Why We Blame God and the Stars for Our Choices?
The blame game we love to play
Every time something goes wrong with us the first thing we do is to look around and try to find out the cause. If you cannot find the reason on earth the next thing we do is to look up in to the sky. In the sky we have the planets in our horoscope to blame. If you are not convinced with this you try to go beyond the planets and start searching for God and sometimes ask "why God have you done this to me"?
There are only a few instances in a long time where you may have said, “Yes. I am the cause of what I am undergoing right now”. However there are a few instances when someone else in your life has been the cause of your suffering. In all other cases we will find a cause that is outside of us. Right from a bad government or governance to the mad street dog, almost anything will perfectly fit in your blame game and if you cannot find one don’t worry there is God waiting to be blamed.
The problem with blaming
When we blame, our focus shifts to someone else or something else and thereby miss a great opportunity to improve your luck. When you assume that you are not the reason for what went wrong where is the scope of changing or making yourself better. You will remain as you are and incapable of doing things right. Because you thought you were doing everything right.
When you blame you accept that there is no need to correct yourself. You think the whole world must be corrected. When Paul Brunton visited Ramana Maharshi he told the Maharshi, “I want to save the western world as it is in chaos…..” to which the Ramana Maharshi replied, “first save yourself…. for that is more difficult…. the creator will take care of his creations because only HE can handle that big an assignment”.
Instead of changing ourselves we are eager to change everything else. All this happens because of the blame game we play.
Why God gives me this suffering?
Many clients who were going through an unmanageable situation in their life have broken down during an in-person Astrology session asking me why God gave them that situation. They say, “I am such a good person, I have never hurt even an ant deliberately, then why me”? While I perfectly understand their situation, I cannot stop explaining why God is not involved. I spend a lot of time explaining how and why individual Prarabdha Karma is to be blamed instead of God.
Many have told me during consultation, “I pray to God…. God do not give the same trouble that you gave me, to others, for I am sure they will die….”. The same statement was told my so many of my clients. I have heard this hundreds of times during the last 3 decades of my life. I fail to understand how these people know what trouble everyone else in the world is going through?
Why does GOD want me to ask Him? Does He not Know?
It is always said, “Ask and it shalt be given”. So that obviously means God does not know of us until we ask Him. Yes. That is the way it is. The reason is that GOD has given us the world, the stars, the universe, the food, the oxygen, the water, the brain, the Sun and the Moon and He has given us countless of things. He knows that we are already rich. He does not know that we need more than what all He has already given us. So if you need something more you have to ask him. Infinity plus 1 is still infinity. God feels that we have infinite things and adding 1 more is not necessary. So He responds only if we ask Him.
God is performing an infinite number of miracles in the universe that there is no need to do one more miracle unless you ask Him to do it for you.
God is the Eternal Charioteer.
The fighting has to be done by Arjuna (The Man) and Sri Krishna does not actively take part in the war though HE is with Arjuna all the time.
God is like Sri Krishna in the Mahabharata war. God drives our chariot through the war. The war is to be compared with tough situations in our life. The fight is between the merits and demerits in our life. He does not participate in the war. He just takes us where we want to go. The fighting is to done by each one of us. God does not participate in the war or the game that we play.
God makes the earth goes round and round and around the Sun and He makes the Sun shine with so much light. He gave us the oxygen and the lungs with which we absorb the oxygen. All that is done by Him. Like Sri Krishna drives the chariot. Arjuna need not worry about that. But he has to use his bow and arrow and fight the war. The outcome is your own doing and undoing. He is not responsible for it. In fact the share of GOD is so much when compared to what you have to do. Yet people keep blaming God.
God is like the referee. He will show the yellow card a few times and then the red card. He will give an out in cricket but will not stand in the way of the players. Players must respect the verdict of the referee. He is meant only to judge and give the results of the merits and demerits on each player. You cannot conduct a game without a referee. You cannot play the game of life without God as the Judge.
God is impartial.
Just imagine if a football player says, “what have I done against the referee. Why is he so partial”? Have you not seen when a bad player is asked to leave the field he does not accept his mistakes, he resists the orders of the referee, he even tries to attack the referee. In the same way, many of us try to attack God. We say we are not be blamed. Some of us love to say that God is always wrong and we are always right. That is how it appears to be.
