03.05.2015

Respectful Assertiveness
When a conversation
becomes heated, can you respond warmly ? When
giving your opinion, can you express yourself
without anxiety ?
Assertiveness is our ability to convey thoughts
and feelings in ways that can be clearly heard;
whilst maintaining our personal integrity, as
well as respect for others.
Compassion
A compassionate
person develops an eye for spotting the
qualities that
make each person special. Even when others are
at their lowest ebb, it
is possible to help them restore their
self-belief by keeping a firm,
clear vision of their goodness and specialties.
Taking a gently
encouraging approach, I must never give up on
anyone.
The Hurting Of The
Ego (cont.)
Continuing from yesterday's message, we commonly
use the terms - my ego got hurt or I
think your ego got hurt. 'You hurt my
ego' is nothing but you hurt or harmed the image
that I carry of myself (as discussed yesterday)
with me each second everyday. Because I carry it
with me all the time, I have become attached to
it. e.g. If, on a particular day, you reach
home late from office and your wife, who is
angry with you, accuses of not being a family
man and one who doesn't give enough time to her
and the children. Your reasons for reaching home
late may be genuine or not, your wife may be
right or wrong on that particular day. In either
case, you carry an image of yourself, all the
time, as being a very loving, caring father and
husband, who has been responsible for the
all-round growth and development of the family
in all respects since the family was created.
Your wife's words basically pinch that invisible
image, as a result of which you feel insulted
and hurt and you react angrily, not necessarily
in front of your wife, but it could be in front
of someone else or even just internally. This
phenomenon happens many times, in various
different situations with different people
throughout the day and every day.
The image that we all carry of our selves is
made of various traits or characteristics,
obviously the characteristics of each one's
self-created image are different. These
characteristics of the image may or may not
actually exist inside the real self, but
whenever someone challenges any of those
characteristics or tries to suggest to us that
one of those characteristics is not ours or does
not exist inside us, we react.
Soul Sustenance
Bringing
The Consciousness Back In Shape
If we try and find the root causes of all forms
of stress, we would find that both lazy
and wrong thinking lie behind various
stressful emotions. No one right from our
childhood to when we are grown-ups puts this
into our heads that we are each responsible
for our own thoughts and feelings. Instead
we are taught that others are responsible for
what we think and feel. No one teaches us how
to think. We are taught what to think in terms
of knowledge of the world, but not how to shape
our own thoughts and feelings.
In spirituality the self gets the required
training to create positive and powerful
thoughts, thoughts:
1. which are connected to true spiritual
knowledge of the self,
2. which are beneficial to your own spiritual
well-being,
3. that inject positive energy in the form of
happiness, love and enthusiasm to those around
you,
4. which are absolutely necessary in the context
in which you find yourself,
5. which use all your subtle energies in an
economical way,
6. which ensure that the result of any response
you may create does not result in stress. When
no one teaches us that any mental or emotional
discomfort comes from within our own
consciousness, we also do not ever realize that
any negative state of being is unnatural and a
sign that our consciousness is out of shape. The
above thought training helps us to return our
consciousness to its true, natural and original
shape.
Message for the
day
To use one value with commitment is to guarantee
the use of all values.
Expression:
Values are related to each
other as if they were members of a great family.
For the one who is committed to one value is the
one who is able to emerge the other connected
values. Such a person is able to add quality to
everything he does and speaks.
Experience:
When I am able to recognise
my own special value and use it with commitment
in my daily life, I am able to experience
success in all I do. This is because I have the
satisfaction of giving my best and of having
added quality to everything I do.