The Stone

Children, remember this stone? This was the thing you were all fighting over in the pool last Sunday. There was a lot of shouting, grabbing each other's hair, bad words, crying. Friendships were jeopardized all for the sake of this little stone. It seemed like your hearts, being too attached to this thing, became like it--hard stone.  The amazing thing was that after swimming none remembered to take it home. Naturally, outside the water, when the play is over, the stone was just any other stone. When you're not too attached to the stone, you can see it as it truly is.


In life too there are stones we fight over. Some are really heavy some are really shiny. Some we really need some we need because of our wants. There are wars because of these stones. When stones are really pretty and shiny it's hard to remember they are just stones. We are tricked like little kids in a pool. We don't notice how it hardens our hearts. We forget they are just stones until we are out of the pool, out of this world of stones. 

In life we need to acquire stuff, for us to maintain our bodies, but we must be able to see that these are just stuff. These are not what life is meant to be. In this world full of miseries in the form of diseases, old age, and death, we are not meant to simply labor for stuff, but to enable us to get out of this miserable existence.

 Only when we realize our true essence will we be able to know what we really need. The truth is that we are spirit not matter, we are eternal spirit-souls in this temporary material body. While we keep the material body alive with material food, we feed the spirit, ourselves in fact, with spiritual food. What does the spirit need? The spirit soul is happy when it is fulfilling its natural function. What is our natural function? Being spiritual beings our happiness is in rendering loving service to the Supreme Spirit, God. That too answers our eternal position which is loving servants. This is not just spiritual life, but this is our real life.