Received the following message from a friend today and decided to share it in this forum.
Stories can be powerful teaching tools and this one spoke to me.
A fascinating traditional Indian tale goes like this:
One day as Shiva and Shakti, the Divine Couple, are
looking down on the Earth from their Heavenly Dwelling,
Shakti sees a poor, miserable looking man walking down a
dusty road. He looks so tired and his clothes are so worn
and ragged that her heart went out to him. She turns to
her husband and begs him to give this man some gold.
Shiva takes a long look at the poor man, then turns back
to his beloved wife and says that he cannot do this.
“But why not?” she asks. “Are you not the Lord of the
Universe? Why can you not do this simple thing?”
“I cannot because he is not ready to receive it”, Shiva replied.
Unaccustomed to being denied by her husband, Shakti
becomes angry and asks, “Do you mean to say that you
cannot drop a bag of gold in his path?!”
“Of course I can”, Shiva said, “but that is a different matter.”
“Please, husband,” she implored him once more.
So because he cannot refuse her, Shiva drops a bag of
gold directly in the man’s path.
Meanwhile, the poor man is slumping along, worrying
about whether or not he will be able to eat tonight,
or go to bed hungry once more… Coming around a
bend in the road, he sees something lying on the ground
in front of him and mutters to himself.
“What is that big ugly rock doing in the middle of the road?
I am lucky I saw it before I stubbed my toe or fell over it.
I might have hurt myself or torn these raggedy sandals
of mine even further!” And carefully, he steps around
the sack of gold, and continued trudging on his way.
Life constantly presents us with gifts disguised as
obstacles. It is so easy to miss seeing them for the
opportunities that they are. Unless we are willing
to lift our eyes up, open ourselves to receive
our unexpected fortune, then we, like the weary
traveler, will be alarmed or annoyed by the
arrival of unforeseen obstacles, even if they are
really blessings in disguise.
