Contemplation: Be Creative

Contemplation: Be Creative 

                                                    Be Creative

Every day is an opportunity to be creative - the canvas is your mind, the brushes and colours are your thoughts and feelings, the panorama is your story, the complete picture is a work of art called, 'my life'. Be careful what you put on the canvas of your mind today - it matters.

Realization

People build their identity around physical achievements, status,
relationships, and other's opinions, which is like grasping a mirage in
the desert - there is no substance or permanence. Rajyoga teaches us
how to understand our original personality as 'souls' and re-emerge our
divinity through the remembrance of One Supreme. No matter how much
others or even God may try to convince me that I am a worthy
individual, until I visualize my own goodness and nurture my
self-respect, I cannot do anything with my life. God loves me no
matter what I may be like and makes me realize my 'self' by loving me
unconditionally.

Negative Control And Domination In Relationships

In a lot many of the different types of relationships we find ourselves in, may they be our personal relationships or at the workplace, we sometimes feel ourselves to be in a position where we feel we are being dominated and controlled negatively by the opposite person. A very common example of the above negative energy, in personal and non-personal relationships, is when someone gets angry with you and manages to make you react and get upset, they manage to dominate you. Over a period of time they start realizing that they possess an invisible and powerful remote control, using which, whenever they want to control you, what they should do is to get angry with you and that way they will achieve the desired control. Their anger becomes a remote control.

When you react you are allowing this control or allowing the other's remote control to work. It is you that chooses to allow yourself to be influenced and dominated. It is important for us to realize that we can choose and take the decision to allow ourselves to be controlled and dominated, or we can choose to express what we feel without being affected by the reaction of the other and still maintaining our love, respect and good wishes for the other.

Let us not allow ourselves to be dominated and influenced by entities external to us which includes objects and people or we will lose energy. Each moment we allow another person's remote control to work successfully or we allow an object to control and dominate our emotional state, we weaken internally. We become like a puppet in the other person's hands. A puppet is never powerful because it does not act on its own but is controlled by someone else. We need to prevent that, if we want to conserve our energy and remain spiritually strong.

Meditation and spiritual knowledge both increase our spiritual strength and also increase our self esteem or self respect over a period of time. Both these increases help us remain in self control and not only disallow the other's remote control to work but also become assertive (not aggressive) and take a stand when required.

Soul Sustenance

The Relationship between Anger and Attachment (cont.)

Attachment is a negative attraction that we succumb to, inside our consciousness, regularly and it gives rise to ego, which in turn is the root cause of all suffering. Suffering, in turn, is experienced at an emotional level through the various different forms of anger. We need to realize this phenomenon very deeply because this happens many a times in each day of our lives inside our consciousness. Then we can see exactly from where our anger arises and we can correct it.

So if we don't want to suffer from anger, the solution is simple - we don’t get attached to anything or anyone, to any expectation, any particular desired result. Sounds difficult at first, but the same solution can be put in a way that would seem easier to achieve, we don’t lose our spiritual identity or individuality in something we are not, in anything or anyone that is physical. That does not mean we shouldn't possess any material objects and not experience joy by using them. It also does not mean we start remaining aloof from people that we love. Nor does it mean we don't have goals and ambitions at the workplace etc. We do. But our relationship with them changes. Our relationship becomes one of detachment and not of attachment. And what is a relationship of detachment? Detachment means that we possess all of them but we are no longer dependent on any of them, for our peace, contentment and happiness.

We choose to be peaceful, content and joyful irrespective of whether they are there with us or not. So when cars get banged into (which can happen at times) and when people close to us are harmed or insulted or they leave or are separated from us due to any other reason (which is also bound to happen) or when jobs are lost (which is inevitable), we don't react angrily and suffer as a result. We have realized everything in life comes and goes; everything is born and comes to an end. We also realize that every process taking place in life is unpredictable and not always controllable, and must end. Things do and will happen. We know this is a reality. Every time we get angry it means we are having an argument with this reality of life.

Message for the day

Where there is courage there is success.

Projection: When we are involved in a task, we sometimes experience setbacks. Such setbacks often make us lose our confidence and we no longer have faith that we will succeed in the task. We then lose all courage to go ahead with the task and lose every chance of achieving what we have to.

Solution: We need to remind ourselves that we achieve success to the extent that we have courage. We need to make effort to maintain our courage even during the most difficult circumstances. Only when we do this will we continue to put in effort, which will bring us success at the right time.