Is it not the goal of Christianity to produce a human being who is a fully realized, spiritually matured, good and warm-hearted person? Yet all religions fall short of this goal. In the Christian context, by living life in an ethically disciplined way, based on tolerance, love and patience is in much more effective than having only prayer as your main practice. If you pray but then do not live according to that prayer, it is of no benefit. One thing I can conclude is that we cannot rely on religion itself to solve one’s personal problems or achieve greater wisdom. The question is what do we do with the present moment? Yet we all too easily conduct our lives day by day as if forgetting that our lives unfold only in moments. We momentarily lose touch with ourselves and with the full extent of our possibilities. If we are not careful, those clouded moments can stretch out and become our lives. Over time we may lose confidence in our ability to redirect our energies in ways that would lead greater satisfaction and happiness, even to greater health.
Life is as easy as we make it to be, and discipline is the basic tool
required to solve life’s problems. How do people’s religions develop? What
determines a person’s particular world view? The most crucial factor in the
development of the religion and world view of most people is their culture. We
tend to believe what people around us believe. But less obvious is the fact
that the most important part of our culture is our family. In other words, what
we learn about the nature of the world when we are growing up is determined by
the actual nature of our experience created by the behavior of our family. Problems
arise from a perceptions and views which developed in our childhood but inappropriately
transfer into the adult environment. People that never take this leap remaining
psychologically the children of their parents, living by hand me down values
motivated by parent’s approval and disapproval; Even long after parents are
dead and buried and never taking destiny into their own hands. To a child a parent
is everything. They represent the world. A child will assume that the way his
parents behave is the way to behave, not perceiving that other parents are
different. Children who lack love and care enter adulthood with no such sense
of inner security. Children that are loved and cared for enter adulthood with a
deep-seated feeling that they are loved and cared for as long as they remain
true to themselves. Love and discipline go hand in hand. Uncaring parents are
people lacking discipline and when they fail to provide their children with a
sense of loved. They also fail to provide them with the capacity for
self-discipline. As kids we develop strategies to survive and “fit in.” We want
to belong and do the best we can to belong. Sometimes we did what we believed others
expected of us, rather than what we wanted. They continue to act this way long
after their teen years. The only limitations are those we impose in ourselves.
Individual experiences of pain, suffering, pleasure, and happiness are often, to a degree, creations of our mind. Despite material advances in our world, humanity faces problems which are of our own creation. And is our mental attitude, our outlook on life and the world-that is the key factor for the future, the future of humanity, and the future of the world. The fact that our religion or world view is initially largely determined by our unique childhood experience brings us face to face with a central problem: the relationship between religion and reality. We have a situation in which human beings, who must deal with each other, have different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his or her own view to be the correct one since it is based on personal experience. To develop a religion or world view that is realistic, we must constantly revise our understanding to include new knowledge and incorporate current information. To develop a broader vision we must be willing to leave our narrowed vision and give up outworn knowledge. Our religion must be a personal one because our parent’s world view will be narrower than that of which we are capable if we take full advantage of our personal experience. You must face the process of establishing your own values and making your own decisions. We are only conscious of a small percentage of that wisdom. The unconscious part of our mind may communicate through our dreams when we are asleep or when we are awake through idle thoughts. Our unconscious part of the mind is wiser than we are about everything. For example when you are reading a book and come across an idea or theory that appeals to you. We recognize it to be true. Yet this idea or theory is one of which we have never consciously thought. We “re-know” the concept as if we knew it once upon a time, forgot it, but we are only discovering something that existed in our self all along. The knowledge of rightness inherently resides within the minds of all mankind. God is the possessor of all Knowledge. This suggests that God is within us all along. We are possessors of the knowledge all along! One of the reasons we don’t take advantage of our unconscious knowledge is that we are not fully aware of its presence. We don’t find valuable things because we fail to appreciate the value of this gift.
