An old man says he complained only once in all his life – when his feet were bare and he had no money to buy shoes.
Then he saw a happy man who had no feet. And he never complained again.
Know Yourself
In two sentences the old man told us everything. We are not able to acknowledge and appreciate what we have. We always focus on what we don’t have. Our life is revolving around what we don’t have. Instead of what we have.
We never look at the root cause of our misery and complain. As we are not looking at ourselves. We are having treasure within ourselves.
Look into your own life when you have trusted yourself and made any decision how much calmness you found within yourself. When your decision is taken by others or focus on others how stressful you are.
Take the example of the old man. He also realizes by looking at others but then what is the difference. When we look at others we look from what we don’t have so we create stress and misery we create. We are responsible for our circumstances. If you become conscious in the same circumstances you will come out of the vicious circle, like old man – Complain. He would not have realized then his rest of the life he would have spent on complaining only. But because he realized while complaining he came out.
Any time in life if you want to experience the silence, it is always in the marketplace. It is not during a few minutes of meditation. If you can become conscious of yourself and be total in your action realization will happen to you. Noone can teach you but you will learn. Like old man not only you will learn but you will drop all your complaints.
Become more aware of yourself and you will find that joy is following you, you will not run after the happiness or joy. You will be surprised with the awareness of the self you will get whatever your requirements are. As your focus will change from problem to solution. This doesn’t mean that with self awareness you will not take any action. You will be taking action but which is not associated with any complaint but with gratitude.
Remember this – Problem cannot find a solution but if you focus on your resources you will be able to find a solution. So always try to focus on your resources. When your focus is on your resources you will feel calmness and enthusiasm from within. You will find that the treasure is within you. Suddenly you will find change in you. This change no one can give you. You need to earn it. It will give you Dignity.
Learning from the story Complaint: Know Yourself
Experience Learning
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Making Wisdom Your Most Important Goal
Waking up is a metaphor for the conscious life, and the conscious life is what wisdom leads to. Every day we are driven by unconscious impulses and desires, and unexamined processes go on beneath the surface of the mind that lead to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, self-destructive behavior, and every kind of pointless discord, from household tensions to war.
In that sense, wisdom has a definite purpose, but escaping the ills and woes of the unconscious life is secondary to the main purpose of waking up, which is to know who we really are. The answer can be formulated in a few words: humans are a species of consciousness whose special trait is self-awareness. Being self-aware, we have the capacity to access the very source of awareness.
We are a species of consciousness whose great pitfall isn’t evil but “mind-forg’d manacles,” to borrow a phrase from the poet William Blake. We make up mental constructs, invent stories around them, and tell the next generation that these stories are true. One story says that women are inferior, a complex tale that gave rise to a thousand injustices and false beliefs. Us-versus-them thinking leads to stories about racism and nationalism that caused their own barbarous results.
Waking up allows us to escape all stories and to live free of self-limiting mental constructs. The real question is whether it can be done. Can you and I wake up? If so, how do we go about it? Are there awakened teachers who can provide examples of what it means to live the conscious life? This is exactly where wisdom enters the picture. Without living examples of awakened individuals, the whole enterprise would be trapped in a limbo of fantasy and wishful thinking. But when a society values wisdom, it turns out that the awakened exist among us and always have.
Anyone who wants to wake up is fortunate to be alive now, because despite our global problems, irrational behavior, and self-destructive denial, modern society is open to ready communication about every topic, including the exploration of higher consciousness. Where prior generations had little grasp of higher consciousness beyond the precepts of religion, millions of people today can walk their own path to self-awareness, choosing to include God, the soul, organized religion, and scriptures as they see fit, or to avoid them. Even “spirituality” is a term you can adopt or ignore—the real purpose of waking up is about consciousness.
We have always had the potential to be wise by using self-awareness to explore who we really are. A society driven by consumerism, celebrity worship, video games and social media gossip, and indifference to massive social problems feels like it could never find wisdom, or even the first impulse to wake up. But I’d argue that we are the most fortunate society to wake up in, simply because higher consciousness is open to anyone. I count this as the greatest opportunity facing us, to see that waking up is possible and to hasten toward it as quickly as we can.
Tags: Honesty And Transparency Know Yourself Living Your Truth The Privilege
