i am currently staying in a town where this day is taken very seriously (in a manner of speaking)… people of all ages travel from great distances to gather on this tourist destination island where they promptly inebriate themselves to celebrate their extended weekend while they barbecue flesh and watch fireworks with their friends and family. Like all other holidays in America, the “true purpose” of this holiday is completely lost.
But it is not my intent today to talk about how we should take advantage of our day off of work to remember the forefathers of America who declared this country’s independence from British rule… nor is it my intent to point out the seemingly hypocritical statements made in said declaration, claiming that all men are created equal while the laws at that time very clearly only gave rights to select few men.
What i do want to talk about is that, while the concept of independence is quite alluring, it is completely an illusion. Whether you are a theist, an atheist, a scientist, a pragmatist or whatever, you cannot deny that we truly have no independence.
Our bodies depend on so many things just to live… air, sun, water, food, a specific climate, etc. so to think we are independent is simply foolish… yet we work very hard to maintain this illusion… wars are fought, sacrifices are made, logic is veiled.
Our lust for “independence” is actually the reason we are in this material world. Our constitutional position is an eternal servant of the Supreme Absolute Truth. Each of us fragmental portions of the Supreme Spirit serve the Absolute whole and thus the spiritual world exists in perfect harmony.
It is only when we wonder what it would be like to be the center of this harmonic situation that we are projected into the material world. By definition there can only be one central point, so when another point desires to be the center, there is no longer harmony but instead a terrible cacophony. But since the spiritual world is perfect, this cacophony takes place in an entirely different realm that we know as the material world.
In this world we have all declared our independence from the Supreme Lord, and even though our dependence on Him is irrevocable, He allows us to accept the illusion that we are on our own and in control. Some struggle to grasp the concept of God letting His loved ones forget Him and undergo severe suffering in His absence, but this is what unconditional love is all about. Without the existence of a choice to “not love”, “love” is meaningless. So out of love, He lets us make our own mistakes all the while keeping us safe from any serious harm.
So the real independence day (the day we chose to try our hand at being the center of the universe), is not a happy day at all… it is a day we should morn and learn from our mistakes.
When we think about it, we realize that we do, in fact, depend on a lot of things and a lot of people. But as long as we continue to live our lives with our own self as the center, we will never know true happiness.
Srila Prabhupada started the Krsna Consciousness movement to train his followers to accept God back into the center of our paradigms. He also gave us a specific process to follow to be able to make this transition of consciousness.
So here is my declaration of dependence… i hold these truths to be self evident that i am a spirit soul, an eternal fragment of the Supreme Lord, and there is no possibility of existence without Him… He is my life, my breath, my everything… currently i am lost because i wanted to pursue life, liberty and happiness separate from Him, but now that i understand the futility of this notion i want to return to His side and again experience true happiness. Thanks to the mercy of my guru and Srila Prabhupada, i am able to follow a process which will take me back there.
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