I've been thinking this week that life is good. Despite what may be "problems," really I have had so many of my wishes come true and felt that most of my troubles were self-inflicted. It was just as I was feeling this way that I came across this story in a book of Swami Muktananda called Where Are You Going?
"Sitting Under the Wish-Fulfilling Tree
There was once an unfortunate man who kept roaming from one place to another. In the course of his wanderings he came to a forest. He sat under a tree and felt himself becoming very calm. A gentle breeze was blowing, and as he looked around, the man saw that the forest he was sitting in was beautiful.
"If I only had a companion," he thought, "I would be completely happy." The tree he was sitting under happened to be a wish-fulfilling tree. A wish-fulfilling tree is divine, anti is said that if anyone sitting under it makes a wish, that wish is instantly fulfilled. So at that very moment a beautiful girl appeared. The man was enraptured.
She sad down next to him, and for a while he was content. But then he thought, "It's a pity that the two of us have to sit under a tree, exposed to the elements. It would be much better if we had a house with a few bedrooms and a dining room equipped with all the amenities. Then I would lack nothing." Immediately, the house he had wished for appeared.
Delighted, he went into the house with his sweetheart, sat down, and had a loving chat with her. Then he said, "Look, what's the point of living like paupers in this house? I'd like to live like a lord. If only we had a butler and a couple of servants to serve us food." In the twinkling of an eye, a butler with two servants appeared.
The man called the servants over and said, "Prepare us two delectable dishes." Before long, the butler brought two servers containing gourmet food. The man tasted the food and it was delicious. But then he began to wonder, "What's going on? I wished for a wife, and she appeared and cuddled me. Then I wished for a house and got a beautiful house. Then I wished for a butler and two servants and they appeared. Then I wished for delectable dished and they, too, materialized. What's happening? There must be a demon here!"
A demon immediately appeared in front of him, with his mouth wide open. "Oh, no, he'll eat me up!" the man cried. Of course, the demon devoured him, and that was the end. This wretched fellow trapped himself in his imagination. At first he thought of good things, but in the process of imagining them, he also imagined a demon and his own death. If, instead of imagining a demon, he had thought, "God must be giving me these things," his fate would have been different…This is all there is to the world we live in. In the heart is the wish-fulfilling tree of divine Consciousness, and we are seated right in its shade. We keep creating our own worlds of thought and imagination. We think, "I am a sinner, I am inferior, I am this I am that." We get trapped in our own webs, and then one day we die."
(p. 52-53, sidda yoga publications www.siddhayoga.org)
So I've decided to keep making wishes, and enjoy the beauty of life and the way dreams materialize. It's taking some doing as I can get negative, but it's just an attitude, a perception, nothing more, and I can change my habits. Feeling the goodness and richness of life is getting more familiar.
I'm wishing you the same!
love
IVA
