Yoga and Spiritual

Women and Spirituality

2009-01-13T05:20:00.000-08:00

Sudesh Didi describes the unique role which women play within the Brahma Kumaris

In a world where women have been seen traditionally as someone's wife, mother, daughter, or sister, why would a woman choose to follow a spiritual path?

Perhaps because, deep inside every woman has a longing to “be” someone in her own right—fully aware of herself, confident and in control. When we talk of spiritual power, we are in fact referring to the original power of the self to be whole and independent—free from the web of domination and suppression, free from the need to exist for someone else's sake.

For the last two thousand years or more, women have not fully utilised their spiritual power. Instead, aspects of the “feminine” have taken mainly symbolic forms from the Virgin Mary to the vestal virgins, from Earth Goddesses to the Shakti Devis. On the one hand, women have been put on pedestals and worshipped on account of their purity or femininity. At the same time, they have been excluded from religious practices and barred, even until now, from entering some places of worship.

Elevated or chastised, exonerated or condemned, the main problem facing women is that they have never been treated as equal to men—either as spiritual leaders or spiritual seekers. This lack of equality finds its roots not only in sociological and cultural systems, but more particularly within levels of consciousness upon which spirituality and attitudes are ultimately based.

Women as Spiritual Leaders

Women become spiritual leaders when they themselves acknowledge they have the capacity and necessary attributes to play such a role. The change of consciousness needed is to move away from unworthy feelings and attitudes and to see the greatness contained within the self. Feminine qualities such as love, tolerance, compassion, understanding and humility are qualities of leadership. They are also needed for spiritual progress, for without them it would be impossible to come close to God and attain self-realisation. Every human being possesses those qualities but women are more easily and naturally able to tap them, for feelings of love and devotion are often more natural to women, combined with a profound sense of discipline and order. A true leader leads through example.

Women know how to serve and how to give. Often the notion of service or of putting others in front has been seen as a sign of weakness or lack of power. Quite the opposite is true. The ability to bow before others, with true humility, is the sign of the greatness of a soul who has conquered ego.

However this quality of giving to others must also be balanced with qualities of courage, determination, clear thinking and self-respect. Too often, women have a tendency to give to others and neglect their own spiritual needs. It is one of the major reasons women find themselves depleted and lacking in spiritual power. The foundation for assuming spiritual leadership is thus a change of consciousness. Overcoming the huge physical, religious and sociological barriers which have prevented women becoming spiritual leaders can only be done through the development of self-respect. The quality of self-respect comes from the knowledge and experience of the eternal self which is beyond social, cultural or physical identity. The eternal self or soul is pure, peaceful and complete with divine and spiritual qualities. When women touch this inner, eternal core, they gain the courage to play the part they are capable of.

Spiritual power is an expression of the inherent qualities of the spirit and has nothing to do with gender or physical limitations. Feelings of domination or suppression occur when there is the awareness of superiority or inferiority. Feelings of equality, however, manifest when there is the consciousness of spirit or soul. These feelings and attitudes can be expressed in actions with positive results.

Women are still a long way from enjoying positions of spiritual leadership, and society still doesn't fully concur with the notion that women make good spiritual leaders. Yet, society won’t necessarily change until someone, whether an individual or a group of individuals, breaks the tradition and sets a new role model. This, in part, was the thinking behind the work of Brahma Baba, founder of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University.

Historical Context of Brahma Kumaris

In 1936, at the age of 60, Dada Lekhraj, a wealthy diamond merchant from the province of Sind (now Pakistan) experienced a series of powerful visions. He had always been religious-minded and had also held a highly reputable position in the community. Yet the visions changed his life completely, revealing striking images of the world passing through a period of immense unrest, as well as images of the change required to usher in a new world for the future. Within a year or so, Dada Lekhraj, later known as Brahma Baba, had sold his business and established a spiritual university. He nominated a group of 12 young women to assume all administrative responsibilities for the group of almost 400 people which met regularly to study spiritual knowledge and meditate.

At that time in India, women were treated as second class citizens, perceived as little more than chattels belonging to their husbands. Such attitudes have their roots in the traditional Hindu scriptures. For example, in the Ramayan there is a reference to four things being equal: a drum (that you beat), an animal (that you push), a senseless fool and a woman.

For Brahma Baba to place women in charge of a spiritual university at a time when they were still hidden by the veil—literally and figuratively—caused a huge uproar. But he was determined to carry out this gentle social and spiritual ‘revolution’. He believed that the balance of spiritual and social power wouldn’t change unless the inequalities were redressed, and women, both young girls and mothers, were given the right to serve the community as spiritual teachers.

By the time Brahma Baba passed away in 1969, the knowledge he was given and the changes he championed had found receptive and fertile soil. Within the space of 54 years, the University has grown considerably and now operates over 8,500 centres in 100 countries. All administrative and spiritual duties are carried out by Dadi Prakashmani and Dadi Janki, the two most senior women teachers who have been students since the University’s establishment.

Student not Disciple

Today, from an organisational perspective, both men and women assume responsibility for teaching and running centres. By and large, however, men follow the founder’s example and willingly put women “in front”.

For the Brahma Kumaris the concept of discipleship does not exist. Brahma Baba never positioned himself as a guru. He taught through example, by putting into practice the spiritual knowledge and principles he had received in his communion (yoga) with the Supreme Soul. He encouraged others to do the same by creating their own communication directly with the source.

Brahma Baba encouraged women to understand and explore their potential, and inspired them with a vision of the valuable contribution women can make as spiritual leaders. He found that women have the serenity and gentleness to understand and accept spiritual ideas easily without the barrier of arrogance which is so often present in men. So, by putting women forward, he sought to create a situation of equality and mutual respect and regard between men and women, and indeed within all relationships regardless of gender.

Sudesh Didi is Director of the Brahma Kumaris Centres in the Germany. She has been a student and teacher with the Brahma Kumaris University for nearly 50 years.

Why believe in Reincarnation?

2009-01-13T05:17:00.000-08:00

What exchanges old for new, offers no special deals or closeouts, and keeps us coming back for more?

Reincarnation

You were. You will be!
Know this while you are.
Reincarnation is the natural
process of recycling human energy through
birth, growth, decay and death.
Each rebirth is a link in one's eternal chain
of latent impressions, thoughts, desires and actions.
The soul in its new body is given the opportunity

to learn from the past,
to live the present and to prepare for the future.

Reincarnation: Why Believe?

Once I have begun to base my sense of ‘who I am’ on perceiving myself as a soul rather than on perceiving only my temporary costume, the body, I deeply realize that, as a being of spiritual energy giving life to the body, I am immortal. I begin to understand that I change bodily costumes just as a snake sheds its skin, but I – the eternal soul – can never die.

Death and Rebirth

At the moment of physical death, the soul withdraws its energy from the organs of the body and vacates its seat in the middle of the forehead. It takes with it the impressions accumulated in that life and enters into the body of an unborn baby, while that new body is still being formed in its mother’s womb. This normally happens between the fourth and fifth month of pregnancy. A human soul only enters a human body. The type of body the soul enters and the conditions of birth are determined by the past actions of the soul in its previous life or lives, and the cumulative account of give and take that it has built up with other souls. Without proper understanding of this process, the leaving of one body and the taking of another is often an experience of great fear and anguish; but the details of the old life are soon obliterated by new experiences so that the soul is not overwhelmed and confused by past memories.

Reincarnation: What You Take With You

By the time the baby’s body and brain are developed, the soul has all but forgotten the past and become accustomed to its new conditions and to the parents of its new body. However, although the soul cannot usually remember details of its past life or lives, it carries with it—in the form of attitudes, tendencies and personality—the cumulative effect of all that it has experienced and learned. All that is genetically brought to the new life is the physical make-up of the body, the racial type, the colour of eyes, shape of nose and so on. And although the environment in which a child is raised – as well as the personalities of those around the child – definitely exert an influence on the child’s development, its tendencies and reactions to people and events are not biologically generated but are inherent in the soul from previous existences. Those predominant impressions recorded in the past life soon begin to manifest themselves and are expressed in the new surroundings.

Relationship in Other Lifetimes

Human life is based on inter–relationships between souls, which in turn are based on the different impressions present in each. These impressions determine the course of life, the nature of the soul’s activities and its physical placement in a particular environment. Thus there is typically a link or an ‘account’ between two souls who have formed a relationship in one lifetime; that link will bring them together again in other lifetimes. This explains why many people have the sense of having met or known a person before, even though they are apparently meeting for the first time. Or they experience meeting someone with the feeling of either attraction or repulsion even though they don’t know them well enough in the current life to have developed those feelings. What is taking place is that the soul is recognizing the other soul – even though they have different bodies – from the last time they met.

Reincarnation: Process of Rebirth

Reincarnation is a process of rebirth. With each death comes a new birth and the opening of a new chapter in the never ending story of life. With each new birth the soul carries on with its journey through eternity where it left off in terms of its ‘accounts’ in the previous birth. The soul is not the victim of an angry or vengeful God condemning it to a lifetime of deprivation or suffering for no apparent reason. The soul inherits a past created by its own self. The fact that the precise past causes for the circumstances of the new life are not apparent or visible does not mean that they don’t exist. In other words, a soul born in fortunate circumstances is not the recipient of God’s grace or blessings; rather it is reaping the reward of its own generous and beneficial actions done in the previous birth(s). Each soul is constantly experiencing the effect of some past action and also planting seeds to be reaped as some future fruit.

The understanding of reincarnation reinforces, in meditation, the experience of my own immortality, my eternal existence as a soul. This is excellent medicine for many types of fear, anxiety and limited thinking.

What is Karma?

2009-01-13T04:02:00.000-08:00

What gives exactly as much as it takes? Goes and comes around? What shows an effect but hides its cause?
Karma

The first thing we do is take a breath.
Then we must give it back.
This is the rhythm of life.
This is a natural law of reciprocity
Where everything and everybody is affected.
You start by taking what you end up giving.
This is the law of cause and effect.
This unwritten law encompasses every action we perform.
This is the law of perfect justice.
We always get the return of everything we give.

What is Karma?
Karma is a natural spiritual law or principle which governs all our interactions. It starts with the seed of thought which develops and grows over time through our feelings, attitude, words, actions, and relations. It finally settles into our souls as personality traits, only to emerge again in the form of another thought.

The Law of Karma can be understood as the spiritual equivalent of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action [on the physical plane] there is an equal and opposite reaction. In physics, the understanding of the absoluteness of Newton’s law shed so much light on a world that had previously been shrouded in mystery, that today it lies at the foundation of many advances in science and technology.

The Law of Karma
The Law of Karma is equally unequivocal in the spiritual dimension. It states that ‘for every action on the spiritual plane there is an equal and opposite reaction’. This means that if happiness is given, happiness will be experienced in return and if sorrow is given, sorrow will be experienced in equal measure. In other words, whatever emotion I cause another to experience must ultimately become my own experience.

Consequences of the Law of Karma

Understanding the Law of Karma makes me aware that each action (or karma) causes a return, a consequence; equally, events (and their effects) can only occur when there has been a corresponding cause. This means that whatever circumstances I’m in at the moment – whoever or whatever is compelling me or repelling me and whatever I am experiencing – is the consequence of my own prior thoughts, decisions and actions. Understanding the Law of Karma gives deep significance to concepts such as responsibility and justice.

Sometimes the Law of Karma is only half understood. Someone may think helplessly, “If whatever is happening to me now is because of my past actions, then there’s nothing I can do about it”. But if the past created the present, the present also creates the future. Instead of being a slave to one’s past, understanding the Law of Karma inspires us to actively participate in creating our own destiny.

Law of Karma: Absolute Justice

Thought is a seed; action is its fruit. The quality of fruit is determined by the quality of its seed. Good thoughts lead to good actions which benefit others as well as one’s self. The Law of Karma begins to work to my advantage when I stop habitual actions that are harmful, take responsibility to positively address the consequences of any such actions performed in the past, and pay attention to performing positive actions from this moment forward. The Law of Karma is a law of absolute justice whose long arm reaches easily from one life to the next, enabling the soul to reap the fruit of whatever seeds it has sown and to create the destiny it wants.

Meditation enables me to understand my karmic circumstances, empowers me to settle my ‘karmic accounts’ in the best possible ways and shows me how to accumulate ‘karmic credit’ for the future.

True Self… Naked and Exposed

2009-01-13T04:00:00.000-08:00

Dr. Roger Cole recalls the transforming insights he gained when he explored death and dying with one of his groups

One of the outstanding benefits of accurate self-awareness is a relative freedom from the needs and dependencies that normally govern our lives. It also establishes a new frame of reference for the terms purpose and meaning. Such orientation and freedom enables one to experience peace and contentment, without leaving ‘worldly’ responsibilities behind. It is a liberated state, yet influential, with the potential to create a far better world.

In the care of the dying we are occasionally privileged to witness this potential. In the mid-seventies Elizabeth Kübler-Ross wrote a landmark book On Death and Dying. In this she outlined five stages of adaptation to a terminal condition, those of anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance. When the final stage of acceptance is manifest, we can see the example of the original nature of the soul emerge. And within this example is merged a mirror of opportunity; the opportunity to discover our true self.

About a year or two ago I was asked to speak to a group of hospice volunteers about spiritual aspects of care for the dying. During the discussion I talked about this state of acceptance. Not as one that simply acknowledges death but as one that engages that outstanding beauty of a soul. In the hope of a demonstration, I asked if anyone had ever witnessed such beauty at the time of a death.

One of the group, June, volunteered that she had. Her mother’s death had been like this, one of true acceptance, despite the fact that she lay there, withered and utterly dependant. “It was beautiful,” she said. “My mother was radiant with peace and the room just filled with her love. Everybody there was uplifted and happy by her company. She appeared so contented. It seemed as though she was surrounded in light…like an angel. I will never forget it. It was really special.”

It is wonderful, isn’t it, that such a grace can emerge at the time of dying? June and her sisters were with her mother when she was dying. I prompted June with a few questions. “Was your mother worried about any of you at that moment in time?” “No”, she said. “She knew we were there, but she was beyond concern about how we were feeling”.

“How about her looks and circumstances?” I asked. “Was she bothered by her appearance, or about the disease, and the fact she was dying?”.

“No…,” she paused. “…mum was at peace with herself. It was as if her body had ceased to exist. Only serenity remained, and there was no fear there at all.”

“How about all the problems of our world?” I asked. “Was your mom troubled by all the conflicts, deprivation and confrontation that are going on?” June laughed, entertaining a fleeting memory. “Oh, mum always had an opinion about everything. She used to get into a real state about it all. Really angry or really sad. But now you mention it…no, she wasn’t troubled at all. I guess she must have just let go of everything…,” she faltered, searching, “…she had let go of everything.”

This last statement had a profound effect on the room, the words were charged with positive emotions. There was pause, then a short silence that was full and unifying. The group vibration resonated with peace and harmony, as I measured the final question.

“In letting go of everything, just before she died, did your mother appeared to be carrying the burden of any of her life’s roles or responsibilities?”

“No, she had become completely free...completely free!”

In those final conscious moments of her life, June’s mother had become completely free. And liberated. Freed from all concerns of living. In the essence of her soul and ‘living spirit’; liberated—yet still occupying the wasted remnants of her physical body. As such, the soul stood naked and exposed, revealing her true and authentic self. I regard this to be fully manifest acceptance and would describe it as a state of grace. Or as one of true dignity. Most people feel that loss of dignity is attained where there is a dependency, or the need for help with their bodily functions. I believe this to be a misconception which reflects human ignorance. An ignorance born of body consciousness. While we will be exploring this concept further, June’s mother offers herself as living proof of this ignorance. In spirit she was graceful, and was revealing her true and original personality through liberation. The questions that I asked of June, were intended to explore four principle directions by which liberation leaves a soul free and vibrant. Liberation from the roles and responsibilities of a lifetime. Liberation from being affected by problems, in an increasingly complex world. Liberation from the material world, including the physical body, its diseases and appearance. And liberation from the attachments we form in a lifetime of relationships.

By liberation, June’s mother entered a state of being in which she was freed from the awareness of her body. She had become completely ‘soul conscious’. As such she naturally filled the room with a radiance of love, peace and acceptance. And those who were in her presence became happy and peaceful. I believe this to have reflected a return to her original condition. The condition she had before taking birth. That of a peaceful soul.

In witnessing this example we are seeing the establishment of soul-consciousness in the face of death. So one might ask, why is it we wait so long to find such serenity? And why do we have to be forced into submission—by death—before we can love and let go? Evidently it could be possible to do so in life and our volunteer’s mother is trying to show us this. The question is, “How”?

I have considered transformation to begin with enlightenment. And that enlightenment is bestowed as gift of awareness, requiring no endeavour on behalf of its beneficiary. When there has been recognition of the opportunity that enlightenment offers, then transformation can proceed. The difference now is that effort must be made. During enlightenment the individual’s experience is akin to that of June’s mother. Spiritual growth or transformation is about holding this love and light constantly. The effort required needs to be made in two directions simultaneously—towards the state of being; and towards the state of liberation. In fact both of these are intimately associated. The main effort is that of becoming soul conscious and free from dependencies. Liberated!
It represents a completely new identity.

In our volunteer’s mother this was attained in the face of death. Through the dying process she had become completely detached from all directions external to herself. External, that is, to her soul—the true or authentic self. In so doing she became a vessel of divine influence, radiating love, light and peace to those around her. She was detached from her family, yet they were experiencing love from her. She was detached from her family, yet they were experiencing love from her. Pure spiritual love. It seems a paradox, doesn’t it, that she had become both detached and loving? Totally unconcerned about anyone’s welfare. Yet loving and, quite effortlessly, meeting everyone’s need for peace and happiness. Her spiritual beauty came with the exposure of her soul. Through its nakedness, seeds of transformation were cast in a radiance of purity. And like a mirror she was revealing the true nature of soul to anyone who entered her presence. June had said, ‘It seemed as though she was surrounded in light…like an angel.” I think she was an angel.

By attaining grace, June’s mother had also revealed this aim and object of spiritual growth. That of becoming an angel. Or soul conscious. From this case it is evidently possible to do so. Her soul consciousness was state of awareness (or being) that served and uplifted others. She gave out an automatic, natural radiance of pure virtues. With a leaf from her book, as enlightened effort makers, we could transform ourselves. And become holistic, spiritual servers, whatever our social or professional roles. Where June’s mother was forced to do so by her circumstances of death, we have the opportunity to ‘embrace the light’ in accordance with free will. In giving us this example, she has afforded us this opportunity. An opportunity for even higher attainment than hers.

Where she found liberation and self-realization in death, we can do so in life. But we must first let go of fears and misconceptions. And understand paradox. To detach from those we love will transform the quality of that love into something divine and unconditional. Do we have the confidence to let go of relationships? And become merged in the divine love that will fulfil those relationships? Or is it that our fear is too great—that we will lose something? It is no easy thing to let go of a world you have come to depend on. But it is a wonderful thing to surrender your life to a higher power. For in surrender you become an instrument, where there is no burden on your shoulders. And you discover the delight of lightness in the service of humanity. I guess angels don’t get too worried about things. Then why should they? They are only God’s helpers after all.

June’s mother has given us a glimpse of the personal aim and objective within transformation or spiritual growth. And we have looked beyond enlightenment to the state of grace. Grace that beckons the soul to make effort to be itself, and to become free, liberate from body-consciousness. By this I mean to have a separate awareness from the physical body; and to be liberated from the four directions. Those of attachments, of responsibilities, of being affected, and of the material world.

We are now entering the individual’s journey. In doing so we will take care to remember that who ever travels this path enters a divine plan. Effort-making and self-transformation are inspired by a higher power. Enlightenment is a gift of higher power. And the motivation to take the journey is sustained from this divine source. We will also remember that the individual who journeys, contributes spiritual vibrations towards world transformation. Each one unique. Each one selected, each with a role to play.

Yet not one is special. For each is only rediscovering his or her true self, before allowing it to remain naked and exposed!

Roger Cole is a specialist physician trained in cancer medicine. He currently directs the Palliative Care Service in Australia. This is an extract from his forthcoming book A Tapestry of Light. It was originally published by BK Publications (www.bkpublications.com) in Retreat Magazine #10.

The Tao

2009-01-13T03:57:00.000-08:00

Respectfully revised and lovingly added to by Barbara Bossert-Ramsay and complemented by the thoughts of Dadi Janki

The title of the annual Mt Abu Forum in India in February 1998 was “The Spirit of the 21st Century”. Three themes provided the focus for the forum: simplicity, creativity and responsibility. During the forum Robin Ramsay, Barbara Bossert-Ramsay and Tamasin Ramsay adapted and performed The Tao to align with the themes, and then Dadi Janki shared a lifetime’s wisdom on each of the three topics. This is the essence.

SIMPLICITY

To know others is wisdom;
To know the self is enlightenment,
To master others requires force;
To master the self requires strength.

To be happy where you are is to be content,
To be content is to be eternally present,
To be eternally present is The Way

*
Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Keep your mouth closed,
Guard your senses.
Temper your sharpness.
Simplify your problems.

Beware of any undertaking
That requires new clothes.

He who has achieved this state is happy with friends and with enemies,
is comfortable with good or with harm,
with honour and disgrace.

This is the highest state of man.

*
The five colours blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavours dull the taste.

Owning and losing madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.
Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.

*
If I have just a little sense,
I will walk on the main road and my only fear will be of straying from it.
Keeping to the main road is easy,
But people love to be side tracked.
When the court is arrayed in splendour,
The fields are full of weeds,
And the granaries are bare.
Some wear gorgeous clothes,
Carry sharp swords,
And indulge themselves with food and drink;
People have more possessions than they can use.
This is certainly not the way.
Sainthood, charity, ingenuity.
These three are outward forms alone.
They are not sufficient in themselves.
Give up sainthood.
Renounce the self-righteousness of wisdom,
And it will be a hundred times better for everyone.

Give up charity.
Renounce opinions of what should be
And humanity will re-discover respect and love.

Give up ingenuity.
Renounce accumulation and profit
And bandits and thieves will disappear

It is more important
To see the simplicity,
To cast off selfishness
To temper desire
To realise one’s true nature.

This is contentment.
This holds happiness.

*
Empty yourself.
Let your mind rest.
All the things of the world rise and fall
While the soul watches their return.
Everything grows and flourishes and then returns to its source.
To return to the source is stillness.
This is unchanging, eternal.
To know this constancy frees the mind.

A free mind brings an open heart.
Open hearted, you will act royally.
Being royal you attain the divine.
Being divine will be your true self
Your eternal self.

The body dies.
The soul will never pass away.

SIMPLICITY

It is a form of wisdom to know how to remain simple, to merge everything and become peaceful. In this state of consciousness spiritual power is accumulated automatically. To become simple means to become a good example in front of the world.
When we become simple we see the solution to everything is to remain peaceful and happy in our dealings with everyone. Simplicity creates the sate of introversion in which we no longer waste time and energy by going into this and that. This makes us very royal in our attitude and behaviour. Any unfulfilled desire does not even arise in us. Any work that we are responsible for is done with a natural easiness. We are able to create ideas and an atmosphere that makes everyone feel comfortable. It’s as if the inner mirror becomes clean and we can see clearly what we have to do.
Simplicity allows us to have courage and faith and it is this that creates success. Simplicity allows us to let go of old things. Simplicity allows us to be more loving towards ourselves and others. And this is what develops self respect. And by living in a simple way the specialty of each one becomes clear and we can easily see each other’s value.

CREATIVITY

What is firmly established cannot be uprooted.
What is firmly grasped cannot slip away.
It will be honoured from generation to generation.

Cultivate Virtue in your self,
And Virtue will be real.
Cultivate Virtue in the family,
And Virtue will abound.
Cultivate it in the village,
And Virtue will grow.
Cultivate it in the nation,
And Virtue will be abundant.
Cultivate it in the universe,
And Virtue will be everywhere.

Therefore look at the body as body;
Look at the family as family;
Look at the village as village;
Look at the nation as nation;
Look at the universe as universe.

How do I know the universe is like this?
By looking!

*
My words are easy to understand, my directions easy to practice,
Yet only a handful under the sky hears and follows them.

My words have ancient beginnings
My laws are eternal.
Those that know me are few;
Illusion is everywhere.
Therefore the sage wears rough clothing and keeps jewels safe in his heart.

