Daily Positive Thoughts: November 25, 2015: Harmonious Balance

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 25, 2015: Harmonious Balance

Harmonious Balance

We all know the old adage - what you give out you get back, or what goes around comes around. But we forget this cast iron law which is found everywhere in the universe. The energy of life is constantly moving at physical, mental and spiritual levels. And if we stand back and just observe, we see it moving in the process of exchange. In the context of our relationships, we give and receive energy, and when we are truly giving and receiving positive energy there is harmony and balance. But when we do what we are taught to do, which is to take and to keep, then we destroy the harmony and the balance of our life. When we say possession is nine tenths of the law we give life to the illusion of ownership which blocks out the truth. It is possession itself which is our attempt to break the law and it is that illusion which lies at the heart of all human pain, discomfort and disharmony. While many 'things' will come to us, we possess nothing. We intuitively acknowledge this when we say to each other, "You can't take it with you when you go." Can you?                 - relax7

Visualization

In your morning commute, take a minute or two to create a positive vision of yourself.

Be creative, but as realistic as possible. The more you explore positive visualisation, the more you will become it.

Then, in your minds eye, visualise the positive qualities you would like to bring into your day. Focus on, explore and experience the qualities.

Visualise your goals, set your desired outcome and visualise your success.

Fears And Dependencies (cont.)

With dependency in relationships (as discussed yesterday) we enter into an energy of pleasing others so that they might continue to appreciate us. We base our self-esteem and personal security on the appreciation of these people. We stop acting in a natural, free and spontaneous way because we are worried about pleasing the one from whom we are taking mental, emotional or physical support.

Into this energy of dependence enters fear: fear of losing the support of that person, fear they will get angry, fear that they might not like us any more, fear that they might reject us, etc. That fear is a signal that warns us of our emotional weaknesses and of our lack of self-esteem. Fear brings on a greater inner insecurity, which makes us carry on holding on to that dependence.

There are people who, after entering into an energy of dependence and suffering because of it, leave that relationship with the objective of freeing themselves from the pain it brings about in them. Then they begin another relationship, where they generate the same energy. The solution is not in a change of relationship with another person, although on occasions that might help us. If we don't change this energy internally and if we don't learn to have a solid base of self-esteem, we will continue to depend on the appreciation and affection of others in order to appreciate and love ourselves.

Soul Sustenance

Analyzing Success And Failure (Part 1)

You feel positive and joyful when you realize that you are successful. However, when failure comes to you, you feel defeated. The definition of success and failure varies from one person to another and according to the stage of life that you are in. It is important to have success and failure well defined for yourself, because, based on your definition, you feel greater or lesser inner wellbeing, happiness and wholeness. There are also different levels of success and of failure. For example, for some the greatest success is to be happy and radiant, whatever happens inside or outside. If one manages to keep happy in the face of failure, for them it is a success. Because to be happy means that I am connected with my essential worth or inner self, my being is awake and alive. Failure does not reduce my vitality, my contentment levels. The greater or fewer external achievements do not reduce the quality of the inner being or of being happy. The important thing is that you believe your own definition of success and failure. Some ideas can be shared that can act as guidelines, but, in the end, each person has to create their own guidelines, definitions and factors leading to success and failure. Basing ourselves on these guidelines and beliefs, we evaluate our successes and failures. You can reflect on what true success and failure mean for you and, according to those meanings, centre your attention on the values and efforts that lead you to achieve your objectives.

(To be continued tomorrow …)

Message for the day

To receive a chance to serve means to accumulate your account of blessings thereby guaranteeing your progress.

Checking: In all that you do for others, check if you are able to feel satisfied. Also check if there is any kind of expectation either for recognition or for facilities for the help that you have given.

Practice: Each day make a list for yourself of the things that you are doing that you feel is bringing benefit to others. Also make sure you realize in your mind that you are doing it for the sake of bringing benefit and not out of expectations. This will ensure everyone's blessings for you.


In Spiritual Service,
Brahma Kumaris

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 24, 2015: Go Deep

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 24, 2015: Go Deep

Go Deep

Most of us think too much, especially about events and people, local and global, famous and not so famous. When we are always thinking about what is happening on the surface of life, the visible, then it is as if we are living a superficial life. And when two people who both live on the surface meet, the exchange, the conversation, is superficial, sometimes totally bereft of meaning. Often it leaves us totally unsatisfied. And as we share news of our surface observations, we come to know our own superficiality, but we are not strong enough to resist it. Deep down inside there is a voice, a longing, a calling to depth. It's our heart, reminding us to visit, explore and express the depths of our ourselves. Everyone has depth but we confuse the heart with emotion, and forget that emotion is the result of getting too close to events on the surface. So one of our deepest needs, which is to go in deep, is seldom satisfied. Going deep and being deep requires time spent in solitude, some periods of introversion and a conversation with ourselves.

