In last post, I
wrote about existence of something beyond our physical and tangible, carbon
life-form based reality. And no, I didn’t discover this profound truth. It has
always been known to us – through scriptures, the word of God, the wisdom of
the super races. It’s been called by many names – atma, soul, cosmic consciousness, the Unmanifested, God, Universe,
and probably others that I haven’t discovered yet.
I also mentioned
that I believe that we are all here because we signed up to experience this
soap opera with the goal to ‘learn’ something in the process. Why do we need to
learn anything at all? Why we couldn’t have already been made as a completely
sorted entity? These are for a discussion at some other date and time. That
question seriously confounds me. It is one of those things that must only be
debated, without any hope whatsoever of coming to a conclusion. You are a soul.
You are here in this Virtual Reality classroom. You enrolled here. And…You must learn something. Deal with it,
already!!
How do we learn
that elusive something? We learn through the life situations thrown our way,
but not just any random, usual, run-of-the-mill event – we learn through
challenges. What, pray, is a challenge? Challenge is something that impacts the
mind, the heart and the soul. Hundreds of people may cross our path during one
lifetime (one instance of Virtual Reality…lol, am getting hooked on to this
reference), but a handful few will leave a mark. Thousands of events will
transpire over the decades of our living years and in the lives of people
around us – and for most of these events we will be no more than silent
spectators. Only few dozens would really shake us up. Going beyond, millions of
events take place every microsecond around the world that we don’t even know
about, but one or two of these during our lifetimes (like an Earthquake or a
war) would actually touch us personally. Mass events would be few, but may make
a major difference in how we were.
These special
people, and these so called freak events – the ones that really impact us – to
the core, are the challenges, the tests given to the souls – to impart some learning.
I had read somewhere, probably a Buddhist saying, that in the classroom of life
tests come first, and teaching comes later. So true!
Birth, Death, finding
Friends, losing them, falling in Love, heartbreaks, Success, Failure,
Achievements and Accidents, finding of hidden strengths, soul connections - are
some of the ‘challenges’ that are specially designed for our benefit, and we
know they are important somehow – because they impact us somewhere deep inside
– in places we didn’t even know existed. It’s usually like an activation of a
part of us that was dormant till now, until this test triggered it and made it
alive. The events that trigger an intense feelings of being happy, elated, joy,
unconditional love, sadness, hurt or anger are the signs of a real test – that
tells us that something is different than usual status quo. Even restlessness,
without reason, means something needs to be filtered and heard through the din
of our existential noises.
There are tiny
surprise tests that would only gauge your grasp on the particular learning.
There could be more involved tests that will nudge your core, but just to see
how strong you really are. And then there would be full-blown,
lightening-from-the-sky, soul-shattering tests – that actually shake the
bejesus out of you. These last ones are the ones that induce transformation,
supposedly help you move up a soul-class (if you learn and pass the test) and
bring you closer to salvation.
If you fail
these tests, well guess what – the test would just repeat all over again. No
fun that!
It is all a big ‘mayajal’ – the Matrix – the web of
illusions, if you will – where we are thrown curve balls every now and
then, and we gotta figure out the right technique and our play strategy to
strike back. And that’s great, because sooner or later each one of us, each
soul, figures it out. We don’t really have a choice – do we? Because this
intelligent Matrix will keep on sending us the same situations – until we crack
the code and pick the right option.
But, you ask,
how do we know what is the right path?
Good question!!
Apparently, that’s
where our inner voice comes into play. But it is so damn tiny, almost a
whisper, that lot of pre-work needs to be done before we can hear it. To make
our challenge little more interesting, this whisper is whispered in some other
language. So it’s not only about learning the ‘art of silence’ to hear it.
Upon finally hearing it, we must decrypt and understand it too. Almost makes you want to raise your hands, and give up, doesn't it?
There is good
news, however.
Once we connect
with our inner self – really connect, only first few times are tough.
Invariably, we would figure out a way to go inwards quickly, and invariably, we
learn the language. And then, going through the tests, the curve balls, is a piece of cake!!
Details on this... in a few days! :)