
Surrender Gracefully
We are surrounded by graceful surrender. The
geese surrender to the first autumn chills, and
think of flying south. The flower surrenders to
the night and shuts up shop as the setting sun
surrenders to the horizon of another day. A
mother surrenders to the needs of her baby, and
the child surrenders to the wisdom of the
father. These kinds of surrender are sweet and
natural. They are graceful movements in a dance
to the subtle symphony of life. While we may
find moments to surrender to such grace and
beauty, if we are not careful, we also tend to
allow ourselves to surrender to our appetites,
to envy, to greed and then to self centred
lifestyles in which we serve only ourselves. No
grace there - only the disgrace of
self-inflicted slavery. Whatever we surrender
our minds to, will eventually shape our
character and define the quality of our life. Be
careful what you surrender your mind to, even if
it's only for a day, or an hour.
God
“God”. It is a
loaded word which, for many people seems
incomprehensible. This is unfortunate because
there are so many
personal experiences of direct encounters with
the One who is the
purest source of truth and love. If we attempt,
as some do, to make
our approach to the Source easier by making it
an impersonal one, we
deny ourselves the essential richness and
nourishment of a personal
relationship. When the meditator practices
meditation with purely
spiritual intentions they are aiming to enhance
their own level of
enlightenment and create a state of being that
is open to receiving
directly the light and love of the spiritual
parent whom we all share.
Contrary to some popular beliefs it does not
take many lifetimes to
master. However, it is an extremely personal and
spiritually intimate
relationship where the energy of God is directly
felt.
Controlling Your
Emotions
There are five essential steps to emotional
control and mastery. Although the complete
process will finally happen in a few seconds in
real life, it is essential for our learning to
break it down and see what is required at every
step.
Step One - Awareness
This simply means being aware of the emergence
of the subtlest (finest) of emotions, which, if
left unchecked, will grow into important
disturbances. For example irritation leads to
frustration leads to anger leads to rage.
Step Two - Acknowledge
Which means taking responsibility for the
emotion by understanding and acknowledging that
I am the creator of the emotion, not someone or
something else.
Step three - Acceptance
Fully accept the presence of the emotion without
resisting (opposing) it in any way. If it is
resisted it simply becomes stronger, or is
suppressed for another day.
Step Four - Ascend
This is the moment of full detachment from both
the emotion and the inner source of emotion. In
the process of detached observation the emotion
is losing its power. And it is only through
detached observation that the emotion will begin
to dissolve.
Step Five - Attune
This means returning our attention to the very
centre of ourselves where our inner peace and
power are to be found. This is the purpose of
meditation.
Soul Sustenance
Identify
The Filters In Your Life
Like different types and different colour
filters on a physical level; on a spiritual
level, there are many different types of filters
that work in our lives e.g. the jealousy filter,
hatred filter, attachment filter, fear filter,
greed filter, etc. and many more. Due to
these filters, we do not see people and things
as they are, but as we are, because the filters
are our own self-created ones. If we want to
see people and things as they are, we need to
check which filters are working most in our
lives. Each one of us has different filters
working to different extents, depending on our
personality e.g. someone might have the jealousy
filter working more regularly as compared to the
fear filter in his/her life.
Because of these filters, everything that we
see is not only coloured by the colour of the
filter we are using at that time, but our look
is also biased as we choose what to see,
what to give more importance, what to be
affected by more, what to let through the filter
etc. and what not to. We have and form a
deceptive vision of the things and people that
surround us inside our minds. And the longer
this deformed vision lasts, the more we will
convince ourself that that is the true image of
the world, because our filters continue to
process new data depending on what they see that
make the image stronger. This reinforcing of
the incorrect image builds up our database of
incorrect beliefs based on different filters and
makes them stronger and stronger as we go
through our life journey. Beliefs are fixed
ways of looking at reality. Thus, the world that
we perceive is no longer the real world, but a
world created by our own mind. So in a way we
become deaf and blind on a spiritual level
towards the world. To heal this deafness and
blindness, we do not have to remove each filter
one after the other, which may become a
difficult task; but we have to discover the
pure, original internal self and start seeing
everything without the filters, based on the
pure-self point of view. As a result of that,
gradually our incorrect beliefs start dissolving
and correct beliefs start setting in based on
our clean unfiltered view.
Message for the
day
To be free is to be free even from the bondage
of things.
Expression:
The one who is dependent on
the presence of a particular thing to succeed in
a task is also under the bondage of that thing.
Such a person will not be able to put in effort
to his full capability since he is always
thinking of what is lacking. On the other hand
the one who tries to find a way to do the task
at hand even when there is nothing available is
the one who finds new resources. He is then able
to use these resources too for accomplishing the
task.
Experience:
When I am thinking more about
what is to be done rather than thinking about
what is lacking, I am able to be content with
what I have. I am able to appreciate every small
thing that is present in my life that I could
use for my own benefit and that of others. I am
able to work for what I want to achieve without
being caught up only with the desires.