👉 *Materialism and Spirituality: Two ways of Living (Last Part)*

🔶 *The mind is different from the rest of the senses in that it is always unsatisfied and ambitious. New hopes and ambitions arise once the old ones are fulfilled. Suppose a person desires to buy a house. He would remain preoccupied with that thought because there is an attraction in it. Once a house is bought, the attraction fades. If a person does not have children, he would yearn for them; once he has children, they appear burdensome. A similar principle applies to other things, such as household items, clothes, etc and to attachment towards people. Therefore greed and attachment are attractive only until they are fulfilled. Egoism also follows a similar principle.*

🔷 *A secretary in a company feels his job status is low and aims for a higher status so that he can elevate his standing in the society. It is possible that several persons within the company may be trying for the same position. Therefore he becomes an enemy for them, since now he is an extra competitor in the race. In case he does succeed in fulfilling his egoistic desire in progressing towards his dream position, mental peace would elude him because there would be several people scheming to dislodge him. His ego thus becomes his own dangerous adversary. The worth and importance of a well-mannered, disciplined person is obviously more than that of an egoistic person.*

🔶 *No circumstances or individuals can challenge a gentleman, whereas examples of egoistic people suffering ruin can be seen all around us. A gentleman is respected while an egoistic person is ignored....*

📖 *Akhand Jyoti, Jan Feb 2003*

https://bit.ly/2MZyZtU

👉 *Materialism and Spirituality: Two ways         of Living
 *There are two aspects of human life: one that relates to the physical body materialism; and the other that relates to the inner self (the soul) spirituality. Materialism means an inclination towards acquiring material possessions and comforts. In short, it is a tendency to lead a life in which pleasures of the body are given preference above anything else. Spirituality means, centred and established on the soul, that is, activities in life are decided keeping in mind the awakening of the soul. Normally a person's needs are fulfilled with limited materials such as food to satisfy hunger, few clothes to cover the body, a bed for rest, a house for shelter, etce ra. Anything over and above the basic needs either remains unused or is misused.*

🔷 *For example, if a person who can eat four chapattis for lunch were given eight chapattis, it would be beyond his capacity to eat the extra four chapattis. A single bed is enough for a person to sleep on; any more bed space would remain unused. Considering this, a few hours work is sufficient to satisfy bodys requirements. The same is true for senses also. There are five physical senses: touch, smell, taste, hearing and vision. No matter how beautiful a view may be, the eyes will tire of seeing it after a few minutes. The ears will not be able to listen to melodious music indefinitely.*

🔶 *A person will be able to eat only a certain quantity of food of his liking. Thus the senses have limited requirements, beyond which they become saturated. But senses are never satisfied they always crave for more. The mind is considered to be the sixth sense. Its attributes are greed, attachment (moha) towards worldly objects and people, and egoism. The mind experiences joy when these three attributes are attended to. Man generally engages his time and effort in satisfying the requirements of the body and the mind. The mind propels him to fulfill the three attributes and also employs the body in its schemes. This is not surprising, since satisfaction of the senses is a bodily requirement, and the mind is one of the senses.*

👉 *The Art of Sadhana*

🔷 *The essence of sadhana is self-discipline. The deities we worship are in fact the symbolic representatives of our own covert indwelling divine attributes. So long as these attributes are dormant, we live in a miserable state, but when the divine nature is awakened and activated, we realize that we are repositories of supernormal energies (riddhi and siddhi). The sole aim of sadhana is to activate these dormant attributes through a focused and dedicated process of self-refinement and self-transcendence.*

🔶 *A farmer understands the significance of sadhana. While tending his crops, he remains thoroughly involved in farming day in and day out throughout the year. In this process, he is least concerned about his health or the severity of weather. He takes care of the fields like he would of his own body. He keeps an eye over each and every plant. According to the needs of the crop, he nurtures it with manure and performs several operations such as tilling, irrigating, weeding and the harrowing of the field, and finally harvesting.*

🔷 *The wisdom for the preservation and maintenance of the fields, the bullocks, ploughs and the ancillary equipments comes to him intuitively from within. He does all this without feeling tired or bored, or showing any haste. He does not insist on the immediate reward for his labour because he knows that the crop takes a specific period of time to ripen and so he has to wait patiently till then. He remains free from the anxiety of filling his cellar with the produce. He also understands the futility of anticipating a plentiful yield. His sadhana of farming continues single-mindedly. He does encounter obstacles but he overcomes them with his own expertise and with the help of available resources. He refuses to relax without fulfilling the needs of the field. When the crop ripens and is harvested, he takes home the produce with a sense of gratitude to Nature.*