In our examinations at school or college the examiner corrects our answer sheets and gives us the marks. Every time we fail, we blame the examiner. The same examiner has given 100 out of 100 in mathematics to a particular student while he gave a weak student 20 out of 100. The 2nd student fails the examinations and starts blaming the examiner.When we get a good score we forget the examiner. Have you noticed that we remember God only when we fail.
We remember God in bad times for 2 reasons. First reason is to pray and plead to him. Second reason is when we like to abuse God for what He has done to us. Kabirdas an Hindi poet once wrote that, “...all those who are in trouble pray to God, but those who pray to God during good times are never going to get into trouble and therefore where is the need to pray at all” . In case you want to know the lines of Kabirdas – it is called a DOHA well and here it is… Dukh Mein Sumiran Sab Kare , Sukh Mein Kare Na KoyeJo Sukh Mein Sumiran Kare , Tau Dukh Kahe Ko Hoye Kabirdas the poet did not know that the modern men may even blame God during their bad times. If he had known that he may have perhaps added that to his doha.
Let us assume that this examiner gives 100 out of 100 for every student even if nothing was written in the answer sheets. Is this examiner doing justice? Will not the education system collapse if examiners award 100 out of 100 for each student?
In the same way God cannot help everyone. God allows the bad ones to take another birth and another birth hoping somewhere the person would change for the better. It is like the same student writing the examinations again and again. But there is no way God is going to give you marks without you doing well in your examinations. If He does that He is surely a bad God. Just think of the top student who worked so hard to get 100 marks spending sleepless nights and this bad student who did not work at all also getting 100 marks. Is that justice? Is that the description of our God?
Why can’t every player in the Olympic games be given a Gold Medal because they all came to the games to get the Gold medal? They did practice a lot. Why test them so many times. The trials, the quarter finals, the semi finals and the final? Why all these. We are trying to bring out the best in people. God wants us to become the best. Until then keep practicing.
Why does not GOD make every person rich and comfortable?
The 100 students of a class want to pass the examinations and they pray to God to help them out. What is God supposed to do. God has given them each the complex brain that is better than all the computers in the world put together. Along with that He gave them eyes to observe and ears to listen in class. God expects them to use it well and get high marks. Instead these gifts from God are utilized in watching movies, trying to fall in love at the wrong time in their life (while studying) and play video games all the time and when the examinations come the students pray to God for marks. After praying to God and then failing these students will curse God or stop believing in God. Prayers will work if they have done their part very well in which case God will help them with that extra bit of luck and that makes all the difference.
So the wise men said, “God helps those who help themselves”.
Just think of this situation. A murderer prays to God seeking His blessings that would allow him to escape the police and the jail. The family members of the deceased also pray to God for justice. If God helps the murderer will not the system of justice collapse? From this you know that God can help you only if you have some merit balance in your account. You still can make some SOS calls (Emergency calls) even though you ran out of balance on your mobile phone. Such is the mercy of God.
Coming back to the story of the murderer who prayed to God for allowing him to escape from the police, God answers his prayers in a different way. He gets him arrested by the police. When arrested the murderer will be in jail preventing him from killing more people. Had he continued killing more people his negative karma would increase making his future lives look like hell. In jail he will become a better person and soon he will be free. So God has actually answered his prayers in a different way by leading to his arrest.
Good times are due to merits carried from past lives.
When we are in good times, we almost never have asked God why He has given us the good times when so many people are actually suffering in this world. We never were angry with God for being partial with us. We never blamed God for letting down other people. We were very busy enjoying life. We use to throw food around after eating half of it. We bought new clothes month after month on various occasions. We drank expensive wines and danced happily. We almost forgot God.
Gold, Silver and Bronze. Why not give Gold to all participants? Will that not make everyone happy? Why are the games authorities partial to these people? You know the answer!
The good things that are happening to us in our good times are mostly due to hard work, intelligent work and has nothing to with God. That is what most people thing. In fact, they are right. You are the cause of your enjoyment. God is responsible for giving you a field to play your game on. The field, the stadium is not due to the capacity of any player. They are due to something outside of the players.
God gives you the platform, the field, the venue, the world to live on but never does he Himself play for you. If you play well you become a champion and a winner.
Do you know the names of these 3 people who got the Gold, Silver and Bronze? Even if you do not know you can guess what they must have done. These 3 people must have worked very hard in whatever field they have chosen to participate in the Olympic Games. They must have toiled for 4 years. How do you know all these? It is so easy to guess. So whenever you see anyone at the top, please know that his karma must have been good. He must have worked hard for it during his past life.
