Be a servant,not a master

23^rd Psalm says,“The lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”  If we make God our custodian in a true sense, we will not be in dearth of anything. But God becomes your custodian only, if you accept the concept to serve others. That means, you have to follow the tenet to become a servant and serve others and pray to Lord accordingly. Some people from the very beginning of their existence follow this principle, whereas some others want to be always masters and dictate their terms. They take pride in those roles, ultimately causing conflicts, difference in opinion, ambiguities, clashes and then loss of peace. The inclination of becoming a servant to anybody and for anything may be practically not that feasible, but approaching this route and follow the similar pattern of thinking will be always a gleeful proposition in life. We know all these philosophical concepts of ideal living. But most of us wait for the fag end of the life to accept this philosophy. We live in a competitive and fiercely mud slinging environment, where powerful people want to dominate others. These powerful people by dint of their strength, money, fame, reputation and followers want to mollycoddle others and decide how the others will lead their lives. In short, they like to dominate others as their masters. Though the number of masters or the persons who always want to be masters are predominately more, but universe supports and like the people who serve others gladly without expecting anything in return.  In common terminology, we mean the so called servants as low class, menial workers and less qualified rather illiterate and poor people. Here the meaning of servant is altogether different. These people are the rich in their hearts and minds who unconditionally provide their services to others and their only mission is to serve others selflessly. Of course,their numbers are less. Most of the time, we find people who are very much inclined to serve others, but for that they expect a reward. There are people who like to serve others only for love. If these numbers get increased, then the society will be a haven of paradise. 

We all are devotees of God. We serve God, visit temples, chant hymns, keep fast and make ourselves busy in contemplative prayers. In the broader sense, we are the servants of God and have to bring happiness to others. When you present a gift to a person out of your affection, you are bringing a smile to his face. Further, when you show your sympathy or help  others who are in distress, when you guide some students to help them to pass in their exams and when you extend your nursing help to some ailing person; your all these  services for noble causes, are acts of good gestures. You are broadly a servant, but you are a hero, who deserves respect and love.  Why we call such types of people as servants?  On the contrary, we must extend our best wishes and paying them homage for the excellent work they do. These people carry out their services  without any ulterior motives.  They do what needs to be done in a particular situation. They do not want any kudos or accolades or medals for their selfless services.  They only think to render their services to others, whether the same are required or not from them. This “servant mentality” is one of the unique qualities of mankind. The people, who possess these qualities, are blessed with God’s profound blessings and they are always at peace and in love for others. People who counter this servant mentality because of their inflated ego and excessive pride for their name, fame, wealth and power, fall through many times during their tenure of survival in this world. They suffer miserably, but do not want to accept the fact to become a servant to others needs. 

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As stated,there are people, who have taken this “servant mentality” in their lives and serve people in their respective capacities. Those enlightened souls are, namely Swami Vivekananda and Ramkrishna Paramhans. They used to take pride to embrace upon the servant approach in life. In today’s glamorous and artificial world, there are many God loving people who continually battle against poverty, illiteracy and superstition,but they always feel happy. These noble souls exist, though not plenty are the real reasons for not our mass downfall. Because of these people and their good deeds, God is pleased and not shackling  us with terrible sufferings and pains. Further, God acknowledges the services of these noble souls and make this world a beautiful place, so that we are able to live cogently and peacefully. Some people always feel that they have a mission in life.  Out of these some people, a few discovers this truth at the fag end of their life, and the remaining paltry numbers  realize this fact at an early stage.  From the early stage of their life, they question “Can I serve others?”, “Can I bring little pleasure to some people while sharing my shelter, bread and clothes with them?” and “Can I help the people who are terribly sick?”  These services may not require an investment of considerable  money, it only requires  adequate mental power to serve others. If this approach does not come automatically, it is better to seek Divine grace to become a servant with an attitude to help others.  The concept must be to help the helpless so as to make them lifted upward. The human race has survived because of these people who engage in servicing others. Though they are very less in numbers, but this world does not survive because of the braggers who climbed the stairs of their lives  considering their own comforts and luxuries only. 

