A Breeze
Never fight. Wisdom never fights, it waits patiently,
speaks positively, releases easily, sees benefit in
everything and envisions a future of abundance, knowing
that all needs will be met at the right moment, in the
right way. If you think life is a struggle you will
always be struggling. If you think life is a breeze,
your attitudes and actions will convey lightness and
easiness. And that's what attracts everything you need,
and much more. Make today a breeze not a battle.
Regard
There is usually a desire to control people and also a
demand to get regard from all. In the process there is a
tendency to show authority to those around in order to
get things done. Yet this does not bring concrete
results, as there is no control over others or their
behavior. The best way to get things done is by giving
regard to all. When there is regard, people are able to
willingly use their specialties for the success of the
task. Also, when we have true regard for others, we are
also able to receive regard from them. It is this regard
that makes others understand and behave according to my
needs.
The Practice Of Meditation
As with anything else, the more we practice meditation,
the more we feel the benefit of what we are doing. We do
need to practice meditation regularly because the habits
of:
i. identifying with our physical form,
ii. succumbing to mental and emotional negativity (in
the form of waste and negative thoughts) along with
negativity in words and actions,
iii. becoming attached to the physical as well as the
non-physical, and
iv. being dependent upon the experience of physical
stimulation of any sort (from e.g. food, movies, people,
sports etc.) for happiness are extremely deep.
These habits have deepened over a period of many many
births, because of repeating them regularly, due to a
lack of spiritual awareness. As a result, in the present
moment also we regularly and quite easily slip into
these four habits.
(To be continued tomorrow...)
Soul Sustenance
Emotional Joy And Emotional Sorrow
We commonly become emotional, either in times of sorrow
e.g. at being separated from a loved one, at
experiencing failure in an external event, on hearing a
negative news, etc. or in times of joy e.g. when our
child or spouse or even pet performs a warm act, while
watching a movie, etc. While we have always believed
that it is absolutely normal or natural to become
emotional and some of us even believe that it is good to
let go of our emotions and crying once in a while makes
us lighter and stronger; on a spiritual level, becoming
emotional comes under the realm of dependencies and
dependencies always weaken us.
This is because when we become emotional, instead of
influencing our self on our own, we allow something or
someone outside our self to influence us. We bring that
something or someone or some event outside our self,
inside, in front of the eye of our mind, attach our self
to it, and lose our self in it i.e. we let the image
hijack our internal world in a way, as we become
subservient to it. As a result our thoughts,
feelings, emotions, words, actions are influenced in a
big way by the image. This is a spiritual definition of
becoming emotional. Passing on the remote control of my
internal world to the outer world in this way is a sign
of a not so strong internal self.
So what does one do instead? Instead of creating images
of external events and people inside our minds and being
influenced by them, we still watch these scenes, but
instead of losing our self in them and taking from them,
we contribute to them by giving them our internal
energy, but at the same time make sure that while doing
that, we are detached from them and not over-involved
emotionally. Internal energy is given in the form of
appreciation and love if it’s a positive scene and
power, compassion and co-operation if it’s a negative
scene, so as to help the scene to be corrected or
resurrected. This is influencing instead of being
influenced. This is a more empowering experience. In
this way we regain the control over our inner world and
rise above such emotional dependencies.
Message for the day
To be seated on the seat of self-respect is to use
virtues in life.
Expression:
It usually seems very difficult to use the virtues
within us when the people around are not doing so. At
such times using negativity seems much easier. In spite
of not having that particular weakness predominantly,
say of anger, when there is provocation from the outside
we tend to react with that weakness.
Experience:
In order to free ourselves from weaknesses and work with
the virtues within us we need to make sure we are seated
on the seat of self-respect. For this we need to
recognize and appreciate some speciality within us. When
we are in the awareness of this speciality of ours, we
will be able to stabilize ourselves in the state of our
self-respect.