🔶 *This is sadhana of a farmer which he continues to perform from his childhood till death with unwavering faith. There is no rest, no fatigue, no boredom and no indifference. A sadhaka (devotee) should learn the art of sadhana from the farmer.*

📖 *Akhand Jyoti, Jan Feb 2003*

http://awgpskj.blogspot.com/2018/08/art-of-sadhana.html

👉 Success Mantra...
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; Who has left the world better than he found it, Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; Whose life was an inspiration; Whose memory a benediction."*

*Bessie Anderson Stanley*

👉 *Love is Supreme*

🔶 *Divine knowledge and selfless love enlighten every dimension of life, destroy all vices and worries; there remains no feeling of hatred, jealousy, discrimination or fear. And then, one is blessed by the divine sight to see the pure love, justice and equality evereywhere.

🔷 *If you want to experience the divine joy, make your mind a source of wisdom, firm determination and noble thoughts; let your heart be an auspicious ocean of compassion. Control your tongue, purify and discipline it to speak truth. This will help your self- refinement and inner strengthening and eventually inspire the divine impulse of eternal love.*

🔶 *If you have integrity of character, authenticity in what you talk and do, people will believe you. You will not have to attempt convincing them. The wise and sincere seekers will themselves reach you. If in addition, you are generous and have an altruistic attitude towards everyone, you will also naturally win people’s heart. The warmth, words and works of truth and love never go in the void. Their positive impact is an absolute certainty.*

🔷 *There should be no doubt in your mind that pure love is omnipresent and supreme. It contains the power to accomplish the eternal quest of life. It facilitates uprooting the vices and allaying the agility, apprehensions and tensions of mind. Selfless love is a divine virtue, a preeminent source of auspicious peace and joy.*

📖 *Akhand Jyoti, Oct. 1943*

👉 *You are the Architect of Your Destiny*

🔷 *If you depend upon others or look for someone’s help in the moments of difficulty, you must be living under some illusion. Otherwise, you would identify the root-cause of the problems you are facing and analyze your own vices and flaws that might have been responsible for those troubles. By overcoming those drawbacks and weaknesses, you would be best equipped to resolve or get rid of most of your problems on your own.*

🔶 *With the aspiration of being progressive and successful, you should also begin  adopting virtuous tendencies and sharpening and enhancing your potentials. Your destiny is indeed written according to your intrinsic nature, inner qualities. Intense impressions of your tendencies, sentiments and thinking and conduct, account for shaping of your inner personality, which is attributed to be the architect of your future evolution. God’s system works according to – “you harvest what you have sown”. If good qualities, abilities are not cultivated by you, and the seeds of virtues are left in a virgin (dormant) state within your self, and instead, negative tendencies, follies, untoward habits are allowed to accumulate and grow, God’s rule will formulate your destiny as full of sufferings; you will not have a good fate or hopes in future unless and until you refine yourself and inculcate the potentials of elevation. So it is in fact in your own hand to design your destiny.*

🔷 *If you awaken your self-confidence, set high ideals as your goal and sincerely endeavor to make yourself capable and deserving for that goal, God’s script will indeed destine you to have a bright and successful life accordingly. If you think wisely, know yourself and earnestly search for the illumined goal, you will certainly find the righteous path to achieve it at the right moment.*

👉 *Motivational Story...
        "Do not run"
One day, Swami Vivekananda was returning from temple of Ma Kali. On the path, Swamiji saw a number of monkeys who were not allowing him to pass through it. Whenever Swamiji would take a step forward, those monkeys would make a lot of noise and make angry face, showing their anger by shrieking near his feet.*

🔶 *As Swami Vivekananda took a step forward, monkeys got close to him. Swamiji began to run and the monkeys started chasing him. Faster Swamiji ran, bolder monkey got and tried to catch him and bite him.*

🔷 *Just then an old Sanyasi shouted from a distance, "Face them…" Those words brought Swamiji to senses and he stopped running. He turned back to boldly face them. As soon as Swamiji did that, the monkeys ran away and left.*

🔶 *Moral: We should not run away from challenges; instead we should face them boldly.*

👉 *Personality, personality, personality*

🔷 *This body is begotten and born of parents. There is really nothing different about the process of human birth. It is the same as in other animals. But on the other hand a personality has to be birthed with great care and resourcefulness.*

