After I completed writing my 30th book on Spirituality, Life, Happiness, and God, with the mission of helping people realize the truth, I stumbled upon a new realization. People don't know how to live life. We wake up in the morning and we just jump into the day. We all seek happiness, but we are going the other way. Although we are given the gift of the human intellect, we are slaves of our own mind and ego, and thus we suffer.
We learn how to operate our mobile phones and our laptops. We are quite familiar with the features of our microwave and our refrigerator. Whenever we get a new gadget, be it a Bluetooth speaker, an electronic clock or simple earphones, we read the Operating Manual before we actually start using our gadgets.
But have we ever read a Manual on Life? Is there such a Manual? There is no simple document that tells us what life is and how we should live. Thus, I decided to write a book on how to live life and I titled it 'Life Manual'.
In this book, I will share my personal experiences in life—how I faced problems and how I solved them. How I dealt with different people, adverse situations and how I made the best use of opportunities that I discovered on the way. How I found everlasting happiness by overcoming misery and how all the events and happenings that I experienced made me understand what makes people struggle through life.
People just zoom from womb to tomb, without realizing who they are and why they are here. We are so busy discovering everything outside that we have lost sight of what is inside. We have gone on quests and discovered continents, invented cures for diseases; we even yearn to go into outer space to explore the universe, but we have not stopped to contemplate and go within to realize our biggest treasure.
Thus, we live and we die, but do we actually live? Most of us think that life has a destination that we must reach. We forget to enjoy the journey that is life. We think success is happiness, and we keep climbing that peak of achievement which in reality, is an illusion. Our greed overtakes our need and we fail to live with contentment. We become attached to our possessions and people, and then we cry. We don't go on a quest to understand the meaning of life and we live in the constant fear of death.
Of course, we learn to sail through our life's voyage by facing hurdles and obstacles on the way. We stumble, suffer and then learn. Like my mentor used to say, 'Every fall is but a rise; to learn this is to be truly wise.' Undoubtedly, through experience we discover new ways to cope with the problems that strike us. But is that the best way to live? Is it necessary that we make all those mistakes and learn ourselves how to live life? Just like we get to see a book of guidelines at the very beginning of purchasing a product, how nice would it be if we could get a Life Manual that would enlighten us to make the best use of our life, and help us to make informed and wise decisions.
Unfortunately, most of us just live life without learning how to manoeuvre through this journey called 'Life'. We don't even know that life has a purpose. We set and achieve goals, but we continue to remain thirsty as these don't satisfy us. All the time, we want peace of mind, but ironically, we do things that cause us anxiety. We continue to get bafThed by problems and sometimes give up. We don't find eternal peace and everlasting bliss.
We see good people suffering and then we wonder, 'Why do bad things happen to good people?' We don't realize that bad things can't happen to good people just like apples can't grow on mango trees. There is a Universal Law that makes this world operate – the Law of Action and Reaction, the Law of Cause and Effect. The Law that states, 'As you sow, so shall you reap' – popularly known as the Law of Karma. Thus, we do not take care of our actions but regret and cry when the reactions unfold as the circumstances of our life.
We live life as directed by the mind. Thus, our decisions are mostly emotional because we don't take charge of our intellect, the most important tool that a human being is gifted with. Because we don't discriminate, we believe in the myth and live with anger, fear, worry, and other negative emotions that make us crave till we reach our grave.
Life is our most precious gift. It is more precious than all our possessions put together and all the beautiful relationships that we enjoy with the people we love, because if there were no life, then all these people and possessions too would be of no use.
It's time to stop, to read the Life Manual and discover how to live life. It's time to realize the truth and overcome the myth that makes us live in ignorance. It's time to find a way to eternal joy and everlasting peace, and to experience true love that is bliss. It's time to overcome our spiritual blindness as we open our 'Real Eyes'.
We mustn't be one amongst those who try to live life without reading the Life Manual, only to reach the end with regrets, 'I would have,' 'I could have,' 'I should have,' but 'I didn't'. You can't rewind life. You can't go back to yesterday, but you can stop and discover life today. From this moment onwards, as you read the Life Manual, you can discover the true meaning of life and live a life of bliss and peace!
A Manual guides us to use a product,
How to operate it step by step.
We just jump into this gift called ‘Life’,
And through it we are swept.