Once, a village sculptor went to the near by quarry looking for some marble stones. He quickly selected a rugged, black marble stone, and then spent hours selecting five, pink marble stones, which were smooth and in perfect rectangle shape. He loaded all the marble stones in his cart and turned back home.

After reaching home, the sculptor unloaded all the stones. He carefully carried each pink stone into the house, placed them down gently, and left the black one in the yard. Next day, he brought out his tools and started chiseling the black marble stone. Although it was painful, the black marble stone did not say a word, as it believed that the sculptor had a good reason for all the pain he was causing. The pretty, pink marble stones, lying in the cool shade of the house, felt sorry at the sad plight of the black stone.

After a couple of months passed by, the sculptor loaded all the stones again into his cart and rode towards the village. When he reached the main crossroads in the center of the village, he unloaded the stones, set the five pink stones as steps, and placed the beautifully carved black Krishna idol on the top.

The rugged stone that looked ugly was put on the highest honor only after it was chiseled to perfection. Similarly, our Eternal Father bestowed upon us a human body, mind, and intellect giving us a chance to chisel away the impurities - lust, anger, greed, envy, pride, etc. - and move towards perfection.  However, as our intellect is subject to many imperfections, we think ourselves to be the body, although we are eternal souls. Therefore, we spend the valuable human life in pursuit of sensual pleasures that lead to eternal misery.  Ishopanishad warns us:

Therefore, it is imperative to realize the significance of this human life, and speed up our journey towards our goal - our Eternal Father. We souls pass through many bodies, which we call transmigration. Just as we start at kindergarten and move through elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and finally graduate from a university, so also our Eternal Father gives us this human body, to progress through many lives and attain Him. Swami Mukundananda ji says, "The Lord has designed this world so beautifully that it makes us experience both happiness and distress for our gradual elevation. If we continue to lead our regular lives and tolerate whatever comes our way, happily doing our duty, the world naturally pushes us toward gradual spiritual elevation,"

How we live this life, determines what we will be in the next. How does that happen? Shree Krishna explains to Arjuna in Bhagavad Gita (15-8) that the soul takes the mind and senses with it, when it departs from the body and enters a new one, as the air carries fragrance from one place to the other. In other words, we have been building our character over many lifetimes.  We carry the sanskaars (past life propensities) from one life to the next. Our scriptures proclaim that it takes millions of years of harmonious and disease-free (from mental afflictions) life for the soul to reach the goal.

Nevertheless, we can speed it up, if we determine that we are the soul, and our goal is God. When we make a firm decision and yearn for Him, he will grace us by sending a God-realized guru, under whose guidance we begin our sadhana - the journey towards God.