SELF CREATED SUFFERING
It was lunch time at the factory and a workman opened his lunch box dolefully. "Oh! No", he said aloud, "Brinjals and Dal again!"
This happened a second, third and fourth day. Then a co-worker who had heard the mutterings of the man said, "If you hate Brinjals and Dal so much, why don't you get your wife to make some other types?"
"Because I am not married. I make the Dal and Brinjals my self."
Does the word "Self-created-miseries" ring a bell? Sri Bhagavan says, "Most of human suffering is only self-created miseries. Life is naturally occurring but you make even a simple incident complex. Once an image forms in your mind that my wife doesn't love me, even an eye movement is enough to drive you into frenzy. Consider the case of a young man who was sacked from his job. He thought of living with his friend whom he had helped out once before. He was happy with these thoughts until he was assailed by another thought that said, "What makes you so sure that he will have you with him?"
"Why wouldn't he", said he heatedly to the thought, "after all it was I who advanced him the money to pay his rent for the first six months, surely the least he could do is put me up for a week." That settled the matter until after dinner, the thought again peeped, "If suppose he refuses..."
"Refuse?" said the young man. "Why in God's name would he refuse? The man owes me everything he has. It is I who got him his job; who introduced him to that lovely wife of his, who has borne him three sons he glories in. Will he grudge me a room for a week? Impossible!"
That settled the matter until he got to bed and found he couldn't sleep. The thought continued to stay, "How the hell could he refuse? If he is alive today it is because of me. I have saved him from drowning when he was a kid. He wouldn't be ungrateful."
But the thought was persistent "Just suppose..." Poor man struggled with in as long as he could. Finally he got out of the bed around two in the morning went over to where his friend lived and kept his finger pressed against the door bell button till the friend, half asleep, opened the door and said in astonishment, "What is it! What brings you here in the middle of the night?" The young man was so angry by now he couldn't stop himself from yelling, "I'll tell you what brings me here at this hour of the night! If you think I am going to ask you to put me up even for a single day, you are mistaken. I don't want to have anything to do with you. To hell with you." With that he turned to his heel and turned away.
See this event in your relationships? Maybe in varying degrees? As long as the mind is alive you cannot but relate to your own mind and its images and hence create suffering for your self.
Sri Bhagavan says, "To be Enlightened is to relate to reality and not to your interpretation of reality."
Unless you are rod of your mind, your life would be repetition of the above-mentioned incident.
Through the ‘Mukthi Deekshas' of Sri Bhagavan, for the first time, you relate to life or reality as it is.
