EXERCISE OF SILENCE

Exercises of silence help you concentrate your mind and intellect, and go within yourself to recover the positive and eternal energies. With the appropriate concentration of the mind and intellect towards your constructive inner forces of peace, love and happiness, you can strengthen yourself. Being strong means staying positive when faced with negative situations, peaceful when everything around you is chaotic: in other words, not being influenced negatively but influencing the situation with your positivity. When you stay calm in your inner power of peace, you can transmit this to others and help them to calm themselves. When you begin exercises of silence, concentrate primarily on peace. This is the basis of the practice, as when there is inner balance and harmony it is easier to build over these the other values love, happiness, truth and sincerity. The experience of deep peace calms you, clarifies you and fills you with energy to think and act positively and achieve your purpose that you have set for yourself. 

[BK SHIVANI]

 

 Taming (Conquering) The Mind

In ancient times, the mind was understood to be extremely difficult to control. It was said to be like the wind: you could never catch it, or hold it - it went where it wished and no human being could become its master. In other instances, it was said that the mind was like an elephant: extremely powerful but equally gentle and patient, able to do a lot of work for its master. However, when an elephant turns wild, its gentleness and patience completely disappear and it destroys and damages everything in its path. When the mind is under stress, it resembles a wild elephant; it has no control and cannot be controlled.
Taming the mind is regarded as a great art requiring time, attention, practice and, above all, a sincerity of heart where individuals truly want to change their way of thinking. To relax, to be positive, to be peaceful and kind all require a change in our thought patterns and this can only happen when we look deeply within. However hard they try, other people cannot change us; we must have personal realization and the desire to make changes through our own effort. Permanent and positive change cannot be imposed from outside; it is something that we choose.

[bkshivani]

 

 

 

 
 

The Invisible Impressions That Shape Me

While the mind and intellect are two faculties of the soul which play their role on the surface of our consciousness; at a deeper level, hidden beneath these two faculties, there lies a third faculty commonly called the sanskaras. The sanskaras is not only a store house of personality traits, as we commonly know it to be, but a store house of millions and millions of impressions or imprints. Such a large number of impressions are created by millions of experiences that I go through my sense organs not only in this life but in all my lifetimes. Everything that I hear, see, touch, taste, etc. I process or analyze or summarize in my own unique way; basically I give the experiences a unique form depending on my personality, before this form gets stored in the form of impressions inside me. I even process my subtle experiences, which are in the form of thoughts and feelings.

This process of experiencing and processing takes place during each and every second of my life including the time I sleep, when my mind may not be experiencing a lot but it is busy processing the physical and subtle experiences of the day that has gone by and storing the processed information in the form of impressions. From this, one can get an idea of the magnitude of the database of impressions stored within me, the being. These imprints which are unique to me, make up my sanskaras, and shape up my unique personality in a cyclic process. My personality shapes what type of impressions are created out of my experiences and the impressions in turn shape my personality, my thoughts, words and actions e.g. if I constantly keep the company of people who gossip, a large number of respective impressions based on the experience of gossiping keep getting stored inside me, which in turn influence my personality, the personality characteristic gets stronger and over a period of time I do not find anything wrong with it and indulge in it more and more. As a result more such impressions get stored. Thus it is a cyclic process.

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Positive Reflections For The Day are messages sent by the Brahma Kumaris. If you are not receiving Positive Reflections already and would like to receive it daily, from the Brahma Kumaris, please send an email to the email address awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org with - Subscribe - written in the subject.

Meditation And Physical Health

 

The state of the body is a result of the state of the soul not only because of past karmas (actions performed in this and previous births) but because of its present state also.

For example, when the emotion of fear passes through the mind, the endocrine system starts pumping adrenalin through the body to prepare it for a surge of energy. It is easy to note the cause-effect relationship between fear (cause) and adrenalin (effect). In the same way all of the mental ups and downs cause resulting secretions throughout the body. Internal rage is accompanied by heavy breathing, fast heart-beats, red face and so on. This relationship between body and soul is the reason most physical diseases arise from a psychological or mental origin. There is no doubt that any lessening of harmful secretions by reducing the emotional causes will bring about sound and lasting health. Health and order in the soul (mind) bring health and order in the body.

Of course there are other factors which give rise to health problems - pollution, unhealthy life-style, lack of exercise, wrong diet etc. Through Raja Yoga meditation (taught by the Brahma Kumaris) and its connected positive lifestyle and through a pure vegetarian diet, ill-health can be minimized. The removal of stress and tension has to be one of the most important advantages for a person who practices Rajyoga meditation.  