In today’s glamorous and malice prone society, we give more importance on achievement, power and positions. But this may not curb the motives of the people who are engaged in selfless services.  So, one should pray to God that let me have an aptitude and attitude to become a servant of someone in need. When these numbers grow means one becomes two, two become three and reach the level of infinity, we all will be servants to God. We all will follow the concept of servant mentality, and there will be no master.  In reality, this situation is remote, but if try and achieve an even smaller percentage of this desire, our this world will be a utopian society. 

How to remove clutter thoughts not to make you a clunker

Thoughts are most powerful inputs for your success in every field, say career, education, sports and social circle. If your thoughts are clear and have clarity, half of the battle of your life has been won by you. Though we are aware of this fact, but we are always puzzled because of  our habit of negative thinking. This negative thinking is the root cause of our failure. It is seen that most of the time, our thoughts are cluttered, which put us in anxieties and thorny situations and sometimes our progress in life gets diminished. So, there is an utmost importance for us to concentrate to think with more clarity for the benefit of ours and also the people surrounding us. Human life encompasses a very stringent and complex structure, where difficulties and challenges confront us every now and then. Most of us are struggling to set right the conflicts of the inner world to lead a meaningful life. There are different types of people and they have a varied pattern of difficulties. Some are fighting to save the damaged relationship, others are very vocal to establish an awareness of an ideal living and there are citizens who are desperate to make a change in the political system, so that the society becomes corruption free. Then there are people  who take pride to save the environment. Some others are very much interested to curb the environment of anarchies caused by the extremists to ensure a universal perspective of brotherhood. All these things are easy to say, but difficult to implement as the task is a daunting one. Most of us take the shelter that the above responsibilities, in question, is beyond our capabilities. We should not put ourselves into problem by taking part in those activities. We are common people and how can we make a radical change in the society. This type of thinking leads to clutter thoughts.

No doubt, we are besmeared with the traits of passivity, negativity and hopelessness. Such attitude and thoughts derived from our  inner feelings being influenced by the  outward environment is the main reason to stall our eagerness for any forward movement and is responsible for not taking any broad initiation. We wrongly pollute our thoughts that we are too small and to implement the said tasks are beyond our jurisdiction. Psychologically, we are beaten before we even try to achieve any goal and it is this attitudinal problem, which surfaces our failure. We do not get success because of less trying or  less eagerness in our trying, and the success eludes us because we feel that we cannot do the job.  If we are in a position to change this mindset and distract our attention from these clutter thoughts, surprisingly, we will be in a position to accomplish any feat as far as practical. Then enough possibilities of individual, interpersonal, social, political and religious development will become evident in life. It is true that all of us try our level best, but many of us  do the same with disorganized thoughts, where transparency will be very less and we are not focusing to any activity very seriously. We concentrate on multi-task owing to our needs, which satiate our personal, social and sensory priorities. This jack of all trade theory makes our efforts little artificial and instead of our getting immersed in any particular activity very deeply and while performing any task, we become enslaved in the memories of the past and the fantasies of the future. Then, the ultimate  outcome of our efforts will lead to waste precious time and will produce a shabby output.

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Most of us consider attention as a mental proposition. In reality, it is a container of energy.  We often desire to acquire supreme power in terms of religiosity, but ignore the input power of “to be attentive” within us. We mostly are fickle minded; ponder from one issue to the other without making any sensible output. 

