There is a beautiful story by a man called Ouspensky. He was a disciple of the great Gurdjieff and he writes about a young boy called Ivan who had left home after quarreling with his mother. He was a fatherless child, and up to the age of nineteen his life was miserable; he could not find peace at home, he could not find harmony at home and he finally quarreled and left his mother and walked away. And while he was walking he met a sage and said to him, "Master! Is it possible to change this existence?"
The sage says, "Why do you ask?"
He says, "Well, if I had a second chance, this life I would have lived differently."
The sage laughs and says, "My son! Not an atom of your existence would have been changed because you have to change first."
He says, "Oh, come on. Don't tell me this tall story. I know you guys." Like a young man of our times, you know I am trying to give his language!
The sage says, "Well, if you want a chance, there is a sorcerer who lives down this lane. Just go and see him and tell him you want a second chance."

So this young fellow wanders off there, he finds a sorcerer and he asks, "Can you give me a second chance at this life?"
The sorcerer smiles and says, "My son, do you think it would be useful?"
He says," For heavens sake, wouldn't you live your life differently if you had a second chance?"
The sorcerer smiled. He said, "Well it is better you find out yourself!"

He takes a bit of powder and throws it on a brazier of fire and this boy is back in the cradle, as a child. The child grows up and, at every instant, it has this feeling that it has been there before or undergone this before or has seen this before and it goes on and on and at the age of nineteen, suddenly he finds himself back on the street, again facing the old man who was the Master, who directed him to sorcerer!
He says, "Master what is this? I had a second chance but I could not change it."
This old man says, " My son, that is the tragedy! As long as you are, what you are, you cannot change yourself. It is necessary to go to someone else who can change."

I have often been amused, you know, when we travel in Indian trains. Sometimes the train stops over long at a platform and the children in the train want to push it from inside! Can you push anything from inside? Whether it is a car or train, you cannot possibly do it. Always you need an external agency to push something. Therefore, you get out of your car and push your car. But I cannot get out of myself. If I could, I would perhaps have done it long ago and escaped from these miseries.
Therefore yogic science says, "Seek a Master. Find one who can change you while you are yet within yourself, within this life, so that this respective recurrence of existence, you know, you break that chain of existence, once and for all."
This we call liberation.

Source: The Principles of Sahaj Marg,Volume IX, pp. 225-227, P. Rajagopalachari, 1995, Shri Ram Chandra Mission India

Q: Have you sometimes thought that you could change a pattern of events in your life, but then found that you fall into making the same mistakes again and again? What would you do to change things?

Q: Why can a Master help us to change when we cannot change ourselves?

O, Master!
Thou art the real goal of human life.
We are yet but slaves of wishes
Putting bar to our advancement,
Thou art the only God and power
To bring us up to that stage.