Spiritual growth is the evolution of an individual. Life offers us unlimited opportunities for spiritual growth. The process of spiritual growth is an effortful and difficult one. This is because it’s conducted against a natural resistance and inclination to keep things the way they are. Each one of us has his or her urge to grow and prosper, and each of us, in exercising that urge, must single-handedly fight against his or her own resistance. What is this force that pushes us as individuals and as a whole species to grow and self-evolve? I don't know, but I do know that the strength, energy, and willingness to grow comes from love. It is through love that we elevate ourselves. Love is too large, too deep to be fully understood or measured. We are incapable of loving another unless we love our selves, just as we are incapable of teaching others self-discipline unless we ourselves are self-disciplined. We cannot be a source of strength unless we nurture our own strength. Everyone in society desires to love, but desire to love is not itself love. Desire doesn’t necessarily translate into action. Will, is desire of sufficient intensity that translates into action. So what is Love? Love is an act of Will, both an intention and an action for the purpose of nurturing one’s own and another’s spiritual growth. Love is the miraculous force that defies the natural law of resistance. Love, the extension of the self, is the very act of evolution. It is evolution in progress. Where does love, or the force of evolution come from? There is a hypothesis that there is a God who wants us to grow. Then we must ask why? What are we growing towards? All of us who really think about it eventually come to a single terrifying idea: God wants us to become as itself. We run away from this idea because it places upon us such a burden and responsibility. Because if we believe in it, it then demands from us all that we can give. It is one thing to believe in a God who loves us and another in a God who has it in mind for us that we should attain his position, his power, his wisdom, his righteousness, his identity. We as humans do not want this obligation. We do not want to work that hard and this brings us face to face with our own LAZINESS. If we can believe that Godhood is an impossible attainment for ourselves, we don’t have to worry about our spiritual growth or push ourselves to higher levels of consciousness and inner happiness.
Laziness is love’s opposite. No matter how energetic, ambitious, or even wise we may be, if we truly look into ourselves, we will find a level of laziness. Laziness is the force of resistance with in us, pushing us down and holding back our spiritual evolution. A major form that laziness takes is fear but while all fear is not laziness, most fear is exactly that. Fear is an impediment to self-growth. Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience. Falling in love is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience. The experience of falling in love is temporary. Falling in love is not an act of will. In a relationship two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other. Love is independence. Dependent people are interested in their own nourishment. But no more; they desire filling, they desire to be happy; they don’t desire to grow, nor are they willing to tolerate the unhappiness, the loneliness and suffering involved in growth. Neither do they care about the spiritual growth of the other. In relationships couples eventually always fall out of love. It is at this moment that their love begins to be tested and will be found to be present or absent. Commitment and communication are especially important in a genuine loving relationship. Couples cannot solve problems without the security of knowing that struggling over issues will not itself destroy the relationship. Communication is how we say what we say. People do not respond to what you are saying, but how you are saying it. There is two ways to confront someone. The first is the way of arrogance with spontaneous and instinctive certainty that one is right. The second is the way of humility through self-doubting and self-examination. Any genuine lover behaves with self-discipline and any genuinely loving relationship is a disciplined relationship. If I genuinely love another, I will obviously order my behavior in such a way as to contribute the utmost to his or her spiritual growth. To attempt to love someone who cannot benefit from your love with spiritual growth is to waste your energy. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but seeks to cultivate it even at the risk of separation or loss. The person who genuinely loves does so because of a decision to love. When we love another, we give our attention. When we love ourselves, we address our growth. In a relationship love is a two-way street, whereby the giver also receives, and receiver also gives. Value begets value and love begets love.
