BRAHMA KUMARIS WORLD SPIRITUAL UNIVERSITY
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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.