Contemplation: Real Honesty

Contemplation: Real Honesty

Real Honesty
Real honesty means being true to the best that is within you. This is more honest than simply speaking your mind.

Greetings of peace, light and love from the inner heart.

Wishing everyone a Spiritual Christmas and Blessed New Year.

We needn't rule out the exchange of useful, thoughtful gifts at
Christmas, but when we expect something in return, it is not a gift,
but a contract. Using this strict definition, we might wonder if all
of those packages under the Christmas tree are really gifts.

Rather than giving expensive, perhaps not really useful gifts, there
are so many more meaningful things that all of us can give. If you have
been a smoker, you can give it up -- not as an act of self-denial, but
as a loving gift to your family. It will be a most precious, most
treasured gift. If you have been drinking heavily, you can give up
alcohol as an act of love. It is a gift that will keep on giving. If
you have been overeating, you can start eating nutritious food in
temperate quantities, and exercising regularly. It's a beautiful gift
for everybody in the family. These are real gifts. - "Words to Live By"

Experiencing Perfection And Success In Role Playing (cont.)

While playing my different roles, another important ability (a few abilities were mentioned in yesterday's message) that I need to possess is to become victorious over the different scenes that I play. What does that mean? I need to remember that every scene, every act, whether positive or negative, in every role, shall pass.

No scene or act is permanent. What happens is that, in a bodily consciousness, each time I am part of a positive scene in my life; I tend to become attached to it and want to hold on it and keep it with me permanently, which is not possible. And each time I am part of a negative scene, I tend to become impatient and want it to get over as soon as possible, which again is not possible all the time.

As if a few minutes or few days of the scene or act are difficult for me to pass or bear. Positive scenes bring me into a strong, temporary wave of happiness or excitement and negative scenes into a wave of deep sorrow, both of which are incorrect emotions. To make sure that I don't get takenin by both these waves, which is becoming victorious over scenes, I need to remain detached while playing different roles in different scenes. I will be able to become a master at this detachment, again when I am established completely as my spiritual self.

Separating role and actor increases opportunities for seeing what my role actually demands, and reduces the chances of being unduly influenced by others. Stepping away from the stage, even for a moment, I'll see more clearly how the other actors in that particular scene are behaving, and what is required of me. So, in this regard, it's a good practice that at different times of the day, I step back for a few seconds and detach myself from the role that I am playing and remind myself that I am a pure being of consciousness, a sparkling star like energy full of peace, love and happiness and nothing else. This is my spiritual identity.

Soul Sustenance

Crossing Negative Circumstances/Situations (Part 2) 

The challenge lies in knowing what the strategy is to learn to live through negative situations without allowing them to influence our emotional and mental state. 

In order to achieve that, in the first place, we should change our interpretation. Instead of interpreting the situation as an obstruction, interference or barrier to our path, we need to change our perception. We can ask ourselves questions like: What has this situation taught me? What does it say to me? Remain detached, observe and listen before reacting immediately. From detachment, observation and listening we can have a more practical and wider perception.

We are the creators of our realities. Reality, in itself, does not create for us stress, pain or unhappiness. It is our way of looking and interpretation of reality that brings about these reactions. Therefore, we have to review how we perceive situations and with what beliefs we interpret and judge them. Reinterpreting the situation, the concrete reality, implies allowing the old perception to die in order to make room for a new vision. Without the old dying, the new cannot be built correctly. Instead of seeing people or situations as obstacles on the path, we can see them as opportunities to practice patience and tolerance, to know how to listen, thank and love. They allow us to widen our capacity to co-operate and enlarge our heart so that we might be more generous. 

(To be continued tomorrow …) 

Message for the day

To be fully responsible is to inspire responsibility in others. 

Expression: When there is true responsibility, there will be freedom given to others too to be responsible. Ones ideas are not forced on to others but there is full freedom for others to make their own choice. Support and guidance of course are given and people are able to become independent and responsible. 

Experience: When I have learnt to take up the responsibility of my own life, I am able to become self-sufficient and independent and also constantly be available for those around me to become independent and responsible too. There are enough resources in me for those around to take benefit from. 

Contemplation: Quiet

Contemplation: Quiet

Adelie Penguins Group Dive, Antarctic Peninsula

Quiet
When the mind is quiet, its whole angle of vision changes. From pouncing on the problems, it begins to perceive the chances, the good things in life.

A Clean Heart

The one who has a clean heart is the one who always tries to do the
best for those with whom he comes in contact. Thus, the person develops
the ability to accept others as they are and ignore anything wrong done
by them. Instead, he is able to do the right action without losing the
balance. So such a person brings happiness for himself and for others
through every action he performs.

Experiencing Perfection And Success In Role Playing (cont.)

Continuing from yesterday's message, if I'm able to protect and maintain my inner spiritual identity in each role that I play in the day, it's much easier for me to switch roles. I switch roles so many times even in one particular day. If I lose myself in a particular role, my mind and intellect tends to become limited and restricted to that role and I'm not able to see beyond the immediate needs of the role and I find it difficult to adapt to another role.

As a father, for example, I may also be called upon to play the different roles of husband or a Managing Director or a friend or a brother or a son or a son-in-law etc. Also many a times, for e.g. in the absence of the mother, I may have to play the role of the mother or in the absence of the Plant Manager in my company on a particular day, I may have to play his role, etc., both being roles that I do not normally play. I'll have a better chance of being able to fulfill all these roles if I don't get too caught up in any of the roles while playing them and remain in my spiritual consciousness while playing them. A spiritual consciousness will keep me detached.