Let us also analyze the nature of evil. First, evil is real. There are people and institutions made up of people who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and will destroy the good as far as it is in their power to do so. Doing this not with conscious malice but blindly lacking awareness of their own evil. As described of the devil in religious literature, they hate the light and instinctively do anything to avoid it, including attempting to extinguish it. They will destroy the light in their own children and in all other beings subject to their power. Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it reveals their badness. They hate love because it reveals their laziness. They will destroy the light, the goodness and love to avoid the pain of such self-awareness. Ordinary laziness is non love, evil is anti-love. Truly evil people actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves taking any action in their power to protect their laziness. If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth and will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them. Evil is inevitable in life. On one hand the evolutionary flow of love, on the other, evil. Since they are conflicting forces, it is natural for evil to hate goodness as it is for goodness to hate evil. It is natural that these forces will be in balance in most humans. People often are not aware of their own religious or world views. If you desire wisdom greater than your own, you can find it inside you. If we just choose right over wrong and spread love and concern for humanity, it gives a sense of inner peace! From my understanding there are Seven Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins. Practicing these Virtues to protect one against temptation from the Seven Deadly Sins, with each one having its counterpart. To an extent, we consciously or unconsciously enact this Virtues and Sins every day.
CHASTITY opposes LUST
ABSTINENCE opposes GLUTTONY
CHARITY opposes GREED
DILIGENCE opposes SLOTH
PATIENCE opposes WRATH
KINDNESS opposes ENVY
HUMILITY opposes PRIDE
In this world, being good is boring and being bad is exciting. We relate happiness to freedom. We’re accustomed to believing that freedom brings happiness, but with freedom comes great responsibility and to be responsible requires self-discipline. There are things on this world that offer excitement are not morally good and yet we catch our selves doing them. Why do you think that is? Self-discipline is self-caring. Feeling valuable will make our time feel valuable and will want to use it wisely. Good discipline requires time and patience. Discipline also requires balancing which is not only a demanding but also a complex task, requiring both flexibility and good judgment. Life is a continuous and never-ending self-examination. A spiritually evolved individual is an extraordinarily loving individual and with this extraordinary love comes extraordinary joy! If we examine the relationship between mind, or consciousness and body, we see that wholesome attitudes, emotions, and states of mind, like compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness, are strongly connected with physical health and well-being, whereas negative or unwholesome attitudes and emotions such as anger, hatred, disturbed states of mind- undermine physical health. We can see that the person who has a tremendous reserve of patience and tolerance has a certain degree of tranquility and calmness in his or her life. Such a person is not only happy and more emotionally grounded, but also seems to be physically healthier and to experience less illness. Most times people make decision with little awareness of what they are doing. They act with little understanding of their own motives and without beginning to know the ramifications of their choices. With total awareness of the nature of a situation, of our motives for acting upon it, and of the results and ramifications of our actions, we have attained that level of awareness that we normally expect only of God. Yet those who have attained this stage of spiritual growth, this state of great awareness, are possessed by a joyful humility. We experience a surcease of loneliness. There is another problem with awareness and knowledge, aloneness. A person who has evolved to the highest level of awareness will have no one with whom to share such depth of understanding. It is such a burden that we could not bear were it not for the fact that as we outdistance our fellow humans, our relationship to God inevitably becomes correspondingly closer. Some people don't believe in God so... Let’s talk about faith. What is faith? In the dictionary faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing; Belief that is not based on proof. To me, meditation is a way of faith. One of the major aims of meditation is an inner transformation; from an undisciplined, untamed, unfocused state of mind to one that is disciplined, tamed, balanced and compassionate. Without acts of faith to nourish and challenge our lives we feel less alive, less whole. When meditation becomes an important part of your life, you will experience a sense of being touched, a sense of being transformed from within. Faith must be grounded in reason and understanding. An individual should be open-minded. When you are in that state of openness, you can reason, and through reasoning you can develop a certain understanding. When that understanding strengthens, it gives rise to a conviction, belief, and trust in that object. Then, that faith, trust, or confidence will be very firm because it is rooted in reason and understanding.
