Remember

Life is not yours, and it can be taken from you at any moment. Reflect on this.

A Fortune-Tell Told Me, p262

Do you believe that which is truely yours no one can take? Not even god?

So many things "happen" to us in the course of our lives...as kids we immediately grasp the concept of "mine". Something to which we feel very close to and if taken away we get upset. As we we lost apart of us. Why is that so inherent in us at such a young age? What is it about being human wants to claim things as ours, as possession? When we are young, it can't be power, prestige, vanity, greed? How can a child even understand the concept of greed? As a child we don't choose the toys, clothes, food, etc we receive yet we quickly claim it as ours. Interesting... in that there are two ways, maybe more, this can lead to.

1. Greed/Ego possession is something we learn at an early age or is developed in us as a survival instinct. Or just the natural nature of being human.

2. The child immediately at a subtle level that the things they receive are a result of past lives and they are claiming them. There is a story about a Buddhist monk walking and carrying beads. He walks by a young child. The child immediately comes up to him and says these beads are his. The child became the Dalai Lama.

This book rightly points out that we don't choose our parents, the time we are born, where we are born, our brothers and sisters, and yet we claim. So the cycle of continues on even as adults.

What is it that we have to unlearn to understand the truth of life?