You know, human life is from the very start a struggle. From the very beginning the baby comes out from the womb, enters into the cold air and cries. And what happens then? Also they get slapped! That is how the life starts and the baby struggles to grow. He cannot talk. He cannot say anything. All he can do is cry. All she can do is cry and hope the mother understands what cry means and will respond sympathetically and get what the baby needs. So you enter into this world helpless, dependent completely on others and if those others do not take care of you, you will die. So your very survival from the very start is in a threatened position and you want to secure your survival and you can’t even talk. All you can do is cry.
So tears are the first means of your communication. This is the beginning of human life and then the child struggles to achieve even the smallest steps forward to learn to say a few words to walk to do a few things there must be the struggle to advance and so from the very beginning of life there is this struggle to survive, to live in the world and to advance yourself. And so you go on through the life ever trying to achieve, accomplish and advance yourself struggling against the odds in the world and all the obstacles that the world provides for you and wondering what is this life? It is so difficult sometimes.
Even though you may appear very happy on the outside to others as if your life is going so smoothly, you may even be one of those people that everyone else looks at and says, “Look! If only my life were like his or hers.” And you certainly have your moments of joy but you also have this struggle and though you may keep your struggle well hidden from others, it is there. The pain, the struggle to resolve the pain within, the struggle to find true happiness, the struggle to understand the meaning of your life and to find your place in the world, to have the harmony you want in life. And all of that struggle is against the background of time and so the body grows, achieves adulthood, reaches the epitome of its expressiveness and then begins to decline.
And all that you have held on to in the life slowly falls through the fingers like the fine grain falls through the hand and you discover that there is very little to be held on to. You attach yourself to this person or that, to this situation or that and you feel only if this then I will be all right but eventually as the sands of time fall away all circumstances change and all that appeared permanent and lasting changes and fades from you. This is the nature of human life. The yogis of ancient times realizing this struggle in human life and the difficulty to sustain any achievements towards happiness and well being that have been accomplished because eventually they all are lost, what to do? The body ages. The mind ages and eventually even the life is gone and in the end before the death, most people become helpless, isn’t it? Unless the death is very sudden. You return to the state of the babe, helpless and then the body passes from you.
So all that you hold to the life, all that you achieve is unsustainable so the ancient yogis seeing this dilemma of human life ask themselves, what is sustainable in human life? What in this struggle of human life can be accomplished that will not fade with the sense of time, that will not become a loss, a sorrow, a grief? And looking deeply, they began to realize there is only one shelter, only one truth that is not diverted with the change of time, the change of body, the struggles and trials and tribulations of life. There is only one that remains constant and even when the death comes, remains the same. And that is the immortal Self, the larger Self of yourself, the Atman.
Your soul, your spirit remains through thick and thin in joy and in sorrow, in achievement and in grievous loss. Who accompanies you at all times? That infinite cosmic entity, that infinite self-aware being, your own true Self, not your ego, body-identified self. Your true Self is your very best friend, your mother, your father divine. That one is there at your birth, is with you through everything that occurs through all of your joys and achievements, through all of your pains and woes and when you take your last breath in the body, that one remains with you and walks you through the tunnel of change and transition to the deeper realms. That Self of yourself is not the person you identify with that you put various identities around and think of as yourself when you think of your body. That is the outer shell, of circumstance, of the story of your life, of your identity.
But within this outer shell of your individual self lies the innermost Self, self-aware being, lies your divine Self, your divine Mother, your divine Father, your [?], your best of friends, your Lord, your deepest Beloved and that deepest Beloved is the deep Self of your being, your Soul. That infinite Self, that knows all that is, is conscious, awake in all that is and is the witness of your individual Self, is the witness of that little person you call you and think of as the person who lives in that body and has so many struggles and so much joys, that Self, divine Mother, divine Father is your closest companion, closer than closer. That one is the Self of yourself.
So wherever you go, whatever you do, that one is there and in your deepest suffering and your deepest sorrows, when the pain within diminishes the ego sometimes at the point of exhaustion there is surrender and that divine one becomes visible. Sometimes in the greatest joy in a moment in nature when you have forgotten everything else in the beauty of a sunset, that one becomes visible. Sometimes in the eyes of someone you love when you stare into their eyes and you are lost, that Self becomes visible, that most Beloved and sometimes when you sit in stillness of sadhana, of meditation, the mind becomes quiet, calm, and the love in the heart arises, then that one becomes visible and the bliss of the knowledge of your true companion, of your true Beloved heals all else.
The love you seek, the love you find in everyone you have loved is your Beloved, that one and when knowledge of the nature of your Beloved of the true Self of yourself comes into view, you realize that you were never alone, that every being, that all creation is composed of that one true Self, that the Atman is the same as the Paramatman, the supreme Self of all, the divine Purusha, divine consciousness and there is nothing.
And when this knowledge sinks deeply within the struggles, the need, the grasping and fear of loss begin to fade because the realization comes that nothing is ever lost and nothing is ever gained, that the infinite, that most Beloved Self of yourself surrounds you.
He is within you and is around you. He is in every person you meet, every being, in the leaves and the trees, the sun and the sky, the earth. He sings with the morning songs of the birds and rises with the sun. And he is in the infinite creation, the stars in the heavens. Knowledge of the true Self is the only sustainable happiness in human existence. For nothing else is a constant that spans time and space. Nothing else, no one else will follow you to the other realms beyond this body.
So learn to know that Beloved. Learn to feel that one and you will unlock the key to lasting true happiness.