Anger

“Suppose you have a weakness of getting angry easily. Now, what you should do is this: Once you become normal again, go and sit in the family shrine room if you have one, or sit in solitude; then regret and repent your own anger and sincerely pray to your beloved deity or to Mother Nature, seeking help to get rid of it. Try to make your own mind aware of the bad outcome of anger. When you are angry with someone, you lose all your mental balance. Your discriminative power completely stops functioning. You say whatever comes into your mind and you act accordingly. You may even utter crude words at your own wife or children, or your own father or mother. Once you lose your discrimination you may even kill someone. By acting and thinking with anger you lose a lot of good energy. Become aware of this great truth, that these negative feelings will only pave the way for your own destruction, and sincerely try to put forth effort to overcome them.”

~ Amma

Amma

Fighting the wounds of the past will only deepen those wounds. Relaxation is the method that heals the wounds of the mind, not reaction.

~ Amma

Meher Baba on Karma

This is how Meher Baba describes karma (in Vladimir Stojakovic’s book):

The Sanskaras (impressions or accumulated imprints of past experience) deposited by specific actions and experiences render the mind susceptible to similar actions and experiences; but after a certain point is reached, this tendency is checked and counteracted by a natural reaction consisting of a complete change over to its direct opposite, making room for the operation of opposite sanskaras.

A person soon realizes the incompleteness of the experience of one opposite, and unconsciously seeks to restore the lost balance by going over to the other opposite. Thus the person who has had the experience of killing will develop a psychological need for and susceptibility to getting killed.

In killing another person he has appreciated only one portion of the total situation in which he is a party, namely, the part of killing. The other complementary half of the total situation, namely, the role of being killed, remains for him an unknown, which, nevertheless, has introduced itself in his experience.

Thus there arises the need to complete the experience by attracting on oneself the opposite of what one has personally undergone, and consciousness has a tendency to fulfill this new and pressing need. The person who has killed another will soon develop a tendency to get himself killed in order to encompass the entire situation with personal experience.

Like the shuttle of a weaver’s loom, the human mind moves within two extremes, developing the warp and the woof of the cloth of life. To use a geometrical metaphor, the development of our psychic life is best represented not as a straight line but as a zigzag course.

The amount of oscillation becomes less and less as the individual approaches the goal, and it completely subsides when he realizes it.

Amma

“Never ask for anything, never demand anything. Let Him decide what to give and what not to give.”

~ Amma

Prarabdha

According to the prarabdha of the jiva, the Supreme makes the jiva act until the prarabdha comes to an end. Efforts made will be a failure due to prarabdha; even in spite of obstructions, the prarabdha will bear fruit. Therefore remain silent without trying to oppose one’s prarabdha is best.

– Sri Ramana Maharshi  (Guru Vachaka Kovai, v. 1190.)

Helpless

You will also be tested by God for your sincerity and patience. He will make you utterly helpless and watch and see whether you have devotion or not?

– Swami Chidananda

Surya

The Shrutis have said that Surya can be worshiped as Vedasvarupa (of the form of the Vedas). Worshiping Surya is an integral part of our Dharma.

– Sri Sri Bharati Tirtha Mahaswamigal

Place of Patience

“When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me and without pain.” – Rumi

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit this week. Voids exist within us and they arise of their own accord. There is no need to “run after what I think I want.” Instead it is much wiser to be inwardly still and remain in one’s own “place of patience.”

Voids are self-healing if left alone. But most of the time we scratch that itch and it just gets worse. The void gets reinforced and the value becomes more elusive.

Voids are like complaints. They are misperceptions that get recorded on some level of our being. Complaints are uncomfortable and eventually we just want to speak up and get them out.

If your partner starts expressing complaints then very often the best thing you can do is just to listen. Allow it, be present, and don’t try to fix anything! The moment you get involved with the expression of the complaint – whether to fix it or fight it – the healing stops. But if you just let it arise without interference, then it will resolve itself and harmony will be restored.

Unfortunately, most people have no “place of patience” within them. Instead, life is a “furnace of stress and anxiety.” In many Eastern traditions the “place of patience” is the primary goal because it allows complaints to arise and self-heal. It comes with regular meditation.

Voids are resentments. They are a rejection of something. When that rejection ceases then the thing you rejected “flows to you without pain.” Try to get the thing you are rejecting and it keeps running away from you. This doesn’t mean you do nothing to achieve your goals, rather you occupy your place of patience as you go about your business. Then you act from a place of contentment instead of the furnace of stress and anxiety.

God

A true Bhakta never quarrels about the nature of God. The name or form that you assign to God is of no consequence to him, for he knows that name or form is not His essence. They exist for the sake of the particular bhakta inclined towards it and the divine essence is the same across all names and forms.

– Sri Sri Bharati Tirtha Mahaswamigal

Joy

If traits could speak I’m sure they’d say, “You are not seeing the real me. I am more than this. Please look past this label and see the whole me.” It’s a request and when it is fulfilled the result is a moment of relief and gratitude.

It’s like a fish that’s been out of water being returned to the water. In that moment of contact with the water there is relief, gratitude, joy, presence, feeling at home, feeling connected, but then it quickly normalises and those feelings go away.

I contend that this experience may be had anywhere with anything. Whenever the senses come into contact with an object, the object asks to be seen fully. Just like people, objects want to be seen beyond the limitations of their traits and labels. For example, the perception of green is an invitation to reconcile with its opposite – red. Since we can only see green in contrast to a perception of red, the red is already there. It’s already inherent in the experience – only it’s buried in the subconscious.

When our intuition is functioning strongly and its reconciling power is active then there is little or no distance between the outer perception of green and in the inner perception of red. This is a real-time collapse and it means that you can experience joy, love, gratitude, relief, presence, etc, simply by looking at the world.

This means that everything is asking us to wake up. The sound of water going down a drain, the breeze touching your skin, the tooting of a horn. All these things have their concurrent complementary opposite and if you listen closely to the object, with the presence you would give to a lover, with certainty that nothing is missing, then your intuition may close the gap and the object will rejoice in being seen and joy, love, gratitude, etc, will arise spontaneously.