06.07.2015 Artist: Alvaro Arteaga, Profesor Universidad Diego Portales, Vina del Mar, Chile Give Give to others from the heart and in turn many things will come to you. The ability to bring out strength is to be constantly powerful. We normally get to a state of mind, according to the situation. But, we can take inspiration from examples like the incense stick which is full of fragrance, and spreads only that. Also is the example of the candle/lamp. It is fully of light so that is what it radiates. So it is important to connect to my strengths at all times, so that I can give what I have at all times. Today I will remember a positive quality that I have. I will remind myself of this at least 10 times or as many times as I can. And while I do that, whatever the challenge may be I'll believe in my own strengths and continue to use them. Reaching The Destination Of Peace On Time The objective of meditation has always been reaching the destination of inner peace. The process of meditation is like a journey to that destination, which many human souls have undertaken since thousands of years. After a life and in fact many lifetimes of indulging in habits of anger, fear, ego, sorrow, jealousy, hatred, greed etc. all of which blocked our access to this inner pure emotion and made us believe that these are normal emotions, believing completely that our true nature is peaceful, which is an experience opposite to all these; might seem difficult at first. Only our own experience can lead to a change in our deeply held beliefs, which then makes it easy for us to incorporate peace as an integral part of our personality. As you dive into you own consciousness, with the objective of searching for and reaching your subtle destination of inner peace, you will encounter some distractions in your journey. Some of the most important of such distractions include: * thoughts in the form of negative memories of the past; over-thinking about the present scenes and day-to-day actions in your life; desires, worries and unnecessary thinking related to the future, waste thinking about the natures and actions of people whom we come into contact with the most, etc. * the inner, subtle voices of the many incorrect beliefs, which we have picked up from people by whom we have been surrounded since we were small; * thoughts and emotions related to deep habits of identifying with and getting attached to things we are not, like the physical body, material possessions, people, our role in society, money, places, opinions or viewpoints, hobbies or interests etc. (To be continued tomorrow ...) Soul Sustenance Resolving the Inner Identity Crisis (Part 1) At the present moment in human history, almost every individual has lost the awareness of its real or true self. This has happened very gradually as each individual has progressed in its journey of birth-rebirth and has kept on attaching itself to various different things and as a result losing its sense of self in things that it is not i.e. identifying with things that it is not. In a way it can be said that this took the self far away from itself. This personal, internal identity crisis has led to a universal, external identity crisis, which has resulted in an emotional crisis resulting in peacelessness and sorrow in our inner world as well as in the outer world. This inner identity crisis is the root cause of the multitude of deformed emotions that exist inside us like anger, ego, lust, fear, comparison with others, greed, hatred, low self esteem, dependencies etc. all of which have brought us and keep on bringing us pain. We explain this with an example – suppose you have just constructed a new apartment. While making it and once its ready and you are using it, you have become excessively attached to it i.e. you have started identifying with it. Due to this false identification, the first emotion that gets created inside you is ego. If someone were to criticize the apartment even slightly, you would react immediately with anger. You constantly fear any sort of harm to the apartment. You even compare it with apartments that others possess. You also start looking down at people whose apartment is not as good as yours i.e. you create emotions of hatred for them. If something negative were to happen it, it affects your mental state immediately i.e. your happiness has become dependent on the material possession. Your temporary success along with the recognition that it brings you from others leads to the desire of more success of a similar type i.e. possess some more things - bigger and better, which is nothing but greed etc. The seed of all these incorrect emotions is my over-identification with this newly acquired possession. All of these wouldn’t exist inside me, if my relationship with was one of detachment with it. In this way, we identify with various objects and people in the whole day, which leads to the creation of such emotions inside us. (To be continued tomorrow …) Message for the day To be experienced means never to be deceived by anything. Projection: It is normally understood that to be experienced means to gain expertise in something, or to become a master in a particular field. Such a person, who is an expert in one field might find himself totally impractical in daily situations. Solution: Life has so many things to teach me through the various situations. I need to keep learning from all that happens. Then I'll never be surprised or cheated by any unexpected events, but will be prepared because of being experienced.