The answers are within

The answers are within

Situations in themselves do not produce feelings. It is our perception of them that makes us feel good or bad

Paul Coutinho

Stephen Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, shares an experience that he once had while traveling on the New York subway. Imagine you are riding the subway early one morning, and everybody appears to be comfortable — people are drinking their coffee, reading their newspapers and magazines, working on their laptops, talking on their cell phones. Everything is normal and peaceful.

At each station, a few people get off, a few people get on, everything is calm and sedate, until the train stops at a particular station and a man walks onto your train car with his little children. He finds seats for them and then sits down in a reflective mood. While he is in deep meditation, the children begin to run up and down the aisle, screaming and shouting, running all over the train car.

How do you feel? Are you mad at the man? Why are you mad? You are perhaps thinking, This man should take care of his children in public. If he does not know how to take care of children, why did he have them in the first place! Are you mad at the children for making so much noise? Spoiled kids! you might think. You notice there is no mother. Now you might be thinking, I bet the mother left this man with these undisciplined children. See yourself going up to this irresponsible father and confronting him, saying, “Excuse me, sir, would you mind tending to your children? They’re being so disruptive, and I think everybody is getting a little upset.” The man looks up at you and says, “Two hours ago these children lost their mother in the hospital. She just died, and ever since then I have been trying to explain to them the death of their mother, and their only reaction is this.”

Now how do you feel? The children are still jumping up and down, screaming and shouting. But now you feel terrible. You feel guilty. You feel sorry for the man, you feel sorry for the children, and you feel bad about their mother. You might even feel upset with yourself for feeling negatively about the father and his children.

I give you this example to demonstrate the power of our beliefs. Emotions are not caused by situations. Emotions are caused by our beliefs about situations, beliefs that color our perception and our understanding of events. In this example, the children are still jumping up and down and shouting, but some of us have moved from being upset to feeling sad, compassionate, and concerned.

Others may still feel angry, because they believe that children should always behave in public. Beliefs cause emotions that trigger behavior. If we feel angry about a situation and react in anger, it is because we have angry beliefs about it. If we feel compassionate, it is because we have compassionate beliefs.

Situations in themselves do not produce feelings. It is our perception of the situation that makes us feel good or bad. Just as situations cannot make us happy or sad, another person cannot make us feel happy or sad. We choose to be happy or sad. If we seek greater freedom in our lives, we need to be objective and rational about the power of our beliefs versus the power of situations. We control our emotions. When we live in freedom, we choose the way we respond rather than let our automatic destructive reactions get the better of us.

Now you might ask, “Okay, but how do I do this? How do I choose to respond when I am under pressure, when I have been taught to fear or fight, when the situation seems ‘bad’ to me?” The “PQR formula” can help us live freely in stressful, anxious, or depressing situations. We Pause to Question how we would like to Respond rather than react and live to regret our negative reaction.

Let me try to explain what I mean by react: You push; I shove. Without thinking, I shove. This is my reaction. It is immediate and disconnected from my higher Self, the constant “I”, and the meaning of my life. My reaction is an imprisoned effect. This is not freedom.

By applying the PQR formula, however, I can respond. I pause (find myself in the situation), question (How does this situation relate to the meaning of my life? How do I wish to respond given a world of infinite possibilities?), and then respond (a freely chosen action — not a reaction). Responding rather than reacting helps us live freely and in greater harmony with our true identity in every situation. It helps us grab hold of the freedom we seek in order to enter into the river of divine life.

TRUE BLISS IS WITHIN YOU

Placing your happiness in the hands of others will lead to a lot of pain and disappointment, says Donna Thomson

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet,” said James Oppenheim. True happiness cannot be sought outside of yourself — not in your relationships with others, the groups you belong to, or in the things around you. Unless you can stand alone in your own shadow and feel happiness from within, true happiness may always elude you for external things come and go like the tide. The only constant in your life is you. Love you, admire you, value you and be happy to be you.

Why do we seek happiness from outside of ourselves? From His Holiness The Dalai Lama: “Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.”

So we learn from a young age to rely on others rather than on ourselves. If we rely on others for our food, shelter and other needs, why not happiness? Well happiness of course does come from many things and our social relationships and other external factors can bring us much joy, but many of us have not connected with ourselves as we have connected with others. The negative side is that placing all of your happiness in the hands of others will lead to a lot of pain and disappointment throughout your life.

