08.07.2015 The hills of Salzburg, Austria, are alive with the Sound of Music-Julie Andrews Create Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. How Difficult are YOUR Conversations ? Difficult relationships usually mean difficult conversations. Sometime focussing on enhancing the conversational dynamics can help the relationships be a little less difficult. 'How dare they speak to me like that!'...is a thought that becomes a memory of a ‘bad feeling’, that becomes a fear that it may happen again, that becomes a mental and emotional obstacle, that almost ensures you will have a difficult conversation in the future! Conversations become difficult for different reasons. But the root cause always lies within us not them! It’s really just a statement to our self that we need to learn more about our self and why we are making things difficult in the first place. But it’s not easy to see that the other person is never the problem, regardless of what they say or do. But if we can say to our self, ‘now what is this person, this conversation, this scene we are both in, trying to teach me’, we may find that we can come away from the interaction with some moments of personal enlightenment and access to a deeper strength within our self. It’s just that we may have to do that in retrospect at first! Creating Positive Habits To overcome a negative habit, we have to ensure that the intellect is strong and stable enough to lead the mind with knowledge and comprehension. In this way, transformation is more deep and lasting, creates satisfaction and fullness, and greatly improves our self-esteem. Our mind, which is under the influence of an old program, must be left in no doubt that "I", the original personality, no longer wants to go down that old road. We must have the strong determination to create a new thought pattern; this will also be recorded on our memory bank. This new register will help us to avoid taking up the old habits the next time something similar happens. For a period of time the two thought patterns, the old and the new, will exist alongside each other. To achieve a long-lasting transformation, we should not suppress our mind and immediately eliminate all the habits or tendencies to which the mind has become accustomed to. If we do this, the mind will begin to cry and make a fuss, and finally, the moment we lower our guard and stop paying attention, the old habits will emerge again and drag our mind towards automatic thoughts and actions so that, almost without us realising, we are once again immersed in our old way of thinking and doing. We have an alternative: creating thoughts of a greater quality that emerge from a new conscience. In this way, thanks to these positive thoughts, full of love, harmony and creativity, the mind will start to cleanse itself, replacing the old habits and negative tendencies in a totally natural way. The positive thought that preceded the positive action is still conscious, but the more we repeat the positive action the less conscious we are of the thought that created it. The time comes when we don't know why we are doing whatever we are doing: it has become a positive habit. Soul Sustenance Meditation And Physical Health The state of the body is a result of the state of the soul not only because of past karmas (actions performed in this and previous births) but because of its present state also. For example, when the emotion of fear passes through the mind, the endocrine system starts pumping adrenalin through the body to prepare it for a surge of energy. It is easy to note the cause-effect relationship between fear (cause) and adrenalin (effect). In the same way all of the mental ups and downs cause resulting secretions throughout the body. Internal rage is accompanied by heavy breathing, fast heart-beats, red face and so on. This relationship between body and soul is the reason most physical diseases arise from a psychological or mental origin. There is no doubt that any lessening of harmful secretions by reducing the emotional causes will bring about sound and lasting health. Health and order in the soul (mind) bring health and order in the body. Of course there are other factors which give rise to health problems - pollution, unhealthy life-style, lack of exercise, wrong diet etc. Through Raja Yoga meditation (taught by the Brahma Kumaris) and its connected positive lifestyle and through a pure vegetarian diet, ill-health can be minimized. The removal of stress and tension has to be one of the most important advantages for a person who practices Rajyoga meditation. Message for the day My words are effective when they are spoken with good wishes. Projection: Although I speak with a lot of logic and make the other person understand what I mean to say, I sometimes find that they are not as effective as they should be. Sometimes my words are also misunderstood and misinterpreted. Solution: What I say is not important, but how and with what feeling I say is more important. I need to keep myself free from any kind of attitude, when I have to say something to someone. Thus I find that my words are filled with good wishes and are effective too.