MAKE OTHERS HAPPY
Are we utterly selfish, or do we see the needy as a nuisance? A selfish man can have no peace. On the other hand, if we are selfless, if we serve others without motive, we will feel great peace and fulfilment at once. Sincere and motiveless service yields pure joy. Let us make others happy, we will begin to delight in their happiness. This is something which is open to everyone to experience.
We are to serve others in a small way or a big way as is given to us. But we must serve without thought of reward or recognition. We must serve for the sake of service. We are to engage in service at every turn, whenever opportunity offers itself.
LIMIT YOUR ASSOCIATIONS
Let us stick to a few tested friends. Do not multiply acquaintances. Do not try to become intimate with everyone. Familiarity breeds contempt. It disturbs emotions and ultimately upsets the peace of mind.
NEVER ARGUE
Never argue, never enter into an argument. Why do you want to win an argument? It offers us no tangible benefit. It will only inflate our self-pride, bruise the ego of other men and lead ultimately to friction between friends. Let the other man hold his opinion. There are incorrigible idiots in this world
who can never be convinced or made to be reasonable. In other words, we should not become mad ourselves in trying to resist a mad person. On this, we should remember the popular story of the man having his bath in a river. The mad man picked up his cloth and fled. Without thinking it twice, the purportedly sane man who was having his bath jumped out naked and chased after the mad man to recover his cloth. The poser this created was, who was more insane between the duo?
We are accordingly advised not to waste our time and energy on ill-minded people. We will suffer exhaustion and earn enmity. Worse still, people may not be able to distinguish between the mad and the sane, once the sane descends to the level of the insane.
Positively, we are to do all we can to minimize life’s tragedies, but we should not worry an iota. Each individual is governed by his past karma (or call it retribution) and no one has the power to alter anyone else’s fate by so much as a hairbreadth. Even when ‘a’ seems to be helping or harming ‘b’, it is God (nay, it is ‘b’ previous karma) who is working through ’a’ and not ‘a’ himself. Once we have understood this, we will not worry about others or about ourselves. Worry saps energy and wastes time. It is timorous and Lilly-livered. The man who worries displays ignorance of spiritual laws.
GAIN GOD’S FRIENDSHIP
No one is interested in you. We are to remember this point well. Therefore, we should not expect the world to rush to our 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 oppose you, you will succeed. But if we lose God and gain all the world’s support, we will yet fail. It is far better to aspire to gain God’s friendship. It is the greatest wealth. Once we have that, peace of mind is ours. We now have everything. Fear has fled. Anxiety has disappeared. See God in all. Feel united in spirit with everything. We are not separate from the rest of the creation. God is just another name for that mysterious life principle in us. Call it life, call it consciousness, or call it existence. This mysterious principle is all-pervading, eternal, and 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, corniness and selfishness which are all the hallmarks of a degraded man. Feel one with all in spirit. Our life will begin to move along the right lines. Our spiritual evolution will be rapid. We will have all the peace of mind that we want.
OBEY THE WILL OF GOD
Learn to accept, accept every happening in our lives as the will of God. “O Lord! Thy will be done” – let this be our only reaction to every twist and turn in life. God is our real friend. He gives various experiences – good and bad – only to mould us, chisel us, and shape us into effective instruments 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.
Have no individual ego. You can do this only if you recognize the existence of God and the will of God imperatively. Learn to see the absolute supremacy of God’s will over all human initiatives and endeavours.
HUMILITY IS NOT WEAKNESS
In the actual sense, humility is not weakness, it is strength. The more humility, the greater the accretion to strength. Our lives will flow smoothly, and because we offer no resistance to God’s will, there will be no friction, and there will be no failure too because we do not attempt to achieve anything by
our own choice and will. Our lives will turn out to be tremendous success. Because God’s wisdom and strength will enter the vacuum of our being, having been emptied of our egoism, it will be filled in the same manner as air rushes into a vacuum and fills it. This is the law.
BELIEVE UTTERLY IN THE UNREALITY OF THE WORLD
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, and indeed the whole world should blend into their plans. We must not try to extract enjoyment from this world. It is as silly as trying to extract nectar from a cobra’s fangs!
There are times we will have to contend with disappointment, frustration, failure, and misery. Therefore, we are to see the world for what it is. The world is made for our experience, for our evolution. We are meant to grow wiser and spiritually richer with every experience. Experience is education. It is only a fool who thinks that this world is made for his pleasure.
MEDITATE
Most importantly, to assist our peace of mind, let us spare time regularly in meditation. Apart from other advantages, meditation calms the mind and induces elevation of the soul. We should start our day with meditation and end it with it. We must not just wake up and hit the road like the animals do, without appreciating the one who has given us the privilege of another day. If we start our day with meditation, throughout the day, the tendency enhanced by the early meditation will persist in our minds all day. Our minds will be less extroverted, while the centrifugal tendency shall be largely curtailed. Finally, let us learn to live in the will of God. On this Christ said in Matthew 6 vs 27 to wit; which of you for taking thought can add a cubit unto his stature.
Further to this; We are to believe the sage that has described the world as a bubble. All the seers of yore have proclaimed in no uncertain terms, that the phenomenal world is only a dream world. And that our phenomenal experience is only a dream experience. In unison the advanced souls expounded thus;
KING SOLOMON DESCRIBED THE WORLD AS VANITY
Christ admonished: lay up your treasures not upon the face of the earth, but in heaven where thieves cannot break through nor moth corrupt, for where lie our treasures, there our heart will be. St. Kabir taught: nothing survives the ravages of time. Everything shall pass – only the word of God endures forever. Tusli sahib, a Muslim saint, echoed: kalamiillahi which is another name for the word of God is your only true friend, everything else is impermanent.
THE GREAT BUDHA EXPOUNDS: LET GO THE WORLD AND LET IN THE LORD
We are to remember, they said all these, only after personally experiencing the unreality of the world, and the reality of pure consciousness. They were no fools, nor are we wiser.
Ipso facto; when confronted with a bitter experience, we are to tell ourselves: “This is unreal. We are all pure consciousness. We are, because we are all spiritual beings, merely in the world to undergo the human experience. This is for the simple fact that the Lord God dwells in us all. May the world of God find expression in us.
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