LIVING AN INTEGRATED LIFE WITH SELF

23 Oct 2011

Today we shall talk about living an integrated life. This topic shall stretch for at least a few Sundays. What we mean by living an integrated life. There are four parts to this, first of all how to live an integrated life with yourself? How you live an integrated life with others? How you live an integrated life with God and how you live an integrated life with nature? As a spiritualist on the spiritual journey you need to be complete when you live this total integrated life. When I say total integrated life, I mean you must live a life integrated as a whole. Most of us live a life that is separate from ourselves. We are not living a life integrated with ourselves. Today I shall talk about just living an integrated life with yourself. The next few Sundays we cover others, God and then nature.

How do you live a life that is integrated? First of all, ask yourself, how many times are you within yourself, having conflict with yourself? You want to do this, but somebody says you don’t do this and you change your mind because you are being influenced. There is no integration, there is separation. We separate ourselves because of our thinking. We are so easily influence by others. You want to do something but somebody say don’t and you say yes I won’t do. There is already turbulence in your mind because we are easily influenced by people who plant seeds in our mind and then we take, it germinates and then we begin to be influenced by others.

To be integrated with yourself, you must first of all have this total self confidence. That you know what you are doing. You are not influence by others. People tell you something, you decide for yourself. Don’t be swayed. Somebody tells you something, you say “Yes I believe him” John tells you something, you say John is right. Jack tells you something, you say yes Jack is right. Now you got three opinions in your head. What you going to do. Most of us live this kind of life.

To start off with, you need to be able to address yourself, you have to know yourself. “Know thy Self.” Know what is your strength and what is your weakness. When I say strength I mean strength in many areas. It is very difficult for a person to get to know himself because there is a blind spot. He only sees that he is perfect but the blind spot he doesn’t see. We all think we are perfect but this blind spot will come out in situations, the universe will present itself this blind spot in situations for it to surface, so you can see your ugly self or others can see your ugly self. Whether you like it or not, you may think you are perfect, you may think you don’t have anger. You may think you don’t have jealousy but situation presents itself suddenly and then the ugliness reveals itself. Nothing wrong, we are all in this journey to perfection, remember! So there is nothing wrong to be jealous, nothing wrong to be envious, nothing wrong with anger but once it surfaces, recognise it. Don’t say I don’t have it. Don’t deny it. You are not living an integrated self. You are living a separate self, bluffing yourself that you are perfect. So address, analyse and know yourself first. We are all living 25%, one quarter of the whole. This one quarter is starting with yourself, the next 25% is others, the next 25% is God and the next 25% is Nature. Then you live your whole life, integrated, wholesome as a spiritualist, as a person on spiritual journey, you live a whole life, complete. We shall talk about the other three parts next three Sundays. Today is just about this.

Think about it, most of the time we live a life separate from ourselves. We don’t know ourselves. We don’t even know how we going the react. We don’t even know how we are going to think because we are not in control. To be in control of yourself, you must know how to act or react when somebody tells you something. When somebody tells you something that you don’t like, when you react, is it negative, is it ego reactive or is it really because that is what you believe. Most of the time it is the ego reacting because ego repairs itself. You can analyse it yourself. Next time somebody tells you something, when you react, what words you say, think about it. Is it ego talking or your divine self talking? Most of the time it is the ego talking. Then you have to correct yourself. This is where we have reach in our journey whereby we call it “the fine tuning”. No more big boulders. It is a fine tuning that we are talking about. This fine tuning is so fine that we are blinded and don’t see it. You say every day I do this, I do charity work, and I help people. Go back to yourself now. Start from yourself, if you don’t have love you cannot give love. If you don’t have compassion, you cannot give compassion. If you don’t have goodwill, you cannot give goodwill. You have to become a fountain which allows you to give all these things. To be able to become this fountain which we talked about, we must be integrated with ourselves. You cannot be separate. To be integrated with yourself, you must know exactly know you would react, how you feel in any situation. Then you become a total person, integrated with yourself. If somebody comes and say let’s go to this place to eat, you can say today I don’t feel like eating. If they say never mind let’s go, you can say I don’t feel like it, Sorry. If you get swayed into it and go then you are not integrated with yourself. You are easily swayed by others. Why? Because you don’t have a mind of your own. People say “this” you follow; people say “that” you follow, in the end you don’t know what you are doing. But if you wish to make the other person happy then go but then you know your intention of going.

Now to be totally in control, totally integrated with yourself, you have to have self confidence. The self confidence to make a decision, make a choice and stick to it. Few Sundays ago we talked about choices in life. We make choices in life; we face the consequences of the choices. Yes, that is what life is all about. Have this self confidence to make this choice and then face the consequences of your choices. After many years on this spiritual journey, where there is nobody for you to talk to or refer to, you have to stand on your own. How long more do you think you can carry on having to use someone as you crutch. When you have a problem, you run to this person and then they solve it that is a crutch. Our Guru has told us many years ago “Don’t use me as a crutch.” He said “Walk on your own. I am giving you just the tips only. You have to walk on your own.” You cannot always use your Guru as a crutch. The teachings are tools that he has given you. It is not a crutch. The crutches are someone you go to and ask, “Can you help me to do this”. Yes that is using that person has a crutch. Advice, can but don’t go again and again to get help. You know why? It is the easy way out. The person makes the decisions for you. Anything goes wrong, he is at fault. You say “You told me to do it.” Very clever, I don’t make any decision, I just say I got this problem, he says ok do this. When it did turn out, you say “He told me to do this.” You see how easy the mind works to put the blame on someone else.

Don’t do that. That is living a totally separated from yourself. Integrated self is stand on your own feet, ask for advice, make your own decision. Then we learn to make our own decision, stand our own feet and then become strong. So today we talked about living an integrated life with ourselves. Next three Sundays we shall talk about the other three things and then we sum up as a total, as one whole.