 

[bkshivani]

 

Habits break easily when there is flexibility

Expression: The more we work with a habit the more it will be strengthened. When we hold on to our habits because of our rigidity, we will never be able to change them but will only be strengthening them all the more. On the other hand if we are flexible we will be able to give up unwanted habits very easily.

Experience: If we are working with any habit which we want to get rid of, we have to remind ourselves that we must not strengthen the habit any more but have to break it. We only need to emerge the flexibility within us and tell ourselves that we needn't act in the same way that we have always done, instead we can think of something new. 

 

[bkshivani]

 
 

 

Bringing Your Dreams Alive

Each one of us has dreams that we nourish right through our lives. Some are short-term dreams and some long term ones. Dreams keep changing as we progress through different phases of our life. Some are achieved, some are not. Some of us possess the ability to realize our dreams more than the rest. The most important and influential factor in this process is how much we believe in our dream and believe that it will be realized. Some of the factors that hamper this belief are:

* The influence of the past - the memories of our past failures, which sow seeds of doubt in our mind; as well as successes, which keep us in an illusionary consciousness and distance us from the present moment and our present actions. Also, sometimes we associate present temporary failures or ups and downs which may come in our way, with failures of the past.
* Lack of inner strength or power, when faced with obstacles in your path. Tendency to get dejected very easily and creating weak thoughts like we do not deserve it or we are not capable of it or are we not lucky enough or it is not in our destiny or maybe it is our negative past actions which are influencing our dream realization process adversely, etc.
* The opinions or comments of people surrounding you who sometimes, are not in tune with your consciousness and are not able to empathize with your purpose. Their comments easily de-focus you from your purpose.
* Lack of ability to mould or adjust during the dream realization journey. Any journey is always full of twists, turns and sudden changes.  A rigid state of mind, which is not able to change its tactics as required, may make the path seem more difficult than it actually is.
* It is very good to dream but excessive attachment to the dream also may make the journey towards the dream stressful and bring down your self-belief at times.

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Positive Reflections For The Day are messages sent by the Brahma Kumaris. If you are not receiving Positive Reflections already and would like to receive it daily, from the Brahma Kumaris, please send an email to the email address awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org with - Subscribe - written in the subject.

Strange World

 

I am finding some very disturbing stories in the News from all over the world involving violent random attacks against elderly helpless victims by crazed lunatics who all have been found using new and powerful strange drugs such as the newly invented ``bath-salts``.

Many of you may have heard about this new phenomena and have read stories of people losing their minds and disemboweling themselves . One account I have discovered of a man tearing off His cloths and ripping his belly open throwing his entrails at the onlooking horrified police officers who are shocked with this new trend that may be caused by some very strange demonic drugs invented by some kind of ``mad scientist``.
It seems as though every time I wake up to a new day I am hearing things in the news that are reaching higher levels of social dementia and unspeakable crimes such as never seen before.

With the expansion and dissemination of social networking, followed by the heightened awareness of Humanity coming of age,- it is obvious that the present Human Civilization is reaching a very dangerous level of transition on a global scale like nothing ever seen before.
A great awakening is stirring in the hearts and minds of countless millions all over the world calling for justice, unity , clean sane methods of living, and the sharing of the worlds resources in a world of plenty as the over-riding priority.

It is obviously clear that we are experiencing violent shifts and drastic changes within every avenue of Human endeavour on the three levels of physical, astral-emotional, and upon the mental planes as humanity struggles to keep up and grapple with the tremendous quickening that is surging us forward into a time of uncertain crisis, forcing us to evaluate and ponder upon the real values , that if adopted , will usher in a time of joy , world cooperation, sharing, trust, brotherhood, -and at last the precipitation of a wonderful glorious Human Civilization that will ensure our passage through the Gates of Initiation and the eternal unfoldment of our Divine Potential as Sons of God. 

 

[bkshivani]

 
 

Selfless Action

 To know that the seed of selfless action will surely bear fruit at its own time

 

Expression: Sometimes when involved in a task, we tend to get carried away with the result. We become so result-oriented that we begin to expect the fruit of what we have done immediately. Without the recognition of the fact that the result might take time to come, we begin to get caught up with our own expectations. This creates a lot of heaviness in our mind and we might even give up what we are doing.

