Brahma Kumaris

13.03.17 Members of a Great Family Values are related to each other as if they were members of a great family. From peace and happiness emerges inner joy. From this state of wholeness love awakens and with is the desire to share and give. Two of its relatives are tolerance and respect. All values have a shared origin which unites them – the peace of spirituality. When you lose peace you begin to lose everything. Keeping The Watchman Of Attention Alert All the religions and spiritual groups place a lot of importance on the virtue of discipline. Without discipline you do not manage to transform negative habits and you do not create a new state of awareness where the self is nourished through the experience of spirituality. Every day you eat, you brush your teeth, bathe, drink water and breathe, and all of this you do not consider a discipline; you have adopted them as something natural in order for your body to continue working. On a spiritual level you also need to nourish yourself and to have a discipline that, with practice, a time comes when it becomes natural because you incorporate it into your life. In the process of change you need to discipline yourself in order not to let old habits come to the forefront. Until you have burnt them and they have died, you should keep the watchman of attention alert in order to maintain your self-control, given that each time you use a negative habit in action, you strengthen it. When you do not use it, you allow it to die. The path of the spiritual traveler is therefore one of waking (awareness of self as soul) and sleeping (under the illusion that we are our body), waking and sleeping. We tend to fluctuate between the two (like dawn and dusk) until we find stability in soul-consciousness. This is why it is important to awaken and stay awake, and why it's important to give our mind and intellect good spiritual food (knowledge) and exercise (meditation) every day to keep them fresh and alert. Being conscious of the soul, acting from that consciousness, the scars (habits and tendencies) left by past actions based on illusions of bodily awareness are healed. Discipline is necessary for growth and personal transformation if you want to obtain satisfying and permanent results. If not, the old habits continue to rule in your life. The evidence that our discipline in the practice of meditation is working is mental lightness and an increasing easiness in our interactions with others. Do you try to do everything yourself? Don't trust others to do things right? Do everything yourself & you'll always be busy doing everything! Instead be less busy & more efficient. Decide what to do yourself & what to delegate. Consider when to take cooperation from others, & when to invest in developing others' skills. When possible, let people choose which tasks to take on, if not then match the person to the task. Know when to be clear about what & how, & when to let others use their creativity & initiative. Message for the day To invest rightly is to increase savings. Thought to Ponder: How we spend is more important than not spending at all. When it comes to our biggest asset, our thoughts, we need to invest well. When we have positive thoughts, they become a saving for the future too. Point to Practice: Today I will spend at least half an hour with something that gives me a feeling of positivity. Today I will also be careful to avoid anything that will create negative feelings in me. This will ensure that I will be investing my thoughts in the right way, without wasting them.