A 3-minute reflection
The air around us does not understand the difference between stench and scent.
It carries both without judgement, without preference, and without knowing what it is carrying.
But when that air is breathed in by a person, the person immediately recognises whether it carries a bad smell or a beautiful fragrance.
The air remains detached.
It only carries.
In the same way, the soul may carry impressions, tendencies, and subtle ingredients gathered through its journey. It may not judge them as good or bad. It simply carries them.
But when that soul enters a new body, the individual begins to experience those tendencies through behaviour, likes, dislikes, fears, attractions, reactions, and repeated patterns.
Some tendencies are easy to understand.
Some are very difficult to explain.
For example, my younger son has always had an unusual discomfort with stickers of any kind.
Once, I had borrowed a friend’s car for a day. When I was dropping my son to school, he refused to sit in the front seat. When I asked him why, he simply pointed to the stickers on the dashboard.
He is now sixteen years old, and this tendency has been there from his baby days.
Where does such a tendency come from?
It is difficult to say.
But it makes me reflect deeply on how certain impressions may travel with the soul, even before the individual fully understands them.
The tendencies carried by the soul may remain with a person throughout life. But they are not necessarily permanent in their existing form.
With sincere effort, they can be observed, refined, converted, and elevated.
That effort is Sadhana.
To understand ourselves, we need Swadhyay — self-study.
To practise what we learn, we need Seva — service.
And to remain steady in this path, we need Satsang — the company of those who are also walking in the same direction.
In the modern world, identifying our tendencies has become difficult.
There is too much distraction, too much noise, and very little space for inner observation.
But perhaps this is one of the deeper purposes of life.
The purpose of this birth may not be only to achieve, possess, or succeed externally.
Perhaps it is also to refine what the soul carries.
If we carry tendencies that are destructive — hatred, anger, jealousy, cruelty, short temper, or anything that causes pain to ourselves or others — we must make sincere efforts to recognise them and gradually release them.
If we carry tendencies that are constructive — love, patience, kindness, discipline, compassion, courage, and peace — we must strengthen them, enhance them, and offer them back to existence in a better form.
So perhaps the purpose of this birth is simple, yet profound.
To reduce the stench.
To enhance the fragrance.
And when the time comes to leave this body, to release a better-quality soul back into the vast space from where it came.
What fragrance are we cultivating within ourselves?