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To understand is to be understood. 

 

When there is a difference of opinion, we try hard to convince the other person of our point of view. However, since they are doing the same, there is no meeting point. Our effort needs to be in trying to understand the other person first. Even if we cannot understand the logic, we need to understand the emotions behind the argument. Today I will go upto one person whom I had an argument with and tell him I understand. For this, I will first change my own thinking and see how well I can understand the other person. I will then find that, because I respect people's opinion and feeling, they too are able to understand us.

Fears And Dependencies

Relationships are a source of support for our life, or at least, they should be. Relationships should ideally be an exchange of happiness and love. Peaceful relationships are the foundation from where we create, generate and carry out shared endeavors (efforts). Thanks to cooperation, we achieve our objectives.

When people are asked about what the different causes of stress, worries and suffering are, one of the main answers is relationships. Relationships have become a cause of ties (bondage) and pain. Instead of trust it seems fear dominates in relationships. In a relationship of love - be it family, be it friendship - due to emotional weaknesses and a lack of self-esteem, in order to learn to love ourselves we need another person or people to value us, to appreciate us, to need us, to love us. Even so, we do not manage to learn to love ourselves and we continue to depend on and worry about the opinion of others, what others might say, think or feel about us. You fear the answer of others; you fear they might say something that hurts you. These fears arise out of the emotional dependence on this person or these people. And they (fears) prevent us from developing and expressing all our potential, meaning that we stop being ourselves and we fear sharing ourselves openly.

(To be continued tomorrow ...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soul Sustenance

 

Attaining Success Using The Tool Of Visualization

A study shows that the majority of sportsmen and women, who win at prominent international events, are trained to use the tool of visualization to achieve success. Many months before the actual event, they visualize i.e. they create pictures of success inside their minds that they have already achieved their goal. The same principle of visualization is also used to cure patients from major illnesses including cancer. Patients are taught to visualize their diseased organs free from illnesses or visualize the organs receiving healing energy in some form or the other.
Visualization helps people to have 100% belief in themselves that they will achieve the desired goal. The efforts made with this powerful energy of belief have a greater probability of success than when you make the efforts without believing in what you are doing and without visualizing yourself as achieving your objectives.

If you think about your failures from the past, you stop believing in yourself, lose your enthusiasm and get frustrated. Visualizing images of a positive future helps you work from the present towards the future, without allowing the past failures to have any negative influence on you. You visualize yourself as a person, who has already overcome his fears and negative habits, and the fears are removed and the negative habits are transformed. You see yourself already transformed e.g. you say * I am a soul full of all powers and not * I am going to or am trying to fill myself with all powers. The power of that vision and the positive affirmations, combined together, is such that it helps you to bring about a major change in yourself, not just a small change, because you make it easy for your sub-conscious mind that is sleeping to wake up and realize its potential. You stop always expecting the worst and hope for, visualize and believe in the best.

Message for the day

True help is to give support in such a way that people become independent.

Checking: Think of those people you are giving some kind of help or support. Check if you are helping in such a way to make them independent or is your help making them dependent on you.

Practice: Remind yourself that your aim in helping is to make people independent and strong in such a way that they are able to support others too. Remind yourself that your help should never make people weak.


In Spiritual Service,
Brahma Kumaris

 

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 23, 2015: Succeed In Life

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 23, 2015: Succeed In Life

 

Succeed In Life

 

The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice you give to others.

 

 

Self Esteem

 

Self-esteem is the foundation of our self-confidence and self-motivation. Self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves at any given moment. Almost all of us have been taught to build our self-esteem on wrong foundations. We build it on something external instead of something internal. We are taught to connect it to our position, material possessions and pay, and by how much regard we receive from others. This is why we very rarely meet people who have rock solid self-esteem. Most of us learn how to hide our delicate self-esteem. Finally the disguise tires us completely and we surrender to the tension. Each and every one of us will have to go back to school to learn this inner lesson and find our true inner strength. Life gives us many signals and offers many opportunities to do this, but most of us either avoid the message or shoot the messenger, preferring to live with the tension and keep up the deception. 

 

Self Confidence

Self-confidence is very much linked to the understanding that I definitely have something to contribute to life through my own uniqueness. Each one of us is unique. That goes without saying. Unless a person has a sense of contributing, or offering, something to life, they cannot really be happy. I cannot be happy and confident when I am just taking; it simply doesn't work. I can only be happy when I am sharing and offering the best of myself. In that way, I don't feel depleted. When I offer the best of myself in an unselfish way, my happiness and confidence increases - the more I give, the more I receive. We start to understand that the well-being of individuals begins when they can contribute what they are, and what they have, to others. To be a truly self confident human being means to have true spiritual powers, like love, peace and happiness, which are brought into daily life - not just appearing as words or emotions, but truly displaying themselves in our behavior and bringing benefit to others.

