Spiritual Solace in Sad Moments

Golu, (Naynesh), my God Grandson

Human life is made up of sad and happy moments, some very sad moments, and brief or prolonged periods of sorrow or difficulties as well as prolonged periods of happiness. Yesterday on TV one of the principal characters of a program I watch mentioned that an evolved human is one who can face both sorrow and happiness calmly with equanimity, since these are inevitable portions of life. I completely agree with this view and feel that the Universal Intelligence makes humans face sorrow for precisely such evolution.

One of the things that has made me face sorrow and difficulties in life with calm is the belief in an afterlife – the belief in reincarnation. I know that many do not believe in a soul or reincarnation but I believe that when one firmly accepts reincarnation as a fact, then sorrows and difficulties of life become less serious, even trivial at times.

Perhaps all of us would have experienced an unpleasant dream in which something awful happens. We wake up and feel relieved that it was just a dream. Some such thing happens to a human soul that is facing an awful time in this life but on departing from it feels relieved that it was just like a prolonged dream that is over and that the soul must move on to a new life. On the other hand, when we wake up from a pleasant dream the happiness may persist for some time into the waking hours. Some such thing must happen to a soul that leaves this body in a happy state. It is likely to continue into new happy lives. Our future lives are drawn from our past.

A very rich person however, such as some of the richest persons on our planet may feel sorry on leaving this body because of the realization that they can no longer access the riches that have been left behind. It is therefore good to be rich enough so that one’s essential needs can be met with ease but not so rich that one does not have time enough to use those riches for producing happiness in the limited time that is available to humans before they move on to a new dream, a new life. Those who are poor do not realize that the richest persons in the world are such that if they set about to withdraw all their money in cash from banks and attempted to set fire to that cash, their lifetimes would not be enough for them to complete that task. This could even become a criterion for the limit to the wealth of an individual in a new world order. No human should be permitted to acquire more than he or she can burn in his or her lifetime.

Looking back at one's life one can draw joy and satisfaction from moments and periods of happiness. I also draw contentment from moments of difficulties and sorrow because those were periods of learning that produced most maturity, but only after the sorrow has long gone by and is lost in the mists of time. It was definitely not pleasant while it lasted. This makes one realize that it is important to continue learning about life even in happy times. As mentioned in an earlier post, a highly respected saint of India – Kabir – even went on to suggest that a human would not face sorrow if he remembered God in times of happiness.

During my younger days, moments of happiness were found in the bustling metropolises of this world. However during childhood and now that I am older such happiness is found in communion with nature – trees, forests, green fields, fresh water lakes, streams and green mountains. I feel that Nature provides the same sense of warmth and security to an older person as a mother provides a feeling of warmth and security to an infant, because Mother earth is the mother of all life on the planet.. Our planet is a beautiful one with vast tracts of green spaces. It also has harsh areas such as deserts, frozen spaces and arid grounds. At the present moment in the history of mankind it seems that human population has become far more than desirable. I feel it is so because in the ideal case it should have been possible for all humans to live in the green and pleasant parts of the planet, reserving the deserts etc. for small settlements for the purpose of mining or research. However that is not quite feasible at the present time. Large sections of humans are compelled to live in arid or inhumanly cold and frozen parts of the planet. It may take many centuries now for the population of humans to decline to a much lower level. Nature alone knows how and when that will happen, or perhaps it will all come to pass very soon as described in another post in this blog here:
http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2014/08/will-world-end-in-2050.html.

Photo is of Golu, my adopted grandson