Currently, every country is talking about economic downturn. Everyday we keep hearing about retrenchments, people being shown pink slips etc. Many banks and companies are closing down. We are all on high-alert. Many of my friends have been having sleepless nights thinking about their jobs. There is a certain eery stillness around.
If we look back a few months ago, before the talks about economic downturn and subprime markets etc. started, we will see a totally different picture altogether. The spending power of a working individual was higher; he was happy to spend on holidays or buying a house. He was comfortable to get a new car and do up his house. Now over the last few months, the picture is no longer the same. There was time when the real estate market had more buyers than sellers; the housing price rocketed up. Now, the picture is totally different. In Singapore, landlords are willing to waive off large sums of money (called cash over valuation) so that they can sell their property, but even then they are finding it hard to get a buyer.
Till a few months back, we thought we were all powerful. We thought we had everything in control. We had planned for years in front of us - a nice house, a big car etc. etc. Each one of us thought we are the king. We have all the strings of our lives right in our hands.
Suddenly, we now feel everything is slipping away from our hands. We are holding on tight and expecting and praying everything will become safe for us. Many of us are praying, "let me not be the next in line..."
This post is not about highlighting the negativity that is already in abundance around us right now. This is not one of those hundreds of "Cope with the Downturn" kind of articles. It is about the truth which enlightened masters have always been talking about.
The greed that was before and the fear that is now, are because of our concept of reality and life. We are very strongly attached to our material possessions, our name, our fame, our life. It is our strong belief that we are all powerful and we are incharge, makes our entire world shake when the slightest of the breeze blows. We are very serious about all this which we call as reality. If the something wrong happens in our dream, we don't care about it once we wake up.
All enlightened masters have talked about one truth - what we perceive as reality is also another dream. Paramahamsa Nithyananda says, "Understand that every dream is made up of the same things as what you think is reality - the same materials, the same emotions, the same stuff. When we wake up, we don't care about what happened in the dream. Then why can't we do the same thing with what we see as reality? All we have to do is to internalize that what we think as reality is also another dream. All we have to do is wake up from this dream also. That is enlightenment."
Our greed and our fear are because of our attachment to our possessions - material, emotional and even spiritual. Our attachment is because we perceive something as real and something as dream. When we live in a complete unclutched state, as Paramahamsa Nithyananda puts it, we constantly imbibe the truth about reality and dream. All we have to do is constantly remind ourselves of the dream we are seeing. The non-attachment is a liberating feeling. Paramahamsa Nithyananda says, "When the non-attachment happens, then whatever happens around you, you will take it as auspicious. There cannot be any suffering, only bliss."
Difficult it may sound, but we surely can try right!! We certainly won't lose anything :)
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