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.
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