*
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
But only the centre hole makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room
And it is the holes that make it useful.
Shape your clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.

Without going outside
You might know the whole world.
Without looking through the window,
You might see the ways of heaven.
The farther you go,
The less you know.

Thus the sage knows without travelling;
He sees without looking:
He creates without doing.

CREATIVITY

You are able to develop creativity in yourself when you have the attitude of learning and when you have the aim of self improvement. When you have the aim of self improvement you won’t want to have any defects in your character. You will make an effort to remove anything negative. For this I need to make myself calm and peaceful. I need to spend time in silence. I have to see myself within. Then I can cleanse my inner self. Then I can create new things. This is the practice which can restore my creative ability.

Try not to allow anything external to influence you; whether it is in the form of praise, defamation, victory or defeat. Everything that is happening is just like a game. I am just an actor. So keep yourself always balanced. Whatever is happening externally let it happen but maintain your highest intentions and focus inside. Thoughts, words and actions should be identical. Attitude should be filled with benevolence and thoughts constantly lined with the creator.

Just as there is a connection with the power generator in order to draw power so in the same way we have to be linked with the creator and draw that power to play our role accurately within the creation. This power restores concentration which enables us to create pure and positive thoughts. When there are thoughts of love and respect for the self we are able to create the same for others. This is spiritual service.

RESPONSIBILITY
Accept your life willingly,
Accept obstacles as part of the human condition.

What do you mean by ‘Accept your life willingly’?
Ride the low waves as well as the high,
Do not be concerned with loss or gain.
This is called ‘Accepting your life willingly’.
What do you mean by, ‘Accepting obstacles as part of the human condition’?
Obstacles are part of your learning
Without obstacles how can there be life?

Surrender yourself willingly;
Then you can be trusted to care for all things.
Love the worlds as our own self;
Then you can truly care for all things.

*
A good walker leaves no tracks;
A good speaker makes no slips;
A good reckoner needs no tally,
A good door needs no lock,
Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots,
Yet no one can loosen it,

Therefore the sage takes care of all men
And abandons no one.
He takes care of all things
And abandons nothing.

This is called ‘following the light’,
This is the heart of the mystery.

*
When Truth is lost,
Charity and self-righteousness arise.
When cleverness and scholarship are born,
The great pretence begins.
When there is no peace within the family,
Social workers and care givers are born.
When the world is confused and in chaos.
The keepers of peace appear.

*
Know the strength of man,
But keep a woman’s care!
Be the stream of the universe!
Being the stream of the universe,
Ever true and unswerving,
Become as a little child once more.

Know the white,
But keep the black!
Be an example to the world!
Being an example to the world,
Ever true and unwavering.
Return to the infinite.

Know honour,
Yet keep humility.
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the stage of the uncarved carved block.

When the block is carved,
It becomes useful.
When the sage uses it, he comes the ruler.
Thus, ‘A great tailor cuts little.’

*
The greatest good is like water
It flows in places human beings reject.
It gives life without any effort.

Therefore:

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be vigilant.
In action, keep your timing full of care.
Let your heart be like water
It will flow in places human beings reject.
It will bring life without any effort.

Ancient masters.
Profound, responsive, subtle, mysterious.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable.

But we can describe their appearance.
Watchful, like those crossing a winter stream.
Alert like those aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding, like ice just about to melt,
Simple, yet holding everything,
Like blocks of wood ready to be carved.

And if we learn carefully,
If we remain still until the moment of action
If we yield like ice just about to melt,
We too become simple, like blocks of wood ready to be carved.
It is the depth of their knowledge that is unfathomable.
Not having knowledge itself.
And having the knowledge,
The depth is only your decision.
And to all others,
It is unfathomable

RESPONSIBILITY

Regarding the coming 21st century we all have a responsibility to plant seeds. The first seed is of simplicity: to have simplicity in our communication with each other and in our relationship with God. There is great beauty in this simplicity for it is open and honest and clean. In your relationships develop a selfless attitude where you bring benefit to one another. Put your heart on one another’s hand. Trust one another. Everyone is now thinking for themselves or their own family. This is the time to think for the world, we have to do something for the world. I have to look and see what it is I have to do at this very important time now.

It is our responsibility to be forgiving, loving and merciful towards ourselves and then others. We must not be sorrowful seeing people in sorrow; this does not help them. So we must bring them to happiness. With truthfulness and with love, if I am responsible for my own self and know that this is what I have to do, I will definitely receive the help of God. But first I need to have pure and elevated thoughts, determined and courageous thoughts; these are my responsibilities and these will serve the world in the 21st century.

Barbara Bossert-Ramsay is an author and freelance writer based in Melbourne. Dadi Janki is the Additional Administrative Head of the Brahma Kumaris.

The Holy Grail of High Self Esteem

2009-01-13T03:42:00.001-08:00

Lesley Edwards goes straight to the core of the challenge that faces us all, every day—the rebuilding and the maintenance of high self esteem.

In the first article on building self esteem (see The Beauty and the Beast) I described the first two steps as Knowing Yourself, and Accepting Yourself: to know and accept yourself as you are, good and bad; and to know and accept yourself as you could be, making the choice to realize your full potential for positive transformation, and appreciating the spiritual process that makes this possible. Having understood and accepted where you are coming from and where you are going to, the next step is to commit yourself to the journey. The challenge of building true self esteem is a pilgrimage in search of the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is our worthiness, our purpose in life, our dignity, our beauty, true love, and a satisfying, peace of mind. Journeys can be dangerous things. Sometimes it’s safer to stay at home with the comfort of denials and attachments and support systems that tell us how wonderful we are—blissfully ignorant of all the work that needs to be done. It is when we venture outside our comfort zones that we get tested and challenged.

PROTECT YOUR SELF

The third step to building self esteem is to protect yourself. This means be careful. You have enemies. There will be forces at work that will try to stop you getting to your ‘Soul Room’, that inner space where you can sustain your soul consciousness and cultivate your conversation with God. Voices will call out to you from the other rooms. “Where are you?” “We need you here!” They will prevent you from knowing and learning from God, the master architect of your new self.

On a pilgrimage it is often best to travel alone, at least for the substantial part of the journey, while you are regaining your self esteem. The purpose of your life at the moment is to find the Holy Grail. But that is not an end in itself. What is most important is what you do with it when you have found it. Then the purpose of your life is to give, to express, to share what you have found. It is true that in a sense you cannot separate the two, for in giving, expressing and sharing you also discover yourself. But it is a fine balance and one that is easily lost. So make sure, if you are traveling closely with others, to give yourself plenty of space.

While Noah built his ark, people came and laughed at him, and teased him. “What on earth are you doing Noah?” They thought he was mad. It may be that others won’t understand why you want to go to your Soul Room to be quiet and to know God. The cocoon is not the most attractive phase in the life of the butterfly, but it is an essential step. No cocoon, no butterfly, simple as that. God has a preservation order on you at this time. Trust, and have faith that if you keep going inside to find power, that the power will do its work.

Protecting yourself is a lot to do with the relationships in your life, your relationship with yourself, with God and with other people. Put your relationship with yourself and God first. Your lessons will come through other people, but don’t lose sight of who is learning and who is teaching.

Relationships with others are a way of knowing ourselves on a deeper level. They are intense and interesting and real. We need someone to bounce off, to mirror back to us our reality. But we need to be wary about what they are mirroring back, which reality, which identity. If you are on a pilgrimage to find your true identity then be careful what other people see in you, because you will see yourself with those eyes too and this could give you a false sense of security; you think you are fine, when really there’s a lot you could be working on. When you are close to someone, your perception gets mixed up with their perception; sometimes you can’t even tell whether your feelings are your own or theirs. If they are not seeing themselves clearly, they will project what they don’t like in themselves onto you, and if you are not doing your work properly you will project what you don’t like in yourself onto them! All relationships are an exchange of power, people competing for energy: A and B taking support from each other until A no longer has the energy or the interest and withdraws affection. And B, having become dependent, is then unable to find that energy either from within or from anywhere else.

In an ideal relationship there will be an exchange of high quality love. Some recent scientific research from New York, which has been attracting media attention, has identified three types of love: lust, attraction and attachment. Lust and attraction speak for themselves. They can be lots of fun, but there may be a hefty price to pay in terms of your self esteem, and they will ultimately be distracting for anyone on a true pilgrimage. Attachment perhaps promises a deeper love, but how many people do you know who can’t live without each other, but they can’t really live with each other either? They love to hate each other! So be careful of the quality of your relationships. Are you really ready to love another human being properly? Or do you need to learn to love yourself first?

The things that attract us to other people are often qualities we would like to have ourselves. If we are quiet and gentle, we may find extrovert and confident people attractive. If we are strong and dynamic, we may find gentle and calm people attractive. In either case, the only and real lasting solution is to find whatever quality we are looking for in someone else—inside ourselves. For the power that can be found by returning to the natural state of the soul has all the ingredients needed for the making of any quality.

Within the cocoon of spiritual transformation there is a perfect balancing out of qualities; a balancing of the male and female within us all. For all of us can be strong as well as gentle, responsible as well as free, adventurous as well as cautious. When we see the alchemy of what was once weak becoming strong, what was once idealistic becoming visionary, what was once worry becoming freedom—then relationships change from being dependent to interdependent, from being unhealthy to healthy.

God teaches us to love ourselves. Because He has no hidden agenda He will mirror back to us only our highest qualities. We will not be able to project onto Him our own weaknesses; we will simply have to accept them and own them. He will not project onto us, because He has no weaknesses. He will not take our power away, nor will He withdraw His power, because it is unlimited. Having a relationship with God is necessary when our batteries have run down. And for anyone looking for self esteem that is likely to have happened.

EMPOWERMENT

The final step to building self esteem is to empower yourself. Power comes from all sorts of places. Some energy will be temporary, like the buzz of caffeine or cocaine that ends up leaving you feeling low. The energy spurt of a temporary attraction can also leave you feeling deflated when it fades, or damaged when it is not reciprocated. Even riding high on success and achievement carries within it the inevitability of coming down to earth with a bump when there is criticism and misunderstanding.

True energy will leave you feeling quietly confident, contented, satisfied, accepting, loving and at peace. You will feel connected to your own inner goodness, to the source of goodness in the universe and the goodness in other people. You will be stable and calm when things are going well and when things go badly. You will not need to blame or criticize anyone or anything.

You will love yourself—which means looking after your physical needs, eating the right food, taking exercise. You will spend time alone, being creative, meditating or enjoying silence, happy with your own company, and happy in the company of others. You will know your limitations and draw clear boundaries with confidence and calmness when it comes to work and commitments.

To maintain this state of self esteem you will need to be very cautious about what causes leakages to your inner strength. Power will seep away if you are not true to yourself. We all have an internal barometer which will indicate to us when we are off track. Deep within the soul, in the silent Soul Room of our being, is our conscience. It is our inner wisdom, the part of us that knows really that love is a more natural state of being than hate, that peace is more natural than stress. And it knows when we violate our own truth through our weaknesses, compulsions and being influenced by others. Our conscience ‘bites’, we become prisoners of our own conscience. I said earlier that God does not withdraw His power, but we can prevent ourselves from taking the power of goodness from God, and finding strength in our own goodness if we are not true to ourselves. If we deceive ourselves, if we forget who we really are, if we take quick fixes of energy by criticising others, by giving in to greediness or easy options, our energy will leak away. If we abuse ourselves or anyone else in any way we will not have a clear conscience. It will play on our minds. And when we go to our Soul Room there will not be peace, but punishment. Self inflicted punishment, the punishment of a troubled mind.

It is a paradox of spirituality, that real self esteem comes when we in fact go beyond our ‘self’. If we transcend ourselves, if we no longer have any selfish or willful desires, we can become an instrument of God’s will. Then our purpose in life becomes very clear. And it is only when we have a clear purpose that we can have true self esteem. When we go beyond our ‘selves’ then we find the soul. Then our life’s purpose is quite simply to learn to love and to bring peace on earth, in whatever way we can. This may be through composing a symphony or baking cakes. It does not really matter.

The Feminine Principle

2009-01-13T03:39:00.000-08:00

Author’s Bio: Gayatri Naraine is the Brahma Kumaris Representative at the United Nations in New York. This article, (copyright 1998 by Gayatri Naraine), was a featured article in “The Fabric of the Future—Women Visionaries Illuminate the Path to Tomorrow”, edited by M.J. Ryan, and published by Conari Press, Berkeley, California. Written 8 years ago, the article is still vitally relevant today.

Gayatri Naraine anticipates the emergence of the feminine at the level of spirit.

Personal growth and human development are perhaps two of the more popular banners flapping in the breeze at the eve of the 21st century. So what’s new? Aren’t these two old chestnuts that humanity has been chewing over throughout history? The issues may indeed be the same but what is new is the emergence of a suppressed part of the human dynamic that can be called the feminine principle. This principle does not cater to a prejudiced belief in the superiority or inferiority of one group compared to another. Nor does it seek to replace male chauvinism with female chauvinism. Its aim is to allow the blossoming of a full and balanced personality that is at once vigorous and serene in an era of both light and might.

The feminine principle is a subtle energy, which has remained untapped within the psyche of both men and women. It is merged in the essence of our spiritual identity and is marked by qualities attributed to the more gentle side of the human being—care, respect, trust, patience, loyalty, love honesty, empathy, and mercy. When this principle is understood and realised, it is a force so powerful that it awakens us to new realities and realigns us to the true purpose and meaning of life .Both men and women possess this feminine principle but throughout history it has often been equated with emotion, weakness, and vulnerability and, in the context of social, economic, and political issues, flushed from the mainstream of development to a backwater and then labelled as ‘women’s issues’. The feminine principle was thereby controlled and crushed by the iron hand of patriarchal power, which almost invariably demanded nothing less than the sacrifice of intuition at the altar of rigid logic, the suppression of gentleness for the sake of brute strength, and the compliance of women with the dominance of men.

If the problems which have arisen through the suppression and control of this principle are to be corrected in a way that will last, then this must be done through a change of consciousness rather than a reversal of positions, roles: a change of consciousness which takes its birth from a base of spirituality and not from a base of sexuality. The feminine principle, this untapped subtle potential that lies at the core of our being, must now be realised to restore a balance between intellect and intuition, facts and feelings, reason and realism.

At the brink of the new millennium, in the midst of the most turbulent of times, the feminine principle is the clear, cool spring that can give life to humanity’s arid wasteland; the sacred water from which to draw purpose and meaning.

Lessons Come From Hindsight

Looking back at the twentieth century, one my say that the progress of women has been slow and laborious, for up until the ‘60s women were best known for their roles as wives, mothers, sisters, nurses, and secretaries. As women’s liberation movements asserted that women were also entitled to human rights, the international community responded with a series of women’s conferences that have contributed to the great strides made in putting women’s concerns high on the global agenda. Yet most women who managed to claim the positions they deserved in the world did so at the expense of the feminine principle and were either caught in the power play of sexuality or achieved their positions only by developing an iron-fisted control over others. While such measures were doubtless successful in the short term, any individual who has to compromise on who she is, and knowingly or unknowingly deny herself access to the source of her own strength, will sooner or later succumb to the trap of exploiting, manipulating, and discriminating against others—the very evils she sought to dispel. Deprived of the strength that comes from within, these are the only tools available to a person living outside the borders of their own being.

Twentieth-century women will be remembered as pioneers of a hard and perilous path to freedom and liberation. Their efforts brought phenomenal breakthroughs and taught significant lessons. The starting point was action-oriented and was influenced by characteristics associated with the left hemisphere of the brain—courage, determination, will-power, and advocacy. The result was the formation of an international network of women’s organizations and groups whose fingers are on the pulse of political, social, and economic changes, and who know how these impact the lives of women all over the world. Faced with the paradox of some material and professional success but very little emotional and spiritual fulfilment, such women continued to feel a sense of inner depletion and a lack of self-worth and self-esteem. Recognizing that the advancement of women was an uphill task, a whole of many parts, it became apparent that progress on the outside had to be nurtured by growth on the inside. Soon, programs on self-development and personal growth began to mushroom. Conferences, seminars and forums were replaced by dialogues, discussions and conversations. The significant lesson learned was the patience to trust that whatever happened was part of a process that would lead to a successful outcome and the rediscovery of characteristics such as intuition, creativity, spirituality, nurturing, sustenance, care, love, and compassion. This shift in consciousness became the backbone of their stories.

Vision Comes From Foresight

Women of the twentieth century have developed guidelines and set standards for women of the twenty-first century to pursue and develop further. The feminine principle, which has come to be seen as the light at the end of the tunnel in the latter years of the twentieth century, will become a natural way of being in the future. Trust, respect, and wisdom will lie at the heart of authentic leadership by women and men; integrity and high moral standards will sustain it. Power will no longer lie in the hands of others who make decisions for us, but within the hearts of each one of us. As natural leaders, we will lead from the core of our inner strength and will follow our own inner principles, conscience, and truth, thus creating our own disciplines.

It will be an integral part of the awareness and attitudes of women responsible for the growth and development of children that every child has the right to participate fully in all areas of society and to equality of opportunity. These guardians of humanity’s future will ensure that the worth of an individual is not determined by gender and will bestow the love and respect with which the true self of each young person may flourish. To a great extent, it lies in the hands of women to master a process that will rescue us and succeeding generations from being restricted by discriminatory attitudes, abusive patterns of physical and emotional behaviour, and the limitations we may have put on ourselves. This will be the sine qua non of our ultimate freedom.
Wisdom Comes From Insight

“Who am I, always keeping an ‘eye’ on ‘I’?”

At the confluence of the two millennia, one of the most challenging insecurities to be overcome is that felt by people in relation to themselves—the question: Who am I?

By using the feminine principle as the premise to explore this mystery, we can embark on our journey of discovery from a perspective of faith in one’s self. We are often reluctant to look within ourselves because we lack the confidence to come face-to-face with the person we fear the most—our own true selves.

Spiritual knowledge gives a deeper level of understanding that can remove the fear of the unknown and open the door to insight. Insight gives the spiritual clarity to recognise the self and the inner strength to accept the self, including our present limitations. Insight also serves as a searchlight with which to see through the layers of limitations we have acquired by overemphasizing the temporary or physical aspects of our identity and with which to focus on the realization of our original and eternal identity— “Who I am always.”

To identify with the inner self is the method to free myself from the confines and constraints of the physical limitations. Faith in myself elevates and divinises my intellect and opens my third eye of wisdom. This is the kind of faith that creates trust and gives me the courage to accept the past, enjoy the present, and create the future I want. It is the wisdom that women must embody. This wisdom is born from the depth of a spiritual consciousness and has been remembered as shakti—will-power received directly from God. Such wisdom, when brought into action, has a truly transforming effect on our lives and the lives of those around us, bringing about integration with integrity.

Using the feminine principle to bring about integration with integrity is the most powerful tool now at our disposal. The practice of returning to one’s original identity and remembering “Who I am always”, as we play our different roles and honour our various responsibilities, is crucial—as it enthrones us on our seat of self-respect. When our subtle inner abilities are integrated in the wholeness of our being and allowed to be expressed with the support of self-respect, actions are performed with a high level of integrity.

The feminine principle has often been mistaken for femininity on a physical level and so respect for inner beauty has often yielded to an obsession with beauty that knows nothing deeper than the skin. A women’s worth comes from the original and innate qualities of the soul: truth, love, purity, joy, and peace, and it is from these values that a women’s beauty is derived and radiated through her features. To believe in the beauty of one’s innate worth and to see the self in the context of this eternal reality, rather than just the transitory physical appearance, gives a tremendous boost to one’s self-esteem and self-confidence.

To feel is a basic human trait, yet when it comes to expressing our feelings in a particular relationship, our passion for a task or admiration for a piece of art or music, often we either overindulge ourselves and lose our sense of reason or we suppress ourselves with the fear of being rejected or of being too emotional. Something somewhere has gone wrong with feelings and so we need to understand deeply what true feelings are. Feelings are linked to motives, intentions, desires, and expectations, and I can control the way I feel when I am in touch with these. I am empowered when my feelings are based on the strength of what is true to me and come from respecting and believing in myself. I am disempowered when I allow external influences to create doubts and fears in the way I feel, causing me to look outward to validate my own feelings. Looking outside myself is the way to let loose waves of victimisation, uncertainty, and insecurity and so feelings are often suppressed and never dealt with. This suppression of feelings leads to depression as I am unable to trust my own feelings and I am reluctant to talk about them, fearing being misunderstood, criticized, or rejected. Staying close to my own truth, innate values, and inner strength enables me to trust my feelings. I am responsible for the way I feel and I have the capacity to remove any painful feelings and to create pure feelings in their place.

Capacity building is the art of balancing feeling with reason. This balance is especially needed in areas of trust, honesty, loyalty, and love. Reason tells me that when I begin to cultivate and nurture any of these values, my own insecurities, fears, and doubts will arise to test the strength of my commitment and to stretch my capacity. Every test has a benefit merged in it. What needs to be understood during these battles is that I must not shrink my capacity to trust just because someone betrays this trust, or my capacity to be honest just because someone lies to me. It is so easy to be influenced by someone else’s behaviour and to internalise their weakness in a way that causes me to lose faith in my own capacity and to waver from staying in alignment with my own values. This is where space is required to maintain healthy and long-standing relationships and not to become so wrapped up in another that I lose all sense of who I am. This stepping back to maintain my own independence and integrity nurtures my growth and increases my capacity to exercise freedom of choice rather than succumbing to the pull of external influences or the expectations of others.

It has been observed that a woman’s intuition guides her ability to make decisions, almost like a sixth sense. However, intuition on its own is not enough for effective decision-making. It is only when motives are clean and devoid of selfish desires that the intuition can give clear signals to help make objective decisions. These subtle abilities must be applied or expressed in relation to facts and not fancy or imagination. Walking the tightrope of daily life can also challenge our ability to make decisions with integrity. This is why it is so important to periodically keep an ‘eye’ on ‘I’ to see whether my actions, words, thoughts, and values are in alignment with my principles. If they are not we must use our sense of self-worth to allow us to delay the decision and, if they are, then that alignment gives us the authority to take a stand, make the decision, and be committed to it.

Within the heart of the human soul, a new world is waiting to be born. The gift we can, and must, offer —to ourselves and to each other—is to rekindle within ourselves the flame of the feminine principle and then to keep that flame glowing strong and steady in our souls, sustaining it with the oil of pure feelings, faith and determination. A commitment to live by this principle is a commitment to ignite the spirit of the twenty-first century in the hearts of all humanity. If I don’t make this commitment, who will?

The Face of Honesty

2009-01-13T03:36:00.000-08:00

Sister Mohini holds up a mirror which can provide us all with useful reflection

Sometimes ambition without aim, purpose or clarity can be dangerous. Ambition is fine as long as there is discrimination as to how a desire will affect others. This is real honesty. Honesty is something that neither brings harm to the self nor hurts others.

Most of the time, when we think of values like humility and lightness, thoughts turn to the self; but when we think of honesty, the thought turns outward. Conflict arises when we begin to think that honesty means fulfilling all our own desires. When honesty is understood as bringing satisfaction only to the self, this is not total honesty.

People who are addicted sometimes feel as though they can’t feel the pain. It’s the same with thoughts: there are certain thoughts that are not beneficial for us, but we allow them to continue because we don’t feel the damage these thoughts bring. Honesty is not just being natural, but giving to ourselves what is good and positive.

When a person uses abusive language, they often feel that they are just being ‘frank’. However, this frankness is a form of dishonesty because the person is not only hurting others, but the self as well. The power to discriminate is needed to determine which words bring relief and peace to the self and others. This is honesty.

Each part of the body is assigned a place. The tongue is supposed to be behind the bars of the teeth. It is said that before you speak, think many times because the wound caused by the sword of the tongue heals very slowly.

If you are honest, any little difficulty only comes to make you more honest. In performing various day to day tasks, we should ask ourselves: “Am I really being honest?” Any difficulty is because of lack of honesty

The more honesty, the more feelings of lightness we have and the burdens are taken off us.

We need to make sure that there is no selfishness mixed in with our honesty and that we are not trying to manipulate a situation or person in the name of honesty. Whatever is true or real should not be mixed.

Honesty—with the self, in our words and in relationships—is very important.

