in two ways. One becomes the source radiating it or the mirror reflecting it. And remember, more often than not, your dark wound is going to be the place from where the light would enter you. Sounds Delirious? Chronically Optimistic? Not at All.

Some of history’s greatest philosophers understood this, and anybody seeking inner peace must realise, too: pain is not a kind of retribution. It is a tool to heighten and broaden consciousness, just like everything else. Put another way: to help you be more in the moment and more able to sense the happiness, brightness, and blessing of that particular moment. When you’re in the middle of it, this certainly seems deliriously, annoyingly hopeful, but remember that rage is the unwillingness to recognise and accept.

Do you think of your wounds as something the world has inflicted upon you? No, you are wrong! Look closely – The injury itself is whispering something in your ears. Hush...Heyy! I am not the source of your pain! It tells you that the pain is not from the cut! It is from the same wall that you are pressed against so hard. The wall that separates who you are today and what you could be! It is a privilege to feel discomfort, a gift to be gutted – For what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! So, the wound is not that bad because darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good! We can only survive if we continue to develop. Change is the only way we can advance. We can only change if we get new knowledge. We can only learn if we are exposed to anything. And the only way we may be discovered is by exposing ourselves to the public. Do it; fling yourself.

We tend to view pain as something bestowed upon us due to bad luck or a cruel universe, yet pain is a warning sign. You are slamming against a barrier that stands in the way of where you are and where you want to go. Through contrast, we may comprehend and experience lightness. Being gutted is a gift, and feeling uncomfortable is a privilege. Growth is the only path and the sole goal in this situation. We all go ahead in the end, whether we choose to avoid it, ignore it, hide from it, be unconscious of it, embrace it, see it, want it, and get there on our own. We all grow. The action obstacle advances action. What is in the way eventually finds a way.

The most beautiful people we have ever met are those who have experienced failure, pain, grief, and struggle yet have managed to climb out of the pit. These people are filled with compassion, tenderness, and profound loving care because of their appreciation, sensitivity, and comprehension of life. Beautiful people don’t just appear. To learn two truths—that we are not who we thought we were and that the loss of a beloved pleasure is not always a loss of true happiness and well-being—we occasionally have to go through struggles, breakups, and narcissistic wounds that shatter the positive image that we had of ourselves.

How could we sense joy if there was no pain? - This is a well-worn argument in contemplating pain. One might debate its naiveté and lack of sophistication for ages, but suffice it to state that the presence of broccoli has no bearing whatsoever on the flavour of chocolate. We do not suffer pain accidentally. An intelligent and compassionate person will constantly experience pain and sorrow. The strongest souls have also arisen through pain, and the wounds on the most prominent personalities are searing. I’ve learned to grasp what your heart used to be through suffering, which has been a more potent teacher than any other lesson. I’ve been twisted and broken, hopefully in a better way. We don’t continually develop chronologically. Sometimes, we develop unevenly, in one dimension but not the other. We grow in stages. We are all compared. In certain areas, we are adults; in others, we are children. The past, present, and future are intertwined and exert a pulling, a pushing, or a fixing force on us. We are layers, cells, and constellations put together.

Our goal is now a new way of seeing rather than a specific location. I implore you to love the questions themselves as if they were locked chambers or books written in a very foreign language and to have patience with all that is unanswered in your heart. Because you wouldn’t be able to live them, don’t look for solutions that can’t be delivered to you right now. And living everything is the aim. Ask the questions right now. Then, perhaps, someday in the far future, you will unconsciously live your way into the solution.

People have been attempting to alter the world from the dawn of time so that they can be happy. Because it addresses the problem backwards, this has never succeeded. The Work shows us how to alter the projector—the mind—instead of the displayed. It is comparable to when there is lint on our spectacles. When we see a problem, we try to fix it on the next person the flaw occurs on, changing this person and that person in the process. However, attempting to alter the projected pictures is pointless. We may clean the lens itself once we locate the lint. Finding the lint marks the end of pain and the start of a brief period of delight in paradise.

Immense sorrow is often necessary to puncture the soul and allow it to be pierced by grandeur. Glory comes after suffering, not in the same way that day comes after night, but in the same way, that spring comes after winter. Just as the winter prepares the ground for spring, so do sufferings that are sanctified; prepare the soul for glory. In most cases, breakdowns lead to breakthroughs. You just haven’t seen the other viewpoint yet. I believe that the purpose of suffering is to alert me that my perception is flawed and that by assessing natural occurrences in this way, I am inadvertently causing pain for myself. For instance, you may experience discomfort due to specific circumstances or conditions. You won’t experience suffering if you declare, “Okay, here I am; I’m going to face the agony.” There is extreme suffering due to resistance to the inherent phenomena of existence, regardless of how much resistance there is.

No suffering or difficulty we go through is in vain. It supports our education and the growth of character traits like perseverance, faith, fortitude, and humility. Through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, we acquire the education that we come to this world to receive, making us more like our Father and Mother in heaven. All that we endure, especially when we do so patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, worthy of being called the children of God.

In India, there is a long-standing tribal saying. It claims that we must cry to clear the path before we can see. Greater empathy, or the ability to understand what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the foundation for unconditional love and compassion, results from embracing pain. Forgiveness is the only way to escape the maze of pain. Suffering and pain are not the same things. When left to its own devices, the body releases pain naturally as soon as the underlying cause is treated. We cling to pain while we are suffering. It stems from the mind’s enigmatic propensity to think that suffering is beneficial, that it cannot be avoided, or that the individual deserves it.

Although you might not have landed where you expected, it’s possible that you landed where you were required! Therefore, when you light a “Diya” this Diwali, and you feel that it’s challenging to be a brilliant light in a dark world, tell yourself that at least you will remain standing for all that you are worth and continue to radiate to people around you - The eternal sunshine of your spotless mind!

I?want?this?Festival?of?Light?to?begin?with?you?becoming?the?light!

I wish you the most beautiful, memorable, eventful, extraordinary and indelible Diwali of your life in advance! And if you think it is foolhardy of me to expect this from you, then let me offer a suggestion. Reread my complete message and reflect deeply. Find out if you are the?‘Homo economicus’?father of the story we began with or something so very different, though yet not discovered!

Happy Diwali Once Again!

PS: Time is frozen in dreams. You can never wholly escape your past. So rather than waiting for the light to show up at the end of the tunnel, get down there and set the whole damned thing on fire!

“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.” ― Sigmund Freud