Human beings share the same goal. We all seek happiness and do not want suffering. There are two ways to create happiness: The first is external and it comes to us when our circumstances are pleasant, and we are free from troubles. By obtaining money, better shelter, clothes, and friends we can find a certain measure of happiness and satisfaction. The problem is that this kind of happiness is fleeting and superficial. When circumstances change- as they inevitably do- this kind of happiness evaporates. But there is another kind of happiness. This second kind of happiness is a lasting inner joy and peace that survive any circumstance. It’s a happiness that endures, no matter what comes our way. Oddly, it may even grow stronger in adversity. The happiness for which our hearts ache is one undisturbed by success or failure, one which dwells deep within us and gives inward peace and contentment, no matter what the surface problems may be. This is the happiness for which our Souls cry out and search relentlessly. This second one is through development of the mind, which yields inner happiness. Inner happiness is more important because if something is missing in your heart, then despite the most luxurious surroundings, you cannot be happy. However, if we have peace of mind, we can find happiness even under the most difficult circumstances.
As we navigate through our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves. The feeling associated with giving up something close to us is depression. Bad dreams, anxiety attacks, depression or any other depressive symptoms are all MENTAL ILLNESSES. These symptoms are a message from the subconscious mind to the suffering individual to initiate self-examination and repair. If someone experiences these symptoms it means all is not right and need major adjustments. The illness exists long before the symptoms. Most reject this gift and do not heed the message to avoid the suffering. We procrastinate, ignore, and pretend they do not exist. People take drugs to avoid dealing with these problems but this substitute itself becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it was meant to suppress. Taking responsibility is a major step towards spiritual growth and inner peace but instead will blame the world, uncaring relatives, false friends, a sick society and even fate. Depression is the leading reason people seek psychiatric help but seeing a psychiatrist is never a guarantee that the problems will be fixed. When someone goes through psychotherapy there is the potential for intensive growth, some more than what someone experiences in a lifetime but again for this to happen a part of the old self must die. To live our lives well it is necessary that we come to understand the reality of the world as best we can. We can understand it only through effort and suffering. All of us to an extend attempt to avoid this effort and suffering there by limiting our awareness and impeding us from a successful transition into greater maturity. If we don't put any effort and try to avoid this suffering our understanding of the world will bear little or no relation to reality. Because our actions are based on our understanding, our behavior will then become unrealistic and out of touch with reality.
As human beings grow in discipline and love so does their understanding of the world. However, as people fail to grow in discipline and love, so does their understanding. We must learn how to assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours. Practicing the process of analysis helps distinguish for we are and for what we are not responsible. The current system of education prepares the student only for a recognized career in society primarily for earning a living. You must develop the mind alone. At the end it is you, not anybody else who has to accept responsibility for your wellbeing. It will also make a deep impact on the level of satisfaction and happiness of your children which see parents as role models. Don’t be a do as I say and not as I do parent. The best I can figure is that if we do our best here and now to live the kind of life we can feel good about, then the future, spiritual and cosmetic will take care of themselves. To train the mind, we must exercise the patience and determination to shape that steel. If we don’t take leadership of our life, real happiness will not increase. There are things in this world that we can and cannot do. We can control our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, attitude, and direction in life. How we spend our time, with whom and for how long. What we cannot do is control others attitude towards us. What another person will say or how someone will treat us. In this world, if possible, we should help others. If that is not possible, at least we should do no harm. Doing no harm cultivates concern for others. One must adhere to truth and being truthful. The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again.
