Brahma Kumaris

14.11.15 Wembley Temple – Shri Vallabh Nidhi Love, Purity, Peace, Wisdom When you build a house, every brick counts. When you build a character, every thought counts. You are what you think. Love, purity, peace, wisdom - the more you think of these qualities, the more you will become them. Helping Others It's natural to want to help others. But sometimes by giving people too much help, we actually make them dependent on us. Dependency limits people from their own potential and becoming more responsible. Is the help you give to others', empowering or disempowering? Are you dependent on the dependency of others' on you? Be independent. Empower others to become independent. We've all heard the saying: don't give them fish to eat, teach them how to fish. Turning Qualities Into Powers (cont.) There are interesting spiritual parallels to the way the physical sciences differentiate energy and power. In physical terms, energy is defined as the capacity of doing work. Power is defined as the rate of doing work. Similarly, we can look upon spiritual energy as our capacity for experiencing the original qualities of the soul. We all have this capacity, but to different degrees. Spiritual power is then seen as the extent to which we put these qualities to work in difficult situations and in our relationships. Spiritual power helps us remain in a state of truth, in the face of the various tests that come. Also, our actions and relationships give us an opportunity to utilize the power we have accumulated. The qualities of God experienced in meditation are also the original qualities of the soul, but the link with God is essential for us to enhance these qualities inside us. In fact God, too, needs the connection with us, despite having these qualities to the highest degree, in order to exercise his power to restore truth to the world. There are eight key spiritual powers - power to tolerate, power to adjust, power to face, power to pack up, power to withdraw, power to co-operate, power to discriminate and power to judge in terms of their application in everyday life - all of which we have discussed and shared with our readers in earlier messages. Soul Sustenance Conquering The Emotion Of Jealousy (Part 1) Man was handed the master key of the knowledge of good and evil karma by God. He used the key to perform good karma for some time. That was the day of humanity. Over a period of time, while playing the game of different roles in the world theatre, the key was lost and man started to perform evil karma. The evil man started identifying with evil so much that he forgot his original good self and thought that evil is the eternal self. That was and is the night of humanity. That is why in the scriptures, mistakenly it is said that even angels used to sometimes feel jealous. In Indian scriptures, devis and devtas, the original good men and women, have mistakenly been shown to possess the emotion of jealousy at times. Poor perception of the evil men, who made the scriptures and temples in the remembrance of the good men and women, the angels, after they had ceased to exist! The good men and women were nothing but our early births as we started our journey of birth and rebirth as flawless beings. Today humans are empowered beings who have the capacity to experience so many emotions, both positive and negative. Sadness, anger, happiness, sympathy and the list is endless. Out of all these one very powerful and dominating emotion is jealousy. When we see different players in this game of life playing different roles, sometimes while seeing them with the spectacles of role consciousness, feelings of jealousy or a desire to be like the other are experienced. Comparisons emerge in our minds. While being competitive and having aspirations to succeed are absolutely fine and there is no doubt that to do that sometimes we have to look at the other or even others and this drive helps us meet life’s challenges also, but when this look at the other is accompanied by comparisons and feelings of low self esteem as a result and takes the form of jealousy; it gets out of control and starts having an adverse effect on our relationships, that steps should be taken to curb those feelings. (To be continued tomorrow …) Message for the day To forgive the self is to have the ability to forgive others too. Expression: I sometimes find it very difficult to forgive the mistakes committed by others. I do try to understand but am not able to understand the other person's behaviour and so find it difficult to forgive them. Experience: When I have love for myself and am able to learn from all that happens, I am able to forgive myself. When I know to do this, I can understand the other person too from his perspective and can easily forgive him.