Daily Vows for Spiritual Growth

MONDAY:
The law of spiritual life is: Find fault with no one. Condemn no one. Criticise no one. Look down upon no one! But continue to pour the love of your pure, passionless heart on all! Remember the words of the Lord in the Gita: "I am seated in the hearts of all!"

TUESDAY:
Be content with whatever God has given to you. trust everyone, and

 never tire in your efforts to reach the Supreme!

WEDNESDAY:
Be careful in the choice of your words. If your words are sweet and gentle, wise and true, people will seek your company. If your words are irritating and hurtful, you may appear to be clever and smart, but people will shun your company. Practice Non Violent Communication..

THURSDAY:
This is what I wrote in the "Diary": There are so many wonderful things which money cannot buy -- character, friendship, goodwill, love, sympathy, empathy, compassion, gratitude, righteousness and above all, the grace of God! If I were asked to choose between these and all the things which money can buy -- I would surely prefer the former!

FRIDAY:
All emotions, in the end, must lead to frustration. All intellectual reasoning, in the end, must lead to confusion. If we want enlightenment, peace, happiness, Joy & bliss, we must rise to the spiritual.

SATURDAY:
If you are hard on others, life will be hard on you! If you are gentle and kind with others, life will be soft and kind to you! You get what you give. Therefore give the very best of which you are capable!

SUNDAY:
There is so much suffering in this world. It is a call to everyone of us to do what we can share to alleviate this suffering. The greatest privilege of life is to become an instrument to help and healing to everyone in this world in which human and non-human misery abound.

Dada J.P. Vaswani 

How To Listen

Some people think that because they have ears, they can sit and listen. But it is not the ear that listens or even hears. One must be a listener to make his ears hear. If the listener is absent, if he is occupied, or if his hearing is ob­scured, he will never hear, even if you play drums next to his ears.

Listening and hearing is a science and a great art. One must have the needed equipment, but he must also be able to use it artistically and creatively.

Let us take the equipment:

1.      clear hearing and healthy ears

2.      a healthy, sound brain

3.      a clear consciousness

4.      focus or concentration

5.      calmness and serenity in emotions

6.      power of memory and recollection

7.      hearing with the mind and intuition

It is known that people listen through the body where their focus of con­sciousness is. For example, if they are materialistic-physical, they hear things related to their body and that body gives them the final translation of a conver­sation. If they are emotional, the emotions translate and respond to the dis­course. If they are mental, their approach will be mental, depending upon their mental condition.

Even our needs, wishes, dreams, and aspirations have a powerful effect on what we hear.

There are three requisites for listening:

1.       You must understand the words.

2.   You must be able to duplicate them with your own words without in­troducing changes in meaning.

3.       You must be able to see the significance of the speech, which lies be­yond the words and the meaning of the words.

This means you must have a threefold listening, listening to: the words the meanings the significances

In other words, you must have physical hearing, mental hearing, and sub­jective hearing.

The three above points that the speaker hints at are the subjective side of his speech. Influential speakers have a good way of using words with their proper meaning...

Listening is an art and it is a science. Good listening makes you a good speaker.""

The Science of Complaints

The Science of Complaints

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Some people, because of their inner insecurity, express lots of complaints about the environment, about people, about the weather. this discourages people and directs their consciousness to unpleasant events existing in their environment.

A real person must never complain but instead try to analyze, observe, and encourage people in spite of conditions.

The atmosphere created by complaints can be highly toxic and flammable. Its affects the auras of people and slows down the centers of his immediate co-workers. Dark forces search for complaining people to destroy organizations.

Complaints sap the energy of co-workers and orient them negatively. They need, cheer,joy, positivity, courageous manners and attitude, not complaints.

Complaining also creates friction with the laws of nature and with the law of karma because nothing happens by accident, nothing happens outside of the law of karma. in the atmosphere of complaints no “flower”  flourishes. it has been observed for centuries that complaining destroys health, happiness, success, and prosperity, and builds a wall between the higher world and the lower world. complaining leads to isolation.

Complaints impress on our mind that the effort of analysis, examination, or observation is hopeless, and you develop a rejecting attitude when life presents you with unpleasant events or conditions which are observed as such because of your psychological conditioning or education.

Complaints   prevents  your horizon from expanding and limits it to negative imagery.   Complaints  affects the imagination and thought form building process. every complaint turns into a thought form through imagination, and time comes that he complaint is surrounded with negative and ugly thought forms and the person cannot free himself from their influence. Because of this his creativity decreases and his clear thinking slowly vanishes. The complainer becomes the victim of his complaints.

 Instead of complaining you can study the events as if they were necessary part of life, teaching you lessons that you missed.

Complaints obscure the pathways of inspiration and the joy of touching higher worlds. Complaints create a psychic fog and even a cloud through which one cannot see the reality of superior values or register the flow of impressions so vital for the growth of the soul.

Every time you think of complaining, focus your heart on gratitude and observe. Complaints emanate waves of energy through ones voice, but the energy waves do not go into space. They turn inward and fills ones aura, thus creating psychic congestion.

Compiled by G.Srinivas Reddy,

Mentor,

Swadhyaya Yoga,

Hyderabad.

Mental States

There are 9 mental stages which characterize stages of our development. They are:

1. Dullness
2. Agitation
3. Mechanical reflection
4. Concern
5. Engagement in problems
6. Thinking
7. Deeper thinking
8. Higher thinking
9. Creativity

These nine stages of mind gradually develop in us through our striving. They are characterized by:

1. Dullness, inertia, involvement in maya, carelessness, apathy, depression, indifference
2. Agitation of the senses which demand pleasure, satisfaction, food, dress, shelter, transportation
3. Mechanical reflection, following instincts, following orders, commands, thoughts, or desires of others, following the ideas and opinions of the masses
4. Concern about business, life, wife, husband, children, future
5. Engagement in problems such as food, health, money, housing, war, pain, suffering
6. Starting to think on our own, trying to solve our own problems, trying to protect our body, family, future, and finding the ways and means to do it
7. Deeper thinking, seeing the causes of many events, trying to find the laws controlling life in general, trying to prevent destruction, transmuting energies to higher centers
8. Higher thinking, coming closer to the Hierarchical Plan, cooperating with the Law of Hierarchy, finding the laws controlling the astral and mental worlds, receiving impressions from higher sources and formulating them to meet the needs of life
9. Creative thinking, bringing into existence those forms which will allow people to surpass their difficulties and their present level, come in contact with beauty, energy, love, light, and joy, and find their way toward superhuman evolution

We can prepare for higher mental states by exercising: 

1. Discrimination
2. Dispassion
3. Self-control
4. Desire for liberation

Discrimination is thinking in relation to the Plan or the Purpose, or in the light of the Plan and Purpose. Discrimination is not only knowing but also choosing the factors that are in harmony with the Plan and Purpose.

Dispassion is the ability to insulate oneself from the influence of self-interest, the influence of objects and persons, and think in_the_ clear light of the consciousness.

Self control is the ability to control your personality and life with the purpose of your divine Self.

Desire for liberation is the urge to stand above your physical, emotional, and mental worlds and act by the intuitional light.

- Torkom Saraydarian [Thought and the Glory of thinking].