Arouse your inner power to be happy

If somebody questions you whether you are happy in your life, you will be little puzzled to reply, if you are not happy. After some time, you will like to know from him,” how can I be happy?”  If you have the slightest idea of this subject, no one can reply in an affirmative tone.  Further, if someone asks you that do you have the power to create happiness?  Again, your answer will be wish-washy.  What one thing we all have that if we choose to be happy, and remain firm to be happy come whatsoever it may be, needless to say, we will be happy, and it is not only my conviction but belief. But in reality, it does not happen easily; the reason is simple that we don’t want to arouse the inner power to ensure our happiness.  You cannot create happiness, but you can be happy even in your distress provided you have that much willpower. We all want to be happy underneath the pursuit of pleasures, wealth and powers.  Then, why we become gloomy most of the time as if we have to wait to be happy. Metaphorically, it seems that happiness is to knock the door to make an entry in our life. Our mind always plays on duality. This duality only creates conflicts, anxieties, apprehensions, and we provoke our mind to think on the negativity. Based on these negativity, we make a distance from our happiness and instead of choosing to be happy; we simply do the opposite forcing happiness to leave us.

The feeling of worldly happiness is like a desert mirage, and when we try to be nearer, it disappears.  It is not advisable to search happiness from outside because external environment though has a bearing on you, but it is you, who has to decide to be happy or not.  People, who are believers of perpetual happiness, search the same wholeheartedly within their inner-self.  We get the blessings of God, and can recognize the true joy within ourselves only. We must have enough courage and strength to choose the same. If you question, “Why you need to meditate?” The answer will be by doing meditation; you can learn and choose consciously the power to make yourself happy. Most of the people argue that even without meditation, we can decide to choose what is suitable for us?  Contrarily, there are people who believe practicing meditation religiously is a real path to being happy. When you are happy, your mind is also calm, and you take most of the decisions correctly. Just by showing a reaction to any situation is not a conscious choice. It is known as an impulsive thought process. Many of us live as a puppet, under an illusion that they are calling the tune of their lives, but in reality, their lives are governed by various desires, habits and Karmic compulsions. They don’t have much control over these attributes. They only follow these norms either because of external pressure or lack of choice and freedom.

Have you noticed how quickly people get agitated over frivolous issues? Or why do you get angry so quickly based on certain emotional impulses due to unwanted comments of other people? Why do you choose to act in that way?  How can you take a decision on behalf of your company, institution or even social organization when you cannot control yourself? People, who can control their “ego-self,” can act freely without taking much stress.  A yogic person takes all types of decisions related mostly to spiritual things with conscious awareness, but not from subconscious inclinations. Yogananda says, “Circumstances are always neutral, it is how you react to them that make them seen either happy or sad.”  When you act consciously, life responds to all your signals properly. But when you react to various things emotionally; life gets out of your control many times.  That is why yoga plays a vital role. Through this practice, you can act in joy rather than reacting in anger or sorrow.  This practice will always guide you properly, and you will show a neutral response to your anger, sorrow, love and hate; you will find that your life changes, and take a positive swing.  Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple of Yogananda, said, “On a fundamental level, we have only two choices in life, to move towards the light or to move away from it.”   We have these choices in front of us all the time during our act for various purposes.  If we desire to be successful as human beings, we must increase our willpower, and we must discriminate wisely to choose the light.  Otherwise, we will be swirled in worldly affairs continuously in the life. Why should you wait to be happy?  Choose it at this moment and that too instantly, and for that matter if you need to perform, discharge all your duties, and show love and kindness to all persons you come across, do it.

 No one can say what could be a quick-fix solution to be happy all the time, but you may try to conduct this small practice. Each morning after you wake up, start the day repeating this affirmation, “I vow from today onwards to be happy under every circumstance.  I came for God’s joy.  I am a joy.”  See the difference after a few months provided you utter this sentence with full devotion and remembering God. Happiness can never delude you.

Identify the difference between Being and existence

Identify the difference between Being and existence

Parents always teach children not to tell lies, to behave properly, to give respect to others and to focus attention on their studies.  It is quite a natural phenomenon. So, when a mother comes to know that her son is telling lies, she was speechless, but for a while, forgot what to do or what not to do.  She started cursing herself that there must be something wrong in her upbringing.  Then she took the boy aside and started cautioning him the consequence of telling lies.  She said that if you continue to tell lies, one day, a monster with huge eyes and a horn on his head would appear in your sleep, and then he would lift you to punish without hearing any word from you.  She finally assuaged him that hereafter, I am sure, you won’t tell lies.  The son replied with all his politeness that he will not tell lies anymore but with a simpering he informed, “I feel you are a bigger liar than me because you tell lies most of the time.”

Now, the question comes why people tell lies? What achievement do they get by telling lies?  Do you not understand the ground reality that by telling lies and suppressing the truth, you are causing more stresses on your mind because anytime there is a chance, you might be caught?  Despite knowing that there is no significant benefit except some momentary gain, you cannot expect a big success in your life by falsifying your existence.  Moreover, many wrong doings, false utterances, and lies will make you a non-reliable person to the eyes of everybody, which may even include your family members and children.  Because of continuously lying, one fills his mind with the thoughts of unnecessary worries, anxieties, and unwanted tension. Ultimately, this act restricts your spontaneity and also blocks your creativity.  Once you lose your creativity, your progress in life in all fronts become slow.

