'K' For Key: Key..... Key, Where is the Key???

The Car – That Car ! I couldn’t take my eyes of that car : it was a beauty beyond description. The colour, the contours, the sheen, the style, everything about it was so attractive. I was so happy and proud to be the owner of this magnificent car. It was a very special car with only one set of keys, for if it ever got lost no one could make a duplicate for it.

I let my imagination fly : now that I owned that car, such a special car, at that, it would give me the opportunity to show every body who I was and what I could do. Proud of all my achievements, proud of all the things I thought I was equipped with, I was raring to go. I opened my purse to take out that one and only key from it: but what HO !
There was no key in the purse !

I knew it had to be in the purse only, where I had kept it safely in a pouch. I did not panic, instead I emptied the entire contents of the purse and started my search again, but still the key could not be found. Then panic started setting in slowly : I became flustered, angry, insane with rage at having misplaced the key. May be I switched the hiding place, thinking that it would be safer some place else which I alone knew. But where?

Shoot ! How could I forget the place I had kept it for safe-keeping ?
 My mind was in a whirl, thinking about all possible places I could have kept it…..Oh, why couldn’t I remember anything at all. I looked everywhere , on the floor, near the car, anywhere and everywhere : I knew one thing for certain, I was going mad.

I spent hours searching, I asked whoever I met whether they could help me find the key, but alas, nobody could, or would. I was all alone, seeing my dreams shattering right in front of me . I have now spent days, years of my life just looking at that car, which I believed was loaded with everything I wanted in life. I knew it was just a matter of time, and I would be zipping away in my car : I only had to find the key.

So here I was, stuck, neither being able to move forward, nor go in the reverse. I was in a real fix. All I could do was go round and round, and keep coming back to the same place with no solution to my problem.

Soon, I realised I was so obsessed with this car, that I was coming back to this earth, birth after rebirth, with only one goal: to find that key to my special, wonderful car loaded with all the goodies in it. Although, I have lost count of the many births I have taken, I was not in the least bothered: it was as if that car had trapped me forever with its beauty, and the immense possibilities it offered.

I kept asking everyone I met, the only question I knew : " can you show me a way to find the key to this unique car which belongs to me ? Different people came up with different ideas, and some joined me in the search, but just for a while, and got bored and left. People kept giving me only negative ideas. They said it would be impossible to find a key, literally lost in a haystack, and when the haystack itself was not to be found. If a thing was lost it was lost forever.

But I preferred to believe in the kind of people who told me never to give up my search, and be focused on my goal, and one day, they assured me I would find the key that I was searching for. Never a defeatist, those were the type of people I put my trust in.

Then there came a new breed of people who propagated the idea: "Fake it till you make it". Their theory was, if you didn’t have something, don’t keep on saying that you don’t have it : this would be sending a wrong and defeatist message to the Universe, which in turn would really make it happen. My, my ,my…… No way I was going to send out such a message to the Universe.

By now, I had become mentally deranged- I was willing to listen to any nonsense advocated by anybody. Soon, I changed my tactics : I started visualising that I had found the magic key to my car, and I was proudly driving on the road to success. I visualised that all my dreams and wishes had come true, and I was having a wonderful life with my car. Every time I saw the car, I would force myself to think such thoughts, till I had become adept at self-deception. I would waste precious time imagining the impossible, with the false confidence that "Fake it till you make it " really worked. That was my new mantra and I was not going to give up.

Years, and several reincarnations passed by, with me nowhere near to finding the lost key. Sometimes I would feel very disappointed, but soon I would console myself with the newly learned art of self deception. This kept on repeating itself, until one day I could take it no more.

I knew in my heart that, one day, I was going to lick this problem which was eating away my whole life, life after life.

At this point in my life, I happened upon a very learned man, who was known far and wide for his vast knowledge and immense wisdom. I put to him my question. To which he replied that I would surely find the key, and would surely drive the car. But, he added - only when I was ready to drive. I explained to him that I was ready , able and willing to do just that for a long, long time, and that I had gone through so many births in this world, trying to find the key, so that I could drive off to glory in my wonderful car. I was ever ready, provided I knew where I had stashed away the key.

To that, he just smiled, and told me to think deeply, meditate upon my problem, and soon I would find my way to the key. I was disheartened and disillusioned with the Wise Crack. Here I was stuck in a quagmire, crying out for help, and all he could come up with was some crap called meditation. How was I to tell him I had tried everything, at sometime or other, in some birth or the other, and found no light at the end of the tunnel ?

After, some deep thought and meditation, just as the wise man had suggested, in a flash, I realized that I did not want to own a car for which I had no key, however beautiful and tempting it might look from outside : without a key, it was as good as useless. It might be fully loaded, hi tech, sleek and snazzy : it had kept me enamoured, enchanted and entrapped with its beauty, with its false promises for too long : but I realized it was not for me.

Not for me a car whose keys could be lost, and not be found at all. With that car I would always live in fear of losing it some day. I looked at the car, and to me, it was a movie screen, with all my numerous births flashing past, mocking me, laughing at me all the while. I then understood, and regretted the many lifetimes I had wasted on it: It was time to say goodbye and good riddance.

At first I was gripped with fear at the thought of abandoning the thing I had most cherished, the object of my unceasing quest over several cycles of birth : but I had decided to take the plunge and just jump out of this circle of endless misery, forever.

I had to listen to my heart, my soul, which were both screaming at me in unison to jump off, but my mind was full of confusion, busy, drawing pictures of my doom all the while, scaring me all the more. The din created in my mind became louder and louder, beating ever more loudly the drums of disaster, and soon the voice of wisdom was almost lost. But I could still hear it feebly, from far away, begging me to jump. To do or not to do, that was the only question.

It was when I could no longer hear my heart’s call, that I suddenly decided to leave all worries behind, ignore the confused signals from my mind, and just for once do the right thing in my life.

As I plunged forward, it seemed like I was going nowhere, everything was suddenly so dark and gloomy, and I could feel myself shivering with fear. But, by and by, the darkness cleared, and so too the darkness in my mind, I could see everything clearly, I could see my past, present and my future, and I knew the path chosen by me was the right choice.

With my mind free of illusions, I landed on the other side safely. Now I felt totally free, and as I picked myself up and started forward, I spied a car -just a car, with no pretensions, no frills, no fancy colour to lure anybody, as if saying, " take me as I am, or leave me - the choice is yours". Dear reader, as you no doubt know by now I had had enough to do with any car, but still, old habits die hard. I went a little closer to to the car to have a quick peek. I liked what I saw: it had no key, it had just two gears, on one it was written, "Man Power" and on the other, "Divine Power".

I came, I saw, I conquered and in the instant I sat in the driver’s seat, I knew what had to be done: I shifted the gear from "Man Power" to "DIVINE POWER", and zoomed away to eternal bliss.

(I simply love this blog written many years ago. I know many of you may have already read it, however, I thought some of my new friends might like it, and so the re-post).