Living on the Edge

 

Photo Credit:The Global Yeshiva

Living on the Edge

It can be said that the person living on the edge or circumference of life is a person without a soul. We live on the circumference and we have lived on the circumference for so many lives that we have become completely oblivious even of the fact that a center exists. Meditation is an inner journey. It is moving from the edge, from the circumference to our own center.

A person living on the circumference is one without a soul, without roots, is a person who remains a victim of accidents. Such a person’s life is at the mercy of a thousand and one accidental causes; his/her life has no intrinsic value. They are just like driftwood — they don’t know where they are going, they don’t know from where they are coming, they don’t know where they are.

There is a story of a great politician who lost his way while driving – he had gone for a pleasure drive. He asked an old man who was sitting under a tree, “What is the way to the capital?” The old man replied, “I don’t know.” Then he asked where does this road go? And the old man again said he did not know.

The politician became very angry and said, “How come you don’t know anything at all? You must be some kind of an idiot or what?” The old man laughed and said, “But I am not lost! I know where I am and you don’t even know that! So, who is an idiot?”

How many people actually know where they are or who they are? It is very rare to find such a person. People are definitely somewhere or the other, but they are there in a state of absolute sleep – they go on about their life just as zombies. When we become sadhaks, it means we are making a deliberate effort to become conscious. That’s what meditation is all about – a great attempt to create the fire of awareness within us. It is there; it has just to be discovered, helped, nourished, nurtured. The center is there.

This is where a living Guru comes into our life and helps us find our center, creates that awareness within us – we are not zombies, but people whose divinity has been awakened, soul consciousness has taken primacy.

Once we have found it, we are centered, we are rooted. Suddenly we have a soul, we know where we are, and we know who we are. And that is the greatest moment in a person’s life. There is nothing else greater than that — to know “Who am I?” With that, the doors of the ultimate mystery open up. Then God becomes available in all its splendour and beauty. Then life is no longer a drag, it becomes a dance! Then life is no longer momentary, it becomes eternity. Then there is no death.

Then we live beyond time and space, and that is true life. Jesus called it life in abundance, overflowing life, life in spring, in a state of celebration. And that’s the whole learning - how to make our life a celebration.