Something greater than you and I…Something greater than mankind…Something greater than the world…THE

Something greater than you and I…Something greater than mankind…Something greater than the world…THE SOUL

A man was walking a long a beach, all alone, no one in sight miles away. As he walked, he would look back and admire the footprints that he left behind. After a while, he began to notice that a second pair of footsteps lay beside his. He looked around, but there was no one around him to justify the second set of footprints. At first he ignored, but then he noticed that slowly slowly, the second set of footprints started to disappear. After a while. It went back to being just his footprints that could be seen in the sand. After some time, the second set of footprints returned; this time his suspicion grew and became peculiar so he asked the open sky around him if there was someone walking beside him. A voice came from above calming the man down. It said, “I am God, and the second set of prints you find next to yours are Mine.” Satisfied with the answer, the man asked, “Why did you disappear half way through and then randomly just come back?” God laughed and replied, “My dear child, I did not leave. But when you saw just one set of prints in the sand, they still belonged to me, and I was merely carrying you. When I felt you were safe, I put you back down and hence you began to see two sets of prints again.”

A deep rooted story that gives so many meanings. Hindus believe that just as God carried the man in the analogy when times were hard, God carries us around to help us understand that we are not the body but the soul. He protects us by holding us and walks by our side when we are set in the right direction. The soul is and will always be an important part of our existence. God teaches us to protect the soul, preserve the soul, and become the soul. It is an object that we cannot see, but it is an object that all humans are attached to. These worldly pleasures come and go but nothing belongs to the soul. Lord Krishna in Chapter 2 Verse 71 of the Bhagwad Gita says that “we come empty handed and we return back empty handed.” Nothing we have in this world is our, because this around us is all perishable. The thing that stays is our soul, and that we must attach to God. Whether He walks by your side or carries you around, His end mission is to build that bond between himself and our soul.