It is the honey bee’s culture to travel every day and reach places where flowers are available for it. The bee extracts nectar from the flower and returns to its abode. It does not care about anything else.
Where there are flowers, there are also other things like thorns; but the honey bee simply ignores the presence of thorns and does not waste its time complaining about them. It simply extracts the nectar from the flower and returns.
This behaviour of the honey bee is a symbolic lesson to man—'Live like a honey bee'. Extract what is good for you and leave what is unwanted. Do not waste your time in complaints and protests.
Once I saw a bee hive on top of a tree. I have read a lot about the honeybee. I was reminded of many things when I looked at the hive. The honeybee extracts nectar from 20 lakh flowers to have one pound of honey. I thought that a honeybee flies to a garden. It sees many trees there. There are many things, but it reaches exactly where it sees nectar. It doesn’t take interest in anything other than nectar. It doesn’t waste even a single moment in anything else. I learnt that we have to lead our lives in this world in a selective way. You have to be attached to only that which is helpful for your life. You have to remain disconnected from everything else. The moment the honeybee comes, it neither sits on the branch nor on the leaves. It neither has interest in leaves nor in the wood. It straight goes to the spot where it can get nectar. This means it works in a selective way. I believe each one of us have to adopt this method. In life, we shouldn’t get entangled in everything. We shouldn’t waste our time on everything. We should become selective. We should take interest only in those things and spend time in only that which is directly useful to us. The aim of our life, the purpose of our life should be primary. If something is helpful for the aim, we should be concerned with it. We shouldn’t be concerned with anything else. This is the spiritual way of life. This is applied spirituality. Spirituality is not anything mysterious which can be had with closed eyes. There is no use of spirituality gained with closed eyes. Whether you have it or not makes no difference. I believe in the spirituality which is part of my life, which helps me achieve a better life. If spirituality only gives me ecstasy, I have no interest in it. This is true spirituality.