Experience: When we make a contribution for something, we must develop faith that whatever has to happen will happen at the right time. We don't have to eat unripe fruit, i.e., not get carried away with immediate results but have to wait patiently knowing that the fruits of our actions will ripen at their own time. With faith this is possible and we will be able to free ourselves from negativity and heaviness. 

[bkshivani]

 

 

Identify The Filters In Your Life

Like different types and different colour filters on a physical level; on a spiritual level, there are many different types of filters that work in our lives e.g. the jealousy filter, hatred filter, attachment filter, fear filter, greed filter, etc. and many more. Due to these filters, we do not see people and things as they are, but as we are, because the filters are our own self-created ones.   If we want to see people and things as they are, we need to check which filters are working most in our lives. Each one of us has different filters working to different extents, depending on our personality e.g. someone might have the jealousy filter working more regularly as compared to the fear filter in his/her life.

Because of these filters, everything that we see is not only coloured by the colour of the filter we are using at that time, but our look is also biased as we choose what to see, what to give more importance, what to be affected by more, what to let through the filter etc. and what not to. We have and form a deceptive vision of the things and people that surround us inside our minds. And the longer this deformed vision lasts, the more we will convince ourself that that is the true image of the world, because our filters continue to process new data depending on what they see that make the image stronger. This reinforcing of the incorrect image builds up our database of incorrect beliefs based on different filters and makes them stronger and stronger as we go through our life journey. Beliefs are fixed ways of looking at reality. Thus, the world that we perceive is no longer the real world, but a world created by our own mind. So in a way we become deaf and blind on a spiritual level towards the world. To heal this deafness and blindness, we do not have to remove each filter one after the other, which may become a difficult task; but we have to discover the  pure, original internal self and start seeing everything without the filters, based on the pure-self point of view. As a result of that, gradually our incorrect beliefs start dissolving and correct beliefs start setting in based on our clean unfiltered view.

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Positive Reflections For The Day are messages sent by the Brahma Kumaris. If you are not receiving Positive Reflections already and would like to receive it daily, from the Brahma Kumaris, please send an email to the email address awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org with - Subscribe - written in the subject.

Meditation And Physical Health

The state of the body is a result of the state of the soul not only because of past karmas (actions performed in this and previous births) but because of its present state also.

For example, when the emotion of fear passes through the mind, the endocrine system starts pumping adrenalin through the body to prepare it for a surge of energy. It is easy to note the cause-effect relationship between fear (cause) and adrenalin (effect). In the same way all of the mental ups and downs cause resulting secretions throughout the body. Internal rage is accompanied by heavy breathing, fast heart-beats, red face and so on. This relationship between body and soul is the reason most physical diseases arise from a psychological or mental origin. There is no doubt that any lessening of harmful secretions by reducing the emotional causes will bring about sound and lasting health. Health and order in the soul (mind) bring health and order in the body.

Of course there are other factors which give rise to health problems - pollution, unhealthy life-style, lack of exercise, wrong diet etc. Through Raja Yoga meditation (taught by the Brahma Kumaris) and its connected positive lifestyle and through a pure vegetarian diet, ill-health can be minimized. The removal of stress and tension has to be one of the most important advantages for a person who practices Rajyoga meditation.

-------

Positive Reflections For The Day are messages sent by the Brahma Kumaris. If you are not receiving Positive Reflections already and would like to receive it daily, from the Brahma Kumaris, please send an email to the email address awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org with - Subscribe - written in the subject.

Faith enables the creation of elevated fortune

Expression: Usually there is a tendency to leave things to destiny. When something goes wrong, we blame fate for it. Then we feel the situation to be totally out of our control, which prevents us from taking responsibility for our own life. And we will not be able to work in any way for bringing about a change and improving the situation.

Experience: Instead of blaming fate for whatever is happening, we need to take up responsibility for creating our own fortune for the future. When we have faith in ourselves we will take up responsibility for our own life. We will then be able to work at making our each thought beneficial, contributing to our success, making a better future for ourselves. 

[bkshivani]

The Spiritual Concept Of Becoming A Trustee (cont.)

