Let one raise the Self by the Self
and not let the Self within become weak;
The Self is,
indeed, the Self’s only friend,
but the Self is also its own enemy
Bhagavad Gita V1.5
As long as you feel that you are a separate entity from That which is Wholeness you will be subject to the vagaries of relative love. While you are travelling towards your Completeness, you can at least understand that you will be a victim of love’s play and you can endeavour to love more and more fully and with purity, until you know that you are Love Itself.
You cannot fully love; you cannot love anyone until you love yourself totally and completely. Until you do this, you will have a dependence on others, on external praise and affirmation. You will feel high when you are seemingly appreciated, and you will feel low when you are neglected or negated. This dependence can make you feel on top of the world, but when the topple comes it can make you feel suicidal. Do you really want to continue on this seesaw?
The truth is that you and everyone in this world will be praised, ridiculed, loved, hated, liked and despised at some time by anyone. But what has this really got to do with you?
The reality is that if you take 100 people and ask them for their opinion of you, you will get 100 different opinions about you, good and bad, which has nothing much to do with you at all, but which will have a lot to say about them. Are you going to continue to live out your precious human life subject to the conditioned and neurotic thoughts of others? Are you going to base your happiness on how one person’s mind projects on you? Are you going to be fleetingly happy or sad because of someone else’s projected, distorted view of you?
For One Moment
make believe that there are no opinions,
judgements or attitudes
anywhere in the world about you.
For just one moment, make believe that your parents,
your teachers, your friends, your peers, your enemies
hold no attitudes about you.
For at Least One Moment
love yourself.
Allow love for yourself to pour out
from your heart to your entire being,
to every little and precious part of you.
Let this moment
become another moment
and then another moment
until you really do feel
completely and utterly
loved.
HEAL
The truth is that at a certain stage, you cannot judge yourself anymore as you continue towards Wholeness. Self-judgement and healing do not go together. There are times in our lives when we can do this from morning until night and the only time we stop is when we are judging others. But with an increasing awareness of love, you will not be able to hold onto past or present feelings of self-disgust, self-hatred, self-dislike and self-torment.
Believe it or not, your life is already perfect and always has been. You may not know this consciously, or even wish to believe this. But the truth is, in your perfect life; you have received and undergone the most appropriate personal experiences to help you to grow spiritually. That is it! What is there to judge? How can you feel bad about what you have ever done? Who was it that did the act or had the thought? Who wrote the script?
Sri Sathya Sai Baba says:
Whatever you do, wherever you are placed, believe that God has put you there for that work.
It is easy to look back and say that one should not have done this or done that, but could you really have done it any other way? And if it had never happened what would you know now?
If you had never made a mistake, how egotistic would you be now? If you had never hurt anyone or been hurt what would you know of such things?
And, if it is pointless to judge yourself, then how can you judge another? If you can no longer punish yourself, how can you continue to justify wanting to punish another? With the strength and power of your own love, forgive yourself, and with the resultant loving softness you find within you, forgive others. This is one of the hardest movements of our heart. It stretches the heart open and you cannot avoid the resultant ego-pain. But the agony is worth it and is short lived. The joy you feel at the slightest opening of the heart is like the accumulated bliss of a hundred thousand years of ego-satisfaction and self-righteousness.
This opening of the being is the reward and is the yearning.
To deny this Truth is the real suffering and pain.
Try to remember a situation where you felt hurt by someone’s actions or words, but you stretched your heart to care to forgive them, to feel for them in their ignorance and their own hurt, and you tried to see life from their point of view rather than your own. Did you not feel good? Do you remember feeling a rush of warmth pervade your being? Did you feel here a sense of opening rather than a contraction?
Jesus said at His time of transition, Forgive them father, for they know not what they do. He knew that the people murdering Him thought that they were right. He knew that they could do nothing else than what they did. He knew also their actions provided the means for His Resurrection. Jesus, in His Divinity and Godliness, saw the whole picture. But from the tunnel vision of our ego eyes we can only see a limited view. From our ego eyes, any limitations placed upon us, any reprimands or, even the destruction of our desires is viewed by us as evil.
How can we ever know if what others or we do is right or wrong? There is no right or wrong seen through the eyes of Divine Love. Criminals and saints, carry the same Divine Spark. God loves everybody equally all of the time. But, as long as we are in this relative world, there is right action, which is the action your Conscience directs you towards. And this is always perfect in its timing and placement.
Sai Baba says:
Whatever we speak should come out of the heart. We should speak with all love. Whatever you speak with love is bound to be the truth. When there is no love there is falsehood. We have to take truth as the basis in all pursuits. It is not that easy. We have to practice.
Our conscience is the direct emissary of our love. Our love is the emissary of our conscience. They are the vehicles of our Truth.
For One Moment
just make believe
that you hold no opinions,
judgements,
attitudes,
about anyone,
or anything
anywhere in the world.
For just one moment,
make believe
that you have never
held an attitude,
opinion or judgement
about anyone
or anything
or any place.
HEAL
Extract from ‘HEAL‘ by Mynavati
