14.04.2014

Schwerin Castle, Germany
Respect
When I learn to respect
myself, other people will respect me. How can I develop
respect for myself? By keeping my mind positive and
encouraging myself to grow and change for the better.
Demanding respect because of my position or background
is simply arrogance. On the other hand, listening with
humility and valuing other people's advice naturally
earns me respect. I get back exactly what I give out.
Self Conversations And Their Significance
A very important subtle activity
that we all indulge in for a lot of time in the day is
having conversations with the self, sometimes
consciously and a large number of times without even
being conscious of it. We need to be extremely careful
about what the quality of our conversations are because
self conversations very strongly influence our
perception i.e. the way we see ourselves, others,
situations as well as our personalities and also mould
them. If channeled properly, they can be constructive
i.e. ones that empower the self; if not, they can be
destructive i.e. ones that bring the self down or weaken
it in some way or the other. They possess immense
potential, both positive and negative, if we want we can
use them to liberate us or they can even limit us. We
can judge, criticize and threaten ourselves or praise
and encourage the self in a positive way. It's important
to create thoughts of acceptance, respect and approval
for ourselves, even if situations don't go the way we
desire or expect. Such positive conversations help rise
above the dependence on what how people see us and what
they think and talk about us, making the self extremely
powerful.
Positive self conversations are not fantasies or
disconnecting from reality and a few minutes given to
the activity do a lot of benefit and no harm at all.
They can be done by detaching oneself from actions when
we have an emerged conversation and our complete focus
is on the conversation and we do nothing else at that
time or whilst being involved in actions. Some actions
like going on a drive, cooking, having a meal or simply
taking a walk or going on a jog allow self conversations
to take place alongside. At these times we give less
mental energy or attention to the conversations i.e. we
can have a merged conversation so that the respective
action is not affected adversely in any way. We can
choose how much mental energy to give to the activity,
depending on the karma alongside.
Feeling
Our
actual words only form a tiny percentage of the
communication. Communication is made up of mostly
feelings. Whether you like it or not, your feelings will
definitely be revealed.
If you like or dislike the person you're communicating
with, then everything within your whole being will
communicate your feelings. Before opening your mouth,
check the feelings behind the words.
Soul Sustenance
Meditating With Open Eyes
It is advised to practice meditation with eyes open. When
we sit to meditate, if we close our eyes, what we do is
that we send a signal to our mind, intellect and our
physical body that sleep is close and that signal, in
turn, induces sleep. That is the last thing we want to
induce inside ourselves, while meditating. Meditation is
a way to wake up and stay awake, not only physically,
but in terms of being conscious and alert about what is
happening internally and externally. It is therefore
good to practice with eyes open, so that during your
meditation, you can become used to going beyond the
physical inputs of what you see, hear, feel and smell
and at the same time, remain exposed to these inputs.
By practicing with open or semi-open eyes, it becomes
easier to create the accurate state of consciousness
while still being faintly aware of our surroundings.
This will be essential in day to day activities when we
want to stay connected to our inner peace while others
around us may not necessarily be very peaceful. It will
also help us to move deeply into our peaceful
consciousness during conversations which at the same
time, require alertness to go into the depth of ideas
and concepts. When we are established in our peaceful,
spiritual state (as a result of meditating), it is as if
we are keeping our third eye, the eye of our intellect,
open, which gives us the ability to see, in actions and
interactions, what is true and false, and to make the
right decisions without being influenced by others or
our own emotions. All the above abilities are required
many times during the day.
We obviously can’t keep closing our eyes to meditate
each time any of these abilities are required.
Message for the day
To be open to
change means to experience constant progress.
Projection:
We usually judge the situation
according to our past experiences and we don't want to
change our responses to the situation. Because we have
succeeded once we feel that the particular response will
bring us constant success.
Solution:
We need to learn from our past experiences but also need
to take care to be open to whatever new learning the
situations may have to offer to us. When we keep
learning from every new situation that comes our way we
will be able to experience constant progress.