15th of August is a day to be celebrated with pride. It’s a day to remember and honour our freedom fighters and the millions of Indians who helped us attain independence from the British. It is a day to express our gratitude to our armed forces that guard our country’s borders, day and night, to ensure that we remain independent.
Imagine living in a country that is not free, a country ruled by a dictator who controls all that we do. We would be living in fear with little freedom. Would we ever be happy? That is why our independence is so important to us. Being independent gives us freedom. It gives us the liberty to follow our dreams, achieve our goals and do many other things, that otherwise, we may not be able to do. It paves the way for us to be happy, to live life to the fullest.
While it is wonderful to have our independence and to live in an independent country, it is far more important to be truly free as human beings. Therefore, the question that we must ask ourselves today is – are we really free? No, unfortunately not. Most of us are prisoners imprisoned by our own ‘self’.
To begin with, we are prisoners of our mind. In fact, our mind is our biggest enemy. It is our mind that makes us fearful, miserable, stressed and anxious. At times, our mind makes us so depressed that some of us even end up taking our lives. Further, it is our mind that makes us desire and crave all kinds of sensual pleasures, making us slaves of our senses. We keep giving into temptations, and we lose control of our lives. Therefore, first of all, we must break free from the shackles of our mind.
To be free, we must also let go of our ego. If it is the mind that bombards us with thoughts and makes us miserable, it is our ego that fills us with rage and makes us angry. It makes us hate people, it makes us vengeful and jealous. It is the ego that creates a divide between people. We do not hesitate to kill each other because we think we are all different from one another, we are separate. In reality, we are different only on the outside, the way we look, but within, we are all the same - we are all part of the one Divine Soul. Our ego prevents us from seeing the truth by creating a veil of ignorance.
Finally and ultimately, we must break free from the Karmic cycle of death and rebirth. How can we break away from this Karmic cycle that seems to go on and on, endlessly? Let us first understand who creates Karma. Our Mind, along with the Ego, becomes the ME, and it is this ME that creates Karma. It is because of the Karma that we create, that we come back to earth again and again. Though the body dies, we continue to be in the bondage of Samsara. We are reborn and we come back into this world to redeem our unsettled Karma. Regardless of how good our Karma is, and how wonderful our life may be, we still suffer. What we must realize is that we can transcend Karma by realizing the truth of who we are, by overcoming our ignorance. Once we realize the truth, that we are not the body, mind and ego, that we are the Divine Soul, we are liberated from all Karma. We are enlightened with the truth and we experience seamless peace and bliss, unknown to the common man.
So, what is true freedom? It is freedom from ignorance. We live in the darkness of ignorance, imprisoned by Maya, the cosmic illusion. We don’t realize that this world is not real, that it is just a cosmic drama and we are but actors playing a role. We don’t realize who we truly are and what the purpose of our life is. Unless we realize the truth, we can never be truly free.
My dear friends, today, as we celebrate Independence Day, let us not forget the single most important thing. We must realize the truth, that we are not this Mind and the Ego, the ME that we think ourselves to be. We are Divine Energy. This Independence Day, let us resolve to attain true freedom — freedom from the body, freedom from the mind, freedom from the ego. Today, let us resolve to attain freedom from our own misery, freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth so that we can be liberated and be united with the Divine!
Happy Independence Day!
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