Heart Of A Mouse

[rose]

A mouse was in constant distress because of its fear of the cat. A magician took pity on it and turned it into a cat. But then it became afraid of the dog.

So the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began to fear the panther, so the magician turned it into a panther. Whereupon it was full of fear for the hunter.

At this point, the magician gave up. He turned it into a mouse again saying, "Nothing I do for you is going to be of any help because you have the heart of a mouse."

Now some questions:

What is the main message of this story?
When in your life have you felt like the mouse?
If somebody you cared about felt like the mouse, what advice would you give?
After reflecting on this story,  what is one life change you now want to make?

[nithinbang]

Nice story I thought there is some basic characteristic in every indivisual, which whatever u do no one can change. If it cant be changed why worry about changing or regretting. In life too there will be some things which u cant change know it and dont worry about it... for example u cant change the past so trying to change the past is like foolishness... although there can be small changes that can be made to your characteristics and improve yourself that can be made.

[Ashok]

We all have our own fears and we are actually like the mouse of the story in our lives. Napolean hill, wrote that there are some basic fears in all of us:

> Fear of poverty (Financial security)
> Fear of old age (Losing health, being sick etc)
> Fear of losing love (Not having friends, bad relations with family members, losing family members etc)
> Fear of criticism (not being acceptable in society)
> Fear of death

We all have mixed proportions of one or more of above fears (in addition, we may have some other fears too). Only a fearless person can be truly spiritual, real spirituality does not dawn unless one is absolutely without fear. Fears are deep rooted in our psyche.

If you ask me, i have all the above fears but i do not know which is my biggest fear.

In my opinion, all the fears above are associated with our body consciousness and as long as we see our entire life from the lens of being a physical entity only, we will have these fears. When the awareness dawns that we are soul and when we actually realise that, we will be free from all fears. But such a realisation may take several lives to come to us. However, optimistic way to look at this fact could be that if we make efforts towards realising the above fact, we will progressively reduce our fears and sorrows.

Peace and love. Om Sai Ram.

[saisaran]

Sairam! A fine portrayal of human weakness, the biggest one Fear and anxiety! i too agree with you 100% that we mortals are subject to all the fears you tabulated. May Baba bless us and remove the anxieties that perturb us. Shirdi Baba has said, "Stay, Cast of anxiety". Sairam.

[rose]

Thanks my friends for all your nice comments. I really enjoyed reading them but I was thinking that we may look at the story from a different angel : we all put conditions for our happiness. For example if I have this or become that, then I'll be okay...then comes the time when I have all I wanted and I am who I wanted to be but still I feel incomplete and insecure...I ask for something else and something else and this journey never ends.
 
About fear, I think if you have complete trust in God, you would not be afraid of anything and if you try to live in the present moment and not the future since it is something uncertain and you don't know that you may face it or not , then you will be in peace with yourself and the rest of the world.
 
God bless you all !