Being Human is to be vulnerable but being human is also to be mighty. The best in us emerges only when we face the greatest vulnerabilities of our nature. That is why God created humanity so that through our vulnerabilities we may carve a path towards greatness. Greatness is not what men ordinarily think it to be. It is not about success, not about fame or money or any other such material gifts of life. It is not about recognition by other men or even unusual capacities and talents gifted to us by Nature and God. These things are simply exaltations of the great Creatrix Energy in us, moments in time when the eternal fills us with abundance and leaves it to us to use them rightly or misuse them to our own peril.
To use them rightly is to further increase them. To misuse or waste or misspend these gifts is to lose them. And it is the worse for us since when we do not have something, Nature expects little from us. But once she has showered her gifts, – whether material or psychological, then to waste them is to commit a travesty against her great purpose. But that is a different matter. Men may regard such gifts as greatness but there is nothing great about it from the perspective of the man who has been endowed with these. Even if he has acquired things for himself through the utilization of inborn capacities, it is nothing much since it is for himself that he has increased them. Such a selfish utilization of the materials offered to us by Nature may look great in the eyes of others but is in fact not the best utilization of our capacities since no man is an island and we live poorly if we live for ourselves alone. To have everything but for ourselves or, for our little circle of family and friends, is to acquire little and a poverty of another kind. True greatness lies in facing the impossible within and around us. True greatness emerges out of the shadows that we confront within and conquer.
It is out of our weakest points that the seeds of mightiness can be born. And therein lies the true greatness of man, a greatness that all can share, nay even more so those who consider themselves deprived and weak for it is to them is given the challenge and the possibility and the opportunity to rise out of the ruins and build out of the ashes the glory of a yet-to-be glimpsed future. Therefore, we must never get disheartened by life, never feel discourages, whatever our present ills and adverse fate for out of our adversity is born the greatest of force that the Divine Wisdom uses to push open an unseen door within us. For one who can face adversity without breaking down, for someone who can take on the great challenge of nature the very adversity helps to catapult them towards the summits of nature. Man’s greatness is not in what he is for what he is is but a gift of Grace or a mask of nature. His real merit lies in what he makes of the materials given to him. It is easy to build something beautiful when all the material is provided to us but far more difficult to create something lasting and enduring out of little. Therein lies our true challenge, – the challenge of being human, the path of our ascent towards supermanhood. Not simply by exalting and aggrandizing nature but by chasing the shadows out of the corners and recesses of our being and filling these gulfs with Light and Peace and Love and Beatitude and Bliss.
The Great Mother reminds us of Her constant Help is this process. She is ever with us holding our hands and carrying us in Her wonderful heart of untiring Love and infinite Grace. To those whom She has blessed outwardly are no doubt among Her loved ones but those whom She has Blessed inwardly, with the strength to climb towards the summits not yet won, whom She has even seemingly deprived outwardly so that their strength can rise up to the challenge, these are Her favourites, Her closest and chosen ones in the great work She has descended here to do amidst the dark and bright, dangerous and delightful appearances of the world. The first type are Her children who are still laboring in the early years of schooling wherein the Mother cares and provides all that they need and also gives them enough opportunity to learn and grow through the school of ordinary human experience. But those whom She loves most and works to carve true greatness out of our frail and human stuff, She casts them into the midst of the battlefield of life, takes upon Herself to train and educate them right here in the midst of the great battle of life where truth and falsehood, light and darkness are locked in a deadly combat. And yet they are never alone for not even for a moment the Divine Mother and the Divine Teacher leaves them unattended. Always She holds the rein of such lives and the destiny of such souls in Her safe hands turning all the sweet-bitter experiences of life into the honey of divine living. For such is the work She has undertaken and such is the work She will accomplish, – to build immortal things out of our transience and mortality, to open and take us through some hidden narrow passage in the darkness of ignorance towards the Light eternal and the Love Supreme. This is the knowledge we must shelter in our hearts as we move through the different appearances of life. The ignorant mind may give them values of good and bad, pleasant or painful but in reality, in their true essence they are neither of these dualities but only the hands of the Divine Architect and the Artist shaping out of our crude stuff eternal Good and unfailing Bliss and the Harmony that is built by Beauty and truth and Love.
Alok Pandey