Why is life as it is? The Bible says, “Out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies.” The real problem is within us-within our own hearts and minds. The Bible teaches that our Soul has a disease. It is worse than any dreaded cancer or heart disease we can face. It is the plague that causes all the troubles and difficulties in the world. It causes all the pain, confusion, and disillusionment in our own lives. This disease is the most terrible, the most devastating problem in the universe. It has crippled every one of us. It has destroyed the inner harmony of our lives. It has robbed us of our nobility. It has caught us in an evil and hideous trap. The name of the disease is an ugly word. We don’t like to use it. We don’t even like to hear it. This disease is the root of all our troubles. All the sorrow, all the bitterness, all the violence, tragedies, heartaches, and shame of history can be summed up in one word. The word is Sin. Plain, old-fashioned sin- it’s what we all suffer from today. Some more than others. It won’t do any good to try to dress it up with a fancier attractive label. We don’t need an innovative word for it. A light view of sin is “human weakness.” In this age one can find an endless number of reasons the world is slipping into spiritual darkness. We are aware about the problems of our generation, yet the world continues to grow darker with each passing day. The reason sin/evil abounds is simple: People are lazy. The act of being busy does not guard us from being slothful. Humans become lazy by making poor choices regarding their priorities. If we learn to continually examine motivation. Since motivation precedes and drives action, controlling motivation is the best way to get positive results in whatever you are trying to accomplish. There are things that we can do to gain inner peace and prosperity which is what is all about. It takes training, effort, and time. Taking personal time for yourself to analyze your life may not be as exciting as going out to party with your friends or catching the new episode of a reality TV show! How exciting is to be alone and exercise thoughtfulness? But then again, how affective is it if we don’t take time for ourselves to block distractions and gain emotional stability?
Individual experiences of pain, suffering, pleasure, and happiness are often, to a degree, creations of our mind. Despite material advances in our world, humanity faces problems which are of our own creation. And is our mental attitude, our outlook on life and the world-that is the key factor for the future, the future of humanity, and the future of the world. The fact that our religion or world view is initially largely determined by our unique childhood experience brings us face to face with a central problem: the relationship between religion and reality. We have a situation in which human beings, who must deal with each other, have different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his or her own view to be the correct one since it is based on personal experience. To develop a religion or world view that is realistic, we must constantly revise our understanding to include new knowledge and incorporate current information. To develop a broader vision we must be willing to leave our narrowed vision and give up outworn knowledge. Our religion must be a personal one because our parent’s world view will be narrower than that of which we are capable if we take full advantage of our personal experience. You must face the process of establishing your own values and making your own decisions. We are only conscious of a small percentage of that wisdom. The unconscious part of our mind may communicate through our dreams when we are asleep or when we are awake through idle thoughts. Our unconscious part of the mind is wiser than we are about everything. For example when you are reading a book and come across an idea or theory that appeals to you. We recognize it to be true. Yet this idea or theory is one of which we have never consciously thought. We “re-know” the concept as if we knew it once upon a time, forgot it, but we are only discovering something that existed in our self all along. The knowledge of rightness inherently resides within the minds of all mankind. God is the possessor of all Knowledge. This suggests that God is within us all along. We are possessors of the knowledge all along! One of the reasons we don’t take advantage of our unconscious knowledge is that we are not fully aware of its presence. We don’t find valuable things because we fail to appreciate the value of this gift.
Spiritual growth is the evolution of an individual. Life offers us unlimited opportunities for spiritual growth. The process of spiritual growth is an effortful and difficult one. This is because it’s conducted against a natural resistance and inclination to keep things the way they are. Each one of us has his or her urge to grow and prosper, and each of us, in exercising that urge, must single-handedly fight against his or her own resistance. What is this force that pushes us as individuals and as a whole species to grow and self-evolve? I don't know, but I do know that the strength, energy, and willingness to grow comes from love. It is through love that we elevate ourselves. Love is too large, too deep to be fully understood or measured. We are incapable of loving another unless we love our selves, just as we are incapable of teaching others self-discipline unless we ourselves are self-disciplined. We cannot be a source of strength unless we nurture our own strength. Everyone in society desires to love, but desire to love is not itself love. Desire doesn’t necessarily translate into action. Will, is desire of sufficient intensity that translates into action. So what is Love? Love is an act of Will, both an intention and an action for the purpose of nurturing one’s own and another’s spiritual growth. Love is the miraculous force that defies the natural law of resistance. Love, the extension of the self, is the very act of evolution. It is evolution in progress. Where does love, or the force of evolution come from? There is a hypothesis that there is a God who wants us to grow. Then we must ask why? What are we growing towards? All of us who really think about it eventually come to a single terrifying idea: God wants us to become as itself. We run away from this idea because it places upon us such a burden and responsibility. Because if we believe in it, it then demands from us all that we can give. It is one thing to believe in a God who loves us and another in a God who has it in mind for us that we should attain his position, his power, his wisdom, his righteousness, his identity. We as humans do not want this obligation. We do not want to work that hard and this brings us face to face with our own LAZINESS. If we can believe that Godhood is an impossible attainment for ourselves, we don’t have to worry about our spiritual growth or push ourselves to higher levels of consciousness and inner happiness.
