In life, you see a lot of people who are successful because of money, fame, career, and family but still they say that they are not happy. Even if all the checkboxes are marked, why does one feel unhappy or lost in life? One often defines success or happiness with the amount of money in our banks. But that success is not coherent with our happiness; more money is not proportional to more happiness in life. Till a certain point, you will enjoy the materialistic luxuries of life but once that phase is over, it might seem like something is amiss. When you dig deeper into your thoughts, you cannot figure out what should be the real purpose of living this life. While some people might think they have achieved their purpose through a successful career or by taking good care of their family, they are still looking for peace at the end of the day. Peace, satisfaction, happiness, tranquillity, or contentment; all these words define one thing - our sense of purpose in life.
So, How to Achieve This Sense of Purpose in Life? What is our purpose in life?
According to Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan, the purpose of life is to serve others. The ultimate joy of life is to help others to achieve their dreams. If you spend time in helping others, you will know more about yourself and attain self-realization. This state is called as Moksha or Enlightenment, according to Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan. In today’s world, you will notice that people spend their spare time in community work or doing something good for others. Why does one spend time in such activities? The baseline for such actions is to achieve a sense of purpose by helping others to achieve their goals. Try this out and see how you feel at the end of the day. You would notice a sense of serenity and satisfaction.
While helping others does not take many efforts, it takes a toll on our ego to do it selflessly. Let’s take a scenario to understand this. Say, for example, you are running an errand during which you ask your neighbour if she needs something from the market. She might take your help and thank you for the service. However, your mind will start expecting the same from her. If this expectation is not fulfilled, your ego comes into play by making you angry and ruining the relationship with that neighbour. However, if you serve selflessly, no such expectation would arise.
In serving others, one must be selfless, keeping the ego and rewarding returns aside. The joy or the reward is to see others succeed.
If you have a little girl child, you will help in her schoolwork and would wish the best for her future without expecting anything in return. However, in case of your neighbour’s child, you would feel it as a task for which you would expect a reward of some kind. However, even here, you should help selflessly. This is the biggest key to the path to real happiness as well as to your sense of purpose in life.
People who serve others with expectations or greed for fame, recognition or monetary returns can never feel the real happiness. With devious intentions, external difficulties arise. However, when you serve others without thinking of returns, everything works out.
Why Does It Become Difficult To Be Selfless While Serving Others?
Our Ego Comes Into Play: Often when you help others, subconsciously, you are expecting some sort of reward or return. The moment this sort of thinking comes in the way, our ego comes into play. The ultimate purpose of life is to attain self-realization, which will come with constant practice of helping others selflessly. The next time when you go to help others, observe what you are thinking and feeling. Do you think there should be a return for the favour done? Or do you feel happy when you help others overcome their problems? This state of mind of being self-conscious and aware will bring you one step closer to self-realization.
You Seek Happiness In Worldly Things: If someone asks you when the last time was you were truly happy, the answer would be an event of achievement like a promotion, buying a house or car, or buying clothes. In short, it would be something materialistic or tangible in nature. Rarely you would find someone saying that he or she was happy helping someone in need. As of now, our brains are tuned to working towards societal norms of success or happiness.
However, Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan has said there is only unhappiness in life and the interval between two events of unhappiness is called happiness. Therefore, worldly happiness is nothing but temporary happiness. After attaining self-realization, you will be in a constant state of self-realization and external forces will not be able to make us happy or unhappy.
What Should You Do?
In this birth as a human, spend time in giving to others whatever you can. One who interacts like this is considered to have humanity. The one who takes away the happiness of others falls into beastliness. The natural law of this world is that when you give your own ‘fruits’ to others, then nature will take care of you. This is precisely the hidden science. So, if you spend your time in helping others, you will be able to overcome your difficulties and all your desires will be fulfilled. However, these actions should be without expecting anything in return. Service to others is a path to attain peace in the present and in the future.
To know more: https://www.dadabhagwan.org/path-to-happiness/humanity/help-others-the-p...
Ambalal M. Patel was a civil contractor by profession. In June 1958, spontaneous Self-Realization occurred within Ambalal M. Patel. From this point on, Ambalal became a Gnani Purush, and the Lord that manifest within him became known as Dada Bhagwan. A Gnani Purush is One who has realized the Self and is able help others do the same. Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan used to go from town to town and country-to-country to give satsang (spiritual discourse) and impart the knowledge of the Self, as well as knowledge of harmonious worldly interactions to everyone who came to meet him. This spiritual science, known as Akram Vignan, is the step-less path to Self-realization.