Why do we cry, all our life?

When I see the birds, a question naturally comes to my mind. They do not possess anything. Neither do they have any home nor any store room to keep the food for the next day. How are they sure of getting the food the next day. How do they sleep without worrying about the food for the next day? 

When we are born, we also do not worry about the future. Even a child with a congenital disease laughs freely. He is not bothered about the future. However, as we grow, our mind is always full of the worries about future which hardly leaves any space to be in the present moment. Why do human beings not live in the present moment?

It all depends on the way we identify ourselves. Hanumana always identified himself as the "sevak of Rama". He did not identify with anything else. His life was so simple and yet so fulfilling. We identify ourselves with this body, thoughts, and material accumulation. All these are temporary. Sometimes we identify ourselves with our clothes, at other times with our thoughts, and almost all times with the body. All these are with us only for a limited period of time.

If we analyze, all our problems will be related to these three. We may feel that we run short of money, or we need a better home or a better car. Sometimes, we may feel insecure about an uncertain future or may feel the need for good relations, may feel the need for social approval, name, fame, or power, or may feel the need to accumulate more knowledge. Sometimes, we may be afraid of death. All these needs pertain to the fields of body, mind, or matter. All these, by very nature, are always insatiable. The more we accumulate these the more we feel deficient.

If we observe carefully, we will realize that we are not the body, mind, or matter. We are away from all three. Our existence is not going to finish with death. We do not change with the change of thoughts. We have remained the same from a baby to this age, despite a sea change in our minds and thoughts. We do not change with the matter we accumulate. Out of ignorance, we start identifying with the body, mind, and matter and then keep cribbing throughout our lives. It's like a rich man feeling poor and then wasting his life crying about his poverty all the time. 

The underlying reason for this ignorance is the lack of awareness of our true nature. Human beings have mirror neurons that help us learn from others. However, these mirror neurons are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we learn so many things by just mirroring fellow human beings, on the other hand, we mirror their fears and insecurities. We mirror whatever we see. A child in China learns Chinese and a child in North India learns Hindi naturally by mirroring the immediate society. Similarly, we learn the way of living by mirroring the way our parents, colleagues, friends, teachers, and other acquaintances live. We influence and also get influenced.

Mirroring has a functional utility and helps us learn the way this world operates. If we just remember our true nature, while using the functionality of mirroring, we will not mirror the fears and insecurities to waste our lives in crying. Mirroring without awareness creates fixations, as we discussed in the previous post.

All fears and insecurities exist in the domain of body, mind, and matter. No solution is going to work permanently since all these domains are temporary, by their very nature.