 

Soul Sustenance

 

Limiting Ourselves In Comfort Zones

We are basically unlimited beings. But we limit ourselves in many comfort zones. We have a lot of conditionings which, in reality, are mental.

Some mosquitoes were put in a box and they kept jumping a lot. The box was covered from the top and each time they jumped they hit the top of the box, and when they jumped too close to the right or the left they hit the sides of the box. Slowly, to avoid harming themselves, they learned to jump just under the cover and without reaching the sides of the box. One day all the four sides of the box were opened. The mosquitoes were free, but they kept on jumping as far as the limit they had learned. The physical limits were no longer there. But they had become conditioned mentally. The same thing happens to us. We have to open the sides of the box and take off the top, or we can continue to live inside the box created by our own mind.

Given below are some conditionings under which we work, because of which we do not experience complete freedom.

* Beliefs, acquired since our childhood, which limit us.
* The negative images of low self esteem that we have created of ourselves.
* The damaging thoughts of doubt, which does not let the highway of trust to build up inside ourselves and does not allow the creative energy of positivity to flow from inside us to the outside.
* The fear of failure or not being to able to succeed completely. A lot of times the fear exists due to past experiences of failure or not having succeeded as much as you would have liked.

We need to become aware of what our pattern of thoughts is, which brings us under the negative influence of mental conditionings. When that happens, we will be able to become free of these conditionings. While we do not become aware, we will continue to remain under its influence.

Message for the day

The method to serve is to become an embodiment of power.

Expression: Service to others is usually understood as bringing benefit to others through what I do. I have love for such service and make an attempt to do it too. But sometimes busy in such service, I find that my own self-progress is left behind.

Experience: I need to pay attention for my own self-progress by learning from everything that happens. I thus find myself improving and filling myself with power. This power spreads around and shows the right path to others, just like a lighthouse and others continue to take benefit from me.


In Spiritual Service,
Brahma Kumaris

 

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 22, 2015: Labelling People

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 22, 2015: Labelling People

 

Labelling People

When we put labels on people, we're categorising them with a single word, without considering complex factors.  Labels get in the way of reality.  In reality, people are so much more than a label.

Remove the labels.  Take a peek below the surface to see, understand and accept others as they are.  And keep the labels where they belong, on cans and jars, not people.

Understanding

 

Often, misunderstandings happen because we're not willing to take time to understand. We get too impatient and don't listen properly.
And because we simply haven't taken the time to understand, we start making assumptions. So, make time to understand people better.

 

 

Awakening Your Intuition (cont.)

Meditation purifies and sharpens our intellect which makes it broader and far-sighted and also makes it free from waste and negativity; very clean and clear, like a mirror. As a result the intellect is able to subconsciously look into the hidden aspects of any situation, sense the underlying thoughts, emotions and feelings of people involved without any of them being visible, also look into the future without it having evolved as yet and sense the right solution. Nothing can remain hidden from a mirror. Even though a mirror is not consciously aware, somehow or the other it will decide correctly. This is only the intuitive capability, the capability of becoming a 'situation doctor', hearing the mental pulse of the situation and coming up with the right cure for it, which is awakened by meditation immensely.  If the intellect contains negativity or waste and is not clear, sometimes one or more than one of the many influences which we had mentioned in yesterday's message might be perceived to be the intuition and then we might fail in a particular situation. Its important to note that the intuition, if heard correctly, which is only the case when the intellect is clean, can never be wrong and will always take you in the right direction. 

In the above context, for the completely analytical minded, it's significant to understand that the intuitive perception was favoured more by old spiritual traditions and the intellectual perception, is being favoured more by modern science and medicine. Relying only on the intellectual perception is not wise. It alone cannot give us a complete idea of reality. A balance needs to be created between the two different types of perception. People with a balance will be more successful in life and victorious in difficult situations.

 

Soul Sustenance

 

Mental Clarity Or Focus

To strengthen yourself you need to have mental clarity or focus. That is possible if there is not so much of excessive thought, so as to generate clouds of unhappiness, suffering, grief, indecision, doubts and negativity - thoughts that your mind produces, thoughts that are weak, useless or wasteful. All of these thoughts cloud your own clarity. Mental focus means to think less, think concretely, concentrate, think in an elevated way, and your thought will have an energy of clarity and inner strength that will help you to put it into practice with greater success. You should strengthen yourself to achieve a state of self-control. For this, you need to study yourself, know yourself and understand yourself. You need inner silence, for there not to be so much mental chatter (noise) from thinking, thinking, thinking and thinking.