Bad times are due to de-merits carried from past lives.
In bad times suddenly God appears. In our good times we forget God. We think of God all the time during our bad times. That is because whatever we did to alter the bad luck failed and things were going against us. God is now the cause of everything. Why me? Why does God trouble me like this. Can’t He see my situation. He is not at all worried about me. He is busy taking care of the rich people in the world. All such complaints against God is so frequent in the world. I lose a game and then I blame it on God. I lost a lot of money and blame God for it. I am heading for a divorce and the cause is God.
How to prove that we are the cause of our problems?
Check your horoscope. Learn the basics of Vedic Astrology. Reach out to an expert in Astrology. Your horoscope will explain your good times and bad times. Your karma is the cause of your happiness and sorrow. God is not. Use this logic and you will soon find that everything in this world can easily be explained. If you hold on the view that everything is due to God then it will lead to more confusion. We will have to say the murderer murders because of God and the the man who died, dies because of God.
Do not blame your father, your mother, your brother and your sister, your husband or your wife if your horoscope indicates the problem. If your horoscope indicates the problem then your Karma is the cause. Why look for another cause. In case your horoscope does not indicate the problem then there is a possibility that something other than you is the cause of unhappiness or happiness in your life. Even that is a possibility.
If your horoscope indicates troubled marriage so strongly then why should you blame your spouse. Your spouse may be the victim of your bad karma. If the horoscope of your spouse also indicates troubled marriage as much as yours then both of you were destined to meet each other in marriage and suffer the consequences of misdeeds pertaining to marriage in a past life. So why blame your parents or others in your life for the cause of divorce?
The invention of black magic
Black magic is an invention. At best it works due to belief in black magic. It gives us the fear and fear does wonders. It actually works only because we start believing it works. People who play games know that if they believe that they are going to lose they will lose. They are afraid of the opponent and soon the opponent become tough. That is the way black magic works.
If something bad happens to anyone in India, it happens first due to God. Some people do not blame God. They soon find something else to blame. Why not say it is due to black magic? Somehow we need to find a reason for our bad times. Our ego does not permit us to believe that our own Karma allowed it to happen. So we fill up the blanks saying that it must be black magic. Once we believe in it based on demand and supply, the practitioners of black magic appear. They appear with skull and bones and they do funny things.A client told me once, “Sir I am a great man, nothing wrong can ever happen to me but now-a-days you know things are not going the right way. I am sure someone is doing black magic on me”. I told him “anyway your time is not good according to your horoscope there is no need to bring in the concept of black magic”. But he never accepted my view. He went to another Astrologer who agreed with him and he was asked to do several tantrik poojas to get rid of the black magic effect. But nothing good happened despite all these. He came to me after 5 years and told me what all happened. When his good times came back as per his horoscope all his problems were solved. He thought it was due to the tantrik Pooja done by the Astrologer. I could not convince him that his good times were due to a combination of Good Dasha and Good Antardasha.
There are so many excuses out there. While using excuses wisdom takes a back seat. I play snooker in a local club. I overheard a snooker player saying, “whenever I drink I start missing the shots. Everything gets bad the moment I start drinking alcohol”. The actual reason was that the player is a beginner. So with or without the drink he can never pot the balls anyway. He needs to put in hours of practice. He was using the drink as an excuse for missing the shots.
If Karma is all powerful why pray to GOD?
If Karma is so powerful then why pray to GOD at all. If GOD is going to be a silent person why pray to Him at all? That is the next possible question if you have accepted what all I have said in this article. God is like the referee. You can appeal to the referee. Considering your request he will give an out as it happens in a cricket game.
In certain situations the umpire does not give an out unless an appeal is made. Here you see the players appealing to the cricket umpire. God is like our teacher. He can give you 1 or 2 extra marks because you begged him. That is enough to pass the exams. But never will He give you 50 extra marks. God is like the bank manager. He can give you a waiver on the interest based on your request when you settle your bank loan but never will the bank manager allow you to settle the bank loan without paying up anything.
Respecting GOD is like respecting the referee. If you do that it means you are respect the rules of the game and you are going to be abide by the rules and will play a fair game. That helps you play the game better. So if you believe in God it means that you will play your game in this life following the rules and regulations. Then you will put in many hours of practice. That helps you win the game.