Every role demands different positive personality traits or sanskaras to be put into practice. I need to be flexible and possess the ability to pick those personality traits from my complete spiritual store house of personality traits that I the soul possess inside me, that are best suited to the role and are required for that role at that particular moment, so that the role and the act is played accurately and perfectly to my satisfaction as well as the other's satisfaction. In a bodily, limited consciousness, I will not be able to that.

(To be continued tomorrow ...)

Soul Sustenance

Crossing Negative Circumstances/Situations (Part 1) 

There are periods of life in which it seems to us that there is someone or something who gets in the way of our path. Circumstances, instead of going in our favor, go against us. They are barriers that make it difficult for us to reach our objectives; they are interruptions that prevent us from feeling satisfied; they are situations that seem to reduce our feelings of success. 

When we find ourselves with these scenes that appear to block our progress towards the aims and objectives that we have set out for ourselves, we tend to have negative thoughts; we feel anger and rage, or we feel sad and unenthusiastic, as if we don't have the strength to either overcome or transform the situation. Rather it is the situation that overcomes or overpowers us and leaves us exhausted. Some people are not prepared for this to happen and put all their strength into fighting the situation. They do so with feelings of anger, revenge and injustice. Often it becomes a process that wastes their energies and leaves them exhausted, without achieving a true solution. 

It is possible to live through situations without them causing such an emotional energy loss. That does not mean that we become cold and insensitive to what happens around us. It is a question of living through situations without drowning into them. If we drown ourselves in them we won't be able to help others or ourselves. We will be lost, like the shipwrecked, at the mercy of the waves, the tides and the winds. We will have lost the control of the steering wheel of our ship – our life. 

(To be continued tomorrow …) 

Message for the day

Words that do not give courage are waste. 

Expression: When someone is facing a problem, if the words are not those that give courage to the one facing the problem, then such words are wasted. There would be no use of speaking such words. In fact, to speak such words is to discourage the other person further. So when attention is paid to speak only those words that are for the benefit of all there is a positive and a powerful impact on others. 

Experience: Even when I keep attention on a simple thing like speaking only positive words, or words that bring benefit to others, I find myself having only powerful thoughts and words. I am neither discouraged by others' behaviour nor will I ever discourage others. I continue to have faith in others and allow this faith to colour my words and actions. So I find that there is benefit in whatever I speak. 

Contemplation: Moment to Moment

Contemplation: Moment to Moment

Artwork- Kinuko Craft

Moment to Moment

If I make this moment happy, it will increase the chances of the next moment being happy also.

Experiencing Perfection And Success In Role Playing

Spirituality gives me the detached realization of being pure consciousness. This realization not only detaches me from my physical body, but also detaches me from the different roles I play through my physical body (male or female) and the different acts or scenes in each role, in one particular day or one particular lifetime. The roles may be many, the acts and the scenes may be many, but I am the actor playing the different roles and participating in the different acts.

There is great strength in experiencing myself as an actor as compared to the previous existence in which I used to lose myself and forget my spiritual identity completely while playing the different roles, identifying more with the roles and thinking myself to be the role instead of being a spiritual actor.

An actor, even while in the midst of the most dramatic scenes, even whilst getting excited or emotional or angry, knows he is not the part itself, the part is just temporary. He knows he is something more than that, and that when the play is over, the role will not exist anymore.

So, even though I play my role, I don't cut off myself from the role and don't leave my responsibilities, I need to adopt the observer or spectator or detached consciousness instead of the player consciousness. A player tends to get over-involved. So, the balance has to be maintained - I play as well as remain detached. Only then the roles will be played to complete perfection and I will experience success in each role.

(To be continued tomorrow ...)

Flexibility

The one who does not expect from others, but is able to give others from whatever resources he has, is the one who is flexible. Being

flexible means to be able to recognize the other person's value system
and molding oneself according to it without losing touch with one's
own value system. When I am a giver, I do not expect others to change
according to my value system, but am very easily able to find a way to
adapt to the other person's value system. I never expect from others to
understand me, but am able to understand others. So there is never any
feeling of negativity for anyone.

Soul Sustenance

The Law of Expectation 

In our relationships with others, it is good to want the best: "I hope you do very well, I am sending you my positive energy and this is my way of encouraging you and giving you courage. However, if you don't achieve what I think you are capable of, I will not feel frustrated. I will not be dependent on you satisfying my expectations, but I will always want the best for you." 

If you have faith and confidence that something will happen, it is a prophecy that must come true. The expectations we have of someone, whether negative or positive, do have an effect on the person we are relating to. 

Many investigations into this question confirm the influence that the expectations of educators have, both in the performance and in the behaviour of their students. Everything points to the conclusion that the teacher's expectations form one of the most influential factors in the academic performance of their students. If a teacher expects good results from their students, their performance will be much closer to their real capacity than if their teacher is expecting poor results. 

Message for the day

To make use of situations in a positive way is to experience constant progress 

Expression: Each and every situation comes with a hidden blessing – a hidden opportunity. It of course brings challenges, challenges that could bring out the best potential from within. But the one who is caught up with only weaknesses never gets a chance to use these challenging situations as opportunities. On the other hand, the one who uses his potential is able to be from his weaknesses also. 

Experience: When I am able to use all situations as opportunities to recognise and use my inner potential, I am able to be free from the influence of my weaknesses. This freedom gives me the ability to enjoy this moment without filling the mind with unnecessary doubts and questions. It gives the ability to bring about progress in my life, whatever the circumstance may be.