On top of that, other people influence you and so you generate even more thoughts. There are so many influences and inner voices that speak to you. With all of that there cannot be clarity. There is the voice of your fears, of your ego, that of desires and greed, there are influences of the past, thoughts emerging from your values, influences of your neighbors, your children, your husband or wife, your mother or father, the influence of your office colleague's opinion, or your best friend, your doctor, your guru, etc. You can listen to many inner and outer voices and, if you are not strong, your mind weakens under so many influences, which has negative effects on your clarity of mind. Because of all of this you have to strengthen your mind, which means, think less; think slower, concentrated and clear thought; with sense and meaning; of quality, based on a healthy and positive motivation. These thoughts are then like arrows, which have positive strength and clarity.

 

Message for the day

To be experienced means never to be deceived by anything.

Expression: It is normally understood that to be experienced means to gain expertise in something, or to become a master in a particular field. Such a person, who is an expert in one field might find himself totally impractical in daily situations.

Experience: Life has so many things to teach me through the various situations. I need to keep learning from all that happens. Then I'll never be surprised or cheated by any unexpected events, but will be prepared because of being experienced.


In Spiritual Service,

Brahma Kumaris

 

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 21, 2015: See Heaven

Daily Positive Thoughts: November 21, 2015: See Heaven

See Heaven

"Hell is other people," so said Sartre. What a way to start the day! If this is our perception of others, even if it is just one other, then we can expect both the people and the day to be hell. We all know how fast expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies. We seem to forget that other people are always in two places at once - out there and in our heads. And if we decide others are hell we therefore create hell for ourselves in our own heads. So let's do a little work, not too much, and transform our own vision. What do you prefer hell or heaven? When heaven is other people we will know our transformation is complete. Remember, everyone has a little piece of heaven inside their heart. Have you found yours? If not then start in your head, practice perceiving heaven in other people and let the day be heavenly. You will be amazed what comes out of your heart when you make this little effort with your head.

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To keep the mind calm and clear is to find solutions to problems. 

The more my mind is calm and peaceful, the more there is a chance to find solutions. But, when faced with a problem, our mind which is like a plain paper is filled with unnecessary things, so much so that we cannot even see the solution that is right in front of us. Today I will be silent when faced with a problem. I will calm my mind too, before I even attempt to think of a solution for the problem. This will help me find solutions quickly. Also there would be accuracy in the decisions that I take.

Awakening Your Intuition

In real life, we are faced with many situations when important decisions have to be taken, a particular path to move ahead has to chosen. At such times, our mind is filled with various different voices or influences like the influence of people surrounding us, who give their different opinions regarding the particular situation; they say something, our mental logic along with knowledge of people and things, says something else, then there is the influence or memory of our past experiences which colour our perception of the present situation differently. Also there is the influence of the outside world in general - all that we see, hear and read. There are also our attachments, selfish desires, fears, mental biases towards a particular person or situation, emotions like jealousy and hatred, beliefs etc. which influence our perception. Our mind is full of all these influences, many of them even conflicting each other, and we experience complete turmoil or indecisiveness inside ourselves, we don't know what to do.

In such cases it is sometimes extremely wise to keep all these influences aside, sit in silence and listen to what our intuition is saying to us. There are many situations, in which after the situation is over, we realize that all the influences mentioned above would have taken us on the wrong path, but it was our intuition, our inner voice of wisdom, alone which gave us the right solution and took us safely to our destination.

(To be continued tomorrow ...)

Soul Sustenance

Positive Consciousness While Performing Actions

1. The seeds, the inspirations, planted in sitting meditation should be carried into action. Powerful thoughts carried straight away into action always yield powerful results.

2. The remembrance should be that the soul is the child and student of the Supreme Being (Supreme Soul) and should reflect the father and teacher through its actions.

3. The remembrance of the Supreme Soul as a constant companion sustains an internal relationship with Him whilst performing actions.

4. Churn (think deeply) over points of spiritual knowledge by relating them to your immediate karmas (actions).

5. Practice going beyond sound in one second. At different times during the day, stop, pack up all worldly thoughts and spend a few minutes in meditation. This is a really powerful way to strengthen the intellect. After a few minutes, return to the world of sound with the reinforced awareness of being an actor.

6. Practice seeing all those who come into contact with you as souls, tiny points of conscient (living energy) light situated at the centre of the forehead. In this way we will not be pulled into body consciousness, and will avoid negative interactions with others.

Message for the day

Determination is the best companion.

Expression: When things go wrong, the first reaction is of fear. Because of this, I can't put in any effort to better the situation. I start looking for a companion, a support who can provide me help. But I rarely get help from outside.

Experience: When I have to look for something to rely on, the only support I get is from my own determined thought. I need to make it my companion, not letting go of it till I succeed. This will help me overcome my fear and move towards success.


In Spiritual Service,
Brahma Kumaris