The divine Godhead is in each of us. So, intrinsically, we all have this
ability to be loving, be human and be compassionate. But all our conditioning,
over the years, has suppressed this ability. We have become, driven by logic, and
the what’s-in-it-for-me question in every transaction, cold, self-centered and so
full of ourselves. Our self-obsession leaves us with no time or opportunity to
love and care. However, a time will come, when all that conditioning will
vanish, all the walls that we have built around us will be torn down, and what
will remain is our true self – that which is capable of limitless love and
compassion.
One
of Aesop’s fables teaches us this lesson beautifully.
At a
riverside, a scorpion requested of a turtle, “Please carry me to the other shore
on your back.” The turtle says, “Do not be foolish. Do not think me to be
stupid. You may sting me in the middle of the stream, and I will drown and
die.” The scorpion said, “I am not foolish; rather, you are foolish because you
do not know simple logic. I belong to the Aristotelian school. I am a logician.
So I will teach you a simple lesson in logic, a simple solution. If I sting you
and if you are drowned and dead, I will also die with you. So be sensible, be
logical. I will not sting you. I cannot sting you.”
The
turtle thought for a moment and then said, “Okay! It seems sensible. Hop on to me
and off we go.” And exactly in the middle of their journey, midstream, the
sting comes. They both are sinking now. Before the turtle dies it asks, “Where
has your logic gone? You have done a very illogical thing, and you yourself
said that this is simple logic, you will never do it, and now you have done it.
Tell me before I die. Let me learn another lesson from your logic.”
The
scorpion says, “It is not a question of logic at all. This is just my character,
just my nature. I cannot be without it. I can talk about it. I cannot be
without it. I am incapable, really.”
In pretty much the same way, all our coldness, all
of our self-centeredness are all mere masks. Each of us, truly, is created to
be loving, caring and human. As Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13th Century
Persian poet has said, “Your task
is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within
yourself that you have built against it.”
So, go on, seek those barriers within you – and remove
them. Let your divinity flow – unfettered and freely!
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