🔶 *Everyone, from a scientist to a philosopher has held human life in high regards. They sing praises to its greatness. The object of this praise is not a person, but a persona - the personality.*

🔷 *Yes, we do hear of someone inheriting a huge fortune, but its quite impossible to inherit - a great personality.*

🔶 *To make a personality is to relentlessly fight the battle of self-improvement with firm determination.*

🔷 *When a person becomes great, becomes extraordinary, outwardly he appears to be the same - but something does change, which makes him extraordinary from ordinary and that is - his personality.*

✍🏻 *Pt. Shriram Sharma Acharya*

👉 *Embrace Forgiveness*

🔶 *Fire burns everything that comes into its contact. But the heat of anger of a person burns only himself. It you hit the earth by your hand; it’s only your hand that will suffer the pains. Your annoyance or irritation upon someone might disturb or hurt him, but it will certainly and firstly do more harm to you. Even if you feel justified in taking revenge against someone’s misdeeds and even if you are mightier and capable of retaliating, you should better forgive. Because, your anger and arrogance would be worse (for you also) than whatever wrong one might have done (to you). As you might have experienced on several occasions, if one controls the wrath and maintains mental stability, most disputes or problems could be resolved peacefully and give you the content of mind, which you are dying for.*

🔷 *So what if you take revenge against someone’s wrong against you? Every animal has this beastly instinct. Even a tiny ant can do that. Greater is the one who can forgive his enemies. Why don’t you learn, something form the earth? You dig it, plough it, but in return, it blesses you with crops, water, minerals and what not! Look at the piece of sugarcane! You cut it, press it, chew it, but it reacts by filling your mouth with sweet juice.*

🔶 *Those who have harmed you or committed crime against you are coward, weak, ignorant, because only those having a dormant conscience can do so. Why should you belittle yourself by responding back at their level? It does not suit an intrepid warrior to use weapons against the blinds or the slept ones. Your act of revenge might sometimes, give temporary ‘satisfaction’ to your ego, but the joy induced by your act of forgiving would last for long…*

📖 *Akhand Jyoti, Jan. 1943*

http://awgpskj.blogspot.com/2018/08/embrace-forgiveness.html

👉 *In the Shrine of the Heart*

🔶 *Whenever you feel woeful, distressed or helpless in tragic circumstances or adversities around, whenever you feel demoralized by failures, whenever you see despair and darkness all around and are anxious about your future, whenever you are trapped in a dilemma and unable to think discreetly – don’t astray anymore in negativity. Remember, when a fox is surrounded by wild dogs
and sees no rescue, it runs swiftly back in to its den and feels relaxed and safe.*

🔷 *You should also throw away all thoughts and worries of your mind instantly and take shelter in the depths of your heart (the inner core of emotions, the inner self). Take a deep breath and just forget about everything; think as though nothing, not even your existence is there. As you would leave out these things at its doorsteps and enter deeper into the ‘shrine’ or your heart, you would realize that all the burden, all the worries and sufferings that were troubling you have evaporated. You have become light and floating like a thin piece of cotton. The calmness of your heart will sooth you like a moonlight shadow or a snow chamber to someone dying of heat in the sun of summer.*

🔶 *The purity of inner self is an edifice of peace and spiritual light. It is the source of ultimate realization and is therefore likened with “Brahmaloka”. God has graciously endowed us with this paradise to experience divine bliss. But we remain unaware of it and astray externally because of our ignorance.*

📖 *Akhand Jyoti, March. 1941*

👉 Two powers influencing human life...

🔶 *Religion and politics are the two main factors influencing human life at large. One offers zeal and the other awes with authority. One influences the outer worldly life of the masses while the other have an effect on the very depth of their inner being thus giving them vision and direction. Both are immensely powerful having an extraordinary influence in their own respective field. The aforesaid comparison is not meant to prove or disprove which one of them is weak or strong, useful or useless. Both are in fact complementary to each other. Each one of them can facilitate the success of the other even though they work in their own discreet fields.*

🔷 *Humanity suffers when one is at loggerheads or at odds with the other. Religion and politics can indeed do wonder to humanity. Unfortunately, such harmony is lacking these days.*

🔶 *Even though both are complementary to each other, religion remains to be of greater importance as it influences the inner core of human being which then produces corresponding results outside physical situations. Therefore, we should rely on dharma to educate and bring worthy changes in the hearts and minds of the masses rather than pleading help from the government administration which should be better left alone to get on with its duty of serving people in the physical field. We should utilise dharma more than ever to educate mind of the masses to rouse, guide, improve and excel their thoughts and feelings. The great luminaries who have been able to transform the world actually came from the world of dharma.*

✍🏻 *Pt. Shriram Sharma Acharya*

👉 Learn to Share...

