If we have a look into the future, we see endless challenges. In the fields of health, politics, population and the environment; in every field, we notice that there are big challenges. Are there answers to all these challenges?
Einstein once famously quoted 'No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.' Here is an attempt to grasp that higher consciousness. That is precisely the purpose of spirituality. We shall also see that spirituality and the higher consciousness is not the treasure of just a few, but is something that should help us all in our everyday life.
Just as a map helps us get an orientation of ourselves in the world, so too lets start seeing our orientation with a much bigger map.
Let us play with an image. For that, we need to see the entire physical world in a box. Imagine that everything that we see and can touch is within that box. This includes the town we live in, the body, the role, the past and the future; it is all in this box.
Simple observation shows us that everything within the box is subject to a constant change. It is different moment to moment. Even the planet Earth is moving through space at a speed of around 30 kilometers per second. 'Change' is a law at that level.
Secondly, with the change comes an 'end'. Everything that you see in front of you is going to end sometime. ‘Beginning and end’ is a law. For example, you go into the garden and see some beautiful flowers there. After two weeks, you go into that same garden and there will be flowers, but these are different flowers. The flowers that you saw, two weeks earlier are dead and gone. The same is true with everything else in that box. If you revisit this planet after some years, or after some centuries, there will be trees, humans, buildings, etc. but, it will be different trees, humans and buildings.
The image of a cloud helps us to grasp the transience of the box more clearly. A cloud has a certain colour and shape. Very soon it will change its colour, shape and position, in fact is it is disappearing right in front of your eyes. It is the same pattern for things within the box. They are changing and going to disappear right front of your eyes.
Thirdly, this change and the end is 'unpredictable'. No one can guess what is going to happen to anything, anyone, or to the very existence of the box in the next moment. So the three relevant words for us in connection with that box are; change, end and its unpredictability.
In such an unpredictable box, if anyone was to create even the slightest attachment, the result will be guaranteed sorrow. If that cloud is going away in front of you, and you start to believe that this is 'my cloud', then you sign up for all kinds of anxieties and disappointments. The same thing is true for everything in the box.
The other option that we have is to ‘be the observer’. Just like we have an option to remain, observers of the cloud. Clouds come and clouds go, one cloud disappears and another cloud comes; the detached observer doesn’t get into any emotional tangle over that cloud.