In the physical world, one common example of a trustee is when a multi-millionaire does not have any heirs, he or she will leave his or wealth in the hands of a trustee or a group of trustees, to ensure the right use of his/her wealth as per his/her last wish. Another common example is of trustees associated with temples and welfare organizations. All the wealth and ornaments that devotees offer in temples out of faith, love and devotion for God or all the wealth and property that people give in charity to welfare organizations is taken care of by a group of trustees. In all these cases and more, while taking care of the wealth, honest trustees always keep the consciousness that this is not their wealth or property and will always use it in the right way, as they have been directed. This is called keeping the trust of the owner/owners of the wealth, hence the word trustee.

In this way, now as a trustee, throughout the day I keep a consciousness that the treasures of my mind, my thoughts, words, actions, virtues, powers, time, my physical wealth, physical body etc. are the Supreme Being's property and I have been appointed as a trustee to take care of them. In this way, I will use these treasures in a positive way, for a positive purpose (as mentioned earlier for a purpose of bringing myself and other close to a state of truth) only; in a way the Supreme Being wants me to and has instructed me to do so. This establishes a relationship of detachment with the treasures I possess and also brings about my spiritual self-growth.

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Positive Reflections For The Day are messages sent by the Brahma Kumaris. If you are not receiving Positive Reflections already and would like to receive it daily, from the Brahma Kumaris, please send an email to the email address awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org with - Subscribe - written in the subject.

With benevolent feelings and good wishes we can free people from worrying

Expression: When we come across people who are faced with a difficult situation because of which they are worrying, we too usually tend to think about it. Instead of helping the other person to be free from worrying, we too begin to worry. This doesn't help either of us in anyway but only adds to the negativity of the situation.

Experience: We need to develop such benevolent feelings for the ones who are going through the situation that the power of our positive feelings will spread to them too. It will act like the light of the lamp, which helps to dispel the darkness around. Only when there is positivity in the mind will they be able to think of some solution.

(BK Shivani)

Frozen Perceptions

Like water, which over a period of time freezes and takes the form of frozen ice cubes, when kept in an ice tray; perceptions of different things, people and events, inside our consciousness, which come onto the surface of our consciousness regularly i.e. we shape our thoughts, words and actions based on them, regularly, take the form of rigid perceptions over a period of time. These rigid or 'frozen perceptions', which sometimes never liquefy in our entire lifetime, are commonly called our beliefs, which can stick in our consciousness like ice cubes and be difficult to uproot at times. One of the greatest harms that holding to a set of beliefs does is, that it doesn't let us see from other peoples' point of view.

Let's say two people look at the same painting from two different points in a room. One describes what she sees and how the painting looks to her. Then the other describes how the painting looks to him. Both perceptions are bound to be different to some extent. They are different because they look from different angles, different points (places) of viewing in the same room. So who has the right view? Neither. But what both of them see is right from their point of view. Another e.g. is, there is Mrs. A at my workplace, whom over a period of time, I have been seeing from a certain point of view and have started perceiving to be inefficient. Bringing this perception into my consciousness repeatedly has frozen this perception inside my consciousness and it has taken the form of a belief, which may be incorrect or correct, partially or completely. Now even if three different people who have all seen Mrs. A from three different points of view i.e. in three different set of circumstances, and have seen three different shades of the same virtue i.e. efficiency in her; come and share their different, but all positive and right perceptions with me, depending on their respective circumstantial view, I will not agree with them and not respect their perception because a person with unfrozen perceptions would at least give a hearing to others' perceptions, but someone with frozen perceptions, i.e. with fixed beliefs, is not able to that and is not able to empathize with or see from others' point of view.

(BK Shivani)

Trustee (2)

The Spiritual Concept Of Becoming A Trustee (cont.)

While it's important to realize that the treasures mentioned in yesterday's message are my treasures and they possess immense potential since they help me grow spiritually by their right use, it is also important to maintain a relationship of detachment with them, because we live with these treasures all the time and it is very easy to get caught up with them and become attached to them. Where there is attachment, there develops ego and the treasures start getting misused. An important concept in this regard is that of trusteeship. The Supreme Being while sharing the knowledge of these treasures and the method of using them, also shares, that for our benefit, once we realize what these treasures are, we should surrender these treasures to Him. This is an invisible or non-physical surrender, not a physical or visible one.