People always wish to increase their knowledge. There is a difference between knowledge and the Being in the East.  Here people give more weight on Being. Of course, both knowledge and Being are equally important. Once you allow the transformation of knowledge into Being, then knowledge will be considered as mere information.  So, both these things are needed together for the purpose of transformation. You can easily identify the knowledge level of a particular person on a defined subject, but a few people understand the subtlety of Being, which is your presence and that your presence might be a good, transparent, encouraging and inspiring entity.  One should not mix the existence and the Being. The building exists, the human beings exist, the tree exists, but they all have their existence distantly visible. For example, Being a man, tree, building, and the Divine, we have to identify all these at different levels.  Being always evolves from the origin, but existence starts from birth.  Take the case of Being of an animal.  All animals have existence from birth.  A dog, a cow, an elephant, a cat or a horse though have existence, but their Being is not from their birth. It is from the conception.

To understand this postulate you need to introspect, and study this subject in details, which is mostly related to the spirituality of the mind.  Being is an evolving subject, an evolving present. It is applicable for everybody. If a person is getting hurt because of inflicts inflicted on him either by his family members or his friends, it only shows the maturity level of the other person.  But if the person who is hurt forgives the other person even after hearing all odd words, it shows the higher level of the person, who has shown the forgiveness.  If you are selfish, it shows your Being at a certain level below than the desired level of ideal living. Similarly, if you always urge to serve others and help them in their distress, you will be classified altogether in a different level of Being.  If you are compassionate and show love and kindness to others, you will fall in the much higher level of Being. 

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Being is merely not a matter of judgment but a matter of clear understanding, which ultimately leads to the growth and the spiritual progression in life.  How can you work on your Being?  Or how can you improve your Being?  This topic is very wide and so easy deliberation, and comprehension will be not that easy.  But questioning others about the vital statistics of life’s perspective and how to increase the same and finally, how the same will be helpful for others human beings, will provide you some clues of your Being.  Then, if you closely analyze and follow the life path of great sages and religious people, you will have more clarity.  With this clarity, you must transform and support the process of transformation in your daily life.  You have to target to reach higher dimension or higher Being so that you may plan for high achievement in life, and get the fervor of spiritual bliss.

Do your work without expectation of result

Do your work without expectation of result

The nishkama does not mean that you are not supposed to do any work. It is not related to idleness.  It interprets that your efforts are in the direction of pure spirit, the uninvolved witness of passivity and the confluence of the activity of body and mind.  If you work with your body means you are exerting your physical energy to perform any work without the spirit, you won’t achieve a result. The reason is that the results of all your efforts entirely depend on you and your divinity, which comes from your attachment to God.  What is this attachment?  You just remember Him with all sincerity while starting and ending any work. Now, one may question can I then get the result? You can expect, but not with one hundred percent attachment.  With His blessings, you concentrate on finishing work to the best of your ability and then you watch what the outcome is? 

When your ego identifies itself with the body and feels, “I am the body,” you get involved in the work as an actor.  Contrarily, if you feel that “I am the Atman,” the pure spirit and in that state whatever you do, it will be termed as nishkama, means egoless passivity of the spirit.  Again, if you start believing only in absolute passivity, your living and managing worldly life and its routine affairs will be a problem. So, you need to carry out all your jobs with dedication and determination to cross any hurdles. If any obstacles come then, surrender your spirit of accomplishment to the Creator without any expectation.  The Lord will fulfill your desires.  It is difficult to understand the concept of nishkama. Because while performing any duty, by habit, you will have the tenacity to know the result as complete detachment is not possible.  You can come to a stage when you understand that whatever achievement you have got, it is not yours. Based on the Creator’s blessings, you have accrued the benefit. In reality, nothing belongs to us.  We have come to this world without anything.  Then, why we feel pride for our possessions, which are all artificial, means they are our companion for a period till we exist in this world. We require Oxygen, and we also require food so that we can eat the same, breathe easily and can live with peace.  With these amenities provided, we can live eighty, ninety or may be hundred years.  From nature, we can meet our different demands. 

This world is a stage on which we enact drama in any roles.  We help mutually each other for a smooth living. You cannot be the owner if you are not the author.  The Creator of this world is the material cause of creation.  When you established a business empire, you cannot say that I have created this business, it is a joint effort. For establishing this empire, you need a ground, building, human beings and other raw materials, which were already available or you have managed to procure getting the help of other people. You procure these resources, use the same and establish the empire.  Human ownership is a representation of something, which has not that significant value in the face of divine blessings.  The willpower of the individual is only a distortion of the divine will by man’s large ego.  You must transcend fragmented attitude with the help of submission and devotion to the divine will, then only a complete peace and perfection are possible in the midst of performance.  You start practicing detachment, and for that, you must establish a connection with God. Then, It will be easy to practice detachment. Slowly, you will move to the path of detachment, and you will only observe yourself as a witness. One will begin to see and acknowledge His manifestations with a complete reverence.  Creation and time are endless and cyclic. The process of creation is a high thought of introspection and creation has a specific purpose of recognizing the soul. Human species by birth is treated to be the best vehicle with a potentiality to reach the God.  The worldly man has to change his attitudinal behavior to devote attention to work.  One will be able to perform nishkama work when he can control his mind, and can dwell in the state of a witness in discharging life’s duties.  Of course, there should not be much of a focus to care for the results. 