If you blame yourself then you will start correcting your mistakes. If you blame others you will never improve and that means you are going to continue blaming others and you will never improve because of which you will never improve and that means you are going to continue blaming others and you will never improve…….
Why does not GOD allow us to remember our past lives?
One of my readers asked me why does God not allow us to remember our past life. I have tried to provide the answer by just telling you a story. This is just an imagination so that you will understand what will happen if we remember what we did in our past life. Here goes…
“I remembered my past life when I was 35 years old. I remembered that I was woman in my previous birth called Bharti Jain. I was very beautiful and had fair skin unlike now. My husband’s name was Ashish Jain. We lived in Gujarat. We had 4 children. When I died I had 2 more daughters to get married. We had around 4 acres of land. As I started remembering all that I became sad. Now I have just about 2400 sq.ft of land. I want to go back. But how can I when I love my current family so much.
I wanted to know what happened to Mr Ashish Jain my husband. Did he remarry again? I remebered that he had a crush on another women down the street. I wanted to go back to my 2 acres of land which had our big house right in the middle. In this life my house is very small and I live in a small piece of land.
How we worked hard to earn those 2 acres of land. I was so used to that land. We were wealthy people. I want to go back. My friends are all there. An uncle of mine did some injustice to me. I need to take revenge on him. I lent money to a friend and she never returned it. Let me go back and try to get it back with interests for 35 years.
I want to go back to Gujarat now and want to perform the wedding of my 2 daughters. But now I also know they must be 35 years older. What happened to them? What happened to my money that I kept in the bank. I want everything back. Whatever I possessed I want it back. I did a lot of injustice to one of my children and now I am so guilty about it that I cannot sleep properly. I feel sorry for him now. I want to bring him back to my current family and start taking care of him. When I lie down in bed, I think of my house in Gujarat. I want to go back and get it back from whoever currently owns it. I want my children back. I had 2 grandchildren too. They must have grown up now. What are they doing?
Now, in the current birth I am man. Who am I? Am I Dhilip or am I Ms Bharti Jain. How confusing? I think of my husband Mr. Ashish Jain a lot these days. But it is an odd feeling. I am man now and how can I think of a man in that way. I think of Jainism, the practices of Jainism and now I am in a different community and in a different place. I like the past as we had a wonderful past. The rituals we followed were different. Which ritual is correct? Which belief is correct?
It is like watching 2 movies at the same time. If I remember more births then it will be like watching 5 movies at one time. As I remember each scene it clashes with my current scenes. Just imagine the hero of all the movies is the same person. Will you not go mad?
I am sad thinking of what all I left behind in Gujarat. If I remember more lives I will get more confused. So I pleaded to God to remove the memories of my past life. I am glad He did.”
When we get a new computer it comes along with a new disk. Just imagine it has all the details of what you did in the previous computer. This is perhaps the best way to explain why God re-formats our hard disk when we are reborn.
The right belief in GOD is a must.
If you believe in GOD there are several advantages and the foremost among them is that you believe in doing good things in this world. You will believe in rules and regulations. You will become obedient and follow a method of living. You will like to speak the truth. You will like to do things that God likes to do.
Good actions become our good karma. You will start believing in good Karma. To start being good, you should start believing in GOD and His ways. God is the embodiment and representative of good things in this world. The absence of good actions lead us away from happiness. If you blame GOD you will blame everything else. If you feel that GOD is the cause of the suffering in this world then you it means you are ignorant and ignorance leads to darkness and conflicts in your mind.
Blaming GOD during bad times will only make things worse. Because you are supposed to pray to GOD during your bad times at least. The good thing about bad times is that it does not last. The bad thing about good times is that it does not last. Knowing the transient nature of life one must therefore at all times praise the Lord for whateve He has already provided instead of blaming Him.
By
Guruji E K Dhilip Kumar
Email : ekdhilipkumar@gmail.com
Discussion(4)
Very nice article Guruji as always.
Thought-provoking indeed!
Recently I was going through some u -tube videos about "afterlife" some say it is stated in Garuda purana tat after death the soul goes to either heaven or hell according to its karma and the accounts are settled there..so if everything is balanced then why there is suffering in rebirth ?how can we say the karma is still carried?..jz my thoughts!
Guruji, Very well explained with simple examples