Laziness is love’s opposite. No matter how energetic, ambitious, or even wise we may be, if we truly look into ourselves, we will find a level of laziness. Laziness is the force of resistance with in us, pushing us down and holding back our spiritual evolution. A major form that laziness takes is fear but while all fear is not laziness, most fear is exactly that. Fear is an impediment to self-growth. Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience. Falling in love is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience. The experience of falling in love is temporary. Falling in love is not an act of will. In a relationship two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other. Love is independence. Dependent people are interested in their own nourishment. But no more; they desire filling, they desire to be happy; they don’t desire to grow, nor are they willing to tolerate the unhappiness, the loneliness and suffering involved in growth. Neither do they care about the spiritual growth of the other. In relationships couples eventually always fall out of love. It is at this moment that their love begins to be tested and will be found to be present or absent. Commitment and communication are especially important in a genuine loving relationship. Couples cannot solve problems without the security of knowing that struggling over issues will not itself destroy the relationship. Communication is how we say what we say. People do not respond to what you are saying, but how you are saying it. There is two ways to confront someone. The first is the way of arrogance with spontaneous and instinctive certainty that one is right. The second is the way of humility through self-doubting and self-examination. Any genuine lover behaves with self-discipline and any genuinely loving relationship is a disciplined relationship. If I genuinely love another, I will obviously order my behavior in such a way as to contribute the utmost to his or her spiritual growth. To attempt to love someone who cannot benefit from your love with spiritual growth is to waste your energy. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but seeks to cultivate it even at the risk of separation or loss. The person who genuinely loves does so because of a decision to love. When we love another, we give our attention. When we love ourselves, we address our growth. In a relationship love is a two-way street, whereby the giver also receives, and receiver also gives. Value begets value and love begets love.
Let us also analyze the nature of evil. First, evil is real. There are people and institutions made up of people who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and will destroy the good as far as it is in their power to do so. Doing this not with conscious malice but blindly lacking awareness of their own evil. As described of the devil in religious literature, they hate the light and instinctively do anything to avoid it, including attempting to extinguish it. They will destroy the light in their own children and in all other beings subject to their power. Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it reveals their badness. They hate love because it reveals their laziness. They will destroy the light, the goodness and love to avoid the pain of such self-awareness. Ordinary laziness is non love, evil is anti-love. Truly evil people actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves taking any action in their power to protect their laziness. If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth and will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them. Evil is inevitable in life. On one hand the evolutionary flow of love, on the other, evil. Since they are conflicting forces, it is natural for evil to hate goodness as it is for goodness to hate evil. It is natural that these forces will be in balance in most humans. People often are not aware of their own religious or world views. If you desire wisdom greater than your own, you can find it inside you. If we just choose right over wrong and spread love and concern for humanity, it gives a sense of inner peace! From my understanding there are Seven Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins. Practicing these Virtues to protect one against temptation from the Seven Deadly Sins, with each one having its counterpart. To an extent, we consciously or unconsciously enact this Virtues and Sins every day.
