BK SHIVANI'

To celebrate means to finish all trace of the old

 

Expression: We find that whenever there is an occasion, we are full of zeal and enthusiasm for that day. However this doesn't continue for long and we find ourselves getting caught with our old nature. We then give the excuse to ourselves saying, 'this is how we are, and this is our nature' etc. Once we start working with our old nature we cannot be enthusiastic anymore.

Experience: Each new festival is an occasion for us to finish something of the old. We only need to take a determined thought to remove something of our old nature. We no longer need to give excuses, but make the firm promise to ourselves to transform. Our zeal and enthusiasm will then never lessen and we will continue to celebrate with constant enthusiasm.

 

Understanding What Is ‘Time’

We created the concept of time to measure our experience of the space between events. Time passes only because we experience change. What is change? Change is only a series of events. So time is our experience of the speed of events. This explains why time seems to be moving faster today, because both the speed and the number of events are increasing. And it seems even faster if we participate in those events. If the speed and number of events was less, we would experience time to be moving slowly, as it used to be a little earlier in the history of mankind.

Today, sitting in our living rooms and offices, electronic, print and other media allows us to observe hundreds of events from all over the world, every day. To observe them actively is to participate in them. If you want to slow time down, learn to be a detached observer of the thousands of events around you – participate or observe actively only when necessary. If you want to stop time, meditate and be in your original, timeless, eternal consciousness. Meditation is after all an art of shutting down your senses and slowing down. Today, we fear time, as a result we hear ourselves saying many a times, "Hurry up, time is running out!" or "I hope to have more time tomorrow!' or "I need to save time!" Ultimately time, is our life: it cannot be saved or lost, but must be lived now. This is where your will-power is important - we can choose exactly how we spend our time at any moment. 

 

To work with the inner happiness is to move forward with lightness

Expression: Usually we do take care not to give sorrow to others, but we sometimes do take sorrow from the words and behaviour of others. This disturbs our own inner state and we are not able to work with lightness. Then we find that we are not able to be effective in our work and this further effects our inner state.

Experience: We need to pay special attention not to take sorrow from anyone. As much as we are careful not to give sorrow to others, we need to make sure we don't take any sorrow too. That means we need to remain light by keeping ourselves open to criticism. We need to take any criticism that comes our way in the right spirit and see that we learn from it without having any negative thoughts. 

 

To remain alert means to ensure our success

Expression: Inspite of putting in our best efforts we do find ourselves taken by surprise in certain situations and we experience failure. We often do not understand why we are experiencing failure even though we have put in our best efforts. At such times just blaming our fate will not help but what we need to do is to check within ourselves to see if we have something to change.

Experience: If we experience failure, it means some or the other weakness of ours is definitely working at that time. We need to check and recognise our weakness and be constantly alert to it. Since it might start working at any time we need to be totally alert and then we will find that the weakness will not take us by surprise. We will then be able to attain total success.  

 

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