Reversals teach you lessons!

Posted by dinesh

When we get hit hard in many directions repeatedly for long enough period, we tend to always see no hope or way out due to the usual trend of going deep down. But there are times when things change and neither situation is permanent so why worry?

It's dualities, so things will change and alternate between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, kind and mean, friends and enemies, good health and disease, winter and summer, wealthy and poor, sane and insane and so on which is an endless list. How long we Identify ourselves with the situations and the dualities depends on how much we realize when we go through these extremes and one day we will understand that we have nothing to do here with what's happening in this world but to look internally and be self satisfied.

"O best among men [Arjuna], the person who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both is certainly eligible for liberation.

The difficulties usually arise from having to sever family relationships, to give up the connection of wife and children. But if anyone is able to tolerate such difficulties, surely his path to spiritual realization is complete. Similarly, in Arjuna's discharge of duties as a kṣatriya, he is advised to persevere, even if it is difficult to fight with his family members or similarly beloved persons. Lord Caitanya took sannyāsa at the age of twenty-four, and His dependents, young wife as well as old mother, had no one else to look after them. Yet for a higher cause He took sannyāsaand was steady in the discharge of higher duties. That is the way of achieving liberation from material bondage."

-Bhagavad Gita 2.15

"O son of Kuntī, the nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed."

- Bhagavad Gita 2.14