A very important step for us is to become mindful. We must have a strong willpower not to distract our attention when focusing on a particular issue. We must cling to the same  unless we emerge as a winner. If we lose even after putting sincere efforts, we must not repent. Next time, we must focus with more sincerity on the same issue or a similar one. In short, it should be one pointed. At that time, anything you carry out, the result is hundred percent to your favor. Attention is a tricky issue.  It can dodge anyone. It can land you both in positive and negative directions. You have to utilize attention in the right manner for any effective output. But due to our habits, we tend to open our mental doors to welcome all negative thoughts. Some people have a bad habit to see wrong in everything, because they are shrouded always with depressive tendencies. They are seldom energetic and hope to achieve positive outcomes. Some others do anything, try anything out of their curiosity, inclination and interest and in this process, they gather courage to cross any hurdles to achieve their goals. They do not want to block and minimize their target. If something comes in their way, they remove the same by the help of their clear thoughts. The Mother continually emphasized and preached through her writings, preaching and good wishes that if anyone wants to grow consciously, one need to create positive thoughts with strong willpower and a correct intention to utilize these thoughts for the benefits of society, nation and all human beings. If we follow her preaching at least to fifty to sixty percent, the perturbation of our thoughts will be eliminated. She said that people who are habitually negative thinkers, are prone to failures, invite disasters in their lives and also bring social disharmony. They become unhappy in all their activities and make others resentful.  If you always foresee the negative aspects and dwell on the same, you will get the output accordingly.  So, we must strive very hard to concentrate and give attention to the positive aspects with a definite aim and offer it to the Divine. When we increase the positive aspects of our attitude and hope to achieve a goal showing a deep veneration for God, we will get it. The goal begins to realize itself.  The essence of our life is that if the same is corroborated with idealism and we always remember God in all our activities, we will be able to magnify our realities to the infinity.  Idealism comes when your thoughts are clear, but not cluttered and you have a wholehearted devotion to God.  Otherwise, your life will be perilous. So, you must decide whether clutter thoughts should engulf you or not; it is better to come out of that phase, not to make you  a clunker.  

Do you think, duality is a mystery of life?

Duality prevails in everybody’s life. Whether you are rich or poor, literate or illiterate, healthy or unhealthy, wise or fool, you will be always encircled with this phase of duality.  Sometimes, the effect of duality will be so severe that even a man full of wisdom and who always takes the correct decisions for any of his problems may be besmeared with doubts and at that moment may take a wrong decision causing unpardonable damages in his life’s progress. This phase of duality is a deeply illuminating philosophical consequence.  Duality in a true sense is a regular phenomenon in our earthly life, where an opposing and contradicting elements exist. Further, duality consists of contrasting opposites – the right and the wrong, good or evil, darkness and light, summer and winter, joy and sorrow, birth and death and likewise.  As per Chinese psychology, the meaning of Yin and Yang defines the above situations. The traits like joy and sorrow, good and evil are the guards of mind’s perception and these perceptive values define our feeling to characterize these dualities. Against these experiences of dualities, certain things have absolutely no confrontation for identification. For example, when we experience the emergence of sunlight, we find that day has started and in the same way, when darkness engulfs us, we opine that night has appeared. Here, you are clear about the consequential effects and your observation has only residual value unless you are a creative person and want to create something in a different way out of this change of day and night scenery. By experiencing and saying something good for any accomplishment, we conceive and perceive the opposite of the same as bad. Both these experiences are true.  But by giving a judgmental value of good for something, we create an iota of doubt to describe the opposite of this thing as bad. This only creates an illusion, which only leads us to duality. This illusory perception decides opposite observations with a correlation of our mind’s behavior, which intensifies observation power. Without the knowledge of “good”, the idea of “bad” cannot be identified and ascertained in true sense. When you recognize something as full of beauty, which is already otherwise recognized as the same, the whole world of yours has to accept the above fact. But if you say a blooming red rose is much better than  some well groomed thorny cactus, then the analogy is not that simple with respect to beauty. In fact, both are beautiful in their respective places.  As you appreciate the red roses spread across a rose garden, you have to appreciate the forming of cactus in rows, when they inhabit a desert. There is no ambiguity at all.