No one can take what belongs to us and we cannot take what belongs to anyone else out of greed or fear. Ghandi’s clothing was simple because he believed that if it were more than simple he would be guilty of taking someone else’s share. When we learn to share then we are free from jealousy and things seem to come to us.

Before most of us became spiritual seekers or practitioners, we experienced disharmony because of breaking certain laws of the universe. Once we learn to adopt honesty not only does disharmony dissolve, but there is never fear of what is going to happen to us. When we lack honesty, we live in fear. Lack of honesty creates sadness and insecurity. An honest person will always feel secure.

Respect is the essential core of humility and we should respect a person for whatever or whoever they are, while knowing that they need to change a few elements in their characters. According to the respect we give others, that much respect will be given to us in return.

The converse of humility is ego. We can develop ego from having many things, or from having nothing at all. Inferiority is also considered ego. In order to destroy ego, the consciousness of being a trustee is necessary. Trusteeship means that we don’t own something, but it has been given to us. No one has brought anything with them to this earth. When we came we were not wearing our clothes even, they were given to us. As much as we can be caretakers or trustees with honesty, that much we can experience abundance and then there is no need for arrogance.

We witness heaviness because we walk around in ‘title consciousness’: “I am this, I am that.” This makes us feel burdened. If we perform our tasks as trustees, we can be very, very light. Another reason we experience burden is because we do not have enough tolerance or patience, and so we respond negatively in our relationships with others and we don’t know how to forgive. Forgiving means for giving. We become so light when we give. Take what is useful, and don’t create a file of anyone’s negativity.

Sister Mohini is the Director of Brahma Kumaris Centres in North and South America and the Caribbean.

The Ethics of Business

2009-01-13T03:34:00.000-08:00

Profits or prophets? Chris Drake looks over his shoulder at the latest perceptions of moral and ethical values in commerce.

In the past two years several major scandals have rocked the world of business. These have affected high-profile names in the City of London such as centuries-old Barings Bank, which collapsed under US$1.3bn in debt, and the highly reputable Morgan Grenfell.

Elsewhere, the New York branch of Daiwa racked up losses of US$1.1bn through trading US Treasury bonds, while the secret copper trades of ‘Mr. Five Percent’ at Japan’s Sumitomo resulted in losses now put at US$2.6bn. Prominent politicians in India and Pakistan, and even two former Presidents of Korea, have all been given leading parts in an unending gallery of greedy rogues.

In a case of widespread fraud at German steel and engineering giant Thyssen, one of the top anti-corruption prosecutors said “We are witnessing a loss of values in Germany. Moral and ethical principles in German boardrooms have gone to the dogs … the only thing that seems to matter is profits and selfish materialism.” Lax controls, the bending of rules and white-collar crime are seen as having reached epidemic proportions with allegations from Australia to Alaska tarnishing household names previously seen as representing the paragon of boardroom ethics.

It appears that in some countries public intolerance of economic injustice, exploitation and dishonesty is on the verge of exploding as more people are posing ever more searching questions. Instead of listening to companies saying “trust me”, individuals are telling them “show me” and wanting to see proof of the honesty and integrity they tout to the world. Likewise, corporate leaders are thinking about their obligations to staff, families, investors and the public, wondering to what extent ethical standards are involved in making money and running a successful and responsible business. Can moral and ethical principles help sort the wheat from the chaff and distinguish good money from bad? And if so, how do we know it’s not just psycho-babble or superstitious mumbo-jumbo, an unread “In God we trust” self-consciously tacked on to the back of a dollar note? When Christ threw the money-lenders out of the Temple, did that signify the fall of the sacred shekeldom, the eternal excommunication of Lucre from the house of God? On 20th century planet Earth is there really such a thing as an honest buck?

Over the years there have been some clear shifts of opinion with regard to the rights and wrongs of business. Gone are the days when vast concerns frequently depended on forced slave labour (although even today as many as 15 million children in India are reported to be working as virtual slaves). However, the reality of today’s global marketplace is such that it is easy to challenge supposedly ethical investment and point out that the world’s economies are all so inter-related that no one can be whiter than white. Miss Cleanhands may think she’s smart not having anything to do with Global Gunrunners Inc. but does she realize what Truly Honest Bank is doing with the money she used to buy shares in it, or even with the money she has in her Truly Honest current account? Yes, Truly Honest is lending poor Miss Cleanhands’ hard earned savings straight to Global Gunrunners! And the interest that Global Gunrunners is paying to Truly Honest is going…straight into Miss Cleanhands’ account!

Nevertheless, consumer power is being applied to put pressure on multinational companies—massive corporate giants typically based in a wealthier country but that take advantage of cheaper labour and infrastructure costs to locate manufacturing operations in poorer countries. One household name under the spotlight has been Nike. Workers at the factory in Indonesia that churns out 1.2 million pairs of shoes a month for Nike are on a basic daily wage of US$2.23 while Nike icon Michael Jordan earns millions in endorsing the fancy footwear made by those humble hands. But how much does a holier-than-thou attitude benefit anyone? The paradox is that attempting to save the poor from the rich can end up preventing the poor from helping themselves. What may be a pittance for one is a living wage for another.

In recent years, at least, the idea of ethical investment came to prominence in the 1970s when the wave of anti-Vietnam war fervour extended to Americans withdrawing investment from companies involved in the war. A number of professional fund managers have since set up funds that enable members of the public to place cash with them for investment in companies chosen primarily on the basis of ethical criteria instead of just commercial ones. Now there are some US$160 billion invested in easy conscience funds in America, and a more modest GBP1 billion or so in the UK. Managers of such funds generally avoid companies with interest in armaments, nuclear power, tobacco, alcohol or gambling.

Some companies might be favoured if they support environmental concerns, give to charitable causes, are active in the community or show greater concern for employees. While many small investors favour such an approach the first question is whether such funds can match the returns achieved by the more traditional funds. The dilemma for consumers is that evidence suggests that often they do not. Nevertheless there are people out there trying to make it work and there has been popular support for companies claiming not to sell products that are made using child labour or involve depleting the rain forests. With business increasingly taking a place at the forefront of social change, companies are in a unique position to shape and reflect public policy.

While such notions have begun to gain popularity in Europe and the USA they never took off in the free-wheeling money-making enclaves of Asia. In Islamic countries, however, the Sharia, or Islamic law, contains a number of restrictions on how money may be made. Profits derived from alcohol and gambling are clear taboos, as is lending money subject to payment of interest, as this is seen as usury, and some authorities will even reject donations made using interest-bearing credit cards.

Modernizing economics nevertheless need money and so this has given rise to the phenomenon of Islamic Banking in which funds are made available to others on condition that they are repaid without interest being charged. Ingenious solutions to the desire for a return on a risk-carrying investment include the issuing of ‘Islamic securities’ and banks taking a share of profits (assuming there are any) in lieu of interest. One of Malaysia’s largest banks has just launched an Islamic credit card that blocks use on transactions deemed non-Islamic, such as gambling, massage, and liquor and nightclub payments. It also offers holders benefits such as discounts on pilgrimages to Mecca.

The other side of all this is an industry that has sprung up in Europe and America in which management gurus and trainers are paid vast sums to talk to corporate executives about what often seems to be little more than plain common sense. They help companies adopt vision and mission statements and the like that often incorporate certain principles and values as part of the corporate culture.

Although it may be hard for most of us to put a value on ethics, many of these gurus seem to have no difficulty in merging profits with prophets and putting a high price on selling ethics in this way. The claim is that ethical business practices can offer a competitive advantage as they avoid losses arising from fraud and dishonesty and can lead to the building up of goodwill and a sound reputation.

While all these ideas are at least a step in the right direction there is always the problem that external regulators and trainers can be outwitted by those who do not see any reason why their activity should be restricted in such a way against their will. Far more effective therefore are limitations voluntarily observed on the basis of an understanding why they should be followed.

In reality humans are moral beings, endowed with reason, conscience and an innate understanding of primary and inalienable qualities such as justice, fairness, respect, honesty, responsibility, integrity and compassion. These moral values are not just universal to all humanity but also universal to all human activity i.e. they are just as valid and called for in economic and commercial life as they are in personal, family and social life. In other words, the values we should express in business are the values that we aspire to in our moral and social lives.

What does this mean in practical terms? A number of things including:

1. The business should not involve an activity of itself immoral.

2. Look closely at how the business is run. On what values or principles are decisions and actions based?

3. What are the motives of those involved in the business? Why are they carrying it out?

4. Given that the business itself passes these tests, what effect does it have on people and their lives?

When looking at the effect that business activity has, at the broadest level there may be an impact on the environment. A business that results in injury to the natural

surroundings causes excessive pollution or destroys non-renewable natural resources, with a consequent loss to humanity as a whole, therefore runs the risk of being unethical.

Next there is the society in which the business is located; what effect does the business have on those people and their lives? For example, a tourism or entertainment business may unnecessarily disturb the community in the place where the businesses is located because of the number of people it attracts, the times they are there or their activities so that the community as a whole suffers.

One more step closer to home are the business’s customers: what effect does the activity or products sold have on them and their health and overall well being? Then partners and investors: are they treated with honesty, responsibility and fairness? Closer still to home are staff and colleagues: are our relations with them based on respect, fairness and integrity? What about my family: what effect is my work schedule having on them and am I acting with responsibility and understanding in relation to them? Then there is my physical health: is that suffering because of the way I work? And finally, what effect is the work having on my mental, emotional, moral and spiritual well-being? Am I remaining true to myself and keeping a clear conscience? What are the motivations for my action or the values or principles by which my actions are guided?

It’s sometimes tempting to justify a wrong action by saying that it wasn’t done with bad intentions, but motives alone are not a sufficient touchstone for judging whether an activity is right or wrong. Many wrongful deeds are motivated by misguided altruism, or the Robin Hood syndrome. While Robin may have been giving all to the poor and deserving, and keeping nothing for himself, the fact remains that depriving someone else of their property in such a way is theft. Even if it’s done in the name of a good cause, a wrong action is still a wrong action.

While there may be some complexity when applying them to individual situations, the underlying and guiding principles are therefore clear. Business and investment should reflect ethical factors, and even in purely monetary terms, they may be more profitable in the long-term if they do so. One school of economics theory holds that prosperity comes when businesses are guided by the invisible hand of the market rather than being subjected to too many external controls and regulations.

Business people today are often motivated by fear and greed more than anything else and if pride comes before a fall then greed comes before poverty and fear before downfall. For profit with peace of mind what is now needed more than the invisible hand of the market is the invisible hand of God, or the conscious commitment to act in accordance with moral principles. If this sounds like a novel approach it shouldn’t really as it was long, long ago that St Matthew summed it all up: “What is a man profited if he gains the world but loses his soul?”

This article was originally published by BK Publications (www.bkpublications.com) in Retreat Magazine #9 in 1997, at which time Christopher Drake was General Manager of Sassoon Securities Limited in Hong Kong.

The Divine Relationship

2009-01-13T03:32:00.000-08:00

Judy Pemell explores the relevance and importance of differentiation, intimacy and celibacy in our relationship with God

As we acclimatise ourselves to the new millennium, with world population tipping the scales over 6 billion and science able to fly men way out into the solar system, why is it so difficult for two people to live under the same roof in a relationship of peace and harmony?

Within all relationships, two counterbalancing life forces are always present—individuality and togetherness. Individuality propels a human being to follow her own directives, to be independent, and a distinct entity, whereas togetherness propels her to follow the directives of others, to be dependent, connected and an indistinct entity. The bringing of these two forces into balance therefore shapes the nature of our relationships. Differentiation is a term frequently employed to describe the process by which a person manages individuality and togetherness in a relationship. On a basic level this is revealed in an individual’s ability, across life, to keep thinking and emotions separate, and to choose between behaviour which is governed by emotional reactivity, or thinking; and to set a life course based on carefully thought out principles and goals. A high level of differentiation allows a person to be emotionally involved with others, without losing touch with his own sense of individuality—both of which can be done simultaneously, and with profound depth. No matter what intensity of emotional and external pressure may be applied to coerce such a person to operate in a non self-determined way, he will be able to retain his autonomy.

However people with low levels of differentiation lack beliefs and convictions of their own, and adapt quickly and uncritically to the prevailing ideology. Even if the beliefs conflict with the facts—conviction is so fused with feeling that it becomes a cause. An individual with unresolved issues of differentiation may pursue intimacy to achieve the feeling of being fused or merged with another. This of course, is not possible, and ultimately leads to frustration, disillusionment and alienation.

Closely related to the notion of differentiation are the concepts of true self and false self. In the usual kind of relationship between two people, there will mostly be an exchange between the false self of both. This kind of exchange is called games, manipulation, control, and patterns of interaction. We often refer to it as “the fit” between the two individuals in a couple. As people try to reshape each other and react to one another’s values, beliefs, etc, one may get the upper hand and become dominant in a certain part of the relationship, where other parts are either traded off or fought over. The false self is vulnerable to being moulded by others, and is most vulnerable in emotionally intense relationships. This is where most people have difficulty—allowing their partner to just be who he or she is. They complain of a lack of intimacy and sexual intensity, but intimacy is about the last thing they can tolerate.

Such an individual is expressing an almost non-existent awareness of essential self, and is functioning totally at the level of personality.

What is the difference between the soul and the personality?
The soul is the spiritual essence or being that is I. When we are born into this life, the soul is emerged and pure. Babies are natural, innocent, defenceless, pure and loving little creatures.

Children and adults alike find these qualities very attractive. As we grow, we begin to develop personality or ego defences, as a way of resisting the pain experienced from little hurts or rejections and, in many cases, to resist the pain of trauma, abuse and neglect. Personality forms around the soul, in a sense, and builds up as layers and layers of defence mechanisms. This construction of personality is completely false, since it is based solely on resistance to the environment. Our emotional reactivity comes from the personality, not from the soul. The more layered with defences we become, the more we are distanced from our essence, until the soul is completely forgotten. This state of spiritual lostness results in the conviction that I am my personality. The experience of the soul is anchored in the essential states of being: strength, love, will, value, bliss, power, peace, etc. These states are experienced with our spiritual senses, our mind, and our feelings. In other words, they come from our innate being, and are not based on a reaction to an external person, place or situation. It is in meditation that we bypass personality and connect directly with the soul, and experience these super-sensuous states of being. A realised self is central to our capacity for intimacy, for intense experiences of self are at the very core of intimate exchange. It is this self which is disclosed during intimacy, and it is this self which allows one’s partner, or ‘other’, to be whom he or she is. Relinquishing expectations of reciprocity and tolerating existential separateness determines an individual’s upper limit for intense intimacy.

It is also worth noting that intimacy is apparently experienced most rarely in marriage, and most commonly in friendship.

During the 16 years that I have been developing my ongoing practice of Raja Yoga, this relationship that I experience with God has been a crucible for my spiritual growth.

Within the spiritual context of Raja Yoga, we are called upon, ultimately, to experience all relationships with God, to relinquish all our falseness (personality) and relinquish attachment in physical relationships. Instead, we are incited to have spiritual relationships with our fellow souls. This doesn’t mean giving up relationships, but it does mean an exchange which takes place between real selves.

The aware soul is not one to coerce or control another, or be controlled. Games of the false personality have no place within the spiritual encounter. When the soul engages in yoga or union with God, the intensity of this connection will be governed by the intimacy tolerance of the person who is meditating. God, I believe, doesn’t have problems with intimacy or differentiation, we do. Thus, God comes completely into the union which occurs with us. Because the experience is subtle, if the false self is in the way, the experience of contact will be contaminated by waste thoughts and projections of the personality. We often speak about the fire of yoga, meaning intense yoga or connection, in which the impurity and falseness (of the personality) that the soul carries, is incinerated. There is no other explanation for the magic of what happens. This is the transforming alchemy. Intimacy with God means intense fire, melting down to one’s very essence. It is reassuring to realise, especially at times when old pieces of identity seem to have flown far away, that it is only possible to lose what is false. At first the true me is not obvious either, but emerges as a rather quiet, flowing and gentle beingness, relative to the louder experience of ego identity. For all of these reasons, committing to a partnership with God involves the practice of Brahmacharya, meaning physical and mental purity. Brahmacharya is not a path of celibacy through repression, since the mind will not be free, even though the sexual urge may be rigidly (albeit temporarily) restrained. Sexual relationships won’t support the task of differentiating in the way that brings us into the company and intimacy of God either, even in a spiritually oriented relationship. Truly spiritual relationships with other human beings are, by their very nature, loving, non-attached, giving and pure. Part of the differentiation process is understanding, in a deep way, that I cannot have my cake and eat it too. Sacrifice is part and parcel of any mature relationship, and the integrity, which develops as a result, carries high dividends. Thus the paths of spirituality and sexuality must, of necessity, diverge, for it is not possible to attain the Parnassus Heights while pulled, even subtly, by body image and attachment. Yet this is a choice we must make for ourselves. God cannot make the choice for us, let alone any organisation or religion. Such a decision remains with the self, alone. Hence the decision must be self-validated, not other-validated or organisation-validated. This is what differentiation is all about, self-validation and self-reference. The decision to practice Brahmacharya is not likely, in the west at least, to be valued and respected by society. It means not conforming, and stepping outside accepted practice. Nor is celibacy a spiritual refuge for undealt with sexual and emotional problems. Sooner or later they will fester, obstructing growth and demanding to be dealt with. This is the nature of the spiritual path. Whatever remains dark and unfinished within me will be exposed. Maintaining the game of repression in the guise of elevated attainment is spiritual suicide. I realise it is almost inconceivable for many to entertain the idea of such a relationship with the Supreme Soul. Sixteen years ago, it was inconceivable to the atheist in me, too. Finding myself in a profound spiritual attraction was, first of all, way beyond the boundaries of my life experience. Later on, the hook, if you like, was that celibacy seemed such a radical thing, it actually appealed to me as much as atheism. I saw it as a brilliant act of rebellion against the beliefs and practices of a society which quite frankly, had let me down.

Three months after I decided to give celibacy a go, to my great surprise a new perspective awakened in me. Overnight, it seemed, I was liberated from the entrenched beliefs, projections and covert web of games between men and women. I was free, realising a new level of respect for the opposite sex, for my own gender, and of course for myself. I realised that the messages, values and double standards of my society had caused me intolerable confusion and pain. Remarkably, at the age of thirty-six, my programming was disabled, the blinkers were off, and I was flying. My worldview was changing fast, as I found myself released into a very different consciousness. When I bravely shared this with one of my friends (who happened to be a sex therapist), she was utterly shocked. Pulling herself up to her full height, “I would never recommend celibacy to any of my clients”, she retorted, reeling with horror. Perhaps it is only through direct encounter with God that this practice of purity is possible. I don’t know, but I suspect it is. In conclusion, I would like to say just one thing. If God taps you on the shoulder and invites you for the next dance, I wish you the best of luck in refusing.

Judith Shepherd-Pemell, NCAC, is a psychotherapist, couples therapist and educator in personal development based in Sydney, Australia.

The Art of Window Cleaning

2009-01-13T03:30:00.000-08:00

Charles Hogg presents the methods to see the specialities in the self and others

In every street there is a Mrs. Judgement and a Mrs. Honesty. One day Mrs. Honesty decided to visit Mrs. Judgement. As soon as Mrs. Honesty arrived, Mrs. Judgement began to complain about her new neighbours, a family of foreigners.

“She is a terrible housekeeper”, said Mrs. Judgement, “you should see how dirty her children are... and as for her house! It is almost a disgrace to be living in the same neighbourhood. Just take a look at the clothes she has hung on the line, see the black streaks on the sheets and towels.

Mrs. Honesty walked up to the window to look, “Actually the clothes are quite clean, my dear. The streaks are on your window!”

Like Mrs. Judgement, how often am I deceived by my own dirty windows into projecting my own ‘misjudgements’ externally, fully convinced that I am seeing the truth? The original seed of misjudgement colours everything I see, so each interaction with my neighbours reinforces my attitude. Until a Mrs. Honesty arrives. Only then do I look closely at my eye-windows. As I begin the process of cleaning the dirt from the outside of my windows I notice something interesting. There is also dirt on the inside. The dirt outside is the product of external influences, atmospheres, opinions and attitudes. The inside dirt is of past experiences, perceptions and assumptions unconsciously colouring my vision.

Just stop for a minute, and reflect on the feelings of judgement and self-righteousness that arise in you, as in all of us. We are aware that these feelings leave us more separate, more isolated, more frightened. And yet within all of us we have the great voice of the critic or the judge. Everyone is on trial. Whether we verbalise our judgmental thoughts or keep them for our own private consumption, others do feel their effect. Reflect again on their opposite. Remember the feelings of forgiveness or understanding. Remember how you wish to be treated when you have made a mistake. Remember how you felt when you let go of someone’s past and offered them a fresh start. Just imagine the healing in relationships if I have the humility to let go of judgement.

My grandmother died a few years ago at the age of ninety-four. During her life she spent only one day in the hospital—at the age of ninety-two to have a cataract removed. She had a healthy, happy life and was loved by all. During one of my last visits, it occurred to me that much of her obvious contentment came from her ability to always tune into the good in others. They responded to her with the same feelings. In a natural way it created a life of giving and taking love. It seems there is a terrible price we pay for the eyes of judgement and criticism. We lose precious love from other hearts.

How do I feel when I see the specialities of others? I feel good about myself. How do I feel when I see my own specialities? Even better. But is it easy? Many times I have taken part in workshops where all participants are asked to make a list of their positive qualities and also a list of weaknesses they would like to change. The list of weaknesses is easy, but when it comes to strengths, almost all of us find it difficult to write even a few. Can I say I really know myself? Often what we write down are talents and skills, what I do or what I have learned, rather than those character traits that are unique to me.

How do I discover my specialities?

Try an experiment. Close your eyes and gently drift beyond your body. Now through your mind’s eye look back at yourself. As an observer of the person sitting below what do you see? What are your specialities? Think deeply about your inner motives, how you treat others, the things you value most. A list of specialities will begin to grow. Don’t just leave them as one word. Expand on them so the depth of your specialities is revealed.

An interesting thing can happen as you go through this process. Perhaps a little guilt or embarrassment enters: “Am I deluding myself? Has my ego taken over?” Somehow we have created in-built barriers that do not allow us to enjoy self-appreciation. Common sense tells me, if I can’t see the specialities in myself it is almost impossible to see them in others. My in-built barrier emanates from a deep lack of self-worth that tells me that I have no value. Breaking through this barrier is at the heart of the spiritual process. As I set myself free from this inner paralysis, my own intrinsic goodness becomes naturally apparent. Not only do my strengths become apparent, but my vision on my weaknesses is one of compassion. I am freed from the jail of hopelessness. I can change!

When I lack love and respect for myself, it manifests externally as arrogant disapproval of others’ weaknesses and mistakes. My own flagging self-respect is bolstered through dwelling on the weaknesses of others. A friend of mine worked as a news reporter for one of the main TV networks in Sydney. He often wondered why we rush home each night to watch the evening news which is a litany of negativity, pain and tragedy. Research showed that when we watch others suffering from the comfort of our lounge rooms, we don’t feel so bad about our own lot. It is unconscious, but a very strange way of feeling better about ourselves.

How many new philosophies and technologies appear on the market each year trying to encourage leaders and managers to improve their game? I feel the most powerful tool of any leader is positive vision towards those he or she is working with. Here positive vision means an inner attitude of trust and respect, and acknowledging the specialities of colleagues. If people receive a double message; what they hear being different from what they feel, they will always trust their feelings. In other words, I can’t hide my inner attitude. If I carry mental criticism of those I live or work with, no matter how much I verbally encourage them they will never fully trust me. If I see the specialities of those around me it is a natural form of empowerment.

In learning the art of seeing specialities in others we need to apply the first Law of Spirituality, which says we are responsible for our own experiences; if I see the negative in others I feel unhappy; if I see the positive I feel happy. It is up to me to decide. To justify the way we feel we have become highly skilled at the Art of Blame. It is a skill we have refined over a long time to escape our conscience. The Media often seems to encourage this skill by glorifying intelligence as the ability to analyse weaknesses in others. With calculated intent the character of another is pulled apart. We learn this skill and pass it onto others. The great irony of the whole process is that I become the target. I am deeply hurt. We forget another Law of Spirituality, that of cause and effect. I will reap the fruit of my attitudes. It makes it even more important to consciously educate myself to see the specialities in the self and others.

