Monday, June 16, 2014

(June 16,2014) Spiritual Message for the Day – Positive Aids to Peace of Mind (Part 4) by Sri.N.Ananthanarayanan



 Positive Aids to Peace of Mind
Divine Life Society Publication: What the River has Taught Me by Sri N.Ananthanarayanan

Never argue. Never enter into an argument. Why do you want to win an argument? It offers you no tangible benefit. It will only inflate your ego, wound the other man and lead to friction between friends.

Let the other man hold his opinion. There are incorrigible idiots in this world who can never be converted, who can never be made to see sense. Do not waste your time and breath on them. You will only suffer exhaustion and earn enmity.


Have no expectation. Because expectation leads to anxiety and often to disappointment. No expectation, no disappointment. Whatever you are destined to enjoy or suffer, you will enjoy or suffer. Neither you nor anyone else can add to, or take away from, your quota of enjoyment or suffering. Knowing this, why should you waste your energy and time in anxiety? Forget the past. Have no thought for the future. Live in the present. To the best of your ability, discharge your responsibilities as they present themselves before you. There is a God to take care of the results.

Some people say, "I do not care what happens to me. But I am worried about others." This is another kind of ignorance. Those who say like this are deceiving themselves. Do not worry about your son’s madness or your daughter’s running away with someone. By all means, do all you can to minimize life’s tragedies, but do not worry an iota. Each individual is governed by his past Karma (despite all the ‘rationalists’ in the world) and no one has the power to alter anyone else’s fate by so much as a hair-breadth. Even when A seems to be helping or harming B, it is God (nay, it is B’s previous Karma) which is working through A and not A himself. Once you have understood this, you will not worry about others or about yourself. Worry saps energy and wastes time. It is effeminacy. The man who worries betrays ignorance of spiritual laws.


No one is interested in you. Remember this point well. Don’t expect the world to rush to your rescue in every bad situation. It will just not happen. Be up and doing, with faith in God. If God supports you and all the world opposes you, you will still succeed. But if you lose God and gain all the world’s support, you will yet fail. Gain God’s friendship. It is the greatest wealth. Once you have that, peace of mind is yours. You now have everything. Fear has fled. Anxiety has disappeared.

See God in all. Feel unified in spirit with everyone and everything. You are not separate from the rest of creation. God is just another name for that mysterious life principle in you. Call it Life, call it Consciousness, call it Existence. This mysterious principle is all-pervading, eternal, one without cause and effect. Feel happy. Think, talk and walk in a manner befitting the grandeur of thy inner Being, the God within you. Shed all meanness, crookedness, cunningness, selfishness which are the hall-marks of a degraded man. Feel one with all in spirit. Your life will begin to move along right lines. Your spiritual evolution will be rapid. You will have all the peace of mind you want.


Each day when you get up in the morning, pray to God for just two minutes. Surely you can afford that much time for your Creator every day. "O Lord! Use me today for working out Your Will in whatever way You deem fit. I make myself hollow and lay myself at Your disposal." In the morning before getting up from bed say to yourself: “May the course of my life today become an offering unto Thee, my Lord!" If you say that, and remember your prayer to the Lord throughout the day, you will think twice before indulging in wrong act or taking a false step. Rather you will like to fill the day with as many good deeds as possible so that there may be more flowers in the garland that you offer to the Lord at day’s end.

Accept every experience in life as it comes. Do not grumble. Do not grudge. Do not feel sad. Do not feel glad either. Rest serene. If you gloat over something, you are inviting trouble. There is always action and reaction on the relative plane. Remain serene always. Serenity is superior to boisterous giggling and laughter and the so-called happiness which only hides sorrow for the moment.


Learn to accept. Accept every happening in your life as the Will of God. "O Lord! Thy Will will be done"—let this be your only reaction to every twist and turn in life. God is your real friend. He is your greatest well-wisher. He gives various experiences—good and bad—only to mould you, chisel you, shape you into an effective instrument for the working out of His Will. Allow yourself to be shaped by His divine hands. Abandon yourself to His care.

Do not struggle. Do not oppose. Allow yourself to be tossed by God’s Will. Become a straw in the cosmic wind. Have no individual ego. This you can do only if you recognize the existence of God and the Will of God imperatively, only if you learn to see the absolute supremacy of God’s Will over all human initiative and endeavour. Humility is not weakness. It is strength. The more the humility, the greater the accretion of strength. Your life will flow smoothly, because you offer no resistance to God’s Will. There will be no friction. There will be no failure too, because you do not attempt to achieve anything by your own choice and will. But your life will turn out to be a tremendous success, because God’s wisdom and strength will enter the vacuum of your being,  emptied of your egoism and fill it in the same manner as air rushes into a vacuum and fills it. This is the Law.


The fundamental mistake that people without peace of mind make is to imagine that the whole world is made for their enjoyment and that everything and everybody in this wide universe should subserve their individual ends and that the whole world should bend to their plans. Do not try to extract enjoyment from this world. You will meet with disappointment, frustration, failure, misery. Rather know the world for what it is. The world is made for your experience, for your evolution. Grow wiser and spiritually richer with every experience. Experience is education. Experience is the greatest teacher. It is only the fool who thinks that this world is made for his pleasure. Says the scripture: Anityam Asukham Lokam. Asasvatam Duhkhalayam (Impermanent and joyless, verily, is this world). Read your scriptures with respect. Ever remember their teachings. Live by their teachings. There is no other way to peace of mind.

Lastly, believe utterly in the unreality of the world. Believe, because all the seers of yore have proclaimed in no uncertain terms that the phenomenal world is only a dream world and that phenomenal experience is only a dream experience. And remember: they said that only after personally experiencing the unreality of the world and the Reality of pure consciousness. They were not fools. Nor are you wiser. Even when confronted with bitter experience, tell yourself: "All this is unreal. I am Pure Consciousness. I am God."

Harih Om Tat Sat

Excerpts from:
Positive Aids to Peace of Mind (Part 4) - What the River has Taught Me by Sri N.Ananthanarayanan           
 
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