Mr. Indroneil Mukerjee, a certified Bach Flower Therapist and a life transformational coach
There is this story of Rabia al-Adawiyya considered to be one of the rarest women in the whole human history.
One evening people saw her searching for something on the street in front of her hut. They gathered together – the poor old woman was searching for something. They asked, “What is the matter? What are you searching for?”
To which she replied, saying, “I have lost my needle.”
Without further questioning and with the intention of helping out the old woman they all started looking for the needle.
A little later somebody asked, “Rabia, the street is big and night is descending. Soon there will be no light and needle being such a small thing – unless you tell us exactly where you lost it – it will be difficult to find.”
Rabia said, “Don’t ask me about that. Don’t bring that question up at all. If you want to help me, help, otherwise don’t. But please do not bring up that question.”
Surprised, they all stopped.
“What is the matter? Why can’t we ask this? If you don’t say where it has fallen, how can we be of any help to you?”, retorted the men who were looking for the needle.
She finally revealed saying, “The needle has fallen inside my house.”
“Have you gone mad? If the needle has fallen inside the house, why are you searching here?” exclaimed the men.
“Because the light is here; inside the house its dark.”
Somebody said, “Even if the light is here, how can we find the needle if it has not been lost here? The right way would be to bring light inside the house, so you can find the needle.”
And Rabia laughed, “You are such clever people about insignificant things. When are you going to use your intelligence for your inner life? I have seen you all searching outside and I know perfectly well, I know from my own experience, that that which you are searching for is lost within.”
They stood dumbfounded and Rabia disappeared into her house.
The above story aptly describes the human condition today: there is darkness inside hiding what man believes he has lost and is searching for in the outside.
What is it that he has lost in the darkness inside?
The Truth, the knowing of who he truly is. It is lost in the darkness of ignorance. Such dense is the darkness that he does not even know about this ignorance. And in absence of the knowing of who he truly is, he has created a conceptual mind-made sense of self. It’s a story of ‘little me’ made up of his perceptions, prejudices and preferences; some limiting beliefs about self, the others and the world –frozen thought forms – all unconscious which are severely limited and conditioned by his growing up experience. This false sense of self, which is almost like an entity in itself, is called the ego. It lives like a Trojan in the unconscious and takes charge of all thoughts, words and action of man when he identifies with it in his ordinary state of being in the conditioned consciousness. Making him lead a dream like life and believe that this is the reality.
Notwithstanding the best of his intent and conscious resolve, the egoic consciousness not only limits man in achieving what he aspires to but also distracts him from his goal. As he sees everything in the world through egoic filters, including other people, his relationships, his decisions, his understanding of situations are all distorted.
This ego is fiercely self-protective and self-preserving. As it is made up of thoughts – conditioned thoughts – it lives in the mind. The basic premise on which it survives is that suffering and misery are default states of man. That man he is essentially unhappy, not satisfied and incomplete. It is this premise that makes him need and greed, for more and more, comparing and competing with the other. So compulsive is its need to for being one-up that it won’t mind being more miserable, more unfortunate than anyone else.
As long as man identifies with his ego, his little self, he keeps feeding into it and it keeps growing. Until, it completely takes over and creates a life condition that is full of unhappiness, suffering and strife. The only way man can come out of the realm of his egoic consciousness is by being present, in the moment, in the Now and witnessing the ego as it appears in the field of presence. The light of his arising presence dissolves the ego. This may be temporary as the ego pulls back man into the unconscious and get strengthened again. The need for its survival propels the ego to hijack as many attempts as man makes on his own to move away from being unconscious to being present and man succumbs to it. The reason is that the same mind that houses the ego cannot / will not want to be engaged in dissolving it.
Sustained Bach Flower therapy can move man from the realm of egoic and conditioned consciousness, by dissolving his fears and fear-led beliefs, to the realm of evolving consciousness, making it possible for him to reclaim the awesome ‘nobility’ that he is innately blessed with by virtue of being human, to live an inspired life of ecstatic limitlessness.
It’s important, in this case, that the remedies are adopted in one’s life as essential allies and not just as temporary means to healing a condition.
One needs to commit to life-long healing and therefore an ongoing relationship with the remedies.