It is often hardest to see the specialities in those I am familiar with: my family, friends and work colleagues. Below are some exercises that have helped me improve the Art of Window Cleaning.

Exercise 1 Virtue Inventory

In my diary I keep one section where I write the names of those closest to me. During a working day or at home when I notice a speciality or I learn something from someone, I make a note of it in my diary. It is like an inventory of their good qualities, and it can help me at a later date. When I become influenced by one of their negative qualities I can then refer to my diary and rectify the balance. I am reminded of the good in the other and not consumed by their mistake or temporary weakness.

Exercise 2 Acting not Reacting

If there is a person who has certain personality traits that upset or disturb me, I make that person my teacher. Why? Because their company will make me change. They make me aware of my own negative reactions. They teach me to act and not react.

Exercise 3 Editing my Memory Tape

Before going to bed I replay the day’s activities on the video of my mind. If I am carrying negative feelings towards someone let me resolve them by forgiving that person from my heart. I don’t only erase the negative feelings, but edit in something positive, so I consciously remember a speciality of that person, which will remain recorded in my sub-conscious. I then go to sleep and wake up much lighter.

Exercise 4 Seeing the Intentions

Another method of learning and holding the specialities of others in my mind is to see the intention and not the action. Sometimes people do make mistakes, or maybe I disapprove of the way they do things. If I focus on the activity then I will get upset. However, if I see a sincere motive, I can maintain an attitude of love or acceptance which will enable me to resolve disagreements respectfully.

Is this kind of thinking a bit naive? Do I see only good and remain blind to the negative? No, the art of seeing specialities means to see both the positive and the negative but then to let go of the negative. Why should I add to the negativity? Let my response to others’ weaknesses be with compassion rather than anger or hatred.

On the path of personal development and spiritual growth, the Art of Window Cleaning is essential.

Charles Hogg is Director of Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga Centres in Australia.

The Art of Heart Maintenance

2009-01-13T03:26:00.000-08:00

Author bio: Charles Hogg is director of the Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga Centres in Australia.

Charles Hogg reveals the secrets of a healthy heart.

It was my first visit to Calcutta. The pot-holed road from the airport was lined with humpies and flocks of vultures leering with menace at all passing by. The taxi arrived at the Red Shield Hostel, a little haven for travelers in the heart of Calcutta near the Queen Victoria memorial. It was a memorable week, observing life in the ‘City of Joy’. Each day as I left the Hostel I was greeted by a couple of young beggar girls clothed in dirty rags with hair matted in thick knots. They repeatedly chanted the mantra “One rupee, one rupee”, that was followed with a radiant smile that would flash across their faces with a naughty twinkle in the eye. They always won. I would dig deep and pull out a rupee or two. I became quite a stable source of income, so each day I could see them waiting for me and the mantra changed to, “Two rupees, two rupees”.

Nearing the end of the week I emerged from the Hostel to find an older woman with the girls. In broken English she invited me to visit their home. We moved our way through the streets to a large vacant lot covered with humpies built with everything and anything imaginable: plastic bags, packing boxes, old tyres, hessian bags, discarded bits of wood. Many people gathered to greet me and I was offered food and drink with so much love and generosity (though perhaps partly financed by me!). Around these two little girls was a loving support structure of parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins and more. In this desperate scene of abject poverty there was nothing . . . nothing but love, and that love was so rich it seemed to be everything that was needed. I began to think that these two little girls, who had become my friends, were lucky. It seemed to me that no matter what the circumstances, when the heart is maintained, life can be good.

However, if the heart is empty or broken or closed, nothing ever seems to satisfy, no matter what the circumstances. To compensate an empty heart, we crave wealth or power or fame or anything that will fill the void. In August of 1997, the world was shocked with the news of the death of Princess Diana. On one level it seemed she had everything except perhaps one missing ingredient . . . love. She craved true love. Her life was a testament to the search for true love. It seems the world-wide grief was the result of people identifying with her search for love to truly maintain the heart. We are all searching for it, but how often do we find it?

I think there are a few times in life when we emerge the feelings of true love. A friend told me he was on a subway in Toronto in the heart of winter. The peak hour train was full of long grey faces, all seemingly isolated and disconnected from each other. There was a stony cold silence. The train stopped at a station, the doors opened, and in walked a young woman with a newborn baby in her arms. The innocence, the vulnerability of the baby touched them all. A new feeling filled the train. All the drawn faces began to glow with gentle smiles. That which is authentic and pure attracts our love. The baby had no masks, no barriers or facades, and its openness kindled the dormant feelings of love amongst the watching people. Just by being itself, the baby’s qualities had the power to emerge love in strangers.

Recently I spent time with someone dying of cancer. When I first met this woman, she had just been diagnosed and was full of fear and burden. Life experience had etched a deep sadness in her face. But during the last few months of her life there was a dramatic change. Her face now radiated joy and love. She had let go so many burdens carried for a lot of her life. She had let go trying to impress, let go the hurts from others, let go the pressure to be something she was not, let go the inferiority complex. But most of all she had let go of the fear of dying, which liberated her from the fear of living also. She discovered her authentic self and, like the baby, became so lovable to all around her.

A friend once said to me, “If you were told you only had a few months to live, how do you feel it would change you?” I thought about it quite a lot. I thought I would like to clear any regrets I had, tell others how much I appreciate them and how much they mean to me, let go of all the trivial tensions with others and focus on what is really important. I began to think . . . Isn’t this how I should be living anyway?

Between birth and death, what happens? We are desperate for the experience of true nourishing love, so we invest our heart in relationships with great trust and sincerity. But the Law of Life is change. Inevitably that which I love will leave, whether due to change, conflict or death. So I invest my heart again and the same thing happens. This process of loss leaves deep scars of fear and insecurity, so that as life progresses I put big barriers around my hear. The sign on my heart reads, “Stop! No admittance beyond this point!”

I want nothing more than the experience of love, but I’ve created so many barriers to stop it. Even if love is received, it is a polluted form of love that gives a temporary lift but does not truly maintain the heart. Sometimes the love is conditional, the sort of love that has a business contract with clauses and sub-clauses. Such love says, “I will love you but you must behave in the way I want. Otherwise my love stops.”

Or perhaps the love is selfish. This love only takes and never gives. The heart feels so empty. This love says, “Your very existence is to fill my heart”, and if the expectations are not fulfilled, there is resentment, anger and feelings of abandonment.

At other times the glossy magazines and certain TV programmers offer us a romantic image of love—beautiful people gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes. This superficial image of love makes most people feel inadequate. Research shows romantic feelings only remain for 6 to 8 months and then love takes on new dimensions. Yet for some, when romantic feelings change, there is a feeling that the love has finished. So the modern game of re-cycling relationships continues. We have also become victims of dependent love. Such love creates love/hate relationships: love because of the support, but hate and resentment because I’ve lost my freedom. I feel smothered and controlled, but I forget it is my dependence that created this feeling.

Those polluted forms of love have made heart disease one of the main health problems of the world today. There is love, but it is often not of the quality needed to cure the rampant heart disease so evident.

To create a healthy heart three main stages are required:
1. A full heart check up.
2. Heart surgery (if necessary).
3. A Heart Maintenance programme.

The Heart Checkup
I have a friend who prides himself on his physical fitness. He would regularly play squash and run, even though he lived an extremely busy life as a barrister and had a young family. One day after a run he developed severe pain in his chest. He immediately consulted his doctor, and tests showed that 90% of blood flow did not reach some parts of his heart. He was shocked to know this. My friend’s experience prompted me to think. How much love reaches my heart? We often don’t realize how little love-flow reaches our heart, and naturally the less that goes in the less goes out.

How do I test the love-flow to my heart? The real signs are contentment with myself and others. Pure love dissolves desires for others’ recognition and respect. Pure love will also replace arrogance with humility. Pure love will be so fulfilling that my natural response is to share love with others. I won’t even feel empty. So, how healthy is my heart?

Heart Surgery
Depending on my checkup, I may need heart surgery. The heart needs three types of love to become completely healthy, so sometimes surgery is required to begin the love-flow.

The First Surgery Procedure – Opening My Own Heart
We all now the ingredients of a good relationship: respect, trust, honesty, openness, care, compassion—the list goes on. Are these words that would describe my relationship with me? How do I treat myself? Do I lovingly care for my heart, or do I put myself down, beat myself, undervalue myself? This self-abusive behaviour seems to be at the core of my heart pain.

We all want to be self-loving. Why is it so hard sometimes? We are educated to try and love an image. Am I attractive, am I intelligent, am I successful? I am trying to love the very barriers and facades I have built around my heart. It has not only prevented others from coming close, it has prevented me coming close to me!

The first surgery procedure removes the old self-image of my body, my status, my beauty, my wealth, and replaces it with the awareness of my spiritual self. First I begin to accept myself as I am. Then, when I discover that my intrinsic original state is pure, I begin to heal deeply, and loving feelings for my true, authentic self emerge. This is the story of “The Sleeping Beauty”: the beautiful and lovable part of my heart was locked up in a big dark castle, overgrown with hurts, pains and sorrow. The prince gives the kiss of self-awareness that enables me to (awaken and) love my true self.

The Second Surgery Procedure – Opening My Heart to the Love of God
The heart became so fragile and sensitive because I felt I was not lovable. I could not accept love from anyone, especially God, because I did not feel worthy.

But now that I have discovered my pure authentic self, this part of me can accept the love of God. Sometimes I like to sit quietly and allow myself to be loved by God. I put all other thoughts aside. This love is such a tonic that it makes a weak heart strong, a broken heart whole, an empty heart full, and a closed heart open up. It is the true love that I have always looked for, because, by definition, true love is love that always exists. This love cannot leave me.

The Third Surgery Procedure – Giving and Taking Love with Others

When my relationship with my own heart is strong and the heart of God is close, I have the foundation to care for my heart in any situation. Not only to maintain my own heart, but interaction with others helps heal their hearts also.

In my heart maintenance tool kit I carry some special tools that will help maintain my own heart and the hearts of others. Before I begin any heart maintenance procedure, I need to decide which tools will be most effective in each situation. It is suggested, if possible, to have a few moments of silence to discriminate clearly the procedure and tools required.

The Detachment Tool: this tool is essential to any heart maintenance kit. To be truly loving, I must be detached. Does that sound contradictory? When I am dependent I am affected and influenced by those I am dependent on. Every word or facial expression can affect my mood. If, however, I use the tool of detached involvement, my love and support can be constant, regardless of the moods of others.

The Good Wishes Tool: this tool is incredibly versatile and can fix most hearts. It comes from the realization that the foundation of positive relationships is good feelings. This tool can fix cynicism and mistrust, and can help open hearts that have been closed. For the tool to be effective, I need to learn the positive qualities of the other person and make a commitment to maintaining my vision on those qualities regardless of their fluctuations.

The Forgiveness Tool: this tool is extremely effective to clear away the rubbish of the past. It can dissolve old rusty feelings and clear the air. As soon as the forgiveness tool is applied, it instantly relieves heart pain and often the patient remarks, “If only I had used this tool earlier!” This tool works best with broken hearts that just can’t let go feelings of anger and resentment.

The Respect Tool: this tool works best with heavy hearts: hearts that carry the weight of many mistakes and failures and when we just cannot see any beauty in our own heart. The powerful self-belief is that I am unlovable, and as a result there is no self-respect. Such hearts expect others not to love or like them. The respect tool rekindles self-value and begins to remove the burden.

The Meditation Tool: this is an essential tool in any Heart Maintenance Kit. When the users know how to apply it, they become the master of looking after their own heart. This tool shows us how to regularly check our own heart and see that the flow of true love in and out is regular. An experienced user of this tool can instantly diagnose if a blockage has developed somewhere, and begin to remove it.

My Heart Maintenance Programme
My ongoing heart maintenance programme needs a healthy diet and regular exercise. A healthy diet consists of a balanced consumption of positive and loving thoughts and feelings. I need to be careful not to consume the fatty thoughts of negative self-talk that clog my love-flow. Exercise for my heart consists of giving love to others. If I do this exercise daily it will help maintain my heart.

When I learn the Art of Heart Maintenance, I have discovered the secret at the core of a happy and fulfilling life.

Silence

2009-01-13T03:24:00.000-08:00

Anthony Strano is Director of the Brahma Kumaris Centres in Greece, Hungary and Turkey. This article is extracted from his booklet The Alpha Point, published by Brahma Kumaris Information Services Ltd, London 1998.

Anthony Strano points the way to a conversation with God.

When silence is deep, brimming with fullness, when there is no more yearning for sound, when there is complete concentration on One, then thought, like an arrow, finds and melts into its target; there the human soul not only glimpses God, but is absorbed in the purity of that Being; absorbed totally, wholly, absolutely. Filled with the pure light that has now become its being, the soul radiates this energy as peace and love to others; a living lighthouse.

Silence is the bridge of communication between the Divine and the divine in the human. Silence is where I find what is most precious.

Spiritual silence is the positioning of the heart and mind in readiness for communication with the One. Neither is it communication based on repetitive words, nor on intellectual theories nor on asking for the fulfillment of limited desires. Sacred communication is the harmonizing of the original self with the Eternal One.

Spiritual silence gives me energy, pure and selfless, from the Creative Source, to burst out of the cocoon of dust and routine, opening up unlimited horizons of new vision. To release the self from negativity, I require silence. Absorbed in its depths, I am renewed. In this renewal the mind clears itself, facilitating a different perception of reality. The deepest perception of all is my own eternity.

The act of silence is as necessary for living as breathing is for physical life. Strength for living necessitates finding a point of stillness from which I begin and to which I return every day: an oasis of inner peace. Silence brings my mental and emotional energy to a point of concentration, where I can be still. Without this inner stillness, I become like a puppet pulled here and there by the many different strings of external influences. This inner point of stillness is the seed of autonomy, which cuts the strings, and then the loss of energy ceases.

Silence heals. Silence is like a mirror. Everything is clear. The mirror does not blame or criticize but helps me to see things as they are, providing a diagnosis to release me from all types of wrong thinking. How does silence do this? Silence revives the original peace of the self; a peace that is innate, divine and, when invoked, flows through one’s being, harmonizing and healing every imbalance. Silence is full and it fills; gently, powerfully, consistently active.

To create silence, I step within. I connect with my eternal self; the soul. In that place of unblemished tranquility, as if in a timeless womb, the process of renewal and restructuring begins. There, a new pattern of pure energy is woven.

In this introspective space I reflect. I recollect what has been forgotten for a long time. I concentrate slowly and gently and as I do so, those original spiritual blueprints of love, truth and peace emerge and are experienced as personal and eternal realities. Through these, quality begins to enter life. Quality is closeness to something purer and truer in ourselves. Quality is the principle for more enlightened thought and for integrity of action. In that space, Silence teaches me how to listen, how to develop an openness to God.

Listening guides me into the right position, opening the channel of receptivity. Receptivity aligns me to the reality of God; a very necessary alignment, if I am to truly know and be at one with Him. For receptivity I must clear myself of myself. I must stand clean, bare, simple, stripped of artificiality, then genuine communication begins.

As I listen, I receive. As I receive, I feel and reflect, and gradually move into concentration. Concentration is when I am completely absorbed in one thought. Where there is love, concentration is natural and steady, like the still candle flame radiating its aura of light. The thought in which one is absorbed becomes one’s world. When the human mind is absorbed in the thought of God, the person feels resurrected; the harmony of reconciliation is deeply felt. In this silent link of love, one becomes fully reconciled, not as an intellectual process but as a state of being. I awaken. This wakefulness is where I am fully conscious of Truth. Simultaneously I become conscious of the illusions in me and around me and of the effort needed to remove them.

This wakefulness enables me to respond and receive what I would not normally notice, either on natural or supernatural levels. In wakefulness, in this heightened state of knowing, a person spiritualises the self; he or she becomes a truer being. Within silence the subtle invisible rays of concentrated thought meet God—this is the power of silence; this is often called ’meditation’. Sound cannot achieve this meeting with God. Sound can only praise and glorify, through song or chant, the closeness of union with the Divine; but it cannot create it. Only silence creates the practical experience of union.

Concentrated silence is the wordless focus of pure attention on One. Love for that One makes the focus easy and steady, fulfilling. This closeness of the self with the Supreme inevitably inspires the desire for change in the self; inspiration to better the self, to make the self worthy by fulfilling the original potential and, where one can, sharing the fruits of that realized potential with others. This sharing is not achieved through saying a lot, but rather through the integrity of personal example.

In silence, the deepest orientation of consciousness is the desire to achieve personal perfection. This desire is a result of the divine flow of energy entering the human consciousness and inspiring belief in one’s own worth. Personal perfection is accepted as being possible. It’s the faith given by God as a gift to the soul. The possibility of perfection is accepted because the soul knows it is not alone in its effort, it constantly has the support of Divine Love to achieve its goal.

In its connection with God, the soul is filled and feels itself complete; it has found what it was looking for. Divine Love works especially through silence; the soul is awakened from its sleep of ignorance and given new life, as in the story of Sleeping Beauty. The soul is the Sleeping Beauty, God is the prince and ignorance is the witch who casts her magic spell of slumber upon the princess. God’s love for the soul is such that it is not stopped by any darkness or barrier but reaches the soul to awaken it, bringing it back to life, back to reality. Love breaks the iron spell.

It is through Love that I, as a soul, am awakened and acknowledge my eternity. My reality is far more than my material appearance. My eternity is my reality. This is the truth of my existence. In Greek the word for truth is alithea, which means ‘not to forget’. The human being is under a very deep forgetfulness; an amnesia of spirit. I cannot achieve the awakened state, the true state of myself with my own skills of intellect. Attainment of Truth is not a matter of cleverness. I can only awaken when God helps me to remember. To remember is real knowing; it is Truth.

To achieve inner change, silence has to be love-filled, not only peace-filled. Many think that it is enough just to experience peace in the silence of meditation in order to achieve transformation of consciousness. Peace stabilizes; peace harmonises and gently quiets. Peace lays the foundation. However, Love actively inspires; Love moves the universe. Love moves all things towards their original freedom and happiness.

Both Peace and Love are needed, and in their archetypal form, come from God, the Universal and immutable Source. It is this God-filled silence that restores a human being and the earth to their original state.

In silence, we realize that it is not only a return to the roots; but, even more, it is a return to the Seed, to the Beginning; it is a return to God, a return to myself, a return to right relationship.

Shopping for God in the Spiritual Supermarket

2009-01-13T03:21:00.000-08:00

Valerie Coyle interviews Dadi Janki
Why most people are lost and searching, disillusioned and desperate for solutions.

Valerie Coyle: The Western world seems inundated with so many different spiritual choices and teachers, and most people seem to be shopping around in the spiritual supermarket and changing aisles all the time. It seems very hard to stay focused on a spiritual path, even if it feels like a true one.

Dadi Janki: Human beings are attracted towards spirituality at present because they are tired of materialistic life. They have not experienced any happiness through materialism. The more they have chased after materialism, to that extent they have lost themselves; they have forgotten themselves. Their attention has become completely extroverted. It has not been turned within. To search for spirituality means to go within. Because there are so many paths of spirituality, from both the East and the West, people are totally confused about what is right and what is wrong, or what they should select.

This world itself is a world of deception. When people have experienced deception they seek a spiritual path. However, even when they come onto a spiritual path, after some time, they again experience some kind of deception. This is why people move away from religion. They are tired of hearing the word ‘religion’. Their pure feelings of faith in religion have disappeared—whether that be Hindu, Muslim, Christian or whatever. No matter which religion they belong to they have to understand what true spirituality is and go into the depth of that spirituality.

Originally, the religious founders definitely had spiritual power. They lived as messengers of god. They came on this earth whenever there was a need, and played their role within the help of God’s power. Now, because people have become body conscious, they have forgotten their religion, and they have so much conflict within themselves that, even if they use the term ‘religion’, it is only namesake. Hence they do not practise the teachings that were shared by those religious founders; they simply repeat them like parrots. No matter how much they study, inside they are empty; they do not have that spiritual knowledge. In order to experience peace, happiness and power it is necessary to go within, for only then can we realize what true spirituality is. No matter how much someone searches outside, they can never find true spirituality.

Valerie Coyle: What does spirituality mean to you?
Dadi Janki: Spirituality means that I should be connected with the Source. For that I need to have the recognition of that Source. Who is He? Where does He reside? In fact God is One. He cannot be different for different religions. He is One for all. If I say that Christ belongs to the Christian religion and someone else to another religion, then I create conflict. Instead of more spiritual power there will be even more wars and even less love between one another.

Spirituality means to have eternal spiritual love for each other whilst maintaining that incognito, internal connection with God. This is only possible when I become introverted, and when I am able to keep my mind under control through the power of concentration. Today, human beings’ minds and sense organs are not under their control. The sense organs cause us to perform very bad actions by coming under the influence of lust, greed and anger. Spirituality means to make my mind free from all these things—to let these desires finish. The consciousness, “I want this, I want that etc,” is also extrovert. The more I want the less satisfaction I will receive from that. In fact I will become even more of a beggar. To be spiritual means to be royal, not to have any desires. A jeweller who does business with jewels will not waste his time in trifling matters. So, I have to go deep into myself and search for the treasures that I have within myself. In order to see God, I need to have a divine intellect and divine sight. I cannot see God through these ordinary eyes. I can see this world through these eyes, but I cannot see myself. Whether my eyes are open or not, I should be able to see myself. Otherwise, if I am extroverted, whatever I see externally comes into my mind. Even things I have seen years ago come into my mind.

Spirituality means to open the eye of the mind and, on the basis of that, to realize who I am. When anyone comes here we always teach them three main lessons: “Who am I?” “Who is God?” and “What is the philosophy of karma?” I should understand the philosophy of karma to such an extent that every action I perform is accurate and filled with spirituality. Even if the actions are mundane, they should reveal spirituality. Even the quality of my thinking must be filled with spirituality because the foundation of human life is the quality of our thoughts. If I have the feeling of positivity and of bringing benefit to others, then automatically my thoughts will be filled with those qualities. And if my thoughts are of quality, then my interactions with others will also be of quality. I am a soul; I am connected with the Supreme Soul; He is teaching me, and whatever He is teaching me I am able to share with others.

Valerie Coyle: Most spiritual teachings do advise us to go within, because the answers are within. But it seems to me that to do this properly requires an enormous leap of faith. To renounce the outer world and especially the ego creates a lot of insecurity. How do you develop the faith to remain introverted? It seems to be a hard thing for people to grasp—having such uncompromising faith—even in yourself?
Dadi Janki: Originally, there was spirituality within every one of us, but today we have accumulated a lot of rubbish in the form of negative thinking and bad habits. And so, spirituality means to clear away the rubbish and release the power that is in the soul. If you ask the experience of those who are following a spiritual path now, they will be to verify this experience of clearing away the rubbish to expose the beauty within. This does not mean ‘blind’ faith; you have to use your intellect. First understand, then have faith and then practice.

Suppose I am explaining something to you. If you are intellectual, you will start to analyse what I am saying through your intellect. Then nothing I explain will sit in your intellect. In fact what you need to do is put aside all the other information that you have accumulated, make your intellect quiet, and then you will be able to absorb. You can have faith only when you can understand what you have heard.

Valerie Coyle: Personally, I feel that a lot of the times I sit on the fence. On one side is faith and trust, and on the other is ego and control. The obstacle for me is the underlying fear that if that I don’t at least attempt to control my world, nothing will happen to me. Maybe I won’t even exist!

Dadi Janki: Firstly, I would like to clarify what it means to have trust. You don’t have to trust me to have trust. You don’t have to trust me or what I say. You trust in something after making yourself understand. If your intellect agrees with it, then you trust. We don’t use the method used by gurus and others that you have to follow what we say. God has given us this understanding. Previously you had the intellect but you did not know how to use it in order to understand and judge what is right and what is wrong. Now, you received that understanding to judge properly.

The difference between animals and human beings is that animals do not have an intellect. Human beings have an intellect, so can ask, “What is right?” “What is wrong?” “What is good?” and “What is bad?” “What is sin?” and “What is charity?” However, we have lost the power of decision-making because the intellect has become so weak. We continue to commit sins (negative and violent actions) and we do not perform any acts of charity. Through understanding, we receive the ability to discern the difference between right and wrong.

