Puerta, San Sebastian, España The Key of Optimism Optimism opens a door in difficult or hopeless situations. Optimism knows that there is always a way, no matter how many doors have been shut. Optimism believes that there is always a useful alternative. No matter what the crisis, an optimist maintains the outlook that it is a sign, time for a different way of thinking, or a new way of doing things. Tolerance The one who is tolerant is the one who is successful. Tolerance frees the mind of waste thoughts, as there is no negativity towards anyone. Also tolerance frees us from questions about things that are going wrong. When we are free from waste thoughts, we can do our best and thereby ensure success. When things go wrong or when someone is creating obstacles in our way, instead of worrying or having questions about it, we need to accept it with the power of tolerance. We need to see within ourselves what strength or speciality we have that can make us face this situation. The Law of Self Control The more control we have over ourselves and our lives, the happier and freer we will feel. We sometimes get angry with other people. Why does this happen? It is probably because they have not met our expectations or we were trying to control them and they have not let us. Sometimes, the simple expectation that a person should behave as we want them to is in itself an attempt to control them. When we try to control another person, which is impossible, we are bound to fail, feel frustrated and stressed. We are capable of having power over ourselves; we can be more responsible for our thoughts and feelings. We have the capacity to choose how we respond to different situations and people that we come across in our lives. If we do not exercise much control over our thoughts and emotions, we easily fall into the tendency of seeing ourselves as victimized, and we blame others, making them responsible in our own minds for how we feel. When we do this, we are forgetting that we create our own thoughts. When this happens, we are handing over the control of our thoughts to those who influence, criticize, attack or slander us. If we want to recover the control over our life, we must learn to control our thoughts and feelings and not blame anyone else for them. The more self-control we have over ourselves, the less will we want to control others and our capacity to influence other people positively will be greater. Soul Sustenance The Relationship Between My Conscience And Intellect To act from a state of truth, it is important to realize the relationship between my intellect and conscience and what role these two play in experiencing this state of truth in my thoughts, words and actions. The quality of my thoughts, words and actions is based on the quality of my intellect and conscience. There are three different stages of the intellect conscience relationship. * The first stage is one in which my conscience and my intellect, both are so pure and transparent that whatever is right and true is naturally brought into my thoughts, words and actions and nothing negative or impure manages to enter into my thoughts, words and actions. * The second stage is one in which my conscience acknowledges that which is the truth, but the intellect does not have the strength to be able to bring the truth into practical. The conscience tells me one thing, but my intellect pulls me elsewhere, and it overpowers me. I do what I know I shouldn’t. * The third stage is one in which my conscience is not clean enough or aware enough to acknowledge the truth so the question of it influencing the intellect to bring the truth into practical does not arise. As a result my intellect, which is not at all backed by the conscience in this state, takes complete control of me. I do what I shouldn’t and I am not even aware of it. When my intellect overpowers my conscience repeatedly, my conscience loses its influence on my intellect. As a result the conscience keeps weakening until its voice is stifled or silenced. As a result of that, I can then no longer discriminate between truth and falsehood. I will feel that there are no fixed ways of defining right and wrong, that each has their own judgment or definition of truth and falsehood. True spiritual knowledge, which gets stored in the intellect, and the experience of meditation, which purifies the intellect as well as my conscience, both together, make me aware of the definition as well as give me an experience of what is the truth and what is false, what is right and what is wrong. As a result of that, I am able to maintain the first stage of the intellect conscience relationship very easily in my day-to-day actions. Message for the day To be a well wisher means to think of changing first. Projection: Being a well wisher just doesn't mean wishing others well. It also means having good wishes for the self and having the pure desire to bring about a change for the better in the self. So whatever the kind of situations, instead of just judging others and what they need to change, the one who is a well-wisher constantly brings about transformation in the self. Solution: For having worked on myself under all circumstances and having used every situation as a chance for self-progress, I constantly enjoy every thing that comes my way. I have no expectations, but just think of benefit for others and myself. I then never find any situation to be an obstacle, but use it as a step for progress.