🔷 You are really fortunate if God has endowed you with vigour, brilliance, knowledge, power, prosperity, glory & qualities like these. Then your life must be progressive and joyful in the worldly sense. But this success or joy would be momentary and won’t be fulfilling if you keep your resources and belongings closed to your chest and use them only for your selfish interests. Your joy, your satisfaction would expand exponentially if you learn to distribute them and share whatever you have with others.

🔶 Try to spend at least a fraction of your wealth, your resources for the needy ones. Your help will not only give them support to rise and progress, more importantly, it will bestow the spiritual benefits of being kind and altruistic. This will augment your happiness manifold. Those being helped by you will also be happy and thus the stock of joy in the world will also expand.

🔷 Distributing and sharing with a sight of altruistic wisdom and a feel of compassion provide the golden key to unalloyed joy. God has been so kind to you, you should also be kind to others. God is defined as the eternal source of infinite bliss because HIS mercy pervades everywhere for all creatures, for everything. HIS divine powers are omnipresent. Every impulse of joy is an expression of HIS beatitude.

🔶 You should see the dignity of HIS divine creation in this world. God has also given you an opportunity to glorify your life by selflessly spreading HIS auspicious grace.

👉 When is a Prayer Granted?

🔶 Our prayers deserve to be heard by the Almighty only when we take care of making use of the potentials he has already bestowed upon us. Accumulation of negative tendencies of lethargy, dullness, escapism from duties, ignorance, etcetra make one hazardous for his/her own life like a balloon full of concentrated acid which is most likely to explode anytime or ruin due to the acidic burning.

🔷 The rules in the system of God work like a vigilant gardener who uproots the useless and harmful wild growth and carefully nurses the saplings of the useful vegetation. If a field is not ploughed and is full of useless grass or shrubs etcetra. Then, how can it yield a crop even if the soil is fertile? Who will praise a farmer who lets his field be destroyed without bothering to clean it? The system of God certainly can’t allow its field of Nature to be left unguarded. The rules of the Omnipresent are such that the vices, the evils, the futile, get eliminated continuously so that the perfection and eternal beauty of HIS creation remains unperturbed. If you expect your calls to be heard, you will also have to constantly strive for self-refinement.

🔶 The best way to get the response to your prayers is to awaken your self confidence and follow the path of duties. Then alone your inner self will awake.

🔷 The opening to the path to the Light Divine lies deep within the realm of soul and enlightened inner self provides the only bridge to reach this sublime source. Those who don’t have faith in the dignity of their own souls and those who keep ignoring the inner voice and hunt in the external world to fulfill their wishes are lost in the smog of passions and confusions and invite adversities for themselves. Those who scorn their own inner selves are also rebuked by god and their prayers evaporate in the void.

👉 Generous Like the Clouds...

🔷 Stingy fellows, who keep their resources only to themselves and remain apathetic to the sufferings & pains are infact accumulating sins for their future destiny. Those who have stocked heaps of wealth in their possession but never use it for the good of others are mere guards of money. Such fellows are burden on this earth that can do nothing for anyone. Even materialistically, they don’t enjoy anything; the thirst of gaining more, the worries and tensions of safeguarding the possession and the miserly attitude do not let them live in peace; they neither eat well nor can give anything to others. Despite having millions & billions of dollars remain poor beggars… Thirst for more and more of selfish possession does not even let one see what is right and what is wrong. They follow unfair means of piling up the stocks of wealth. Prosperity earned by unfair means cannot let one prosper… One dies empty handed and later on all that ‘dead property’ possessed by him does no good to even those who grab it afterwards.

🔶 On the contrary those who earn honestly and spend magnanimously and wisely in good, constructive and auspicious activities are always prospering. They are like clouds which enshower generously even if emptied today, the clouds are filled again and return back tomorrow with same dignity.

🔷 Integrity, benevolence, caring and helping socially are the virtues of greatness which can make the entire world your own. No one can forget the warmth of meeting such amicable personalities. But, the selfish fellows howsoever talented and affluent they might be remain aloof and virtually isolated. Their state is like that of milk kept in a dirty pot which is thrown without use.