Previously, we used to suppress our conscience because we were under the influence of other people, opinions and the world. Now our conscience opens up, and we develop the power to perform good actions. If for example, I know what is right, but don’t have the strength to do it, then I connect the yoga of my intellect with the Source and take the power from God, and then I can do it.

First of all, I have to understand who I am and what my relationship with God is. Then, I practically establish that relationship, and receive power. On the basis of this experience, I have the faith that this is God and this is soul. At that point, I understand what I should be doing. Then all my thoughts and actions will be accurate, and I will thank God for giving me such good thoughts. This is what is called ‘having faith’.

For example, if I am born a Hindu, and I believe in all the teachings of Hinduism, then I continue to move forward. Now, suppose somebody else speaks to me about another religion or culture. I will not start thinking that I can’t leave my Hinduism behind because I can’t survive without it. I will just incorporate the new information. It is the same with education. When you study, you learn more and more new things. And, when you learn something better, then automatically you will leave behind whatever is past. You will not have questions, “How can I survive without it?” “How can I give up that teacher?” or “How can I leave those books?”

If I have no ego, I can survive without these because I know that I am receiving something better that is for my own progress.

Valerie Coyle: So then why do we all resist?
Dadi Janki: Fear, Ego comes because of fear. We have been taking support from it for a long time. Many people have this obstacle. If I give up what I was doing before, if I have any loss, then what? God has given us an open opportunity to learn. He says you learn until the last breath of your life. Myself, I had gurus before starting to practise Raja Yoga. They used to frighten me by saying, “If you leave me something will happen” because they wanted me to be their follower. I would answer, “Thank you for all you have taught me, but please now give me blessings so that I can move forward in my life”. But I needed courage to do that.
Because there is no end to spirituality, the more you go into its depth, the further you can go. And to that extent, you experience happiness.

Valerie Coyle: I think that most people have ego as their guru. It is the ego that tells most of us what to do.

Dadi Janki: Because ego has filled the soul over a long period of time, it has gone deep inside. Ego of my own body, my religion, my education, my culture, my nationality has gone deep inside me. So, now I have to bring that ego out of myself. I have to become free from ego. Then I am able to experience what reality is. The soul cannot do anything without a body. But what has happened is that being in the body, we have allowed all the bodily things to affect us: culture, religion, education, etc. In reality, the soul is truth, love and bliss. We have to cleanse the soul in order to finish the ego. Because of ego, we also have greed, anger, jealousy and attachment. If someone is jealous he can never make his mind peaceful no matter how much meditation he does. Meditation means to remove all the rubbish and cleanse the soul. No matter how much people may criticize or insult me, I don’t have to be affected by that. I have to adopt truth and I have to move along that path. I know that God is truth, but now I have to experience and realise how God is truth.

Dadi Janki is the Additional Administrative Head of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. Valerie Coyle was editor of Southern Crossings Magazine published in Australia.

Preparing for Silence

2009-01-13T03:19:00.000-08:00

(Sister Mohini Panjabi shared these ideas at a Call-of-the-Time Dialogue in Uruguay in 2001 as dialogue participants prepared for a day of silence).

One of the true gifts in a busy life is an extended period of silence, a time when we intentionally turn our attention away from the rush of conversations and commitments, images and messages, and lists and obligations, and quietly attune ourselves to an inner space.

For some of us, imposed silence has been a punishment in our past; for example, a parent may have admonished, “Close your mouth and go to your room.” The silence we are entering here is a choice. This silence is a chance for discovery, to find out new and different things. The absence of talk is quite different when we are choosing not to speak.

Silence is not a lack of communication. There is a subtle language that connects us to one another through the eyes, with a smile, or a gesture. Fluency in this subtle language calls for our ability to observe the small details of life. As we develop our facility with this subtle language, we find that we are less dependent on the mechanical devices that can connect us but that can also make us feel more separate.

In moving into an inner space of silence, we are attuning ourselves to the spirit of nature and letting go of the tendency to be critical.

Silence provides the opportunity for me to identify the qualities in myself that have the capacity to transform me. In silence I can connect to the highest quality of my lightest, clearest thinking.

Action emerges from the seeds of thought. Actions are the fruits of these seeds. What is the soil in which I choose to plant the seeds of my thoughts? Violence or peace? Anger or love? These choices are transformative.

The state of awareness I attain in silence connects directly to the quality of my understanding. Understanding “in sound” is a cognitive process, while understanding “in silence” is more subtle, resulting in realizations that emerge from within. These are very different experiences.

In silence I discover my innate qualities, the qualities that are intrinsic to who I am. Here in silence I touch my eternal self, and I come to trust this deepest essence.

The experience of recognizing my intrinsic and unique qualities increases my own power to receive. In silence I touch my inner strength and experience trust, faith, safety, beauty, worthiness. It is from this base of inner strength that my actions evolve.

In silence I can listen to the call of God, the call of nature, the call of others in need.

Silence is an inner space of learning. When I do not understand something, I continue to hold on to it. When learning has occurred, I can release it and move on.

In silence I discover truth by getting in touch with the true self. Silence increases my capacity to hold the truth within.

Silence is an opportunity to rest in the lap of my own greatness. Remember to care for yourself with the special attention you would accord any great soul.

Silence is a discipline, not of doing, but of being.

Use these thoughts about silence as a tray of hors d’oeuvres, picking what you want to support you as you transition into a silent inner space.

Of Frogs, Captains, Iceburgs...and Eagles!

2009-01-13T03:16:00.000-08:00

Marc Fourcade reflects on what you need to change the course of your life

The world is moving. Either we move with it or we move against it, in which case we may not be strong enough! The forces on the move are enormous and uncontrollable; they are the forces of nature, the forces of life. The power to change is the power to live.

The Creation is in permanent re-creation. It dies and is reborn at every instant. It becomes ugly and makes itself beautiful again at each breath. It does not stop undoing what it had started so well; as it chases away the spring it puts summer in its place; it languishes in autumn and then hits you in winter. Nature, day by day, gives us the tempo of life—but it is hard for us to follow, being weighed down by the baggage we carry from the past, containing the weight of our memories and our nostalgia.

For many of us, changing implies losing. It is not always related to the conscious area of ourselves. Entangled in our habits, our routines, we are seldom willing to leave safe areas of inner comfort. Every time we do move away from our comfort zones, it is synonymous with danger. Coming out of the shell of our apparent certainty is like entering a jungle of ignorance, anguish, and maybe death. As Woody Allen once said, “As long as a man will consider himself mortal, he will never really feel relaxed,” and we could probably add “and never really be ready change”.

Very often, in order to obtain something new, one has to renounce something old. This is often goes against the grain as our tendency is to both have our cake and eat it. We always wish to have more but nevertheless don't want to renounce our attainments. For that reason, we have invented a wonderful quality: adaptability. It allows us to attain new things without getting rid of the old things. It is called the patrimonial instinct.

Adaptability is of itself a beautiful quality, but it also presents a few dangers if we don’t know what we are adapting to. The human organism, for example, adapts very successfully to tobacco, alcohol, fats and even to arsenic in small doses, but each one can eventually make the body sick and even kill it. The frog is legendary for its capacity to adjust its body temperature to the surrounding temperature. However, when it is submerged in a pan of water that is gradually heated up, it adapts and adapts and is eventually boiled as it lacks the energy to jump out of the pot. Are we not also trapped at times in situations where we adapt instead of jumping, until it is too late?

An individual does change when his major interests are at stake. When he realises his emotional and mental balance, his health and his life are threatened, he suddenly realises he has the means to change. Change obeys at least three criteria: need, awareness and the power to act. In this trilogy, information plays an essential role; in other words, how can one apprehend, understand and act without any information, without knowing. The essential need for right information is illustrated in the story if a certain ship’s captain of the Norwegian navy who was caught one night in the fog in the Galapagos. His ship was the flagship of the fleet. Faced with a flickering light headed straight towards his ship, he sent three signals requesting the ship bearing the light to changes its course by twenty degrees to avoid collision. At the very last moment, he furiously had to change his own course to avoid collision with that unrelenting light, which turned out to be a very stable lighthouse.

Information is the pivotal point in any process of change. It is not enough to know that one has to change; one also needs to have the know-how, in which case information is power. Information is not only at the heart of the challenge of change, but it is also the reason why there is so much resistance to change. Despite living in the information age we are not really that well-informed, at least in terms of quality, either about ourselves or our surroundings.

Quite recently a study published by two French writers, Regis and Brigitte Dutheil, a physicist and a philosopher, in their book called “The Super Light Man”, revealed to what extent the role of information is essential in the development of our awareness of events, and beyond that, the shaping of our behaviour. They tell us how our awareness of our environment is limited to the quite weak capacity of our sense organs. Our eyes, for instance, are only able to perceive a spectrum of colours between 0.3 and 0.8 angstrorn, that is, from pale blue to dark red, and therefore we are totally unable to perceive ultra violet or infra red rays. The same applies to our ears, which cannot hear very low or very high frequencies; and to our nose, the olfactory cells of which are unable to compete with those of a dog! This type of information about our environment is always incomplete, and yet we continue to interpret the way the world works and the nature of life from this very limited input.

If we only have very little information about our surroundings, we have even less about our inner world—the way we function psychologically, the mechanism of our thoughts, our emotions and our personal resources. We have integrated over the course of years—through our education, our experiences, our discoveries, our realisations—an incredible quantity of memories which today constitute our internal reference system.

These memories, linked to one another at the heart of a complex internal network, are the mother earth of our thoughts and also of our behaviour. The quality and strength of these memories and the way in which we use them determine our emotions, our reactions, our desires and our state of mind. Our ability to change ourselves lies in our potential to manage this bank of information but first we have to find out what exactly is in the bank, that is to say, we have to get to know ourselves. There is scarcely any other method than to plunge deeply inwards and go through the indescribable morass of memories to try to find ourselves, and know where we are at.

The human being is a like an iceberg. We only know the emerged visible part of it, that is, scarcely ten percent of the personality. The merged ninety per cent is under the surface, and constitutes its essential reality. Nevertheless, with what little information we have, we try to anticipate its reactions, to foresee its changes, to act on its behaviour. If the wind is blowing north to south you would expect the iceberg to move south, but contrary to expectations it moves north, because the current is pushing ninety percent of its mass under the surface in the opposite direction.

In the case of an individual, the conscious ten per cent is not strong enough to fight against the ninety per cent of the subconscious of buried memories and forgotten emotions—hidden in the shadows of our past, incognito, but active and representing a very powerful, invisible current. This is one of the key reasons why we have so many problems—whether in terms of organisational management or in terms of self-management. We are over-informed and submerged with excessive, irrelevant and bad quality information about the ten percent of reality accessible our five senses, and under-informed in quantity and quality about the ninety per cent our reality. What a pity, because we all possess unsuspected resources, but our narrow vision of ourselves and our mental limits prevent us from drawing on them and expressing them.

This is illustrated by the story of the eagle’s egg which was hatched by a hen. Since its birth, the baby eagle’s only environment was the world of chickens. He grew up as a chicken, ate like a chicken, ran like a chicken, communicated like a chicken and lived like a chicken. Then one day near the end of his life he looked up into the infinity of the sky and admired the majestic gliding of the large royal eagle overhead, and he began to dream of flying like him!

This story enlightens us about the incredible impact information has on our stages of consciousness and beyond this on our behaviour and quality of life. An excess of information about the superficial in our external environment drowns out awareness of our internal environment which is essential if we are to capture subtle signals which require a great deal of sensitivity as well as intuition to be perceived. Beyond what our five senses perceive, there is an unlimited dimension to explore. There is an unsuspected field of vibrations rich in quality information capable of radically transforming our vision of the world and of ourselves. For this, we have to stop being surfers and become divers and discover the treasures of the soul in the silence of the depths of our own being.

Meditation is the royal path for this travel to the centre of the self, the search for the Holy Grail, the search for perfection, for the pure beauty of the original being. Michelangelo had one good argument to convince the sceptics that many of us have become. One day, when he was tired of the praise of an admirer about an enormous sculpture that he had just finished, he replied to her, “Madam, I only took off the stone that was not necessary, the perfection lay inside.”

Is there not, in that awareness, a good reason to start the voyage towards the centre of the self?

Marc Fourcade is a Management Consultant in the field of Human Resource Development based in Paris.

Life in the Balance

2009-01-13T03:14:00.000-08:00

Charles Hogg explores the trick of maintaining a balance in life

Some incidents in childhood leave deep impressions. I have a deep memory of a television programme showing a tightrope walker crossing Niagara Falls. I was fascinated as he carefully placed one foot after another in a state of total concentration. Sometimes he stopped to re-balance and reassess his position. Only one slip or slight imbalance and he could have fallen hundreds of metres into the turbulent white waters below. It was breathtaking.

Some of us feel life is similar. Finding our inner balance while living amongst many extremes, like the tightrope walker, can be precarious. It can create extraordinary tension. We live in a world of duality, and at every second we have to make decisions about where we sit between so many extremes. Should I tolerate the situation in silence or should I face it and express how I really feel? Am I coming from a point of self-respect or am I just being arrogant? Am I being selfish or am I just being sensible and looking after my own needs? When should I let things be and when should I push for what I want?

Taoist philosophy expresses these dilemmas in the ancient Ying Yang symbol. At almost every second we are faced with the duality of opposites. Unfortunately, there is no formula for finding the right balance. Each situation requires a different mix of seemingly diametrically opposed forces. Some situations require us to be totally assertive and express how we feel. Other situations require us to let go in favour of others’ needs and desires, and at other times a mixture between the two. Every situation depends on our ability to objectively view a situation and discern the middle path. In my experience, the middle path means to find a point of silence from which I observe all the tides of influences and opinion. From that point I clearly see the path I need to take.

Most of us find life a constant juggle in which we try to fulfil many different responsibilities. Firstly, to our family and friends—most of us do feel relationships to be the highest priority. Secondly, our responsibilities in our chosen career. Thirdly, to our other interests, whether they be community service, sport or just our own recreation. Neglecting one can create stress.

The greatest stress does not come from overwork, but from the worry that we are neglecting an area of our life. It’s common knowledge that workaholics who may be brilliant in their field often use work to escape areas of their life they find difficult. Perhaps there’s conflict at home, or even a lack of self-worth. Going to an extreme is usually a sign of covering up a lack in another area. We seem to pursue the things we are good at, but very cleverly create our life to avoid those things that challenge us or we find difficult. A renowned public speaker once told me he had so much confidence in front of a crowd, but when it came to one-to-one communication he often felt totally inadequate, so he avoided it. The result, imbalance!

I took up the practice of meditation when I was just twenty-one years old. One of the wonderful benefits of meditation I discovered was the art of objectively viewing myself, like a member of an audience watching my own performance on stage. As I watched myself I could see how hard I was trying to please others, constantly compromising what I really wanted or needed. It was more important to seek respect from others than from myself. The result ... more imbalance.

So, do I have a responsibility to myself, and what is it? How many of us reach a point where the anxiety of juggling our various responsibilities reaches an extreme. It’s often at this point I reassess my priorities. An Australian social researcher, Hugh Mackay, described the 1980’s as the “anxious 80’s”. He observed that many people were opting for the “inner journey”; a total change of attitude where one begins to look internally to resolve anxiety and extremism. Blaming others and situations is the path of self-deception, but taking responsibility for how I feel is my true path. I neither resist the challenges that life brings me nor am I overwhelmed by them.

But how do we find our point of balance in each situation?

We need to extract ourselves totally from the influence, opinions and even past perceptions and take the ‘helicopter view’. From there we can view the whole picture with clarity. Detachment has always been the mark of great thinkers because it is only when we see the situation as a detached observer can we perceive the real truth. Otherwise our emotions, desires or attachments cloud our clarity. Detachment is so necessary to find true balance, but to many of us it can tend to feel clinical, or lacking in heart. That is why the first and foremost balance is love and detachment.

Love is the greatest need. Those who always express their love with a pure motive will always feel full of love. But to be truly loving we need detachment. When we are detached from others we are not irritated or affected by their actions, so we can maintain our love. Our love isn’t conditional to others’ responses. We are not trading in the business of love which says, “If you do this, only then will you receive my love ...”

Sometimes we have to show total love and support but other times we have to stand back and allow others to stand on their own feet. Here, our detachment can be a form of respect, where they can do without us. Being loving and detached is like a protection from different influences and atmospheres, where others’ moods, inaccuracies and perceptions cannot disturb our clarity.

The practice of meditation takes you into the ‘helicopter view’ naturally. From there you can see the complete picture and become a more balanced person. Some of the areas in which you will find balance are:

Analysis and Acceptance

Some situations require clear analysis, but analysis does not end the matter. The mind repeats events again and again and we try to maintain our objectivity. But acceptance can clear subjective feelings and allow us to get on with life. Acceptance does not mean denial or suppression but a deeper wisdom that realises nothing more can be done. All we can do is take the lesson from whatever has happened and progress into the future.

Humility and Authority

When we have self-respect, our words and actions express humility. Some say they admire humility, yet feel that humble people can become doormats. But true humility is a point of gentle strength and authority. This is self-authority, not an authority that imposes control over others. The one with humility will speak with truth but their authority will not hurt the hearts of others. Others will admire the dignity and self-assurance of such a person. The balance of humility and self-authority is the foundation of a great leader.

Satisfaction and Ambition

Some people are never satisfied. No matter how much they have, they want more. It is a cancerous type of inner peacelessness that never allows them to be quiet and enjoy the present. Others seem to have no motivation to improve on any level. One of the gifts of meditation practice is discovering a deep awareness of our spiritual self and our relationship with God.

This cools down the ambition for recognition, and creates a feeling of fullness and contentment. However, even with this inner satisfaction, there can still be the ambition to improve our own lives and to help others. But this is not an ambition that seeks the approbation of others, but comes from a point of genuine benevolence.

Charles Hogg is the Director of the Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga Centres of Australia.

Instruments of Peace

2009-01-13T03:13:00.000-08:00

The call of this time is a call for peace. In my early morning meditations, I can hear the call of the peaceless world for peace – not just for an end to conflict, but for a deep inner stillness and calm, which all souls remember as our original state.

If we are to find peace, first we must teach ourselves to become quiet and then we can become peaceful. Becoming peaceful means seizing the reins of the out-of-control mind and bringing the runaway thoughts to a halt. Once we have the mind’s attention, we can begin to coax it to take us into silence, a true silence; not the place without sound, but the place in which we experience a deep sense of peace and a pervasive awareness of our well-being.

It is not an empty mind that elicits this state of peace. To move into this state of profound silence, we must train the intellect to create pure, good thoughts. We must train it to concentrate. Our wasteful thoughts burden us. Our habits of creating too many thoughts and too many words exhaust the intellect. We must ask, “How can I cultivate the habit of pure thought?”
Who is it that yearns to go into silence? It is I, the inner being, the soul. As I detach from my body and from bodily things, and turn away from the distractions of the world, I can face inwards to the inner being. Like a perfectly calm lake when all whispers of wind have stopped, the inner being shimmers, quietly reflecting the intrinsic qualities of the soul. Feelings of peace and well-being steal across my mind and, with them, thoughts of benevolence.

I let go of all thoughts of discontentment and am reminded of my oldest, most intrinsic state of being. I remember this inner calm. Though I have not been here recently, I remember it as my most fundamental awareness, and a feeling of happiness and contentment wells up inside of me. In this state I know every soul to be my friend. I am my own friend. I am deeply quiet. I am silent and utterly at peace.

This deep well of peace is the original state of the soul. When I am in this state, I feel the flow of love for humanity and I feel a state more elevated than what I would normally call happiness, a state of bliss. It is when I attain this state that something truly miraculous can happen. When I am in this state of complete soul-conscious rest, I become aware that another energy is beginning to flow into me. I feel strength and a power so expansive, that in this moment I know there is nothing I cannot do, nowhere I cannot reach.

When this happens, I am experiencing the connection with the divine energy and the flow of God’s power into my inner being. If I stay focused inwards, connected with this stream of divine power, even the way I use the physical senses will be different. When I look at the world, I will see through my original nature of benevolence and experience compassion for the world.

It is in this experience that I know what silence power is. It is this power that transforms me inside, making me pure and powerful. When the soul and God are linked together, there is a power that reaches me and then reaches invisibly across to others, bringing about transformation in them, in nature, and in the world.

The secret of this power of silence is that I don’t have to do the work of transformation. Divine power automatically transforms. Let me do the inner work. Let me go deeply into that experience of the original state of the self, and let there be silence so that God is able to do His work through me, His instrument.

How to Take Yourself Lightly

2009-01-13T03:11:00.000-08:00

Brijmohan takes a closer look at the difference between body and soul

A burdened mind may snatch some fleeting, short-lived moments of pleasure, but it cannot experience true happiness. Remaining always light is the key to happiness. In today’s conditions, the ability to take yourself and everything around you lightly is perhaps the number one capability to cultivate. There is a vital need to develop the inner powers to ‘take it easy’, come what may.

It is widely understood that the state of a person’s mind depends upon his attitude to people and objects present and to the events occurring around him. There is also a well-known saying: “you cannot change events, but you can change your attitude towards them.” Yet when actual situations arise, attitudinal change is difficult because of the mind-set already formed.

Attitude is determined by prides and prejudices, desires and ambitions, priorities and preferences, needs and compulsions. These, in turn, are influenced by habits and addictions, learnings and dependencies, beliefs and outlook, whims and fancies and a host of other factors. Pre-dispositions thus formed produce certain mental pulls and pushes which determine responses and reactions to external situations. That’s why attitudes towards the same event vary from person to person. New paradigms are called for to break the old mind-sets and create inner capabilities that can automatically take care of anything that comes your way.

The first fundamental attitudinal change for remaining ‘light’ always is to make a firm resolve to do so. As you think, so you become. The word ‘light’, in the spiritual sense, also means enlightenment that dispels the inner darkness of ignorance, illusion, doubt and confusion. This enables you to visualise things in their true form. As a result, deception is eliminated. Confidence and clarity change conditions of fear and anxiety into those of joy and happiness. From this follows the second attitudinal change: Consider life as a celebration and not as a struggle or war zone. Greetings and good wishes exchanged at celebrations are always a source of great joy and happiness. Likewise, to become a well-wisher of all is the easiest way to make your life a celebration.

At the root of your attitude lies your belief system. The greatest common basic flaw in today’s belief-system is body-consciousness, i.e. identifying yourself with the mortal body instead of the immortal entity called ‘soul’ that you truly are. This identity-crisis is the mother of all other crises. The eternal you—the soul—is a sentient entity, an imperishable point of light. Your original innate qualities are love, peace, happiness and bliss. As long as you remain established in the state of soul-consciousness and use your body as an instrument, you will remain light because, firstly, your very existence is that of being sentient light and secondly, your thoughts, words and actions will be in conformity with your innate qualities.

As it is made of matter, the body and its sense organs can only give sensual pleasures which are short-lived and dependent upon external factors. Body-consciousness leads to adoption of material values which affect the mind, destroying the pristine purity of your innate qualities and, in fact, of the entire thought-process. As a result, jealousy, hatred, anger and other types of negativity lead to unrighteous thoughts and wrongful actions. Negativity produces waste thoughts and increases the number and speed of your thoughts. This dilutes the quality of thoughts, and consequently, the quality of life. Waste thoughts produce attitudinal maladies like doubts, apprehensions, fear, etc. and take away from all the zest and zeal of life. This results in lethargy and laziness. In this way, negativity weakens the mind and it becomes prone to external influences.

Self-realisation or soul-consciousness on the other hand brings home the truth that the soul’s original qualities of love, peace, happiness and bliss are all non-material, like the soul itself. Even the negative traits or perversions like ego, anger, hatred, jealousy or the stresses and strains produced by these vices are non-material in nature. Hence, the required corrective action in this respect has essentially to be taken at the level of your basic beliefs. An inner journey is therefore an essential pre-requisite for enjoying a happy external journey through this life and beyond.

Self-realisation enables you to easily let go of the past. Instead of regretting, it enables you to gain valuable experience from past mistakes and increase your powers of tolerance and patience. When one begins to learn from mistakes, the meaning of the saying ‘everything happens for the best’ becomes clear. Mistakes are not repeated. Attention helps avoid tension. Reduction in waste thoughts improves the quality of thoughts.

