Why Me

Why me; now that's a good question.

       How many times do we have to ask this question? Life is so full of wonderful things and yet how often do we find that we simply cannot cope with adverse circumstances? We all know the feeling. There has to be a reason for our difficulties, and the reality is that we are not acting in our own best interests.

How could this be possible.

       The reality that we perceive is a reality that we have learned. Since the days of our early childhood we have been amassing information about our environment, which, of course, includes the people and beings that populate that environment. And that "reality" is learned from our forebears who learned it the same way. We are taught that to enjoy the pleasures of our senses is the purpose of our life, and/or to make life pleasurable for others, whether they be our countrymen, or political group, our friends or, our family members. But what if none of this were completely true? Then, despite our moments of fleeting happiness or contentment, wouldn't our lives be invaded with irritations and frustrations, tensions, dissapointments, and other less than acceptable events. Wouldn't we live in a world where, due to a struggle for the appropriation of resources that are insufficient for everyone to enjoy, war and other conflict would be a constant, ubiquitous threat?

But that's exactly how things are.

       Precisely! And there's a very good reason for this. We are acting for the benefit of our body and for the benefit of our bodily relationships, but we are not our bodies. Let me ask you this: what part of your body is you? If I cut off your arm, are you still you? Yes, you are still you; minus an arm, but still you. The same with a leg, lung, eye, ear; it's you with a different body, just as you were still you when you had a younger body. You were still you two or three or twenty years ago when your body was different.

We are stardust,
we are golden
and we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden.

       You cannot be nothing, no matter what anyone may tell you. You are a spirit soul. A particle of the same pure, conscious essence that constitutes everyone. So trying to please the body will make pleasure for the body, but activities for pleasing the soul will bring pleasure to you, the spirit. This is essential if we are to achieve lasting happiness, otherwise we are just dependent upon whether the body is enjoying, to feel comfortable and at ease with our environment. This is why happiness is not constant ... this is why we are beset with adverse circumstances, with conflicts, and with anxiety about future difficulties and suffering. Indeed, at times, our distress can become so intense as to make life nothing short of impossible. We look after the body; but we need food for the soul.

The Eternal Infinite.

       So what we are requiring is to get in touch with the eternal component of our existence. Eternality is nothing unusual. Think about it; you experience the transformation of energy but never experience anything totally new. The fact is that nothing is brand new ... it has always existed, and always will. You will always exist. You can get new bodies, but you, the spirit being, inhabitant of those bodies, is eternal. We need to cater to the happiness of that eternal being.

Acknowledgement: We are stardust, we are golden... lyrics from the song "Woodstock" by Crosby Stills and Nash