Contemplation: September 16, 2018: Happiness in the
Heart
Happiness in the Heart
To have questions in your heart means to be distressed and to cause distress for others. Therefore, be one who has happiness in the heart, not questions in the heart.
Have Faith
Whenever one experiences deception in
relationships, there is
disappointment and one tends to get disheartened. At such times
feelings are destroyed and one tends to reject people and move away
from them - mostly physically and always in the mind. When dealing with
others if exchanges with them are based on falsehood - on what is not
connected with the innate truth, then there is difficulty in being a
giver. When I have faith in myself I learn to love myself. This love
gets me in touch with my innate qualities. Thus my thoughts and
feelings are pure. Then I have powerful good wishes for others and
these good feelings reach them.
disappointment and one tends to get disheartened. At such times
feelings are destroyed and one tends to reject people and move away
from them - mostly physically and always in the mind. When dealing with
others if exchanges with them are based on falsehood - on what is not
connected with the innate truth, then there is difficulty in being a
giver. When I have faith in myself I learn to love myself. This love
gets me in touch with my innate qualities. Thus my thoughts and
feelings are pure. Then I have powerful good wishes for others and
these good feelings reach them.
Natural Qualities and Acquired
Qualities
When we look at ourselves from outside we can only see the surface of what we have become. We can't see or perhaps cannot even imagine the inner core (center), which, like in the example of the coconut, is the only part that really can nourish us and give us energy. The shell (in the case of the coconut) serves as a protection but we certainly can't eat it.
In our case, the core (center) consists of natural or inner qualities such as peace, love, power, truth, happiness and so on. The shell is the ego which consists of features or personality characteristics we have acquired through the journey of our lives such as experiences, abilities, memories, learning, habits and beliefs - in short, all that we are referring to when we say: 'I am so-and-so, from such-and-such family or organization or city'.
While we are limited to these acquired characteristics, our true qualities remain inaccessible. Through deep reflection and meditation we can break the shell and activate our inner qualities from which our values or principles are born.
Soul Sustenance
Role Induced Stress
A very common form of stress which has raised its head in recent years is stress induced due to one’s role. There was once a famous movie actor, well known as one of the best of all time and he was obviously very much aware of the same. One day as he was shooting for his new film; his director, a very prominent figure in the film-making arena, mentioned to him that there was a general perception spreading in the film industry as well as in the film going audiences that the actor was getting older with time and his performance was dropping and he needed to spruce up his performances if he had to compete with the younger actors. As soon as he heard this, he started taking his acting role and everything related to it over seriously and lost his happiness completely because he had been used to listening only to praises regarding his performances and reputation all his life. He also forgot all that the world had given him all his life, all the love, respect and adulation and became angry, bitter and resentful towards everyone he met, believing that they no longer held those feelings for him as much as before. Also a general sense of fear and nervousness started developed inside him regarding his next performance.
One piece of information had changed him altogether. What had gripped him – Role Induced Stress. His emotion of stress was made of three sub emotions - sorrow, anger and fear (or worry). What was the cause – he over identified with his role. He 'believed' he was an extremely famous hero actor. But was hero actor what he was? It's what he did. But he learned to believe it is what he is. Even we need to remind ourself that we get to play various roles on the world stage of action and that if we over-identify with any of the roles, which a lot of us do, then just like the actor, our creativity, spontaneity and lightness is reduced and we start to take things far too seriously, more than necessary, and as a result get stressed.
(To be continued tomorrow …)
A very common form of stress which has raised its head in recent years is stress induced due to one’s role. There was once a famous movie actor, well known as one of the best of all time and he was obviously very much aware of the same. One day as he was shooting for his new film; his director, a very prominent figure in the film-making arena, mentioned to him that there was a general perception spreading in the film industry as well as in the film going audiences that the actor was getting older with time and his performance was dropping and he needed to spruce up his performances if he had to compete with the younger actors. As soon as he heard this, he started taking his acting role and everything related to it over seriously and lost his happiness completely because he had been used to listening only to praises regarding his performances and reputation all his life. He also forgot all that the world had given him all his life, all the love, respect and adulation and became angry, bitter and resentful towards everyone he met, believing that they no longer held those feelings for him as much as before. Also a general sense of fear and nervousness started developed inside him regarding his next performance.
One piece of information had changed him altogether. What had gripped him – Role Induced Stress. His emotion of stress was made of three sub emotions - sorrow, anger and fear (or worry). What was the cause – he over identified with his role. He 'believed' he was an extremely famous hero actor. But was hero actor what he was? It's what he did. But he learned to believe it is what he is. Even we need to remind ourself that we get to play various roles on the world stage of action and that if we over-identify with any of the roles, which a lot of us do, then just like the actor, our creativity, spontaneity and lightness is reduced and we start to take things far too seriously, more than necessary, and as a result get stressed.
(To be continued tomorrow …)
Message for the day
To be a self-sovereign is to be in control
Projection: The one who is a self-sovereign never finds difficulty in being in control. He doesn't have to go out of control and then bring himself back in control. The moment the order is given to the self, every thought, word and action is immediately in order.
Solution: To be a self-sovereign means to be aware of my own specialities and work with them. When I am a self-sovereign I experience myself to be free. This is because nothing binds me but I am able to win over my weaknesses too. Thus I find myself to be in total happiness in all situations.
In Spiritual Service,
Brahma Kumaris
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