No matter how much you love a partner, a child, or a friend, you cannot make your happiness conditional upon them. Why? Because you will have certain expectations of others and when those expectations aren’t met, you may feel hurt, betrayed, misunderstood, taken for granted, invalidated, confused and so on. Everyone is individual. We have each grown to develop our own sets of values, beliefs, attitudes and ways of looking at the world. Our views may not be exactly the same as our loved ones. However, we often expect those loved ones to know what we want from them.

When someone else’s actions don't live up to your expectations you are let down. Often the other person won’t even realise they’ve done something to cause you pain because they don’t know your expectations unless you have explicitly shared them. Often we don’t even realise our own expectations until we feel someone has hurt or disappointed us.
For example, you may unconsciously expect your partner to show their love in a particular way such as saying “I love you” regularly and when this doesn’t happen you start to wonder if they truly care for you. You may feel unacknowledged and unloved. However your partner may feel that they are showing their love through their actions. You have one belief while your partner has another. Is there a lack of love? No. While you let your feelings build into a stressful negative state within you, your partner would probably be very surprised to know you feel that way.

It’s unrealistic to expect another person to know what's in your head — your values, beliefs and expectations. Thinking “Well they should know!” is not good enough, yet most of us would have thought this of someone else at some stage. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. They see you become sad, angry, unresponsive to them, or upset and don’t know what they’ve done, or if it’s even them who has made you unhappy. This leads to negative feelings from both sides and possibly arguments that could be avoided through open communication.

Rather than looking to others for your needs, begin by looking within yourself. When you feel a sense of disappointment in someone, use it as an opportunity to analyse your own expectations. The only person who should truly be able to disappoint you is yourself — when you are not being true to yourself in some way. You can take that disappointment and turn it into a positive — a pledge; an action that you can take to better yourself.

Analyse why you are disappointed or hurt. You may find your initial thoughts or statements begin with “Because he did” or “Because she didn’t”. Now look deeper to the true reason for your disappointment. Such statements will start with “Because i expected”, “Because i wanted” or “Because i thought he or she should”.

You truly only ever have control over yourself and realising this can save you a lot of pain. Of course you can be disappointed in others but you have no control over their actions and reactions. You can share the reasons for your disappointment but you cannot expect the other person or situation to change because the other person has free will.

When you realise that you are responsible for your thinking and expectations, you will start to see that you’ve placed much of your happiness in the hands of others. You can now take your power back by recognising that you have the choice to react to something either negatively or positively. By making your happiness conditional upon another person, you hand your power over to them. You feel a ‘victim’ whenever things don’t go as you want or expect. In doing this, you set yourself up for pain, but you can now turn this around and instead set yourself up for happiness.

The key is to not expect a particular outcome. What happens next is up to you. You can choose to wallow in negative feelings which may further damage a relationship, or you can try to place a positive spin on the situation. Perhaps you can find your happiness in the fact that you’ve done your part in dealing with the situation by getting your issue out into the open. Realise that it may not be an issue to the other person, but ideally you will work together to reach a compromise. You can also decide to be happy for the other person and the pain they show you because it helps you to grow. There are always choices and different ways of looking at the same thing.

It puts things into perspective when you resign yourself to the fact that people do make mistakes — they forget things, they don’t think properly, they don’t always consider how others may be affected by their actions, they can act selfishly at times, and so on. We are all humans and we are designed to make mistakes as they are our greatest opportunities to learn. As Horace Friess says, “All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.”

Your life is your creation

Your life is your creation

You are creating your own reality, moment by moment, with the thoughts you choose to think and say

-Jim Donovan

Thoughts are things. You’ve probably heard this idea at one time or another. You’ve probably nodded your head in agreement understanding that thoughts are in fact, things. You probably believe this and accept that your thoughts, being things, do in fact have power. Have you really thought about this? Do you apply this to your day-today life? Hopefully you do, because you're every thought and word is contributing to your life experience.

For openers, your thoughts produce your emotions, which, in turn, result in how you feel about a particular event occurring in your life. It has always amazed me how people can walk around feeling a particular way and not understand that it is their own thoughts, or more accurately what they are telling themselves that is producing the feeling in the first place. This is why two people can look at the exact same event and have opposite feelings about it. You are creating your own reality, moment by moment, with the thoughts you choose to think and what you say, both to yourself and others.

Let’s explore this a little further. Most people will agree, and science can demonstrate, that everything in our world is a field of energy and therefore has a particular frequency. The chair you're sitting on, your car, your cat, dog, you and everything else including thoughts, have a field of energy or vibration. Recent scientific work has identified particular ranges of frequencies and scientists are able to measure them. Interestingly enough, negative energies, like anger and rage, measure very low on the scale, while positive energies like those given off by prayer and meditation reach the highest measurements.

