Practical Wisdom – God Helps Those Who Help
Themselves
- A Sultan asked an astrologer to
tell something about his future. The astrologer said: “Your highness will
live long to see all your sons dead.” The Sultan was enraged and ordered
the astrologer’s arrest and imprisonment. He consulted another astrologer
on the same point. This second astrologer said: “Your highness will enjoy
a long life and outlive all your family.” The Sultan was highly pleased
and gave him rich presents. Both the astrologers knew the truth, but the
latter knew the Sultan.
- ‘God helps those who help
themselves.’ But we have to help ourselves in terms of God’s law which
requires that we sacrifice ourselves in every one of our acts in such a
manner that our acts help in exceeding the lower personality by degrees,
and approximating God’s existence.
- What you have enjoyed yourself and
what you have given over to others in charity or as gift is really yours.
Everything else is of doubtful nature and you are merely a protector
thereof.
- In your dealings with another
person, try first to think through the feelings of that person and then
try again to overcome the limitations of those feelings by rational
methods of approach. This will avoid much of the unnecessary tangles in
which social life is caught up every day.
- Do not keep anything which you will be afraid of
showing to others.
Do not do anything which you would not like others to know.
In spiritual life secrecy has no place except in regard to one’s sadhana (spiritual practice). - “Even this will pass away.” This
is a good maxim to remember that our joys and sorrows are not permanent,
and that we should always be therefore unattached and hopeful of a better
future.
- We can judge ourselves as to the
spiritual progress we make by the extent to which we are free from seeing
defects in others. The wider we grow, the narrower becomes the eye which
sees defects in the world.
- When we come in conflict with
things, we are likely to think that the things are against us. But this
would be like imagining that a stone is against us because it is thrown at
us by someone. The things and circumstances are only instruments in meting
out our dues.
- Often, what matters most is not
the words that are said but the way in which they are said. People either
bore or irritate others with what they regard as wisdom, when it is
wrongly uttered or expressed at the wrong moment or told to the wrong
person, though the intention behind it may be good. Judgment of
circumstances is necessary to bring about the requisite result. Else
effort may become a waste or even harmful.
- The distance between you and God
is the same as the extent of your desire for the world.
- Our joys and sorrows are just
sensations or experiences and cannot be called either good or bad, even as
we cannot say whether the heat of the sun or the coldness of water is good
or bad. Goodness and Badness of things are personal evaluations of
situations which are themselves impersonal.
- Often it so happens that our
contemplation on a vice which we feel we have and which we wish to avoid
leads us more deeply into it until it is too late to recover from the
shock of this knowledge of the fact about us. It is better not to think of
a vice, even if we have it, and concern ourselves only with positive
virtue and spiritual conduct.
- “Love all, but trust a few” is a
good policy in social dealings. To trust a few is, of course, not to be
suspicious of everyone, but to be vigilant in every case, even when things
are entrusted to others for execution or when some situations are involved
in other personalities. One should not trust even one’s own self when the
senses are in the proximity of their desired objects.
- Dirt is matter out of place. Weed
is a plant out of place. Nuisance is action out of place. Even those
things, acts or words which are normally good and useful become bad,
useless and even harmful when they are out of place, time and
circumstance. Knowledge of this fact is an essential part of wisdom.
- Material amenities and economic
needs and the satisfaction of one’s emotional side are permissible only so
long as this law and order of this eternal truth of the liberation of the
Self in universality of being regulates their fulfillment.
- The temptation from the evil one
comes, first, in the form of unsettled thinking which makes one
immediately forget the Presence of God. This is at once followed by the
implementation of the evil move, whether in the shape of passion or anger.
When the deed is done and the matter has ended, the remembrance of God
might come in, but it rarely appears in the presence of things which we
either love or hate.
- They say that procrastination is
the thief of time, postponing a work which needs to be done immediately.
There is no use committing the same mistake again and again and resolving
every day to avoid it, but with no success. Something positive has to be
done with strength of will.
- Where either the question of
self-respect or sex is involved, the spirit of service goes to the winds.
- When you have inadvertently done a
wrong, switch on the situation, person or thing involved to the Absolute
and concentrate on the former as an inseparable part of the latter. The
wound shall then be healed and the determination to refrain from repeating
the act shall make you stronger than before.
- That is wisdom which can reconcile
itself with actual life. When the realities of practical life conflict
with or stare at the knowledge we possess, it should be remembered that
such knowledge is immature and is a mere theory. Moreover, it is not
knowledge ‘of’ life that we need; we require knowledge which ‘is’ life,
and is inseparable from its daily vexations. We have to view ourselves in
a Universal context and then live life, not look upon ourselves as
individuals who have to be at war with the world in our everyday life.
- Thus did a wise man pray: ‘Give me
the will to change what I can, the strength to bear what I cannot, and the
wisdom to know the difference.’ This is the secret of worldly wisdom, that
which decides the nature of one’s success in life.
- The vision of God seems to be as
far from us even now as it was many years back, and there is no proper
yardstick with which the progress made on the path can be measured. There
is much difference of opinion as to this matter among wise men, and the
wisdom of one does not seem to tally in all details with that of another.
Perhaps self-confidence, coupled with goodness and an immense capacity for
adjustment, as well as continuous delight, form a good touchstone.
Continue to read:
Practical
Wisdom – Part I from “Thus Wakens the Awakened One” by Swami
Krishnananda
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