Daily Positive Thoughts: July 1, 2013: Cheerfulness

Daily Positive Thoughts: July 1, 2013: Cheerfulness

Beautiful Art Work

Cheerfulness

Cheerfulness keeps up the spirit of the one who possesses it and brings a smile to the lips of others.

There are some false ideas about anger that we have acquired, which we use to justify and nourish our anger:
1. Anger is a natural response to other people’s behaviour.Fact:
You don’t realize the danger anger presents to your personal health and well-being. By maintaining this belief, you conveniently avoid the inner work of changing a deep negative habit.
Tip For Transformation:(Change) Meditation enables you to remain kind towards what and who you see, no matter what they appear to have done.

2. In order to be assertive (confidently aggressive or self-assured), I have to use anger as a weapon.
Fact: Anger is the opposite of assertiveness. When you become angry, firstly you are killing yourself, and those with whom you become angry are only going to give back to you what they get or distance themselves from you completely.

Tip For Transformation: To make a real and lasting peace with others we need to be anger-free, which can be achieved through meditation.

Experiencing Self-Rule Through Meditation

Practicing meditation helps us to reach our goals of self change, because during meditation we link our soul self with the Supreme Energy (God), who fills us with power. The more mentally powerful we become through meditation, the more confident we are with the ability to respect our self more. We become more stable in our own self, we are able to control our reactions a bit better and we wait. We don't suppress the self. Rather, we wait, observe, clarify and then control our reactions (including, of course, our tongue!).

We don't want to be ruled by our negative emotions. We still meet them, acknowledge them, try to understand them and dissolve them. We cannot pretend that they are not there, but we are no longer a slave to them. As we follow our spiritual path more closely, we learn that we don't want to damage ourself, nor do we want to damage others. We become a little more careful. Sometimes we know what is the right thing to do, but still we are not able to control our reactions, or act correctly. We know, understand, agree but still can't do the right thing. Then we are filled with guilt and regret, having done the wrong thing. We lose our self-respect. What can we do then? Where do we find the strength to change? Spiritual knowledge shows us the way as to what is right and what is wrong and in silence through meditative practice, we are able to find the strength to be able to put this knowledge and our basic values as well as our conscience (inner voice) into practical karma and thus bring about change.

Soul Sustenance

The Functioning Of My Internal Processor
The body consists of physical limbs to move around and carry out its tasks in the physical world. So too, the soul has the subtle limbs –the limb possessing the power to think (mind), the limb possessing the power to reason and make decisions (intellect) and limb of its own unique personality. These three subtle limbs are used to maneuver, control and carry out tasks in the inner subtle (non-physical) world of thoughts, feelings, emotions, decisions, mental images and nature characteristics (or commonly called habits). I need to understand completely how these limbs work individually and also how they function together in conjunction as a team. This understanding helps me immensely in putting my personal mental and emotional world in order.

If the processor of my computer develops a problem, my computer comes to a standstill. I will be able to fix it only if I know how it works. In the same way, I have an internal processor which has three processes going on inside it continuously right through the day - the processes of thinking (mind), deciding(intellect) and becoming (sanskaras) – which affect my complete functioning as a human being. Only if I understand completely the functioning of this internal processor, can I start to correct myself and function well.
Message for the day

To be experienced means not to be deceived by anything.

Expression: There are so many times when a situation takes us by surprise and we make the same mistake that we had made before. It is only when the situation has passed that we realise that we have actually repeated that mistake. What then remains is only repentance as the time has passed where we could have done something.

Experience: Whenever there is a mistake, we need to take care that we learn from whatever has happened. When we continue to move forward in this way there will be no repentance for the mistakes made but there will be learning that'll make us experienced. And when we are experienced we'll never be deceived by situations which make us commit mistakes.