Fallen Angels

I have allowed pain to be the making of me and in doing so I learnt one of the most important lessons that life can teach. These beautiful lines from the famous poem if express this learning in an apt way –

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat these two imposters just the same
Yours is the Earth ad everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a man, my Son!

- Rudyard Kipling

It is very easy to fall prey to the feeling of self pity and playing the victim in the drama of life when life has dealt you a hard one or many hard ones. I have been through it myself so it’s very easy for me to identify it in another, almost effortlessly. And I have seen the pattern repeating itself so many times in so many human beings.

What it essentially does is make us feel justified in pursuing our wants because haven’t we lost out on so much in life and isn’t it time we got what we deserved ? This is a dangerous state to be in because it makes us self centered or rather self focused. We are constantly in a state of feeding our needs and we fail to see and identify with another person’s pain or what they want because our trauma is so big in our own minds. We are angry with life for the harsh battles we had to fight. We fail to see the significance of the events in our life or value each experience, the good, the bad and the ugly for what it has taught us and how it could mould us if we understood the message it brought for us.

I have learnt from life that God’s ( let me clarify that to me God is the cosmic laws) justice is not punitive its reformative and when something we consider as bad happens to us be it anytime in our lives , it was meant for our good only . This learning lends credence to this line from The Bible – “ Thy will not mine be done” .I feel that The cosmic Laws are very meticulously designed to govern and create the story of each person’s life for their exclusive benefit , their individual blue print to reaching self realization and however difficult it may seem to us while we are living it , it is indeed he best medicine for our ailing soul .It can never help to compare our story with another’s story and especially those whose stories are better than ours . When we understand this, the distinction between a good experience and a bad experience vanishes. Good and bad is something our mind tells us when essentially its just an experience and as impermanent and transient as any experience can be.

We need to thus step back and take an honest and hard look at ourselves because it is indeed the toughest battle that we will ever fight, that with our own ego which makes us blind to our faults. History and Mythology has been replete with instances of great men, men of immense strength, endorsed and praised by the gods falling prey to the vices of mankind because they stopped questioning themselves. Nobody is ever safe and we need to constantly be on our guard lest we become a fallen angel.

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