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It is possible to achieve this stage in two steps, the first, let you be the worker and your all actions and fruits thereof must be resigned to God.  It is known as graceful acceptance of divine blessing. The high-level monks and sages have left their feelings for doer-ship when they reach a higher level of divine grace, the sense of belongingness starts disappearing. This state is known as offering a choice of action to the divine.  This special type of attitude is based on the appreciation of the divine long back before you start taking action. The second step, we have to supplicate to the preaching of Hindu mythology. We must practice the concept the “nishkama,” which leads to the path of nishkama Siddhi; otherwise, the expenses of some charitable work, releasing workers and staff’s wages, and many other benevolent works will be meaningless.

Try to do your work without much expectation of results; it is bound to come if your dedication is sincere. After all, God likes sincerity.

Don't be so fast, just slow down

Don’t be so fast, just slow down

To pace with the competition in today’s world of digital civilization, we would like to run, but not walk. We want to be fast in all sphere of life so that another person cannot snatch our share of success. It is altogether a wrong concept of ideal living. If you like to achieve a full-scale success, you have not only to slow down your pace, but also to show enough receptivity to others.  If people around you are happy with you, they will ensure that you get success in all your endeavors.  If you maintain the same principle of working attitude and behavioral pattern, the society will nominate you like the best performer initially in the locality, then to the state, state to the country and then country to the international. 

In today’s fast life, and in the age of technological advancement, if we live as per God’s will in a humble way, even unto death, God’s door will always be opened for your assistance in this life, and also in rebirth. If you believe in the theory of incarnation and reincarnation, your rebirth will be there, but how much sufferings you have to undergo here, and then in your rebirth that all depends on God’s mercy.  If God promises something to you in the midst of your prayer, which you will be able to perceive once you lead a humble life in line with God’s wishes.

Remember, in all your endeavors, God is with you.  Then why to run always, and keep yourself on the toe? He never breaks his promises.  It’s you only disobey His advice and then put yourself in the problem.  The only fastness will not yield success in your life; you must carry out your duties with total conviction and faith. When God provides you any promise to walk with Him on life’s journey, you have to understand the inkling. For that, you must enlighten your mind and soul.  Each of us gets a unique invitation from God; it is not the same for everybody. We are born here not do what we like. We must own the responsibilities entrusted to us with a pang of sufferings. 

If you keep faith on God’s omniscience, that is fine, but that does not mean that you will be able to forecast everything in advance what is going to happen to you and when.  You can only hope that God is with you, He will not let you face the perils always.  He gives odd and good things simultaneously to test your patience. Whatever sorrow you face, He will transform the same in His perfect time. God makes these types of promises to only a handful people, who accept Him as their savior. People who acknowledge God as their savior, their lives are much happier than the others, who do not have any reverence for His existence.  One promise Jesus gave to the weary travelers removes all their tiredness.  Jesus said, “Come to me, you who are heavily burdened and I will give you rest, for my yoke is not heavy.”  Life is full of challenges.  We always face a new challenge.  At some point in time, we will be burdened and will be prepared to let go and give up many of the challenges.  When we do these accepting a  few challenges, it can open a new path in our life.  Sometimes, you may feel that you will be able to shoulder more responsibilities may be professionally or socially, but while expressing this feeling, you should never think that what would happen, if you cannot discharge the responsibilities properly. That will develop a negative feeling and will eclipse your positive energy. Jesus gave a sermon for all those people in the form of His promises.  When we are in two minds before we discharge any responsibility, there will be a state of ‘nothingness’ in our lives and then turn to Jesus, He will give you water from the fountains that springs from His heart and reduces our nothingness to positivity. 

We all like to have a peaceful death.  Then why do we run so fast throughout our lives?  To do work in the right spirit and direction is laudable, but for that matter, a constant moderate speed of life is more than sufficient.  Unnecessarily, throughout our lives, we run like a mad dog to accomplish various feats.  In the end, we achieve some because to achieve in totality is next to impossible.

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Why maintain this fast speed?  Just slow down and take God as your companion in all your endeavors.  He will ensure that you get the best. In this way, you would get many opportunities in the disguise of His promises.  But we can get these opportunities provided we take and respect God’s promises sincerely.  In a way, God prepares us for that great experience.  It should be the mission in your life to accept God’s promises as your own. We may not be able to help each and every people in this world, but we can touch the lives of a few people with hearts overflowing with kindness and love.  If we can do that, it would be a “messenger” of God.  There is no need for the message to be big or small, because, through the power of breeze, it would reach the masses for their benefit. Just live a normal life remembering Him all the time with a moderate speed.