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]