CHASTITY opposes LUST
ABSTINENCE opposes GLUTTONY
CHARITY opposes GREED
DILIGENCE opposes SLOTH
PATIENCE opposes WRATH
KINDNESS opposes ENVY
HUMILITY opposes PRIDE
In this world, being good is boring and being bad is exciting. We relate happiness to freedom. We’re accustomed to believing that freedom brings happiness, but with freedom comes great responsibility and to be responsible requires self-discipline. There are things on this world that offer excitement are not morally good and yet we catch our selves doing them. Why do you think that is? Self-discipline is self-caring. Feeling valuable will make our time feel valuable and will want to use it wisely. Good discipline requires time and patience. Discipline also requires balancing which is not only a demanding but also a complex task, requiring both flexibility and good judgment. Life is a continuous and never-ending self-examination. A spiritually evolved individual is an extraordinarily loving individual and with this extraordinary love comes extraordinary joy! If we examine the relationship between mind, or consciousness and body, we see that wholesome attitudes, emotions, and states of mind, like compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness, are strongly connected with physical health and well-being, whereas negative or unwholesome attitudes and emotions such as anger, hatred, disturbed states of mind- undermine physical health. We can see that the person who has a tremendous reserve of patience and tolerance has a certain degree of tranquility and calmness in his or her life. Such a person is not only happy and more emotionally grounded, but also seems to be physically healthier and to experience less illness. Most times people make decision with little awareness of what they are doing. They act with little understanding of their own motives and without beginning to know the ramifications of their choices. With total awareness of the nature of a situation, of our motives for acting upon it, and of the results and ramifications of our actions, we have attained that level of awareness that we normally expect only of God. Yet those who have attained this stage of spiritual growth, this state of great awareness, are possessed by a joyful humility. We experience a surcease of loneliness. There is another problem with awareness and knowledge, aloneness. A person who has evolved to the highest level of awareness will have no one with whom to share such depth of understanding. It is such a burden that we could not bear were it not for the fact that as we outdistance our fellow humans, our relationship to God inevitably becomes correspondingly closer. Some people don't believe in God so... Let’s talk about faith. What is faith? In the dictionary faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing; Belief that is not based on proof. To me, meditation is a way of faith. One of the major aims of meditation is an inner transformation; from an undisciplined, untamed, unfocused state of mind to one that is disciplined, tamed, balanced and compassionate. Without acts of faith to nourish and challenge our lives we feel less alive, less whole. When meditation becomes an important part of your life, you will experience a sense of being touched, a sense of being transformed from within. Faith must be grounded in reason and understanding. An individual should be open-minded. When you are in that state of openness, you can reason, and through reasoning you can develop a certain understanding. When that understanding strengthens, it gives rise to a conviction, belief, and trust in that object. Then, that faith, trust, or confidence will be very firm because it is rooted in reason and understanding.
Human beings share the same goal. We all seek happiness and do not want suffering. There are two ways to create happiness: The first is external and it comes to us when our circumstances are pleasant, and we are free from troubles. By obtaining money, better shelter, clothes, and friends we can find a certain measure of happiness and satisfaction. The problem is that this kind of happiness is fleeting and superficial. When circumstances change- as they inevitably do- this kind of happiness evaporates. But there is another kind of happiness. This second kind of happiness is a lasting inner joy and peace that survive any circumstance. It’s a happiness that endures, no matter what comes our way. Oddly, it may even grow stronger in adversity. The happiness for which our hearts ache is one undisturbed by success or failure, one which dwells deep within us and gives inward peace and contentment, no matter what the surface problems may be. This is the happiness for which our Souls cry out and search relentlessly. This second one is through development of the mind, which yields inner happiness. Inner happiness is more important because if something is missing in your heart, then despite the most luxurious surroundings, you cannot be happy. However, if we have peace of mind, we can find happiness even under the most difficult circumstances.