Will-power is the aggregate of all your inner powers like tolerance, discrimination, judgement, concentration, and co-operation. The will of a person with a good reservoir of inner powers shall always prevail. Hence, the saying ‘where there is a will, there is way.’ Strong will-power enables you to transform a situation of possible failure into that of success—just as in a game of cricket, a good batsman converts a dangerous looking ball into a four-er or six-er by a mere flick of his bat. Strong will-power not only protects you from adverse outside influences, it empowers you to exert influence on the external environment; much in the same way as rose seed produces fragrant roses even from a heap of foul-smelling rubbish. Zeal and enthusiasm is a natural outcome of success and becomes, in turn, the motive power for further success. Moving from success to success will always keep you in good spirits. This is the formula to remain light and happy under all conditions and circumstances.

How to increase will-power? It is not a physical power to be acquired by any material means. Wasteful and negative thinking have to be eliminated to increase will-power. The dilemma, however, is that they arise when will-power is weakened, whereas it takes strong will-power to destroy them. So, how to go about it? Just as negativity reduces will-power, it is positive thinking that generates it. Inculcation of virtues like humility, contentment, detachment and compassion, a simple life-style, good company, purity of food and becoming a well-wisher of all will help you do that.

Brijmohan is the Editor of Purity newspaper and Secretary of the Rajayoga Educational Research Foundation.

Food for Thought

2009-01-13T03:06:00.000-08:00

Barbara Ramsay reflects on what’s good in food and best in diet.

‘Always read the fine print’ used to refer to mortgages, contracts and important business deals. Now it’s cereal boxes, soup cans and bottles of juice. We stand in supermarkets peering at labels, trying to decipher strange codes with numbers attached, and search for things are ‘poly’ or ‘mono’ or ‘un’. When Linus refused to eat his peanut butter sandwich and Lucy demanded to know why, he looked at her with horror and said, “Look at the label on the jar. This thing is full of ingredients!”

The food pundits have a lot to answer for. They say we shouldn’t eat dairy foods. They cause mucous. Vegies are okay but watch out for the dreaded eggplant. It has the same cellular structure as a cancer cell. A tomato? Well, that’s part of the deadly nightshade family. Follow ‘Pritikin’ and you’ll eat lots of grain before noon. Be macrobiotic and you’ll eat almost nothing else all day. ‘Live mostly on fruit but always cook it.’ they say. Except, of course, for the ones who say, ‘live mostly on fruit, but never, under any circumstances, cook it.’

And it’s not only eating that’s fraught with danger. Drinking is almost as complicated. Hot chocolate is out, after all, it’s made with milk. Coffee? You might as well say ‘arsenic’. Tea is almost worse than coffee because it not only has caffeine, it also has tannic acid. Soft drinks don’t have tannic acid, but they do have the caffeine. They also have sugar, except for the diet type and they’re all mini chemical factories just looking for a stomach to pollute. Juice should be freshly squeezed or it has no nutritional value at all and for heaven’s sake don’t drink it with anything else. Of course, there’s always water, but the stuff from the tap is full of dreadful things and the stuff that bubbles up from springs—well, who knows what’s in the ground these days.

There’s always mineral water, but then the minerals aren’t really all that good for you. Listen to it all and you’ll end up living on distilled water and wind-fall apples and I’m not too sure about the apples.

Then there’s the ‘vegetarian’ question, a subject that has caused many a long discussion with friends. For me, when my daughter was small and we’d just been singing ‘Mary had a little lamb’ and then there were chops for dinner, it gripped my mind and wouldn’t let go. But... if I say I don’t eat anything that thinks, or is conscious, huge debates spring up filled with facts about carrots than scream when you cut them, and questions like ‘how can you prove a fish thinks?’ To save the trouble, I just say I don’t eat anything that has a face. No matter what our food choices or opinions of all the arguments, with all the facts and figures, the speculations and investigations, something very important is usually left out.

Food feeds more than just the stomach and it nourishes more than just the body. Food comforts the heart as well. After all, how many mothers offer a cookie as well as a hug, when a child falls down? When food is given with loving hands, it has the power to soothe a crying child. Even when we’re grown, its power to comfort is still there. In many cultures, when someone is bereaved, it’s traditional for neighbours and friends to bring food to the house. Far more than simply saving the mourning from having to cook, it means ‘I care ... I’m here ... there is life after this’.

Celebrations too, often have food at their heart. We invite people to share a meal as a sign of friendship, and we celebrate birthdays with a cake. And what is nicer, warmer or friendlier than to bake something sweet for people you care about?

Life being what it is, there are lots of special treats for the palate, the tummy and the heart that will never disappear—whether or not they’re good for us—and the most important of these are the things that are made by hand, by someone you know.

Sure, cakes and biscuits from the supermarket, or frozen dinners and tins of things save people lots of time. There’s no reading of recipes or spending extra time in the kitchen or washing up afterwards. But you can’t make them carefully, with love, and they will never fill the kitchen with the good smells of culinary care and cosiness. You can’t serve them still warm from the oven and you can’t bake them with your children.

But there is even more to home cooked food than the way it tastes and they way it smells. More, even, than the act of sharing. Though it’s true that ‘We are what we eat’, it’s even ore true that ‘We are what we think’, for the human mind is a powerful thing. Few people these days would doubt that our minds send out vibrations constantly and that these vibrations effect the world we life in. It’s something that people always seem to have sensed on an instinctive level.

Once when I was small, I remember overhearing my mother talk about a quarrel and the atmosphere it left. “You could cut the air with a knife”, she said. To my child’s mind this was incredibly vivid. I could almost see that air ... thick and kind of gluey. It would be hard to walk against such air, I thought, and impossible to run or skip. For a long time whenever there was quarrel, I looked hard, trying to actually see the air in the room, but I didn’t have to get much older before I understood what she meant.

In the days of the happy hippies and the flower children, people said, ‘Good vibes, man’, or ‘heavy’. It made total sense. An atmosphere filled with antagonism or jealousy or anger is heavy and it does create a feeling you can almost cut with a knife. We all know these things. There are endless numbers of books written on how to use the right thoughts to create your own life, to change it into what you want it to be. Everyone agrees that thoughts are powerful. It is accepted that our moods can affect the atmosphere. And if the way we think affects the vibrations, it also affects the food we cook. Every day we deal with vibrations that we can’t see and yet completely accept. Many of these vibrations travel incredible distances and are picked up so clearly and so strongly that they arrive as pictures and sound, clear enough for anyone to see. The only reason we don’t look at television as a little cosmic, the only reason we don’t view it with scepticism, is because we’re used to it.

With the click of a switch, light happens, and we never waste any time considering how impossible that seems. Indeed, if it depended on our belief, we’d probably still be living in the dark. Some miracles we’re used to and some are simply still new to us.

When we are cooking, our minds are working, minds do that all the time, whether we want them to or not. That’s what our minds do. When we are stirring and rolling and baking, we’re thinking, and thinking creates vibrations, whether we want it to or not, because that’s what thoughts do. If we are thinking positive thoughts, then our vibrations are happy, peaceful ones and these affect the food, so they will affect the people who eat the food.

Except in places where survival is so hard that food simply holds the body and the soul together, the sharing of it has always been part of deeply significant moments ... milestones in life: the wedding breakfast, the christening feast, the funeral feast, the shared feast of thanksgiving that commemorates an older sharing of food between two cultures. Even the words ‘breaking break’ signify friendship and peace. Deeply spiritual moments use food as their coin of passage, whether in the West, where Christ and his disciples shared the Last Supper, or in the East, where worshippers are given food that has been offered in temples, or cooked in remembrance of God.

Thoughts are powerful and the vibrations created by what we think affect Life. If our thoughts are filled with negativity, if we cook when we are angry or upset, we run the risk, like an old wives’ tale, of metaphorically ‘curdling the sauce’. Cook with care, cook with love and know that this is one miracle you have control over ... one miracle you can perform.

It’s in our power to give this miracle, like a gift, to the people who eat what we cook.

It’s in our power to give them food that holds peace and love and warmth and even a little bit of magic.

We must never forget that in the best of recipes, love is the secret ingredient.

Barbara Ramsay is a Freelance Writer based in Melbourne, Australia

Encounters with God

2009-01-13T03:04:00.000-08:00

Author’s bio: Anthony Strano is Director of Brahma Kumaris Centres in Greece, Hungary and Turkey

Anthony Strano explains what happens when we have a direct personal relationship with God and why it is important.

I remember when I was thirteen and I thought, “What am I going to do with my life? I’ve got the energy of youth, the aspirations of youth—what will I do?” I was growing up in Australia, a very free country; you can practically do anything you like at that age. I picked up the Bible and opened it. It opened at the place where God was asking Solomon, “What is it that you would like most of all?” I was surprised. Solomon didn’t ask for more money or a bigger palace or anything like that; he just said, “I would like to have wisdom.”

I thought, “That’s a good thing to ask for, to be wise and understanding.” Further on I read, “Beware of youth! Youth is like the green grass. Today it is fresh and glowing and tomorrow it will be dry and the wind will come and just blow it away.” So I started thinking, “When I’m thirty or forty and I look back on what I have done, what will I say? Will I be happy with the decisions I made?” I remember that whole day, just staying in silence. I always liked silence. It was a mirror through which I could understand many things, not analytically, but I could feel them. I had a characteristic that I never quite trusted my own perception about things. I felt it was easy to delude yourself, so one must always have a point inside oneself from which one is observing.

One Christmas Day, I woke up very early and decided to go into the forest. It was just around dawn and there was an oval fir tree with a lot of dew on it. I was watching it. The sun rose higher and higher and rays of light hit the drops of dew and the wind started to blow. It was a beautiful experience, all those drops of dew starting to reflect many different colors—green and blue and red and yellow—and as the wind was blowing lightly the colors were changing. It was like a Christmas gift to me, nature’s Christmas tree. Then of course the sun rose completely and all that finished. I thought it would be nice to be like one of those drops, somehow able to reflect something hidden, something silent, but also very beautiful.

I began to realize that to have a true connection with yourself, with God, with other people, it is important to keep a very deep faith and a very consistent humility, because the faith in yourself, in God and in other people helps you to go beyond many difficulties, doubts and tests, and makes you confident that—even though you may not understand—there is always a solution. You also need humility to never ever get into the trap that ‘I KNOW’. Always keep the self open, for only when I am open is truth given to the self as a gift. All divine things are gifts; the only effort one needs to make is to position the self in such a way that one is able to receive those gifts. As one receives those gifts they increase as one shares them. But you share them simply as an instrument—not as one who made the gifts. Whether it is of wisdom, of peace, of happiness—those were given, absorbed and shared.

As you read about others’ encounters with God, you find with some that it transforms their life, becomes the foundation of all their life. Others have it but then forget it, and get lost in routine again, lose the awareness, the wonder of that encounter. When there is a genuine encounter with the divine, the human being feels three things—deep transformation, deep insight and great inspiration.

TRANSFORMATION
Transformation is driven by the desire to really change the self, to return to something pure and original that has been forgotten or that has been polluted, and knowing very deeply that if there has been this transformation within the self then certainly one will be in a position to help and co-operate with other human beings. A deep transformation only comes when there is that encounter with God, because what transforms the depths of the self is love. If God remains abstract, as for many people, then there is very little transformation. When God becomes personal and real then one is able to experience the relationship, and it is through relationship that one begins to experience the love that gives one faith in oneself and the courage to change.

INSIGHT
The encounter, which is silent and very personal, often cannot be described. In some ways it shouldn’t be described too much. In the silence there arises insight. Insight is the opening of the third eye and spiritual blindness is taken away—in particular the blindness of being very critical about things and people, of getting lost in weaknesses of others and caught up in trivial things. Insight is where I am able to see the positive reality of others, no matter what their appearance may be, no matter how negative they may appear to be. The insight of someone who has encountered God is to see through God’s eyes, to be able to see others as one’s brother or one’s sister. It is this insight that starts to create a sense of unity and friendship, and a sense of belonging to all.

INSPIRATION
A personal encounter with God also gives me great inspiration. The impossible can become possible. There’s nothing that I can’t do. There is always that support, acceptance, faithfulness from God in His relationship with you. He doesn’t abandon damage or diminish you, but holds you. You are sacred to Him. It is great inspiration when you feel this, not just knowing it intellectually but also feeling it.

From abstract to real, this is something we all have to make an effort for. That comes from going into stillness, silence and listening. When there is this encounter, one’s faith and courage are empowered. There are always tests, problems, difficulties, but one always has that strength to overcome them because one is now able to look and see with another ‘eye’. One sees with an invisible eye, you hear with another ear, an invisible ear. One does not have to see everything ready and tangible in front. I don’t have to see the solution because I know it’s there and it comes at the right time. The person who has a genuine encounter and ongoing experience develops a lot of kindness, generosity, tolerance—but especially non-violence. They never think they are better or superior, or inferior. There is a feeling of equality with others—that others are as good as me, that whatever good I have in my own self, others have it also.

When you have that genuine encounter with God, the vision of universality is restored and there is an attention on personal change and giving. There is never an inflated sense of superiority. However many forget to protect their genuine encounter with God with humility and self-respect. Instead they start to say, “I saw this vision, I saw this light, and I got this message.” So what did I do with the message, with the light? Did I grow? Growth is measured by the respect I have for others and the non-violent attitude towards all things. I accept any differences as something divine and enhancing for the world; I realize such differences do not limit but enrich.

One thing is very important in cultivating our encounters with God. While we have to make an effort in our movement towards God, equally we need to be aware of the point at which to stop, to be still, and be guided. We grow up in the West feeling that we have to create everything, we have to make it happen, that it’s up to us. It is in a way, but it’s not all up to me. Sometimes I just have to position myself. When I first went to learn meditation as a method to get closer to God I had very good experiences of God, which I didn’t expect so quickly. I remember, the very first time, feeling God, not just as the Father, but as the Mother. I had never thought about the Motherhood of God before, but as the rather traditional Fatherhood. I had the feeling of God, my eternal Mother, looking at me sweetly and whispering. “I love you as you are, you do not have to prove yourself. You are what you are and I love and accept that. But, yes, make the effort to change, to awaken the purer part of the self and this will bring you great joy.” Quickly afterwards I felt the Fatherhood of God, like a wave of great gentleness soothing the self. He was definitely not ‘the stern authority in charge’, which I had learnt about in school.

I never felt God was really strict and authoritarian anyway. As well as a Mother and Father, He was a wise and concerned Teacher trying to keep me on the right path.

When I was very young and some adults were upset with me they told me, “God is looking at you and only forgives you 3 times if you are naughty.” I got really afraid because I know l had been naughty many more times than just 3. Everyday, my naughtiness or ‘mistakes’ were in the vicinity of at least 33! because one day I had made a conscious count of my ‘sins’. When you are very young the things you are told impress themselves on you. But deep down I thought, “I’m sure God’s not like that. God doesn’t measure.” God is a Friend. And the blessing of such a benevolent friendship is a true gift from Him.

My own experience with meditation has been that when I step into silence and I tune my mind and connect with this Benevolent Point, this Point of Benevolence for all of the universe, when I can connect to that current, then I fill myself, not just with light, but with deep compassion and understanding. In that compassion and understanding, there is change in the self, attitudes, vision towards others. This is why, when people say God, Allah or Father and then there is a lot of violence in their behaviour towards others, it is clear that they are very far from God. The one who is pure cannot be violent, cannot give sorrow. In silence we have that encounter with the Benevolent One. Then we are able to feel ourselves lifted, our consciousness is lifted and made positive, encompassing, and reconciling with other souls. We feel the joy of being alive, of being a human being. We don’t reject anything and we don’t get attached to anything, because both poles do not keep the balance and the harmony necessary to maintain joy.

When we have an encounter with God we experience God’s Fatherhood, God’s Motherhood and above all God’s friendship, sweet friendship. Yes, the ancient Egyptians were very right, God the Father, the Mother, is the Lord of Sweetness, and it is that sweetness that takes away the bitterness of the past and enables us to experience the power of forgiveness, to let go of things, not hold grudges. When there is that forgiveness for my own self then I can start to realize who I can really be.

This love-filled transformation makes a human being spiritual. A true relationship transforms and frees you, it does not bind and limit. When we encounter God as He truly is, then our consciousness ascends to a level of universality and compassion where there are no barriers of resentment, accusation or fear.

To be able to keep your courage, faith and principles, even in times of opposition, and to keep a kind eye on those who oppose you—this is spiritual! This is the ability to have mercy and compassion towards those who criticize and oppose. It’s not just a question of being stable and strong but having a kind eye for everyone. For that we require the sustenance of a personal relationship with God or else we can’t do it. If I don’t feel that relationship, I can be kind once or twice to people who are negative towards me, but to keep doing it requires a very positive, continuous flow of strength within the self. This is why meditation is important, not just for the self, but also for others. It’s in meditation that I get close to God and experience the power he is constantly offering me. This closeness to God is called bliss. Bliss is an experience that is internal, beyond touch, sight or anything physical and no-one can ever take that away from me. I carry it within myself.

Dying to be Thin

2009-01-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

Jillian Sawers breaks down the myths surrounding diet and beauty and how to break free from the fear of food

In a recent study of high school girls 53% were unhappy with their bodies by age thirteen and by the age of eighteen 78% were dissatisfied. The United Kingdom now has 3.5 million anorexics or bulimics (95% of them female), with 6,000 new cases yearly. According to the women’s press, at least 50% of British women suffer from disordered eating. Dr Charles Murkovsky, an eating diseases specialist of Gracie Square Hospital in New York City, says that 20% of American college women binge and purge on a regular basis. Other statistics show that out of ten young middle class women, two will be anorexic, six will be bulimic, only two will be well. That means the norm is to suffer some form of eating disease. 40% to 50% of anorexics never recover completely while 5% to 15% of hospitalised anorexics die in treatment, giving the disease one of the highest fatality rates for mental illness.

In our adolescence we are warned of the dangers of taking drugs; doctors’ surgeries are full of posters and leaflets giving detailed accounts of the signs, symptoms and dangers of drug addiction. And yet it seems that the diseases of compulsive eating, bulimia and anorexia are even more widespread, and starting at increasingly young ages, can haunt an individual through much of their life. There is no way of measuring the damage to the self-esteem, health, success and happiness of millions of people.

The Beauty Myth
It is no coincidence that the number of people affected by some kind of eating disorder is rising sharply and running in parallel to the increase in beauty pornography. You may not have heard that term, but may have become increasingly aware of its presence. Remember, not that long ago, when the covers of women’s magazines were decorated with the face of one or another pretty model? Suddenly it seems, the norm has become not just the upper body of the model, but very often the model is topless. Just yesterday I was flicking through a magazine in a waiting room, and wondered what product a young model was being used to promote. In all seven of the pictures there she was almost totally naked.

What was she promoting? In her milestone book, the Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf captured the essence of the most powerful illusion which has pervaded modern society—if you are not beautiful you cannot be successful or happy. The beauty myth traps woman in a cycle of self-hatred and self-imposed limitations brought on by the daily consumption of hundreds of images of impossibly beautiful, thin and seemingly happy successful young women. The myth tells us that we too can ‘have it all’ if only we were to invest enough time, energy, will-power and, of course, money into achieving it. Each and every beauty product within that magazine was associated with slim, attractive, naked female forms. For ‘she’ represents the dreams of beauty for millions of women, and the dreams of millions in revenue for the manufacturers of beauty products, diets, plastic surgery and exercise equipment.

There is little point in fighting the irresponsibility of advertisers and manufacturers, for they themselves know not what they do. Their evasions of the issue can be heard in their clichéd claim, “We are only selling what women really want”. But in our search for self-esteem, a real sense of identity and purpose in life, we need to acknowledge the powerful influence of the media in shaping our consciousness, desires and behaviour. Perhaps this is the first step in the healing process.

A journey through a substantial museum or art gallery will reveal a wide range of beauty norms, according to culture and time period. Within the 20th century alone, we have seen the popularity of the boy-like figure of the 20’s, the voluptuous Marilyn Monroe ideal of the 50’s, followed by the pre-pubescent ideal of Twiggy in the 60’s. The goal posts keep shifting. But it seems thinness is here to stay. And this is a goal which takes more than an application of make-up and new hair-do to achieve.

Public Enemy Number One—the Diet!
Enter stage left—the Diet! When someone embarks on a diet, it is not as simple, as restricting food intake, losing weight, maintaining weight. When we enter this mysterious world of dieting we enter into a dream, a promise, maintained by an elaborate set of rituals.

The dieter begins to invest their mental energy in a battle against themselves to attain a weight, which they consciously or subconsciously feel will bring them the confidence, style, love, success and acceptance they desire—a battle that most never win. Statistics reveal that 97% gain the weight lost from dieting, plus some more. Of course we would never conclude that the diet doesn’t work, only that the dieter is suffering from severe lack of self-control or will-power. Just try harder. Yet there are many reasons why diets will never work, and why, if we are serious about regaining healthy eating habits, we need to say a long overdue goodbye to calorie counting, raw carrots and scales.

As soon as someone decides to start restricting their food intake to lose weight, powerful psychological and physiological forces come into play. Naomi Wolf recounts a fascinating experiment at the University of Minnesota. Thirty-six volunteers were placed on an extended low-calorie diet and the psychological and physical effects were carefully documented. The control group were young and healthy, showing high levels of confidence, strength, emotional stability and good intellectual ability. They began a six month period in which their food intake was reduced by half—a typical weight reduction technique for women.

Before too long the group began to exhibit classic symptoms of food disorders: collecting recipes, hoarding food, emotional disturbance, binges, vomiting and self-reproach. Some were terrified to go outside the experiment environment, in case they were tempted by foods they had agreed not to eat. Interestingly, all the volunteers were men, and they were responding in a perfectly predictable, understandable manner.

The Rebel Within
Firstly the body is magnificently equipped to avoid starvation, and at the first signs of impending famine, will slow down the metabolism in order to store fat longer. After some time, the appetite will increase dramatically in order to prompt the food consumption needed to sustain life. Thus the dieter has to work harder and harder against the body’s natural mechanisms in order to lose and maintain weight lost.

On a psychological level also, I can only ignore my appetite, in order to attain the acceptable ideal, for a restricted period of time. Eventually a wonderful psychological magic takes place. The rebel within me, which tires of conforming, which wants to be accepted for who I really am, not an imposed ideal, begins to wreak havoc with my best laid plans for slimming down. Like a child which needs a deeper motive to be good, rather than just fear or reward from the parents to avoid the bad, my deeper inner self rebels against the shallowness of my motivation. It will no longer put up with starvation to look good for the world. It stands its ground, and you head for the fridge.

Normally, heading back to food doesn’t mean adjusting back to normal eating habits; more often it’s a binge, followed by another retribution diet, binge, diet, binge. When you tell someone they can’t have something which is in front of them it produces an unnaturally strong desire for that thing. This is why a dieting mentality produces food obsessions, and eventually when the will is overcome, bingeing. Every time a diet is resumed, it becomes harder to lose weight, because the metabolism becomes less and less efficient.

Although the futility of dieting may be obvious, it’s not so easy to renounce its powerful lure. For years it has held within it the promise of a bright future, and an avoidance of present pains. And although diets have kept us in a pattern of being in tight control and then completely out of control, we fear that if we were to give up trying to control ourselves, then we would be out of control forever, and who knows how fat we might become as a result.

Letting go of the diet
It is important to keep in mind that eventually once your mind and body are convinced that deprivation doesn’t lie around the next corner, they will begin to relax and find their own natural rhythm. So the first step is to give yourself full permission to eat and enjoy whatever food you desire. If the very thought strikes fear into your heart, then this is definitely the advice for you. The longer we fear food, the longer it will control us. We have to face that fear by keeping a wide range of foods available to us all the time, more than we could eat in one or even two sittings. This helps convince our mind that the food isn’t going to run out, so you don’t need to eat everything while you still can. If this still sounds illogical, think of the last time you binged on chocolate or ice cream. Did you eat half a bar, fold the wrapper over neatly and return it to the cupboard for a later date? More than likely you finished the whole thing, plus anything else sweet you could find. Now imagine you are faced with a cupboard so full that you could never finish it, at some point you would have to say ‘enough!’ And you could, for you know that it will still be there later. You may at first find yourself eating huge amounts of food, but eventually you will begin to say enough, much more frequently and sooner. If you find your bingeing doesn’t start to diminish after quite a long period, it may be that you are treating this new approach as yet another diet, and if it doesn’t work, you will go back on a ‘real diet’. If this is the case, your subconscious won’t believe that famine is not around the corner, and it will still want to feast just in case.