Now, if you think to use either rose or cactus to decorate your house, you will be in dilemma and invite dual frame of mind whether to decorate with rose or cactus. At the same time, you may like to illuminate the grandeur of your house putting both these plants. Which one to follow will ultimately put you in duality? If you choose rose discarding cactus, you give prominence using your perception to one at the cost of the other. Not only your behavior will be guided by duality, but you may be in anxiety, whether  all your family members will accept your decision or not. So, your mind will be perturbed and will be clouded with a bit of anxieties as you like to get the knowledge of others opinions. We, the human beings, always pass through these types of perspectives, which consist of happiness and despair, life and death and hope and despondency and many other consequences.  During the course of the day in our daily life, we come across these types of  syndromes at a varied degree when our mind gets agitated with unpleasant facts, awareness of interdependence of various situations or states, which will rise to equanimity. This will lead our desire to aggravate on the eve of various impediments.

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As we experience various seasons in a year, our life is also experiencing various contrasts.  Extreme situations and volatilities out of the same make us more discernible and  we accumulate  many gratifying experiences. Keep vigilance into the abundance of the limitations of life as well as plenty of opportunities and happiness; you will be astonished to find out the results.  The scorching sun and heat of the same provokes our mind to go and take the shelter in the lap of cool breeze of winter, so that our body gets a soothing effect.  If you toss on a coin of joy and sorrow, the deeper the sorrow inflicts your mind and body, the more joy you will be able to achieve after a certain period of suffering. This is a natural cycle in any human being’s life. The cup, which is used for your drinking purpose is invariably getting burnt in the potter’s oven. Even though, it is an inanimate object, it has suffered pain before it displays its aesthetic finishing as a cup. What is the significant explanation behind the duality that every good cause has a good effect and every bad cause has a bad effect and vice-versa. If you are too much bothered about these dualities, you will be more sufferer. You must know how to come out using your correct judgement.

Khalil Gibran, the eminent Lebanese-American artist and poet explains the complementary nature of opposites. He teaches us that without excruciating the pain of various sufferings, one cannot relish the sweet fragrance of joy. Taking the cue from the poet’s philosophical explanations about the alternatives of joy and sorrow, life and death, peace and war and if you can position the same in various simulation techniques, you will see that pleasant outcome always succeeds the unpleasant situations. We must increase our experiences from this philosophical explanation. The more these experiences are accumulated in your perception, the more you will  tolerate or become stubborn to combat these dualities in your life. Despite being stricken with extreme agonies or pleasures in life, you have to face dualities because of the prevailing norms of living and once you experience the same and able to counter, you will be able to lead a meaningful life.  Drawing the analogy of the cup, which we use to put tea, milk and even bitter medicine always reminds us the least pain to hold the cup, even for a split of a second though most of the time, we ignore the sequence of accepting the pain. Our life is  like that only. It is only a container to hold many beautiful and ugly things. By knowing the fundamental values of  of the duality of life, you are acquiring much awareness to understand the right and the wrong of your living.  If you can circumvent its influence and minimize the same to the extent possible, you will remain in balance and will navigate your life in the right direction mostly.

Identify the difference between a physical computer and a life computer

Can you identify the similarity of functions of a computer with a real life?  To a certain extent, it is identical.  How a computer works?  It basically works on the basis of some inputs programed in the system.  On its own, a computer cannot do anything. But on our own, we can perform many things in life. We are able to operate a computer when some software programs are downloaded to it. These software programs carry out different tasks and functions.  Almost all the computers are same, but they are operated differently based on the various softwares inbuilt in the same. Human beings and their lives are like computer hardwares. We are born with the same types of operating parts. By divine power, we all have a physical body, a system governing the functions of the body and we have the privilege to have a most sensitive organ, namely the brain like the CPU in a computer. This particular part of our body takes various signals of the body system and senses the same to give signals to us for our performing various duties and functions. Based on the inputs provided by our intelligent system, we fulfill our  desires, actions and implementation of those activities most of the time in the right direction. The major difference between the computer and our life is that in a computer, control of the signal and other programs are done by the combination of the hardware and the software, whereas in our life, we control the bodily system to act and perform our duties as suitable for us. In the case  of computers, we  load the software as we want. Though there is a similarity between the two, but the computer system is completely governed by the human dictum whereas our life system, though governed by our willpower, determination and healthy system of eating and sleeping, the same is influenced tremendously by the inputs of the surrounding environment. We take various inputs from our society. We get it from our parents, teachers, friends and neighbors. Most of the time, we are being influenced by their opinions, advices and support services without knowing whether they are right or wrong, at least in our formative years. We have to depend on their judgement as the computers depend solely on the combination of the hardware and the software for its performance. In our life, after getting various inputs from different sources, we try to accommodate the same to our needs.

