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If I listen to even the slightest defamation of anyone, I lose some spirituality. I lose some value if I start interacting on the basis of what I have heard about them. Let me see only virtues and specialties.
'To-do list'
When the mind is idle it may wander from one thought to another. If you want to stop your mind thinking unnecessarily, think useful and constructive thoughts.
You're thinking anyway, so you may as well keep the mind busy with the right thoughts.
Make a schedule for your mind. Just like a 'to-do list', create a 'to-think list'!
Experiencing A Spiritual Lifestyle Without Renouncing Society
A good meditator is one who has a mental link or union with the internal self and the Supreme Soul or God who is the source of all goodness. This, along with an understanding of the laws of action or the laws of karma, which govern the behavior of souls, means that one does not have to renounce or leave society in order to achieve enlightenment. Rather, the soul filled with spiritual illumination faces society directly with understanding and the generosity to serve it and to elevate (improve) it.
The soul becomes elevated not by the renunciation of responsibilities or worldly duties but by a renunciation of the negativity that exists within the role being played by it in society. A good meditator does not try to escape social obligations (duties) but rather purifies those duties by becoming filled with light, love, peace and happiness. The stage of self-awareness and God-communication injects a subtle richness into one's life-patterns.
There are those who believe that the elevated state is beyond society and its duties. They find a quiet spot in the jungle or an ashram and contemplate (think about) deeper things. There are others who are stuck in the quicksand of their problems, and believe that those who leave society and take up a spiritual lifestyle are saints. However, holiness and virtue are qualities attained in one's life situations, not in running away from them. The elevated state is not merely a matter of elevated thoughts (which can be experienced in a sanyas), but elevated actions also, for the benefit of the self and the world. We are what we do and not so much what we imagine ourselves to be.
Soul Sustenance
Overcoming Fears Connected With Negative Past Experiences
Some of our fears arise due to the situations we have lived through; for example, if you are driving a car and you have an accident. Then you take some time to drive again, because the memory of the accident awakens the fear of having another one or reliving the one you had. The person that has never had a car accident gets in the car with confidence, because they do not have that scene recorded, since they haven't lived through it.
There are fears that we carry within us that are not of the present. Something happened to us in the dark and we are now afraid of the dark. Fears in relationships: you opened your heart, you fell in love and, after a time, you experienced pain, you felt hurt, misunderstood, manipulated, deceived or mistreated, and now you no longer open your heart for anything; it is closed off with the shields that you yourself have created. To overcome this kind of fear due to experiences you have lived through, you have to come to terms with your past and accept it fully. You cannot change your past; lamenting the past doesn't help you; complaining about the past doesn't benefit you. Those shields brought about by fears do not disappear unless you do a deep cleansing. Begin to heal your experience of the past. Part of the past is healed with forgiveness. Without forgiving, you cannot forget.
(To be continued tomorrow …)
Message for the day
To be free from bondage means to be able to fly.
Projection: Sometimes we find that we are not able to progress as much as we should. We also find that we are not able to be light in all circumstances. At such times we might blame the situation and just stop making effort, as we cannot see the real cause for our lack of progress.
Solution: We need to understand that the lack of progress that we are experiencing is not because of the situation itself but because of our own weakness that is like a bondage. When we recognise this fact, we will be able to know the right method to overcome our own weakness so that we will then be able to fly forward.
Never believe anyone who says we cannot change. Vision is one of the secrets of personal transformation. We are all artists, our mind is the arena of creation and vision is what we are constantly creating. What is your vision of yourself today - patient, relaxed, positive or tense, tight and negative? What do you prefer? So be creative - what does patience look like, feel like, what are you doing that is different when you are patient and you are expressing your power to ..wait? Always start with vision not action. See it and you will be it. Be it and you will do it. This is how we create our own life.
Anger
Anger is a vice which, in its gross form, will directly and instantly cause great harm to the self and others.
Sometimes we use the vice of anger for the sake of truth or what we believe to be right. We use it to justify the fact that someone else has lied or stolen or worse. However, anger in itself is wrong and thus it can never be justified. Two wrongs do not make a right. And someone else's wrong does not give me the permission to commit an even greater violence.
Anger will finish only when we begin to understand the real damage it causes.
The Search For Happiness And A Beautiful Relationship
Throughout history, human beings have desired and searched for two things, happiness and a perfect loveful and beautiful relationship. It is interesting to realize that you cannot search for what, you have not already had or known. In other words, we search for these two things because inside us we have a deep subconscious memory of the original, perfect and eternal relationship with our Friend, Guide and Parent, the One remembered as God, Allah, Ishwar, etc. It is only when we restore our relationship with this Being is that we can experience true happiness or bliss. Bliss is the highest form of spiritual happiness we can experience. It is experienced only when we are free of all attachment, when we no longer identify wrongly with anything physical and when our inner mental state is not dependent on anything or anyone.
At its highest level and in its purest state, our relationship with God is non-dependent and unconditional, and therefore blissful. Deep within the soul, there is a memory of the bliss of this perfect union and it is this memory that inspires us to search for the perfect relationship, for the perfect happiness. However, instead of seeking it at the spiritual level, we seek at the level of personality and body. We search in those around us for the perfect partner - our soul mate. It is not incorrect to have worldly relationships, but there needs to be a deep realization inside each one of us that our true soul mate, is the One with whom we can have an ever-lasting, eternal relationship, the One with whom we have the deepest eternal bond (over a period of many births), the One from whom we will experience everlasting, eternal, unconditional attainments.
Stepping Inside … (cont.)
When we learn to become silent we become more compassionate (generous) in our outlook and start accepting others for who they are.
The more we are able to accept, the sooner we find that there is harmony (peacefulness) in our relationships. We start saving energy, sparing or reducing our thoughts and our words. This is accompanied by more patience, tolerance, flexibility, easiness and lightness. Silence teaches us the art of living. Silence can be misused to isolate oneself and go into loneliness, but true, positive silence gives us a balance between our inner and outer worlds. Having explored our inner self we collect our positive energy, become aware of our qualities, and then very naturally these are expressed externally. We move our concentration to the inner self and then to the external world. Then we go inwards again. It is a circular movement. As we go into silence, we recharge our inner energies, become one with the self, heal our self, relax and release our self from negativity. There are so many benefits by simply stepping inside to meet our true self. As we draw out our internal riches and resources, what do we do with them? We share them and give them out and in doing this we receive and we learn.
Message for the day
Knowledge and faith bring the ability to be positive
Projection: Whenever things don't happen according to what we expect we begin to look at everything negatively. We are caught up with the negativity to such an extent that we are not able to find anything that might be positive in it.
Solution: We need to understand and develop the faith that behind everything seemingly negative there is something positive. It is up to us whether we want to see positive in negative or negative in positive and be influenced .
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