It is thoroughly recommended that you throw or at least pack away your scales, so that you don’t panic and rush back to the comfort of a diet, or equally important, if you do begin to lose weight, it is fatal to base your happiness on that. You need to break free from having your happiness dictated by those little numbers on the machine.

It is also important that you start doing all those things you dream of doing when you reach your perfect dress size. Whether swimming, wearing nice clothes, applying for a new job, or creating new relationships, if you postpone living till you are slim then you will never be slim and you will never start living.

Avoid reading women’s magazines for a while. They only trigger comparisons, low-esteem and yet another diet.

Eating to overcome over-eating.

Obviously you can’t expect to eat everything in sight and lose weight. But the first scary step in the process of healing is to start accepting your body as it is now, understanding the reasons behind your inability to lose weight, and to ease up on yourself. To relax at last.

Eventually we have to heal negative eating patterns by replacing them with good ones. This involves listening carefully internally to distinguish whether the urge to eat is a healthy physical hunger or a spiritual, emotional or mental hunger. It can take some practice to clearly make the distinction, because for those whom hunger is often the last reason for eating, the signal for genuine hunger can be very subtle. Once you have recognised that your body needs food, you need to ask your intuition what would satisfy the hunger. Lists of special foods and calorie requirements have often put us out of touch with our body’s own incredible wisdom for knowing what it actually needs. If we don’t satisfy that need, we may eat much more than we require in order to fulfil it. The act of respecting hunger, rather than denying or suppressing it, and then eating what is required, is a great act of self-love. The pleasure of eating from a real appetite and eating what the body really requires, contains a care and sweetness which eventually makes the mechanical, addictive eating experience, where one doesn’t even taste the food whilst eating, seem an empty experience in comparison.

Rules for eating
1. Forget the rules. At least the rules that had you counting every morsel, and feeling guilty for breaking them.
2. Check to see whether you are really hungry.
3. If hungry ask yourself what you really feel like eating.
4. If you realise you are not hungry, but you still want to eat, acknowledge you are comfort eating, and ask yourself what you would really like to eat.
5. Make an occasion out of the meal, enjoy each mouthful.
6. If you do comfort eat, don’t feel guilty afterwards.
7. Try and discover what triggered the need to comfort eat and see if you can find a more appropriate way of dealing with it in the future.

Facing the feelings
There are numerous triggers which can send a compulsive eater to the fridge. Loneliness, boredom, excitement, celebrations, nervousness, rejection, and so on. We can misuse eating to block out these unpleasant feeling in two ways. First, while eating, our occupied mind is given a break from feeling the feelings. And second, after the binge, I can then occupy my mind with bad feelings towards my self, and the weight I am gaining. The original fear or problem which was concerning me has now been transferred to my eating and weight problem. And I feel if only I could have victory over my weight, everything in my life would be perfect. People are often disappointed upon losing weight, to find that their lives haven’t improved greatly. As part of the healing of negative eating patterns, it is vital that we become more sensitive and sympathetic to the state of our emotions. Keeping a diary of your emotions and eating patterns can be useful for this, as can observing your feelings at different times with different people. For instance visits back to old family homes can trigger old feelings and eating patterns because of unresolved anxiety or memories around our childhood or parents. Breathing deeply, consciously relaxing and eating slowly can help us face rather than run from feelings.

Satisfying Spiritual Hunger
Ultimately overcoming overeating is a process for which we need to draw deeply on our inner stock of patience and self-love. Instead of putting a dummy, in the form of food, in our mouths, we must keep asking ourselves, what is the real need, what do I really want? The desire to overeat is simply our inner child crying out for some quality attention. That quality attention can involve asking our inner self questions such as, “How am I feeling? What do I want? Will food give me what I want? Is this emotional or physical hunger? What does the soul need? What do I the soul need to experience or express?”

The search to satisfy this real inner hunger is a spiritual one and the hidden blessing of any addiction is that it ultimately forces us to rediscover our inner self, our true identity and our true inner beauty. This is especially pertinent to eating disorders because of their obsessiveness with body image and food sensation.

The practice of meditation is extremely vital in learning to love and understand the self and ultimately transform negative conditioning. One of the discoveries that one makes in meditation is the difference between the spiritual ‘I’, the inner being, and the body which I inhabit, rather like a costume. Instead of needing external beauty to make me feel valuable, I experience my real inner beauty and strength, and develop a stronger sense of self worth. I find myself maintaining my body out of a sense of love and responsibility for myself, rather than using the body to seek attention and satisfaction. Meditation can also help us discover a deeper sense of our purpose in life, freeing us from more mundane concerns and worries.

Writing affirmations based on the concept of the spiritual self, loving and caring for the physical body, can work wonders, reprogramming old subconscious thought patterns with minimal effort. You can write them, speak them or do both simultaneously. I would suggest twenty-five in the morning and twenty-five in the evening—experiment for yourself. The following affirmations are some of my favourites.

• I have a healthy vibrant body which I treat respectfully.
• I treat my precious body with love and care.
• I am a content soul who treats my body with gentleness and respect.
• I am a goddess residing in my sacred temple with dignity and peace.
Long Term Success

The journey back to physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being is a lifelong one, and a great test of patience for those of us addicted to the crash-diet experience. As a survival kit, you may like to keep the following reminders handy.

What can help?
• Understanding that we aren’t abnormal or crazy, only compulsive.
• Finding new ways to express ourselves.
• Giving up sugar—yes, sugar is an addictive substance and giving it up can often reduce bingeing by 90%!
• Learning more about the interaction between food, the body and emotions.
• Learning new ways to nurture ourselves that don’t involve eating.
• Moderate exercise.
• Wearing comfortable clothes which you feel good in.
• Developing a support system for yourself.
• Keeping a daily diary.
• Doing affirmations daily and meditating regularly.

What doesn’t help?
• Going to doctors, therapists and counsellors who aren’t specialised in the area of eating disorders.
• Dieting, vomiting, diet pills, drinks, laxatives.
• Worrying constantly about your weight or food.
• Weighing yourself.
• Reading the monthly glossies.
• And giving yourself a hard time about anything!

Jillian Sawers is a facilitator, coach, trainer and writer assisting organisations in Europe and Asia to bring out the best in people.

Don’t Take Sorrow!

2009-01-13T02:55:00.000-08:00

Sr. Kiran explains the difference between pain and sorrow, why another’s sorrow is not meant for personal consumption and how to avoid making a meal of it!

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

Having been raised a Christian, the wisdom of the Golden Rule and its derivatives were a big part of my understanding about how one should live one’s life. I also inherited a somewhat dim view of my own worth and a keen sense of my own shortcomings, which meant my worst fear was that criticism and condemnation might be ‘done unto me’. I therefore made special effort to be non-judgmental and forgiving, hoping that would be ‘done unto me’ instead.

Whenever something was done unto me from which I took sorrow, I added it to my inner landscape of low self esteem, for I believed that sorrow was my lot. “Mea culpa” was my subconscious motto. Yet often my immediate feeling was “I don’t deserve this!” Knowing that “as I sowed, so I would have to reap,” I refrained from deliberately giving anyone sorrow in return. However, I was not above silently blaming and cursing the person I thought responsible and secretly wishing them sorrow.

I know that I’m not the only one that does this! How often we button our lips and denounce others in our minds. We accuse and blame through our thoughts while feigning a smile. Or we write the other person off in our ‘book’ and gradually excuse ourselves from keeping their company. We think this doesn’t matter because there’s no ‘hard’ evidence that we’ve actually hurt anyone. We feel justified in our judgment and never consider there may be a price to pay for making it. Most of the time we don’t even realize we’ve made a judgment. Our attitude feels so ‘right’, so correct. When even our close relationships aren’t working very well, we never consider that our own mental attitude has anything to do with it.

My continuing search for wisdom eventually led me beyond the teachings of the Christian faith, beyond forays into many other religious, philosophical and occult studies and onto a more spiritual path on which I have felt at ease for over 27 years. I have learned (and am still learning) that sorrow is not my fundamental lot, but rather a temporary condition which has a beginning and an end. I am gaining an understanding of myself which includes a positive, wholesome vision of my original nature; an understanding which encourages me to accept my shortcomings without negating my value as an individual. Oddly enough, I’ve found that compassionate acceptance of my shortcomings is the prerequisite to moving beyond them.

I wasn’t far along this path before I encountered the slogan, “Don’t give sorrow, don’t take sorrow.” “What strange twist of the Golden Rule was this?” I wondered. The second half of this injunction puzzled me because, whilst I could understand that sorrow would come back to me if I dished it out; whilst I could accept the responsibility of refraining from hurting anyone, I could not grasp how it was possible to avoid taking sorrow. As far as I could see, sorrow just comes unbidden as part of life. I couldn’t see any connection between what I was receiving with what I had done unto others. Isn’t taking sorrow just a natural human condition?

Gradually, two aspects of spiritual knowledge have helped me make sense of the implications of this slogan. The first is a deep understanding of the great Law of Karma, the essence of which is captured in the Golden Rule. I began to realize that even the movement of my thoughts and feelings are subtle actions and reactions, also subject to the Law of Karma.

Gary Zukav, in his groundbreaking book, The Seat of the Soul, explains karma with great clarity:

“Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect. If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect. In this most profound way, we are held responsible for our every action, thought and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention. We ourselves shall partake of the fruit of our every intention. It is, therefore, wise for us to become aware of the many intentions that inform our experience, to sort out which intentions produce which effects, and to choose our intentions according to the effects that we desire to produce...

Every cause that has not yet produced its effect is an event that has not yet come to completion. It is an imbalance of energy that is in the process of becoming balanced.”

Karma works on the principle of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” However, as Zukav describes it, karma is an “impersonal energy dynamic.”

“Karma is not a moral dynamic. Morality is a human creation. The Universe does not judge. The law of karma governs the balancing of energy within our system of morality and within those of our neighbors. It serves humanity as an impersonal and Universal teacher of responsibility.”

Because it is an “impersonal energy dynamic”, it is not a simplistic balancing that takes place, as in “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” or “tit for tat”. This is why trying to “settle the score” does not work. Trying to get even in this way creates additional karma, or, in Zukav’s terms, “another imbalance of energy which, in turn, must be balanced.”

The second aspect of spiritual knowledge that helps me understand “Don’t give sorrow, don’t take sorrow” is the concept of reincarnation, which says that the karmic, energy-balancing dynamic of my journey as an immortal soul continues over time and through numerous lifetimes. This explains why the connection between an effect and its underlying cause is not often apparent to what Zukav calls “the five-sensory” personality or what could be called the ‘body conscious self’. It also means that everything that goes around eventually does come around, without exception.

When I realized that nothing can escape the law of karma, I became even more careful to suspend judgment and prevent negative emotions from developing towards anyone, regardless of what they might be doing. Now, however, I maintain this caution, not out of fear of what others might do to me, but of what I am doing to myself. Gradually I am coming to accept that any sorrow coming to me is the effect of an event that I myself once set in motion; that I am partaking of the fruit of some past intention of mine.

But then, the question still remains, “How can I not take sorrow?”

First let me distinguish between pain and sorrow. That they are not the same is evidenced by our frequent use of the expression ‘pain and sorrow’. Pain is a signal or symptom that tells us something is wrong, that an imbalance is present, and that there is need of healing. It is not the imbalance or the illness itself.

In our culture, we are conditioned to avoid pain at all costs. This is because we haven’t understood pain. By making the pain go away, whether through drugs, alcohol, venting our anger, workaholism or other dysfunctional behaviors, we are merely treating the symptoms and not the underlying cause of the pain. We are in fact suppressing the pain. Anything suppressed or denied builds up pressure and erupts, usually in some far more serious form, sooner or later. It doesn’t matter whether we are dealing with pain in the body, pain in a relationship, pain between the haves the have-nots, or pain between races or nations.

Sorrow is my emotional reaction to pain. It is the depression which can accompany chronic illness; the grief which accompanies a loss, whether it be the loss of face or the loss of a friend. It is the fear and mistrust which follow the pain of being deceived, the righteous indignation which flares when one is insulted, the anger that follows the discomfort of being manipulated.

Healing begins when I accept the pain. Karma is created when I express the sorrow or other negative emotion that accompanies the pain.

Acceptance of pain doesn’t mean invoking it. Nor does it mean simply tolerating it or bearing up under it. It means making a connection between the pain and its underlying karmic cause. In order to heal, I must allow myself to feel the pain, the hurt, not to dwell on it, but to acknowledge and understand what it is trying to tell me. I can alleviate the pain by taking the pills, by sharing or confiding in someone who cares for me and whom I can trust, by working through and transforming my emotions through meditation, counseling or other positive means. But if I really want to heal, I cannot deny it, escape from it, or rationalize it away. And I most definitely will not heal if I take sorrow from the pain by heaping blame, shame, judgment, guilt, anger and recriminations upon myself or others because of it. For in doing so I’m adding insult to injury, harboring grudges and resentments, and further depleting my spiritual vitality.

I can learn to accept pain and heal my karmic imbalances only when I have a strong sense of my worth or value as a human being. At the deepest, innermost level, the way I think about myself, the regard I hold for myself is what determines my spiritual strength and vitality. In order to heal my karmic imbalances I must not only understand the cause and treatment of the imbalance, I must also know how to strengthen myself as a whole being.

“Wait a second”, you must be thinking. “This is all very well, but, doesn’t the one who hurt me have any responsibility? Do I just become a martyr? Where’s the justice in all this?”

The Law of Karma guarantees that we live in a just universe. I must remember that whoever is wounding me is going to get back what he or she is giving out in equal measure—not from me, but from someone, somewhere. Eventually, he or she will unavoidably experience the sorrow that I am now receiving. But does this knowledge make me happier? Does it give me satisfaction? Do I think, “OK you so and so, you’ll get yours one day!” If it does, then it is as if I am wishing upon the person who wounded me the sorrow that I am feeling. We are volleying pain and sorrow back and forth between us like tennis balls. The sorrow that I am wishing on them is eventually going to land back in my court. A better course of action is compassion. Let me instead think, “May they never have to suffer what I am going through right now.” Let us, like Jesus did, forgive them—for they know not what they do. This intention stops the volley and the game.

A deep understanding of karma can give us a perspective which Zukav calls “non-judgmental justice”. Non-judgmental justice is a perception that allows you to see everything in life, but does not engage your negative emotions. Non-judgmental justice relieves you of the self-appointed job of judge and jury because you know that everything is being seen—nothing escapes the law of karma—and this brings forth understanding and compassion. Non-judgmental justice is the freedom of seeing what you see and experiencing what you experience without responding negatively.

If I do not either give sorrow or take sorrow, what kind of person will I become? OK, maybe I won’t be judgmental, but will I become insensitive to others? Isn’t it important to empathize with another’s pain, to experience it as my own? There is a saying “By sharing happiness, it doubles; by sharing sorrow, it halves.” Does it follow that if we all shared each other’s sorrows there would be less sorrow in the world? Well, no it doesn’t. Let’s be honest. Feeling another’s pain does more to make me feel alive and involved than it does to alleviate that other’s sorrow.

Sometimes I take sorrow from what has happened in the past. I remember it, relive it, regret it, remorse over it. You might think this could itself be a way of balancing the energy, but in fact it further depletes it, because I’m not generating anything positive with my energy in the present. Whatever I need to deal with from the past will come up for me sooner or later in the present, so I don’t need to keep going back into the past to recall it. Many faith traditions speak of the dire consequences of looking back. There are far more positive ways to heal. Just as a sick person can change his or her diet and start an exercise program, so also, I can begin to nurture myself with positive thoughts and feelings, and engage in positive, selfless actions. This is a relatively painless way of redressing even long-term karmic imbalances.

Sometimes I take sorrow from things which are not intended to cause me sorrow. Someone inadvertently does something and I start interpreting the person’s actions and building a case against him or her. Then I ultimately judge/decide the case and render the verdict, “He or she is like this or like that”. Learning to not take sorrow also means learning how to be less sensitive or vulnerable, how to not take things personally.

Sensitivity which reflects an irritable or a delicate, easily offended temperament is a sensitivity rooted in dissatisfaction with the self, in low self-esteem. It is this sensitivity which convinces me that I am a victim, which then robs me of self-awareness, transforms my response-ability into reactiveness and renders me powerless.

So how to not take sorrow? Develop a kind and compassionate relationship with yourself, a solid sense of your own value. Heed the messages in your feelings, learn from your pain, accept responsibility for your karma. Forgive others and send them only good wishes and positive vibrations. Let the past be the past, remain compassionate but unaffected by the pain of others, refrain from taking things personally.

In every tradition there are memories and visions of a world free from sorrow. Have the faith that it will some day be a reality, and that we can bring it into being all the sooner by stopping the give and take of sorrow. Let us resolve to give and take only happiness.

Tips to alleviate pain and stop taking sorrow

When something hurtful happens, view the pain as a messenger. Notice your emotional reactions and understand them as something which you caused someone to feel in the past. Love the pain for letting you know, and forgive yourself. Send the person who is hurting you love, forgiveness and pure good wishes.
Be proactive. Be the one who stops the sorrow from going any further. Realize the excellent karmic return that you will create for doing so.
Don’t dwell on the pain, hurtful remarks, et cetera, i.e. watch your thoughts.
Don’t hold painful feelings inside. Let them out in a safe environment where they won’t harm you or others. For example, go to the seashore and fling rocks into the ocean, hike up a mountain and wail at the moon. Or confide your troubles to someone whom you can trust to not be affected by what you say, to not gossip to others or to use it against you.
Get some perspective on your problems by looking at them within a larger framework of reality.
Let the past be the past.
Shift the energy! Put on some uplifting music and sing or dance.
Find something that makes you smile or laugh. Spend some quality time with a child.
Clean out your room, or a cupboard or the basement. Open the windows, let in light and air.
Create some good karma: Give and take only happiness.

Sr. Kiran is the Coordinator of the Brahma Kumaris Centre in Eugene, Oregon

Coping with Negativity

2009-01-13T02:52:00.000-08:00

Sister Jayanti is the Director of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University in the United Kingdom.

Sister Jayanti explains how to handle negativity within ourselves and when it comes from others.

In this world there are so many questions about our future, the environment and population, the financial and political situation, distribution of resources. You only have to pick up a newspaper to realise the world is in a horrendous state. It is easy to become negative. If I want to become negative I can find 1001 reasons to be so. If I allow all these factors to influence me then yes, it is as if 1000 guns were pointed at my head, so I feel extremely negative.

Another factor is the people I am surrounded by; it is very easy to become influenced by their negativity. I may be influenced by people that I work with and sometimes it is their negativity attacking me, then it becomes difficult to maintain my balance, lightness and happiness because of their negative reactions and responses to everything, or it could be my negative response towards them. I might not like the way they talk to me or look at me, so there is a gradual build-up of feelings of being pressured from all directions. So how do I escape?

Even if I were to escape there will be another deep realization—that the problem is not actually the world outside or the people I am with. If I spend a few moments in honest reflection I realize that whatever is going on inside of me is the root of my negativity. This probably won’t bring joy or lightness and may even cause feelings of depression or heaviness because it means I have realized that the negativity is coming from inside. How do I cope with it? First of all, I can try to understand it, and by understanding and realizing it I have gone a long way towards being able to put it right.

I understand that the period of history that civilization is passing through now is a particularly dark one. But it cannot last forever. The condition of the world is horrific but it will change. After the darkness the light will come; night has to turn into day. This will happen in the passage of time; I cannot force the day to come, I cannot force the pace of it so I learn to be a detached observer. I can be part of the movements that will bring the day and not allow things to affect my own inner state of consciousness. This requires a bit of experimentation. I can draw on analogy here: an actor plays a role on stage and is totally involved in all that is going on. Someone in the audience is aware of everything on the stage also but has a different state of consciousness. I have to learn to be both in this game of life. I have to be an actor and an observer. I have to be able to step aside and look at things from a distance. This will bring faith and confidence in the fact that the darkness of night will pass and the light of day will come.

What about the negativity of other people? I know that if I am affected by the negativity of other people then I am going to be plunged into the cycle of actions, reactions and responses over which I have no control. But if I see them, hear them, respect them as human beings and individuals and I understand their point of view, I will not let myself be moved from my position of inner stability. If I can make sure that I remain my own master, their negativity will flow over me and above me and not influence me. I can ask myself what it is that I want and then move in the direction to reach that goal. I can develop the art of detachment, being friends and yet not allowing them to touch me. I can draw on another analogy here: think of the image of a lotus flower. It is found in dirty, stagnant water yet the lotus has a waxy substance on its petals and nothing can touch the surface, the dirt just rolls off. I can create that layer of protection so my inner purity and stability remain unaffected by outside influences. Only in this way can I be true to myself. Otherwise I become a puppet of circumstances and situations that others have created and I am no longer a master of my own feelings and destiny. I learn to have this protection through the experience of detachment and the awareness of God and this will bring a canopy of blessings influencing myself and others around me.

Is there a human being creating a shadow over you? Sometimes I find myself in a situation whereby I am reacting against someone and then it becomes more and more difficult and irritating to manage that individual. I am creating a huge burden for myself which will make it more difficult to live with myself, as well as the individual. If I want to create an environment of peace and love around me, my response of negativity towards anyone becomes extremely uncomfortable for me.

I must try not to allow this build-up of negativity to happen. If it’s happened already, let me analyse the whole process and I will see that it is a subtle form of ego because I think that the way I thank, the things I do and my understanding is all correct and the other person is wrong. So I am constantly criticizing—this will mean a build-up of this negativity. Appreciate that it has come from my own ego and learn humility and respect, recognise the value of the individual and acknowledge the goodness in them.

Everyone has enormous value, I just have to have the right vision to be able to see it. When I start appreciating their value, I will realise the negativity is my own. Yes, they do things in a different way from me but there has to be variety so let me appreciate that. I cannot change them or control them; what I can do is change my attitude and my responses. If I continue to have the vision of love and respect for them I know that through this there is a very good possibility that I can influence them and help them in their change process. If I react against them I will not be able to influence them in the future because my reactions will have set up a barrier between us, thereby making communication very difficult. If I change my attitude in a genuine way—not from diplomacy or artificial courtesy but by seeing their eternal, original divine state—then with genuine respect a good level of communication will arise, and perhaps, at the right time, we can talk about things and a change can take place. But I must not allow this build-up of negativity to destroy communication with them; otherwise walls will have been built up which will be difficult to sort out later on.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for me to come to terms with is the negativity I feel about myself. I see my weaknesses, I see the difficulties I have created, I see the emotional debts I have accumulated and I wonder how it is ever going to be possible to deal with all of this. If I lose hope things will get difficult. Therefore, I do not allow the cycle of negativity to come into being, I do not lose love for myself or negative thoughts will pull me further and further down. As soon as I see that there is the possibility of this negative cycle beginning, I make sure I cut it at that point because cycles are powerful; one weak though and another and another and I am trapped. If I cannot stop it before it begins, it ties me into a knot. Firstly I must see the cause and what needs to be done, and look at the future so I can prevent things from happening; then I take precautions so that it will not happen again. When I recognise myself as an eternal soul, I alter my vision of myself completely. I come back to the realisation of my own original form and feel the divine being that I truly am, and hope returns.

Coming into the awareness of this experience of my own immortality, of ‘I’ the soul, I am able to change my vision completely. I know that in this awareness of being a child of God, I have within myself the capacity for purity, peace and love. If I allow these qualities to emerge and spend a few minutes in silence each day, just letting my mind become detached from all the other things that it’s usually caught up in, then I can value who I truly am. As this stage grows, the influence of this lasts longer each day. As I develop this awareness of self respect and self esteem and I move outside the cycle of negativity that has pulled me down, I make sure my vision, words and actions show this esteem. It is expressed in value and respect for others and from them I get the same response back.

Whilst I lacked esteem I sought support and confirmation from the outside world and usually if I am seeking something it is denied. Only in this state, where I am generating my own self respect within, can I earn respect from others. This is the way I can change my own negative image about myself. When I learn to remove negativity I am drawn by the beauty that positivity can bring and, because I develop a liking for this, I learn to accept positivity and reject negativity. I therefore have a greater impact on the atmosphere around me and the people I am with.

