Bondage to COMFORTS = miseries + helplesness + repeated failures etc etc

Today I want to share a thought with you. May be I should call it a ‘lesson’ I have learnt. The very reason we have enslaved ourselves to what we call as miseries.To make it easy, let me put forth that lesson with the help of a small story.

I came across a short story told by ‘Osho’, which will help me explain that to you. Well the story goes like this,

“A man, a great man, a fighter for freedom was once traveling in the mountains. He stayed in a caravanserai for the night. He was amazed to see there a beautiful parrot in a golden cage, continually repeating “Freedom! Freedom!” And it was such a place that when the parrot repeated the word “Freedom!” it would go on echoing in the valleys, in the mountains.
The man thought: “I have seen many parrots, but have never seen such a parrot whose whole day, from the morning to the evening when he goes to sleep, is spent in calling out for freedom.” He had an idea. In the middle of the night, when the owner was fast asleep, he got up and opened the door of the cage. He whispered to the parrot, “Now get out.”
But he was very surprised that the parrot was clinging to the bars of the cage. He said to him again and again, “Have you forgotten about freedom? Just get out! The door is open and the owner is fast asleep; nobody will ever know. You just fly into the sky; the whole sky is yours.”
But the parrot was clinging deeply. The man said, “What is the matter? Are you mad?” He tried to take the parrot out with his own hands, but the parrot started pecking at him, and at the same time he was shouting “Freedom! Freedom!” The valleys in the night echoed and re-echoed, but the man was also stubborn; he was a freedom fighter.
He pulled the parrot out and threw him into the sky; and he was very satisfied, although his hand was hurt. The parrot had attacked him as forcefully as he could, but the man was immensely satisfied that he had made a soul free. He went to sleep.
In the morning, as the man was waking up, he heard the parrot shouting, “Freedom! Freedom!” He thought perhaps the parrot must be sitting on a tree or on a rock. But when he came out, the parrot was sitting in the cage, the “golden” cage and the door was open.”

Well this is the story. And what do we understand from it?
The parrot which cries for freedom, even after being helped and showed way to its freedom, comes back to its “golden” cage. Why? Was that parrot mad? No. Or is that it dint know it was freed? No, it knew it was out of the cage.
Then what’s the reason?

It wanted its freedom from the golden cage but it failed to free itself from the “gold” of that golden cage. That parrot had developed an attachment with that ‘Golden’ cage; which had become its very comfort.

‘We’ are that ‘parrot’.We want freedom from many things, the very things which are eating our life away, the very things which are obstacles between us and our dreams.We shout aloud for our freedom, we cry for that. We want to gain the freedom. We want to achieve. But what’s holding us back???

Don’t you think its our very "Bondage to COMFORTS”
What you say?
Awaiting your comments and thoughts :)

Warm Regards,
Sanjeev Kulkarni