Brahma Kumaris

05.08.17 Trustee Consciousness We all have a relationship with everything. Obviously the relationship we have with the people and objects in our immediate vicinity is more intimate than the rest of the world. For most of us the most common relationship is possession. In our minds we think we own and possess things like cars and houses and carpets and golf clubs etc. This thinking easily spreads into jobs and tasks and positions and perhaps even other people. "I want you", and "You are mine alone", is the essence of many romantic film scripts and song lyrics. What we forget is that this relationship is wrong. It is not possible to possess anything. Care for..yes. Use...yes. But possess...no. You can't take it with you when you go, so we say! And yet it's the idea of possession which lies at the heart of all fear, war and conflict. Can you see it? Fear of loss, fear of not acquiring what we have already decided is ours in our minds. So what is a better relationship we can choose which takes all the fear away. Be a trustee. Everything comes to us in trust, for us to use and then to set it free. The consciousness of trustee sets us free of the tension of grasping and guarding. To see ourselves as trustees of everything that we receive, including our bodies, encourages our innate capacity to 'care for with dignity'. It is a much more relaxing way of relating to the things which we are privileged to receive in life. Going Beyond False Identifications The more I identify with the physical factors of my life, the more I become a prisoner to my destiny or the various up and downs of my life. E.g. if my self-respect is attached to my beautiful new car, how will I feel about myself when the car becomes old and its beauty and shine reduce? Or if I my car is stolen or gets immensely damaged in a road accident? Then, I shall find myself in an identity crisis. The same will be true if my business or job is everything to me. If one day, I am in a good financial state and I enjoy a very respectable and dominant position, and the next day I find myself in a dispute in my profession and I suddenly lose all of that, and nobody wants to know me, I will feel as if I have lost my soul and have almost died. The problem is sometimes so great that people do, literally, lose their desire to live. It happens, too, in relationships, when your partner leaves you either due to a separation, a divorce or even death - a partner in whom you have invested all your love and emotions. Or if my identity is tied to my back balance or property, and suddenly I am broke. All of these are actually false identifications, and the crazy part of living this way is that I can never be satisfied, even if I succeed in maintaining my false identity. These kind of false identifications do not keep me placed stably on my seat of self-respect and either bring about an inferiority complex or a superiority complex - both of which are false, so both bring insecurity. Even while I am externally successful, having my identity based on that success means I am a slave to them. I've handed over my self-esteem to them. I become addicted to it. Humility To focus not only on the self but on others too brings humility. Such humility allows others to come close. The one who is humble is able to give others what is required. Yet he balances with certain quietness, so that others don't become too casual and familiar. When we are humble, we become easy and light giving the love that we have within. We are free from the sorrow of expectations. Instead we actually become a reservoir of treasures from where others can take benefit. We are constantly a giver, being available for others. Message for the day Success comes through maintaining self-respect. Expression: Where there is self-respect, there is naturally a stable state of mind, even in the most challenging and difficult times. This in turn brings right judgement at all times, which allows discrimination between right and wrong. Right judgement leads to right actions. So there is constant success for such a person. Experience: Self-respect is the state of mind where I am able to appreciate my own uniqueness and give regard to myself. When I am able to be in my stage of self-respect, I am able to be stable in all situations. This seat of internal stability keeps me light and easy under all circumstances. I am also able to experience constant success even in the most difficult and challenging times.