19.07.2015 Library at the Benedictine Monastery of Admont, Admont, Austria Something New Focusing on developing a positive aspect of one's life can achieve a goal more easily than by trying to give up the negative habit. After all, it seems to be easier to take on something new than to give up something old! The old way often falls away out of disuse. To be special is to do ordinary things in a special way. If I want to be special, I don't really have to do something special and spectacular. Probably, the opportunities for doing such things are also very rare. But we surely have plenty of opportunity to do each and everything in a special way. That means, I value the contribution I make and I value the action itself. Today I will bring specialty to my actions. Before I start any action, I will remind myself of the contribution I have to make and also understand the significance of the task itself. I will then start the action. This will bring specialty to all I do. The Principle Of Focus and Flow If we look at the sun and the earth, we appreciate a basic and fundamental law of life, which we as human beings can learn from, that is of great help in the right movement of life. By means of light, the sun gives life to the earth; in addition, the sun is fixed in its position (a symbol of focus) to enable the earth (a symbol of flow) and all the other planets of our solar system to continue in their rhythmic, harmonious orbit. Otherwise, there would be chaos, upheaval and great damage. The earth on the other hand, constantly moves in repetitive cycles around the sun. This movement allows for changes and expression on the earth, which have a beginning, middle and end. In other words, the phenomenon of time is created as a direct result of the earth's balanced and harmonious cyclic movements. Both the fixed position of the sun and the movement of the earth are necessary for life. The earth has all the potential for life but, without light from a fixed source, there would be no life. In the same way, the sun has the power to give life, but if the moving earth did not hold the potential, even with light, there would be no sustenance of life. Tomorrow we shall explain how this fundamental law involving the sun and the earth can be applied to real life (the principle of focus and flow)... Soul Sustenance The Invisible Impressions That Shape Me While the mind and intellect are two faculties of the soul which play their role on the surface of our consciousness; at a deeper level, hidden beneath these two faculties, there lies a third faculty commonly called the sanskaras. The sanskaras is not only a store house of personality traits, as we commonly know it to be, but a store house of millions and millions of impressions or imprints. Such a large number of impressions are created by millions of experiences that I go through my sense organs not only in this life but in all my lifetimes. Everything that I hear, see, touch, taste, etc. I process or analyze or summarize in my own unique way; basically I give the experiences a unique form depending on my personality, before this form gets stored in the form of impressions inside me. I even process my subtle experiences, which are in the form of thoughts and feelings. This process of experiencing and processing takes place during each and every second of my life including the time I sleep, when my mind may not be experiencing a lot but it is busy processing the physical and subtle experiences of the day that has gone by and storing the processed information in the form of impressions. From this, one can get an idea of the magnitude of the database of impressions stored within me, the being. These imprints which are unique to me, make up my sanskaras, and shape up my unique personality in a cyclic process. My personality shapes what type of impressions are created out of my experiences and the impressions in turn shape my personality, my thoughts, words and actions e.g. if I constantly keep the company of people who gossip, a large number of respective impressions based on the experience of gossiping keep getting stored inside me, which in turn influence my personality, the personality characteristic gets stronger and over a period of time I do not find anything wrong with it and indulge in it more and more. As a result more such impressions get stored. Thus it is a cyclic process. Message for the day Success comes about only when there is an effort to bring about transformation. Projection: When I am working towards being successful I usually want to work with just those personality treats that I have always been working with before. But this does not always bring me success. Then the reaction is to blame the people around you or blame the people around you or the situations. Solution: Learning from each situation and working to bring about steady transformation brings constant success for me whatever the situations I will surely feel successful.