Once these treasures are surrendered to Him, unlike worldly surrenders, the treasures don't remain with Him, because being an Unlimited Donor and being Incorporeal (bodiless), the Supreme doesn't keep them with Himself and returns them back to us. Anyways, the surrender is deep but is on a mental level and not on a physical one. But, while returning the treasures back, the Supreme Being presents a condition in front of us. He says that since these treasures now no longer belong to us, we need to remove any sense of ownership over them and become a trustee while taking care of and using these treasures only for the purpose instructed by Him, the purpose of bringing the self and others closer to a state of truth (as explained in yesterday's message). The word trustee comes from the word trust. In this case the Supreme Being says that He wishes and hopes that we keep His trust and don't breach it at any cost, at any point of time, in taking care of and using 'His' treasures, because don't forget, although the treasures are with us, there are no longer ours.

(To be continued tomorrow...)

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Positive Reflections For The Day are messages sent by the Brahma Kumaris. If you are not receiving Positive Reflections already and would like to receive it daily, from the Brahma Kumaris, please send an email to the email address awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org with - Subscribe - written in the subject.

Open eyed meditation

OPEN EYED MEDITATION

One of the special characteristics of Raja Yoga meditation (as taught by the Brahma Kumaris) is that I learn to meditate with my eyes open. The training of the mind, so that it creates thoughts, to give a positive experience, helps me in facing not only my daily routine, but specifically, in dealing with unexpected practical life situations that test my real power. Mastering the art of meditating with my eyes open can be of immense value to me in my practical life.

If I restrict myself to seated meditation with my eyes closed, then I am prevented from continuing the meditative experience in the course of my normal activities i.e. walking, eating, cooking, working in the office, moving around and so on.

Meditation is at the same time an incredibly relaxing experience as well as brings about an increase of perception (judgement) powers and sharper reaction response. In this way, I can be walking along the street in a meditative state and yet have a very quick perception (judgement) and reaction response to the surrounding pedestrians and traffic. 

(BK Shivani) 

Trustee

The Spiritual Concept Of Becoming A Trustee

Spirituality introduces to us a very beautiful concept of trusteeship. At first, I realize that as a spiritual being or soul, I possess the treasures of my mind, my thoughts, words, actions, virtues, powers, time, physical wealth, etc. Even my physical body is a treasure. While I may have many a times misused these treasures earlier, now I learn how to use them correctly for my spiritual upliftment or the long term benefit of me, the soul. As per the Supreme Being's instructions, I use these treasures for a positive purpose of bringing not only myself but others also, closer to a state of truth, a state in which the soul experiences its original virtues of peace, love, joy, purity, power, wisdom, etc. By doing that I, in return, experience spiritual self-growth.

Each time I deviate from this purpose, I come down spiritually, or I do not grow spiritually. This is a different type of existence as compared to before when I did not even realize that these were treasures in the first place. A treasure can be defined as something of immense value. So, these physical and spiritual energies or resources (mentioned above) which I own or possess, become treasures because by the right use of them towards myself and others, I can increase my value. Here we refer primarily to the spiritual self's value. Once that is increased, the physical self's value also increases as a result.

(To be continued tomorrow...)

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Positive Reflections For The Day are messages sent by the Brahma Kumaris. If you are not receiving Positive Reflections already and would like to receive it daily, from the Brahma Kumaris, please send an email to the email address awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org with - Subscribe - written in the subject.

False Attachments

Are you aware that whenever you lose your true self-awareness (soul-consciousness), you will identify with and get attached to something that is not you?   It could be another person, your work, or some material possession.   Let's say you are attached to your job and one day, due to rising costs, your company decides to downsize and starts laying off thousands of its employees - all of a sudden you are asked to leave.  The attachment to and identification with your position in the company, which has become a habit (sanskara), causes the creation of fearful and angry thoughts (e.g., "I'm going to lose my job" (fear related to the future) or "How dare they downsize the company and damage my position" (anger towards the company and its leadership)).  The destructive energy of these thoughts becomes emotion (energy in motion) which then invades your entire mind so you cannot have clear and calm thoughts (the prime requirement of that moment).   It hijacks your intellect so you cannot make correct, wise decisions and choices (also the prime requirement of that moment) for the future.  Any connection you had with your inner peace is broken.   All this happens because you forgot who you really are and had begun to think you are what you do.   When seen from the point of view of this example it sounds ridiculous that we should identify with what we do or what we have, but this is currently how the world and its people work.  So, never forget who you truly are!

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Positive Reflections For The Day are messages sent by the Brahma Kumaris. If you are not receiving Positive Reflections already and would like to receive it daily, from the Brahma Kumaris, please send an email to the email address awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org with - Subscribe - written in the subject.