At this point you may be wondering what this has to do with your thoughts. Bear with me and I promise to connect the dots.The second part of this equation is the universal law that states “like attracts like”. This has been referred to as the law of attraction, law of similar and other names. What we choose to call it is not terribly important, what is important to understanding the part this plays in our lives.

Let's supposing for a moment you're in a bad mood. You're feeling pretty negative. At that particular moment in time your personal vibration, the energy of your thoughts and words is in the lower frequencies. Let’s call this particular mood, “Frequency X.” Now somewhere off in the distant universe, there is another negative experience. Maybe it’s a flat tire, whose frequency happens to be “X” as well. By virtue the law of attraction, you will begin attracting that or some other undesirable experience to you. There are no accidents. The universe works on a specific set of principals that do not waiver. Like attracts like, whether we believe it or not.

The good news is that the opposite is also true. If, for example, you are feeling great, having invested time sitting and reading your goals and taking care to monitor your thoughts, intentions, and your internal and external dialog, you are now entering a high energy vibration and are in a place to attract other high vibrations, generally things that you want to have, into your life.

I’m not asking you to accept this blindly only that you begin to observe the world around you and see if this holds true for you. I'm sure you've noticed situations when, in a room full of people, one person seems to be the centre of attention. Why do you suppose this is? I’ll give you a hint, that's it's probably not her perfume.milarly, you probably know people who are always having undesirable experiences in their lives.

These are the people who have a lousy time in even the best restaurant. They seem to travel with dark clouds over them and always experience things going wrong in their everyday lives. If you observe and listen to them closely, you will begin to see the connection between what they think and say and what shows up in their lives.

Travel Light To Enjoy The Journey Of Life

Travel Light To Enjoy The Journey Of Life
Tia Paranjape

I often wonder: Is it possible to love without attachment? We do have so much love to give, but is it the right kind of love? We tend to feel a kind of ownership over all that we love though we don’t own anything or anyone.

It is easier to utter the words ‘I love you’ than to actually mean it. Love is perceived in many different ways. My mother would say: “Love, but never be possessive of what you love. Once you are possessive, you might claim ‘this is mine’ when in actuality nothing or no one is yours.”
We are all here on a spiritual journey. Along the way we find several co-travellers who become part of our lives but they too have their own destination. There is a hierarchy of love. Right on top are parents, spouse, children, siblings, other family and friends. Love stops here and further down the ladder it becomes ‘like’. Sri Sathya Sai Baba says love all as if your own. He talks of universal love. This is not easy to follow but maybe we could try. For starters, we could do little things that make people smile. A kind word or tone would not take away from you but give a lot to the other person.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba says: “If you want peace and if you want happiness you must live in love. Only through love will you find inner peace. Only through love will you find true happiness. Love flourishes through giving and forgiving. Develop your love! Immerse yourself in love!
“...Love is the basis of everything. It is the single most important quality that has to be developed. All your thoughts must become immersed in this quality of love... then truth will naturally establish itself in your heart.”

People who serve are Godlike; their service should be appreciated, whether they belong to your peer group or not. We need to learn to love without attachment. We love those who we feel are ours. What about the rest? Why is an amazing emotion like love saved only for those few people who we perceive as ours? For instance, how might one learn to love the person who has wronged us? I guess i would say OK, don’t love, but at least try not to hate. That is an improvement.

Again, received wisdom from my mother says things can never bring you happiness. Once you’ve bought something, its value diminishes. At first i used to think that was not true, but in time i learnt that it is one of the few truths in life. I constantly try and make an effort to not get attached to ‘things’ now because at the end of the day they are things. This doesn’t mean don’t shop, don’t want... it means realise that actual happiness cannot be attained from anything external.

Enjoy all the things you have and be grateful for it, as that too is the grace of God but do not expect it to give you anything. I find my peace every evening as i sit by myself and watch the sun set. That is when i feel real joy. The sun sets with such ease and that is how we should be.

I would get attached to songs and smells! Some smells can take you back in time and songs too can transport you to old memories. It is nice to remember but if we dwell on the past we are missing out on the present; we tend to miss out on new smells and songs as we’re so preoccupied with the old. We have to let go, because holding on to something does not give us ownership rights. So much baggage! To enjoy the journey, travel light. In other words, practise loving detachment.