Even one individual who comes into this awareness of making things positive, of learning to deal with things in a positive way, makes a great difference. The heaviness of the world has come about because of the accumulation of all our negative thoughts and actions and the only way we can transform and replace it is through the power of positivity. This enables us to bring about change, firstly in our environment, workplace, family and home which will inevitably reach out and change society. In the state of hopelessness and lack of courage, the forces of darkness grow heavier and stronger.

If I become aware that I am a child of God, a being of light, an instrument of light and I let the light of awareness, wisdom and truth change me, then I can be an instrument to bring light into the world around me. In the state of negativity there is a great deal of fear and ignorance. If I can understand this then the fear is reduced and gradually eliminated and there is greater understanding of the reasons for a negative state of the world and of my karmic connections with other individuals. By understanding all these things light has entered the picture, darkness is removed and I know what to do and how to do it. I have to bring light into the world and in this way darkness will not be able to influence me and I will be able to help remove the darkness of others.

Beauty and the Beast

2009-01-13T02:49:00.000-08:00

Lesley Edwards clarifies the role of self-awareness in building self-esteem.

Building Self Esteem is about deep personal transformation. I do not believe that we can discover our true worthiness without making the effort to change, without having the courage to look ourselves straight in the eye, appreciate what we see and then move on from there.

I was showing a class of 6-year-old children some pictures of the life cycle of the butterfly one day and I asked them how they thought it happened. One little boy’s face lit up and he exclaimed, “I know, the caterpillar has the heart of a butterfly!” What a wise old soul. It is true that if we know within our hearts what we want to become, then we will become that.

A friend of mine recently realized that she was only able to see herself through other people’s eyes. A counsellor asked her how she saw herself, and she replied that people said she was attractive, intelligent, and fun to be with. On being further pushed to say what she saw, she realized with horror she saw nothing, only a reflection of herself in other people’s eyes, and she was experiencing a profound feeling of being disconnected from herself.

It is a frightening feeling when we don’t know who we are. And many of us don’t, or have come to a point in life where we are seriously seeking some clarity. There has never been a time when we were more in need of some simple ancient wisdom—a spiritual as opposed to a material explanation of who we are. For so long we have been caught up in an identity based on external factors such as our job, appearance, talents and relationships. We have looked to other people, situations and circumstances to define us, to affirm us and to be the source of our pleasure. We have lost ourselves by comparing ourselves with others and measuring ourselves against material standards of success and achievement.

To begin to retrieve ourselves from this mess means a change of perception from physical self-awareness to spiritual self-awareness, seeing ourselves as a soul or spiritual consciousness that is beyond form. The natural state of the soul is internal strength and highest expression of the soul is to express that strength in the form of love, confidence, courage, and many other positive qualities. To have our center of gravity firmly anchored in this part of us makes us bigger than the detail of our daily lives, so that whatever challenge life presents us with we can stand firm and solid. It is to have an experience of Self that “brings a feeling of standing on solid ground inside oneself, on a patch of eternity, which even physical death cannot touch …” (Marie-Louise Von Franz).

It’s quite a challenge to work with a vision of yourself that is beyond image!—for your butterfly to have wings of compassion, peace courage and love as opposed to promotion, beauty, wealth and success! Yet I have seen many people meditating for the first time, connecting with this inner reality, breathing sighs of relief and sharing experiences of an inner freedom and lightness they have never felt before.

Of course the real challenge comes in integrating this experience into daily life, for spiritual self-awareness does not mean ignoring your physical, social and emotional world, but using it to give you the will power, the tools and strength to bring healing and change into all areas of your life. Without a spiritual awareness you may find yourself trying to make superficial changes when things go wrong, like putting knick-knacks and decorations over subsidence or putting more icing on a rotten cake—the equivalent of buying more clothes, eating more food, or drinking more alcohol when you feel depressed. Without a spiritual practice such as meditation you may know very well what changes in attitude and behavior would be good for you, but simply not have the energy or power to put them into practice.

The energy and inner strength that is experienced in meditation equips you with the right weapons to fight a non-violent war—weapons such as patience, tolerance, forgiveness, compassion, acceptance and generosity. For however deeply we believe in our positive selves and however real our experiences of our spiritual self have been, this reality will inevitably be challenged. You may believe that you are a peaceful, loving soul, but can you maintain this experience in the face of sickness or criticisms. A spiritual awareness means always being ready with the right weapons, where battle and victory are an opportunity for alchemy. Where there was fear let there be courage, where lies and illusion—truth, where anger—acceptance, where hurt—forgiveness. Attacks will not just come from outside. Our self-image is made up of layers and layers of past experiences in our own subconscious in the form of deeply ingrained habits of negative thought patterns and behavior. Lasting change and healing requires a deep commitment to emerging gold from lead.

When awakened to their spirituality, people typically discover a sense of purpose and meaning in life. This should not just be a fleeting sensation! The challenge is to live every day with a sense of meaning and purpose. Do you understand the significance of the roles you play, the work you do, the talents you have? This is a potential minefield of stress, frustration, and boredom, of unfulfilled dreams and feelings of failure. Yet from a spiritual perspective, whatever you do is presenting you with exactly what you need for your growth and inner change. You may need to be in a situation to learn patience and humility. You may be bursting to change things on an external level but the best thing you can do right now is to change your attitude and perception towards what you do—patiently waiting for a time when the change that will happen is not a reaction against something bad, but a conscious choice to move towards something good.

What does it mean to translate spiritual self-awareness into your relationships with other people? Are you able to love? Do you love yourself enough to love other people? —to know that love is a verb and not something that will be found in the ideal person, or the ideal situation? —to be as committed to seeing gold in other people as you are to seeing the gold in yourself, appreciating how deeply connected those two perceptions are? When our inner resources are weak we cannot take other people’s attacks and defenses, and the easiest thing to do is to highlight their weaknesses as a way to avoiding responsibility for how we are feeling. To be stable in our own spiritual self awareness is to be able to turn things around, so that faced with someone coming from a space of anger, fear or jealousy, I am not threatened but I can disarm their negativity by seeing beyond it to their goodness. To maintain this vision needs a lot spiritual power—when you are tired and low on energy yourself you get stuck in the external appearance of things and it is much easier to blame, criticize, and put others down.

True self awareness is to see and accept the full life cycle of change—that there is the caterpillar, the cocoon and then the butterfly; that the alchemist uses lead to make gold and daylight always follows the night. A spiritual perspective gives an understanding of this complete story, and enables you to view the story from some place “outside of” or “beyond” yourself, without getting too caught up in any part of the detail. It enables you to see weakness and strength with equanimity and stability; to see weakness as a temporary reality but not ultimately part of true identity; to see weakness as the flip side of strength and to always make the choice to move towards the light, to move towards gold and to move towards flight.

Without seeing the full picture it’s very easy to get caught up in a small part of the story. Many people can accept their weaknesses but not their strengths. When asked to list positive and negative things about themselves, the negative list comes far easier and is a lot longer! Maybe it feels safer to stay on familiar ground, “It’s my personality to be like this. I can’t change., I was born like it!” To see themselves in a positive light is to step out of their comfort zone into dangerously unknown territory. I am reminded of children whose only way of reaching out and making contact with others is through physical violence, because that is the only language they know; and whose attention-seeking strategies result in constantly being told off. But they are getting exactly what they want—attention! For those whose early and subsequent life experiences have been characterized by pain and suffering it takes a Herculean effort of will and courage to step beyond this into a language of love.

Perhaps less common but certainly a potential hazard, is when we accept our strengths but go to great lengths to avoid facing and accepting weaknesses. None of us is perfect, and even the greatest souls have a shadow side. And this shadow has to be seen and embraced if we are to keep on growing. Courage can only come from facing fear, compassion from understanding anger. The peace we can experience is only in contrast to chaos. Every weakness is a strength out of balance; a feeling of worthlessness can be humility distorted, and arrogance may be confidence for the wrong reasons.

It is an art to look at Beauty and Beast with equanimity. And the greatest threat to that is fear. Fear is the big distorting mirror. We look in the mirror and see Beast, and stay with Beast because Beast says I have nothing to live up to, and has plenty of excuses for not having to do anything. Or we look in to the mirror and see Beauty and ignore Beast. And if Beast does not get at least a nod of acknowledgement he will chase us, driving us from within the labyrinth of our subconscious, demanding sacrifices—a missed opportunity here, a damaged relationship there. He will rear his ugly head manifesting as projections, denials, excuses and distortions of truth. So Beauty has to fall in love with Beast to turn him back in to a prince. And the only way for Beauty to love Beast is go beyond fear. Look in to the mirror and see beyond Beast and just see light. Light fills you with the love and courage to face and transform your weaknesses and the strength to express your strengths.

Anger Management

2009-01-13T02:35:00.000-08:00

One of the unhealthiest emotions is our old friend anger.

It has been connected with cancer and it destroys our ability to think clearly.

Yogesh Sharda explains how we can manage it better.

What is anger, can it be overcome, and indeed should we even try?

If one were to ask a selection of people what triggers their anger I suspect there would be a wide range of answers.

However one thing I am certain of is that whatever the cause, even a single word spoken in anger can leave an impression on a person’s heart that may remain for a long time, and has the ability to ruin the beauty of any relationship.

A famous sage once said, “How can there be peace on earth if the hearts of men are like volcanoes?” If within the person there can be peace and freedom from anger, only then can they live in harmony with others.

So how can we set about creating that sense of peace within ourselves?

It starts with the realisation that we do have the choice to think and feel the way we want to.

If we look at what it is that makes us angry we might discover there is nothing that has the power to make us feel this way.

We can only allow something to trigger our anger—the anger is how we respond to some event or somebody.

But because we are so used to reacting on impulse, we forget to choose how we want to feel, and then respond inappropriately, leaving ourselves with angry feelings.

Have you ever heard someone saying: “I really hate it when you speak like that to me?” Or how about, “How many times do I have to tell you to do it like this?” One lesson I have learned is that, try as I might, I can never control circumstances, people or situations, as they are constantly changing. The only thing I can control is the way I choose to respond.

Only I can increase my capacity to tolerate; only I can develop my ability to understand; and only I can nurture my love for others regardless of whether one day they praise me and the next they defame me. Modern-day life comes with a whole host of challenges.

In facing these I have come to see every interaction within our world as part of one large drama or game.

And within this drama, every single individual has their own unique part to play, which is essentially an expression of their own inner self.

As I come to accept this, rather than spending my time keeping an eye on what others are doing, I can begin to use my energy to play my own part to the best of my ability.

I realise that I cannot possess or own the behaviour of others, because if I do, this will ultimately lead to conflict. Instead I need to practise the understanding that regardless of whatever action a person may be doing, according to their own part within the play there is some reason why they are behaving in that way.

Therefore I should try not to jump to conclusions too easily; and rather than trying to control another person’s behaviour, it will be far easier and more productive for me to focus my energy on my own actions.

So what is so wrong in judging in their actions? There is a danger that if we become too concerned with their activity, we may begin to feel anger toward that person, which may lead to dislike for them. We put them into some kind of box, and fix a label on them.

Then whenever we come into contact with that person, we will see him or her in the light of their past mistake.

But in doing this, we are effectively imprisoning them in their past actions.

However if we allow the person the dignity of actually growing out of their own mistake—if our vision allows them to do that—then, sooner or later, it is possible for people to change.

This concept of life being a drama can help us to detach ourselves from what’s happening around us, and this detachment or space is of great help in learning not to make judgements so quickly about others. If we create a small space, a healthy space between ourself and the drama of life, we find that that space acts like a buffer.

Neither will we jump out and grab someone’s throat, nor will the drama of life be able to suddenly grab us unawares.

This is one of the many benefits of practising meditation. It helps us to create personal space within ourselves so that we have the chance to look, weigh up the situation, and respond accordingly, through remaining in a state of self-control. When we are angry, we have no self-control.

At that moment we are in a state of internal chaos, and the anger can be a very destructive force.

It is often said that anger can be a useful thing. People say, “Look at all the problems in the world, surely unless someone got angry about it nothing would happen?” It reminds me of the story about an old man sitting by a river and talking to a group of his disciples.

His hand was stretched out behind him and an insect came crawling along and bit him badly.

As it did so, it slipped and fell into the river.

This old man looked behind him and saw the insect struggling in the river, so he picked it up and placed it back on the ground.

A few minutes later, the same insect crawled over to his hand and bit him on the finger, and again slipped over and fell into the river.

The old man looked round, picked it up, and placed it back on the ground.

When this happened a third time, one of his disciples said to him, “Master why do you do this? The insect bites you and yet you save it. Why do you not let it drown and it then it won’t be able to bite you?” He replied “It is in the insect’s nature to bite, it is in my nature to save”.

Similarly, someone’s nature might be to criticise, or to backbite, or even to challenge us.

Yet that is completely out of our hands. We can only do what it is that we have to do.

We can’t justify a negative action by saying, “Oh well, you do the same thing too.”

If we say that, then we are saying, “I will only grow and change when you decide to grow and change, it’s in your hands.”

But can growth ever happen like that? If we wait for each other to change it is likely we will be waiting an extremely long time.

Sometimes anger is used as a kind of self-defence mechanism, a sentry guard standing outside the fortress walls of our inner selves. When anybody tries to attack or criticise us, anger pops up and demands, “Who do you think you are? Look at you!” Anger reacts.

Anger is the emotion which tries to hold all the other illusions together. If anyone tries to attack what we believe in or care about, anger comes out to chase them away. This is an example of using anger to protect our simulated self, our sense of ego.

However, by recognising ourselves as spiritual beings, and through the awareness and experience of the beauty of our true nature, our dependency on other people’s approval reduces as we rediscover an inner stillness and stability.

Thus the need for anger as our protector is eliminated.

This form of stability can create a firm foundation, a kind of positive stubbornness. Others can say whatever they want, and it may also be true, but we don’t lose our peace or happiness for any reason.

This is to respect what is eternal within each of us. We give ourselves the opportunity to maintain our own peace of mind, because let’s face it, no-one’s going to turn up at our door with a box full of peace and say, “Here, I think you could do with some of this today!”

There is a particular story about Buddha which illustrates an important principle. Buddha was under the tree of enlightenment when someone who had heard that the Buddha was an enlightened person came along to test his self-control. He came in front of Buddha and started swearing at him, calling him all the names under the sun and yet there was no reaction. Some time later this person got a bit tired so he went off and had a rest and came back and had a second go.

He abused Buddha’s family and hurled every insult he could think of but there was still no reaction. He grew very tired and so asked Buddha, “I am defaming you every way I can think of, and yet you do not say anything back at me”.

Buddha looked up at him and said, “If someone gives you a gift, but you don't accept it, then who is the gift left with?”

This highlights a crucial insight. We have a choice. If we have taken sorrow from someone, we cannot blame the other person and say, “It’s your fault, you spoke to me like this”.

We recognise that we do have a choice in every moment. We can use our intellect as a filter to decide what we are going to allow to enter, and what we are going to prevent from coming inside and affecting me.

Broadly speaking, there are two methods which people suggest one should try and deal with anger. Some say if you’re feeling angry, then be angry as a way of expression—let it out.

And indeed, at that moment we do become free from the anger, because we have let it out.

However, as we deepen our understanding and experience of the way in which our consciousness works, we realise that the more we do something, the deeper that habit becomes. So tomorrow we will find it easier to become angry because we have already done it today.

It is like a smoker trying to give up cigarettes. When he feels like smoking, he smokes, and so he doesn’t feel like smoking any more. Nice idea. But instead of removing that desire, the act of smoking has only temporarily fulfilled it, and the habit has taken an even firmer grip such that tomorrow the desire will be even stronger.

So expression doesn’t transform the habit or feeling.

Another suggestion people might make is that you should suppress anger. If you feel yourself getting angry, stop yourself, suppress it. But this is the pressure cooker situation.

I just get more and more heated up inside until I explode! I can only ever suppress for a certain period of time.

And actually when I am suppressing, I am really pushing those fears and emotions into my subconscious, from where they will emerge in another form, rather like weeds.

But there is a third method, which could be described as sublimation, or the changing of form. Through the daily practice and application of spiritual principles in our practical life, the experience of our own inner peace can become a very natural.

In this way, just as the form of water can be changed from solid to liquid to gas, so too the energy which was previously being used to express and feed anger, can also be changed to the force behind the expression of determination or courage instead.

Rather than being angry with someone to prove a point, we can learn to be assertive. Assertiveness contains respect for oneself, whereas anger shows respect for neither the self nor others.

Only by ridding ourself of anger can we become free to experience the peace of our true spiritual nature.

There is a story about Alexander the Great, as he was about to return to Greece from India. Since he had been told to bring a yogi back with him, he went searching into the forest.

Eventually he found one sitting under a tree and quietly sat down next to him.

After some time, the yogi opened his eyes. Alexander said to him “I want you to come back to Greece with me”.

The yogi just looked at him. Alexander continued, “If you come with me you’ll have your own people to attend to your needs and you will be well known throughout the land”.

Yet the yogi explained that he had no desire to go. So the exasperated Alexander drew his sword and shouted, “Do you not realise who I am, I am Alexander the great conqueror and if I want I can cut you up into pieces!” The yogi smiled and replied, “You have made two statements, neither of which is true. Firstly you cannot cut me into pieces; you may be able to injure my body, but I am the eternal soul, deathless, immortal. And secondly, you say you are Alexander the great conqueror, but may I tell you that in fact, you are nothing more than the slave of my slave”.

Alexander put his sword out to him and demanded the yogi explain himself.

The yogi said “I have conquered anger through the process of meditation, and yet look how easily anger gets the better of you. Anger is my slave and you have become the slave of anger.” I never did find out what Alexander did to that yogi!

Yogesh Sharda is a teacher of meditation and spiritual development currently based in Istanbul as a co-ordinator of the Brahma Kumaris Centre there.

Extremely Busy People Learn Meditation

2009-01-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

More people are living, but fewer are choosing, life in the fast lane. The need to restore balance, find inner peace and replenish spiritual power can be satisfied by some form of daily meditation. Sister Jayanti, an extremely busy person in her own right, presents the how to of meditation and ways that meditation can help to take the stress out of busyness.

I wonder how well I know myself. Sometimes I really do wonder because I surprise myself at my own reactions and responses in certain situations. I wish I could have behaved a little bit differently. It’s one of the indications that tell me that I need to know myself a little better. In a materialistic world everything carries values in terms of matter. So often the value that I have placed in myself has also been associated with external factors, the possessions that I have, the property that I own, the position and profile that I occupy or the position that others give me. Very often I see myself in compartments, just simply in the way that others see me. What is it that you see when you look at me? Instantly the inner computer begins its calculations and we connect with each other in terms of our face, our colour, our skins, our features, our age, the profession we work with and yet, when I begin to think about it, I question this and wonder whether external factors tell me anything either about myself or about you. And I begin to be aware of things that are actually not material at all, nothing to do with my external form or external situations and these are the things that I actually value and appreciate about myself.

I look inside and I become aware of things like my feelings, my emotions, my thoughts and I begin to wonder which bit of me is really me. It’s important that I learn to separate two identities, the material identity, that is the physical form, and the inner reality of my thoughts and feelings. It’s important to know things in terms of the external, but much more important to know that which is under the surface, that which is below the skin, and when I focus my attention inside, on my inner being, that’s when our journey begins.

Coming into this inner space and finding what’s happening in my own inner world is actually an adventure as marvelous as the adventures of outer space. Where is it that my thoughts and feelings emanate from? As I begin to allow my mind to be quiet I discover that the source of life, the source of energy that I am, is actually just a spark, a being, a point. I am not 5 feet tall, but I am just a point of light. In our language we use sometimes this expression ‘my soul’, or ‘I have a soul’ and yet this is not true at all—the reality is that I am a soul, I am this point of light. And operating from this consciousness creates a total change in my awareness. In this awareness, knowing who I am, I am able to step beyond all those limits that the physical body has imposed on me. So often I have said “I can’t do this, that or the other”, and yet none of that is reality. I am this eternal being of light. I am being of light, I am actually a being of love; these are my natural qualities, and coming back to this awareness means that I’m able to go beyond all barriers, all boundaries. I am able to find that inner freedom of the self. In this awareness of knowing who I truly am, I’m able to manage myself.

Sometimes we question whether the original state of the self is that of goodness. And yet peace is that which is totally natural for me, and so I know that it is a state that belongs to me. I don’t need to attempt it. It is there within me. In a life in which one is very busy, if I know how to turn my attention just for a moment, to this point of light that I am peace is instantly accessible. When I find that inner peace, it’s like the recharging of the battery and then I am able to accomplish all that I need to accomplish on the external level. If I can even do this for one minute within every hour I would find that the other 59 minutes are able to flow very, very smoothly.

My own being of peace inside also means I have power inside. I am able to find my own inner strength. We use this word ‘empowerment’ a great deal and yet empowerment cannot come to me from anyone else outside, but empowerment which comes from within means that it’s a strength that stays with me forever and ever. Wherever I go, whatever else it is I do, this power is that which I carry within my own being.

Let’s experience a few minutes in which we use this concept so that you can actually see how it works for yourself.

Sit quietly just letting the body be relaxed, preferably both feet on the ground and your hands folded quietly. Let your breathing become natural and slow. You can keep your eyes open. (In fact it is preferably to do so, so that this awareness becomes a natural stage of awareness for you.)

I focus inside and I watch what’s happening inside my own inner world.

I see many thoughts flickering on the screen of my mind and I can consciously choose which thoughts to have.

I choose the thought of peace.

I visualise a point of light and in this awareness of peace I know that this is who I am.

I am a being of light.

I am a being of peace.

My thoughts slow down and I savour the beauty of peace within, as my inner world is filled with peace.

I am also filled with light.

I can feel the clouds of confusion receding and as this light becomes bright I can feel my own inner power growing within.

My own being is light, is might, is peace.

Having forgotten myself I had forgotten these original and natural qualities of mine, and now that I know who I am, all these qualities naturally belong to me again and in this awareness I radiate light, peace and might.

And now I let my thoughts come back to the awareness of the physical body that I occupy and the situations in life that I find myself in today, but now I come back with an outlook transformed with an attitude which is very different.

Coming home in this awareness of I the soul, the master of this physical instrument, this precious body of mine, I know now what it is I have to convey through my eyes, through my lips, through my actions, I know the direction that I have to move in. My vision of others has also been transformed. I don’t put them into boxes anymore. I am able to see them as external beings, as souls. I still carry on with those things I need to do, but now having created that original eternal world also, there is clarity in the way which I think; there is understanding and empathy in the way I behave with others; there is power in my actions so that my actions lead to the right conclusions; and positive results emerge in my life and also the lives of others around me.

I compare this to the state I was in before, a state of chaos and confusion inside, and so little wonder that there was chaos and confusion in the world around me. Managing myself means to know that I am the creator of my own inner world. I’m able to be the creator of the world around me. Managing myself means finding my own dignity, finding my own state of self-respect so that I’m able to stand independently on my own feet. We surround ourselves with so many different supports and are unable to manage without those supports. But now that I know who I am, I carry my own stage of self esteem and of course when I value my self, I value others around me. In a state of self-respect that respect extends out to others. Managing myself means I’m able to move with stability in which I bring calmness to the world of chaos around me. The peace that I have means that I can begin to create a little oasis of peace around me. The light that I have means that illusion and darkness no longer touch me. The power that I have means that I can truly be free.

Om shanti. Om means I am, shanti means peace. I can turn back to this awareness at any moment and again be a master of myself.

Sister Jayanti is the Director of the Brahma Kumaris in London. This article, originally published by BK Publications (www.bkpublications.com) in Retreat Magazine #10, is an extract from her opening presentation in a series of audio presentations entitled Meditation for Extremely Busy People.

Self-Realisation And Karma

2009-01-12T15:14:00.000-08:00

Self-realisation is the recognition and understanding of the soul's actions and reactions. Unless we have a deep concern for this we cannot progress. We must see if an action is beneficial and channelled into the service of others. For then it is of service tot he self. If we do happen to perform some harmful action, our knowledge and yoga will give the power to change, and to realise 'past is past'.