Why People Change!

Dear Readers,

This is a piece i wrote on a forum on the 25th august, 2006. i wrote it in quick time and spontaneously on what makes people change due to certain events occurring in one's life.

i am reproducing the same for your reading pleasure. read on :)

mahalakshmi
5th Feb, 2010.

let me share my thoughts on this with you.
ego. i. mine.
observing human nature from close quarters (i recommend living in joint families to learn this firsthand. if the spouse or child is equivalent to a dozen people then ignore this advice!!) brings me to compare this feeling with a young tree in its prime, upwardly mobile, growing straight and almost trying to reach the stars' state. neither does it offer cool shade to a passerby nor does anyone gets to taste its fruit. its very posture of being upright and proud makes people ignore it. this is the ego in youngsters who are just getting more and more successful in life in some way. remember the elders were also youngsters once! so this is no accusation as we too have passed by that road once.

then something strange happens to it after many a storm, lashing rains and the punishing heat from the relentless scorching sun year after year. the tree's egoistic feeling that it is the best, the supreme most, the greatest, the tallest, etc, takes a beating and it starts to bend just a little. then along come some children who pluck the fruits and enjoy it. when they keep coming back again and again the tree starts feeling important, wanted and happy. sharing and caring for other's feelings makes the once-proud tree feel it belongs here on mother earth and it dint just drop from some heavenly body out of thin air. it bends a bit more. and more.., day by day... until it is aged, bending as if in humility, almost tempting the passersby to rest under its shade for a while and taste its fruits. the upright tree has indeed come a long way!

life's hard knocks does bend anyone. it is personal tragedies which makes a person more understanding of other's sufferings. but one must remember that he or she is not the only one who is destined to suffer! some suffer silently!
no one grows old and wise from day one! one is a baby first then we all have to go through life's ups and downs, down the years. for some of us, bitter lessons are learnt in the first 30 years and others learn it in the next 30 years!
(i dint mean it with Saturn's 30 year cycle in mind though! )
in between the almighty gives us some lollipops through rewards or motivation to keep us going from strength to strength despite the hardships. god sure knows how to hold out the olive branch just so that the meek and the humble don't give up living (this is Jupiter's transit through the rashis!).

we get connected with many people as we go along. if the satsang or company we keep is either intellectual, adventurous, plain bad, good, spiritual, religious, mean or criminal then our thoughts too do get molded in that direction either due to peer pressure or just being there! birds of the same feather...
being bad comes very easily.
being good and at times feeling egoistic is what we see around us.
being knowledgeable and being good at times is great.
being knowledgeable and being kind, humble and good to all at all times is indeed the lakshana of a super human.
this super human is so close to god that it is a matter of time when he starts attracting more people to him through sheer wisdom and his humility.

Saturn does have a big hand in teaching a person his humbling lessons of life.

when one is sick or very sick.
gets a second life after an accident or the worst of some ailments.
when one loses someone he/she loves dearly.
when one loses a lot of money earned the hard way for years in some unthinkable and stupid scheme in a matter of a few months or even days.
love failure.
not finding the right life partner for one or the other reason (it does not really matter if we are right for the other!! because we are always right as we are!).
not having a child in good time.
having a specially abled child.
being demoted in office.
not getting that most coveted promotion, which is alright as long as someone whom you knew all along as dumb, numb and not the right candidate getting that post!
these are some of the most humbling (read humiliating) experiences one goes through to reach a higher state of thinking where you begin to accept others and the world in general with more open arms than previously thought.
of course the right or should we say the wrong dasha/bhukti and some powerful transits aid in the way we change our thinking from time to time.
we are not what we were, down a few years from now!

natal sun in one's lagna (or a trikona) does make for a proud and a dominant person, more so if it also happens to be in one of those fiery signs, but it could just be a matter of time when the sun's 'son' will come visiting to teach him a few facts of life the hard way, mostly. bringing one's pride and prestige down miserably.
don't we all learn better and faster under a strict teacher!

the concept of 'i am the greatest'. 'i am the latest' will soon vanish into thin air once another waiting-in-the-wings greatest and latest arrives on the scene!!
for those who are wise to believe that there's enough room at the top and some more can be accommodated will be more at peace while handling competitions like this one than the ones with a king-sized ego.
after all the mind which has so much of negative energy in the form of ego will never rest peacefully just thinking about how to deride or slight others at every given opportunity thinking that there cannot be a second opinion on any topic.

one tsunami and no one wants that dream cottage near the golden beach anymore!

each one of us have our own unique permutation and combination to be more observant, to learn from our mistakes and become more human in the form of life experiences we undergo throughout our time on earth.
some of us learn with one bad event.
some have to go through the bad events many times over until they learn the very hard way.
this is like learning a chapter at a glance like swami Vivekananda. for the lesser souls it could be going through 20 or even 100 times and yet the lesson will not be well learnt! it is the worst of karmas.
reminds me of the wedding bands playing popular tunes while going in a baraat (procession) in the streets of Hyderabad. the band would keep repeating the first line of the song so many times over and over again that it would look as if they were practicing those lines until they got it right!!

but it is another matter altogether for some who are willing to learn through other's sufferings like Gautama Buddha. these higher souls do not have to put a finger in the fire to see whether it will get burnt or not! because they simply know it will, without having to go through such practical experiments!
jokes apart, this advice should be ignored for those who want to get married and have kids despite knowing marriages are not rosy dreams or is it?! each one has to go through with it to know whether it is happy or sad to be married!
well life comes as a package and we can't pick and choose our gifts or pricks.
a humble person treats the gifts as blessings and goes through the pricks as a chance to observe, not to repeat those mistakes, if possible, and learn to enrich his/her life.

there may be as many combination as humans on earth! each of us is unique in our own way and correct ourselves in good time (dasha/bhukti) and is lucky to get good guidance from a kindly soul.
just my two cents.
cheers
mahalakshmi
posted on 25th august 2006 on an astrology forum.