Sometimes Divine Spirit may use someone such as a coworker, a friend, a family member, a stranger, your boss at work, to teach us something we need in our life, often in an area of our weakness on which we need working. So look around you, maybe your co-workers, what are people around you teaching you about yourself?
For that, I eternally thank you, Stranger, wherever you are, whatever noble work you are doing, for, from you, I learned valuable life lessons about professionalism.
On the Journey
Many times on my journey to learn how to follow GOD’S guidance, I have stopped and wondered about whether I was doing the right thing or making wrong choices that would take me in the opposite, negative direction. Was I reading the signposts correctly? Was I applying the spiritual principles correctly? Was I effectively maintaining my spiritual awareness through spiritual exercises? Was I being adequately detached from situations I had become attached to? Was I maintaining proper and enough objectivity? Was I doing this and that…Questions upon questions, going on forever.
At times I made choices based on inner guidance, which sometimes came through dreams. How good my understanding of the guidance was dependent on how well I interpreted the dream. Often I was wrong because I tended to apply the principles from a logical standpoint. The dream world is a different world, whose images and experiences are open to a variety of interpretations and don’t easily conform to logic. In the physical, fire is fire; in the dream world, it could mean different things to different people. The journey into the mystery of life is endless and can be complex, therefore takes great care to correctly fathom it at different levels, both deep and superficial.
GIVING UP LIFE OF ATTACHMENT
When we give up something from within and it does not come back to us, chances are that we didn’t need it. So, no regrets, no loss; if anything we have gained for that may have been an obstacle to our spiritual progress.
Learning detachment makes it easier to learn how to live with God, in God, for God, and by God’s laws. On face value, it seems contradictory; but when we plumb the depths of it, we realize what it truly is in spiritual sense. Spirituality forms an integral part of our lives irrespective of one’s religion to the extent that we all have a spiritual side. To understand it, to know it, and to live it is to live in a state of mental poverty of material desires and mental possessions. These mental possessions exist and persist because we have allowed them through our own notion of security, false sense of need for them for our survival. Yet true spiritual survival does not depend on anything in the outer world. Things of the outer world hold us in bondange through undue attachment. Unfortunately, we tend to define ourselves by identification with our material possessions. This creates fear because our dependency is on things of impermanent value. This fear influences how we conduct ourselves and how we relate to others. As a result our behaviors become shaped and dictated by our fears. This results in diminution of our latent divine character. Our lives become limited contrary Divine Spirit’s nature for us. Thus it behooves us to eradicate all self-imposed limitations in our life, eliminating inner bonds to this outer world of materiality. It is by giving up life of attachment from within that we awaken to an abundant spiritual life that encompasses all aspects of our lives and brings about true fulfillment beyond measure.
Anger
Anger is a destructive force and it is one of the passions of the mind or our human emotion. Whereas it is normal to be upset when something unpleasant happens to us, being angry is an extreme form of being upset. Without proper control of it and not understanding its destructive nature, we often allow it to spiral out of control. Additional to that, we justify it when all is said and done. Sometimes we regret it and other times we feel good about it if it affords us a false sense of pride stemming from having intimidated, beaten up, or forcibly encroached upon someone else’s space, and we call it justifiable anger so as to justify our actions. In our own self-righteous way, it is always the other person’s fault, we conveniently believe. We feel we have the right to be angry because we have been provoked without realizing the deleterious consequences of such emotional indulgence. We make no attempt to control it or if we try we often fail at it especially if anger is a dominant and intractable force in our life. In the fit of anger, we are liable to say things that are destructive and irrational that we would not say if we had kept our emotions in check.
It is important to recognize that words, deeds, thoughts fueled and executed with anger are always destructive. The problem is that as these actions born out of anger begin to come back as negative effect, we don’t recognize their origin thus we are often unable to link them to our past actions. Unfortunately, we begin to point fingers at others, blaming everybody but ourselves. Blinded by our emotions and unable to see the causal link, we repeat the same cycle, making the same mistakes over and over and continue to suffer the effects emanating from such negative thoughts and deeds. Sooner or later it begins to have ruinous impact on our life. It is in our best interest to learn to control anger by gaining control of our mind. That is the starting point. First step is to learn to recognize its injurious effect on yourself and to whom it is directed and find techniques to minimize or bring it under control. To help bring anger under control, one can try a simple natural technique by either mentally or vocally singing an ancient natural charged sound called HU (sang as HUE) when you get angry or catch yourself getting angry.
Essentially what we are learning is how to put Soul in charge of the mind other than the other way round. As the expression aptly goes: The mind makes a bad master but a good servant.
FACTORS THAT LEAD TO A MORE FULFILLING LIFE
A fulfilling life as we know it in human state is one in which there’s love, good health, material self-sufficiency, and spiritual well-being. A combination of these in a balanced manner makes for a fulfilling life. Factors that lead to such a life are many and varied. To name some of them: self-discipline, hard work, patience, clear goal setting, motivation to aspire to excellence, pursuit of a career in which you have a special ability, interest, talent, or love.
With self-discipline comes actions directed toward fulfillment of work set out to be accomplished without being distracted by other extraneous and competing forces. Staying on course, staying committed to a task at hand, and applying the law of economy is one way to go.
Hard work implies putting in as much time as is necessary to a point of sacrificing if necessary in order to accomplish a set goal. Recognizing the value of the project, and seeing it through to its completion and doing it well.
Patience—with it you can endure setbacks, discouragements, temporary failures, rejections, disappointments, and when you fall you get back up, feeling stronger, wiser, better, more resilient to meet life’s challenges.
Clear goal setting—without a clear goal, you will end up somewhere not intended.
A goal becomes a target of our perceived destination. On this trip to meet a goal, clarity of a goal makes us less wasteful of our time and energy in figuring out which way to go and what resources we may need to help us succeed. Clarity of the goal is a sure way to allow Divine Spirit to assist us toward the attainment of the goal. In essence, a goal is a mold we create. The clearer it is, the stronger the impression on divine spirit, the greater the divine forces are marshaled to help toward the achievement of the established goal.
The other vital element is motivation—without it, our efforts will lack the energy needed to move us forward, thus sooner or later we may fall flat on our face. And it becomes an arduous task to aspire to