The whole world is a net in which you have been caught

 

 “The whole world is a net in which you have been caught. Consequently you are in bondage. The bondage of money and material possessions. The bondage of physical pleasures. The bondage of strong likes and dislikes as well as the bondage of anger, pride, cruelty and other negative emotions. You are not free. Yet all delusions, illusions and errors come from within.

                                                                                      When the "ego" is the center of our life  there are borders, "restrictions" and limitations. When one becomes Self-realized there is unbounded freedom in life without the "me" as the center. Self-realization is unlimited life !  A Mahatma or Saint comprehends within his pure essence of being all existence and looks upon the entire manifestation as merely a beautiful play of cosmic forces.   

The power that keeps the individual soul bound to the wheel of life and death is its thirst for separate existence. Every thought, feeling or action that springs from this idea of exclusive or separate existence binds. It is for the fulfillment of cravings connected to objects and experiences of the world of duality that the ego-mind keeps on reincarnating itself.  

All persons have to pass through the state of bondage, but this period of bondage is not to be looked upon as a meaningless episode in the evolution of life. One has to experience being caged if one is to appreciate freedom. Good as well as bad, both of these kinds of samskaras (mental impressions) bind because both have to be experienced; both have to be spent. So it is impossible to be rid of samskaras by one’s own self, because whatever you do, it binds. You may think the highest thought, it binds.

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So how to escape these bindings ? 

The only wanting, the only desiring that binds for freedom is Love. The lover wants Union, but in this Union, the ‘I’ becomes so feeble that the binding, instead of hindering, helps to free. Just think of it, God is within all, in every one, and He is infinite. God is all-powerful, God is all-bliss. And yet, though God is in each one of us, how helpless we feel! We weep, we feel pain, we feel sorrow, although God, who is so infinitely powerful and blissful, is right there within us.

Why is it so difficult for our souls to become liberated ? It is because of our own bindings. 

But there is one way to get liberated from these bindings and that is through Love. 

Divine Love is a strange binding. It binds and unwinds. The more you bind yourself to the Beloved ( Lord), the greater the freedom or unwinding you have..”      

                                         ━━━━━━━━━━                                              ~ Paramahamsa Hariharananda