It is a customary practice that we always download the various inputs of society into ourselves. If we are able to recognize our own identities in the real sense, that means, our true self, which is known as soul, we will be able to identify that the society’s offerings in the form of various inputs are not fulfilling ourselves, in reality. The true self is not that interested to be besmeared with the fun and frolic getting downloaded from the society. The soul only wants to have the experience of divinity and its bliss, love and ecstasy.  Our soul is only getting nourished by the love and the light of the divine. In a real sense, if you want to radiate your presence nourished with divine blessings, you need to download God. With the contemplative power of prayer, when you enrich your soul and you carry out only all sorts of moral activities, you can be successful in your activity of downloading God. Most of us  pray, but we miss to download God in our system. The fundamental difference between the life system and the computer system is  this power of prayer. 

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After making our body still; we try to sedate our mind, but convolute in the various affairs of the world and continually downloading the same. This is the problem and in this process, we pollute our thoughts and impure our soul. We always fill our system with the happenings of the past, whims and fancies related to fantasies reserved for the future and thoughts pertaining to the ego, envy, hatred, lust and anger. We are mostly crumbled with the desires of our ingratiating senses. The contemplative prayer and meditation should be flawless and must be performed effortlessly. We must close our eyes and observe what is lying in front of us in religious perspective.  No sooner, we will be able to reach that stage, we will progress rapidly. In the midst of a meditation, when we feel our true self, we should not be disturbed by external environment and various mundane thoughts evolve thereupon. As stated earlier to download God, we need to keep our mind still and practically thoughtless. When we are not thinking and keeping our mind still, we will be able to access God. When we get busy in prayer and religious hymns, if we are continually disturbed by various worldly thoughts, we cannot download the power of the Almighty and program the same properly. The question may come, “Do I need to run behind worldly thoughts?” or “Do I want to absorb in prayer wholeheartedly?” We have to select and choose the path correctly. 

This simple idea of moral living can put us in the right track to focus our attention within us.  If we are able to educate and train ourselves to follow to do this, a habit of practicing religious principles will grow, which will lead us on the path to identify our true selves. This habit will make your mind still while you carry out meditation. Your mind will not be agitated with any type of sensualities while you are getting engaged in your prayer.  Now, you will be able to see a tremendous positive result in meditation and will be mentally moving through the white blanket of bliss and altruistic movements. You will be enjoying a divine ecstasy.  By your power of meditation, if you download God into your mental frame of thinking, you will actually merge your nature back to your source, which is the abode of your soul. This soul guides you to tap your eternal wisdom, bliss, happiness, enlivenment and divine love. Many times, we do not recognize the ecstasy of divine love and platonic love in this physical world.  Our soul is always contended and fulfilled by union with God.  It is not satisfied by anything of this world. Secluding the concept of soul and the power of prayer, our life is like a computer, which functions based on the combination of hardware and other programs duly downloaded  from the various sources. Apart from all these programs, if we  can download God and His blessings in our life system, we will run our lives without any virus. Some people are able to download God and His wishes in their life system, just to enjoy their lives with love and peace.  And, they extend  these fundamental values to each and everyone.