Easiness
As we grow in strength in our spiritual life, we give up
the habit of worrying. It serves no purpose other than
to make us feel tense and miserable. When I stop
fretting about things that are beyond my control and
focus instead on generating optimistic and kind
thoughts, my life can begin to flow in ever more
positive directions. Such a light and easy approach to
life enables me to take everything in my stride.
Clear Aim
When the aim is clear,
constant effort is put in to fulfill this aim. There is
an ability to learn from the obstacles, adjust to them
or ignore them in order to move forward. There is the
understanding and the faith that even the worst
situation will take one forward. So the one who
understands this doesn't stop with any kind of difficult
or challenging situation, but is able to recognize and
use one's own treasures.
At Peace With Time
To live in freedom you have to
live at peace (harmony) with time; live the dimension of
time as a creator of time and not a slave of time;
live without being either a prisoner or victim of time.
To live at peace with time is to live in harmony with
nature, beginning with your inner nature. When you plant
a sapling today, you cannot accelerate the process so
that the next day you have a tree.
When it is summer, you cannot make the earth revolve
around the sun quicker or slower for winter to arrive
before or later. Everything has its rhythm in nature. We
have distanced ourselves from the natural rhythm and our
accelerated mind exercises pressure, creates stress and
causes anxiety. We plan the future, we are stuck in the
past and the present escapes us.
Many worries have to do with how we live time: the past,
the present and the future. Worrying about what might
happen (future), when the moment has not yet come for it
to happen, takes away from us the necessary energy to
deal with it when it finally arrives. Living in
memories drains our energy; the past already happened
and no longer exists, except in our memory. We feed
memories, not realizing that emerging the memory in our
mind distracts us from the present and weakens us.
It is like being a plug that connects to a socket with
no current passing through. We lose our energy. We want
to relive an experience that already happened, and in
the end we feel disappointed, feeling a mental and
emotional waste.
(To be continued tomorrow ...)
Soul Sustenance
Improving the Quality
of Different Areas of My Karmas (Part 1)
Karma yoga (experiencing meditation in practical life
situations) functions in two ways:
• By filling the self with power, the transformation
of action is possible. This in turn brings about change
in my sanskars.
• By absorbing the qualities of the Supreme Being my
sanskars change.
It's necessary to experiment with this to discover its
validity. On one level, whatever I have done, I have to
receive the return for that but, on another level, just
simply pure love for God is the factor that purifies,
cleanses and forgives. Whatever my past karma may have
been, the fire of God's love, the fire of a powerful
connection with Supreme is able to resolve it and remove
its impact from within the soul itself, in terms of
negative personality sanskars and also in terms of
negative karmic effects in real life situations.
Thus it can be seen why yoga or the union of love with
God is so crucial. If one looks at the whole pattern of
human life, there are four areas of karma which need to
be improved:
• Karma that I perform for myself, for my own sustenance
and upkeep.
• Karma that I perform with or for others in terms of
relationships.
• Karma that I perform, not out of need or necessity,
but for leisure or entertainment.
• Karma that I perform as service of others.
In the next three messages, we shall explain how we can
improve these four areas of karma.
Message for the day
The one with the vision of perfection constantly
experiences Progress.
Expression:
Many
times, as we are moving ahead in the path of our life,
we find ourselves stagnating. There seems to be no
progress at all in any aspect of our life. We try to
bring about a few changes that work for sometime. But
after sometime we find ourselves dissatisfied and we
stop trying.
Experience:
We need to have the vision of perfection constantly in
front of our eyes. We need to ask ourselves what is it
that we expect out of ourselves, to be a source of joy
to others, to keep learning.... it could be anything
that inspires us to constantly move ahead while
appreciating all that life brings.