Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj
Swami Ram Tirath once said “Wanted: reformers not of others, but of one’s self.” He was trying to teach his disciples that they should not be wasting time trying to get others to change. He knew that it is only by each person changing himself or herself that one could attain the goal of union with God. He did not want people wasting their precious life breaths in criticizing, gossiping, and trying to get others to change. He wanted us to look at our own selves, find our own failings, and then reform ourselves. To achieve this, we need to weed out any thoughts, words, or deeds that are failures in the ethical virtues. When we criticize others, we not only waste time that we could be spending in improving ourselves, but we also add to our karmic debt.
Change is not easy. No one wants to change. Even the act of trying to change someone else is bound for failure. We cannot even change ourselves even when we know what is good for us. For example, in this day and age with all the information available at our fingertips through the internet, we all know the research of what is good for us. In the field of health, we know what foods keep us healthy and which ones contribute to illness. In the field of studies, we know what habits good students have that lead to top grades and which behaviors lead to failure.
Although we know good behaviors from bad, people tend to persist in doing what they have always done. Those with good habits continue with those, but those who are doing things that are not producing good results also persist and continue to struggle and fail.
In this connection, there is an amazing true story that took place in 1988. The event was so strange and remarkable that a famous movie was made about it. Yet this actually happened to someone and has an instructive lesson for all of us. There was a man who was expelled from his native country Iran. He even lost his passport, thus, there was no evidence of his citizenship papers when the airport authorities in Paris found him trying to pass through customs. The airport authorities in Paris did not know what to do with him. He could not be let into the country without papers. He could not be sent back to his original country as he was expelled and they could not let him board a plane back to his home. Finally, they decided he could live in Terminal 1 of the Paris airport until a solution was found.
The man found a table and chair in the terminal where he could sit. He began keeping a diary of his experiences. For food, he begged, living off hand-outs from airport employees. In exchange, he cleaned the airport bathrooms for work. He lived like this for eleven years.
Finally, in 1999, there was a reversal of his situation. The French authorities were able to work out permission to get him an international travel and a French residency permit. This would make him free to go wherever he wanted. He could go to another country or he could live in France.
When the airport authorities handed him his papers, his ticket to freedom, the man just smiled, folded the papers into his jacket, and kept writing in his diary. He refused to get up from the chair and table which he had made his home for eleven years. Days passed, but the man refused to leave.
The airport authorities who had gotten to know him did not want to upset him and just throw him out. They decided to gently encourage him to leave, in his own time. They were shocked though that after eleven years of being kept in an airport terminal, he refused to leave.
This story illustrates how difficult it is to change. When we get used to something, no matter how bad the circumstance is, we would rather cling to it than change. We are shocked to hear how a man who was basically kept as a prisoner in an airport due to red-tape problems would want to remain there even when told he could be free.
Yet, this is what each of us does. We come from a land of eternal bliss, happiness and joy, free from suffering, illness, and death, but we persist in staying in this physical world of pain and sorrow. We think this is the best there is for us, and we do not want to take advantage of the freedom papers that God is offering each of us. God has been sending representatives to this world to alert us that God is offering freedom papers to each of us. God is offering a chance for us to rise above this physical realm to experience regions of light, beauty, and love more wonderful than we can ever imagine. But how many take this opportunity?
Saints and Masters have been coming in every age to offer us our freedom. We even read their message in the scriptures of each of the major world religions. Six billion people are exposed to this offer of freedom whether they are of one religion or another. But how few take it! We know that even in worldly habits, we persist in continuing those behaviors that are harmful to us.
People know that smoking causes lung cancer and can kill, yet they smoke anyway. People know that drinking and driving do not mix and cause deadly car accidents, yet people drive drunk anyway. People know what is good for their body and what is bad, yet they refuse to change.
The same resistance to change poses problems when we are trying to lead a more spiritual life. We know of the law of karma and that whatever we do will set in motion causes that result in reactions. We know if we are violent to others, we will be laying the groundwork for events later that will come back to us that will cause us suffering. We know that if we are not truthful, we are laying the groundwork for events that will result in a consequence we will have to pay later. We know that if our egotism hurts others it will come back to haunt us. We know that if we are selfish, that too will boomerang back to us one day. We cannot escape the results of our actions. Yet, knowing this, people persist in engaging in the five deadly thieves of anger, lust, greed, attachment, and ego.
We have become habituated to our own prisons. We are prisoners of the mind that wants to keep us stuck in the airport terminal of this world. The longer we persist in these habits, the harder they become to break. Habits over time become human nature.
The moment we become aware of the harmful habits we engage in, we should change them. The longer we keep bad habits, the more ingrained they become and the harder they are to break. We should examine ourselves and take positive action to change our habits for the better.
We can develop better habits that will be more productive in helping our soul rise above body consciousness, travel through the inner realms, and ultimately reunite with God. Let us not be stuck like the man in the airport terminal even though we have our freedom papers. Let us take advantage of God’s offer for freedom and leave our bondage to return to freedom our true home in the lap of God.
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