As we navigate through our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves. The feeling associated with giving up something close to us is depression. Bad dreams, anxiety attacks, depression or any other depressive symptoms are all MENTAL ILLNESSES. These symptoms are a message from the subconscious mind to the suffering individual to initiate self-examination and repair. If someone experiences these symptoms it means all is not right and need major adjustments. The illness exists long before the symptoms. Most reject this gift and do not heed the message to avoid the suffering. We procrastinate, ignore, and pretend they do not exist. People take drugs to avoid dealing with these problems but this substitute itself becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it was meant to suppress. Taking responsibility is a major step towards spiritual growth and inner peace but instead will blame the world, uncaring relatives, false friends, a sick society and even fate. Depression is the leading reason people seek psychiatric help but seeing a psychiatrist is never a guarantee that the problems will be fixed. When someone goes through psychotherapy there is the potential for intensive growth, some more than what someone experiences in a lifetime but again for this to happen a part of the old self must die. To live our lives well it is necessary that we come to understand the reality of the world as best we can. We can understand it only through effort and suffering. All of us to an extend attempt to avoid this effort and suffering there by limiting our awareness and impeding us from a successful transition into greater maturity. If we don't put any effort and try to avoid this suffering our understanding of the world will bear little or no relation to reality. Because our actions are based on our understanding, our behavior will then become unrealistic and out of touch with reality.
As human beings grow in discipline and love so does their understanding of the world. However, as people fail to grow in discipline and love, so does their understanding. We must learn how to assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours. Practicing the process of analysis helps distinguish for we are and for what we are not responsible. The current system of education prepares the student only for a recognized career in society primarily for earning a living. You must develop the mind alone. At the end it is you, not anybody else who has to accept responsibility for your wellbeing. It will also make a deep impact on the level of satisfaction and happiness of your children which see parents as role models. Don’t be a do as I say and not as I do parent. The best I can figure is that if we do our best here and now to live the kind of life we can feel good about, then the future, spiritual and cosmetic will take care of themselves. To train the mind, we must exercise the patience and determination to shape that steel. If we don’t take leadership of our life, real happiness will not increase. There are things in this world that we can and cannot do. We can control our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, attitude, and direction in life. How we spend our time, with whom and for how long. What we cannot do is control others attitude towards us. What another person will say or how someone will treat us. In this world, if possible, we should help others. If that is not possible, at least we should do no harm. Doing no harm cultivates concern for others. One must adhere to truth and being truthful. The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again.
Why is life as it is? The Bible says, “Out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies.” The real problem is within us-within our own hearts and minds. The Bible teaches that our Soul has a disease. It is worse than any dreaded cancer or heart disease we can face. It is the plague that causes all the troubles and difficulties in the world. It causes all the pain, confusion, and disillusionment in our own lives. This disease is the most terrible, the most devastating problem in the universe. It has crippled every one of us. It has destroyed the inner harmony of our lives. It has robbed us of our nobility. It has caught us in an evil and hideous trap. The name of the disease is an ugly word. We don’t like to use it. We don’t even like to hear it. This disease is the root of all our troubles. All the sorrow, all the bitterness, all the violence, tragedies, heartaches, and shame of history can be summed up in one word. The word is Sin. Plain, old-fashioned sin- it’s what we all suffer from today. Some more than others. It won’t do any good to try to dress it up with a fancier attractive label. We don’t need an innovative word for it. A light view of sin is “human weakness.” In this age one can find an endless number of reasons the world is slipping into spiritual darkness. We are aware about the problems of our generation, yet the world continues to grow darker with each passing day. The reason sin/evil abounds is simple: People are lazy. The act of being busy does not guard us from being slothful. Humans become lazy by making poor choices regarding their priorities. If we learn to continually examine motivation. Since motivation precedes and drives action, controlling motivation is the best way to get positive results in whatever you are trying to accomplish. There are things that we can do to gain inner peace and prosperity which is what is all about. It takes training, effort, and time. Taking personal time for yourself to analyze your life may not be as exciting as going out to party with your friends or catching the new episode of a reality TV show! How exciting is to be alone and exercise thoughtfulness? But then again, how affective is it if we don’t take time for ourselves to block distractions and gain emotional stability?
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