For the past few Sundays we talked about transformation. The spiritual journey is a journey of transformation. Transformation of the mind and heart. Now let\u2019s talk of the transformation of the mind. Before you can transform your mind, you must know how you are thinking, your mental habits, what you are thinking about. We have talked a lot about this and today we shall talk about the application. If you do not apply what you know you will not gain the experience.<\/p>\n
I give you an example, say you want to cook and you have the best recipe in the world of say the chicken curry but if you don\u2019t apply, that means you don\u2019t attempt to cook, you will never be good at it. Practice, first time maybe you fail, second time starts to get better, third time slightly better and you get better and better. The more you apply the better you get so much so that you don\u2019t need the recipe anymore. But the best part of it is the taste of the food.<\/p>\n
The spiritual journey is no different; you may have all the knowledge, all the books, all the recipes, all the prayers, all the teachings. So long as you don\u2019t apply on a daily basis, you cannot taste the fruit of your actions. You cannot experience this joy that we are talking about. You cannot experience this harmony that we are talking about; you cannot experience this peace of mind we have been talking about. You say \u201cI have been reading my prayers every day but I don\u2019t get the harmony, I don\u2019t have peace of mind.\u201d This is just like reading the recipe every day and you cannot taste the chicken curry. \u201cI read my chicken recipe daily, how many spices, how many this but I can\u2019t taste my chicken curry.\u201d<\/p>\n
So spiritual journey is the same thing, you have to apply. Now how do you apply, this is something we shall talk about today. All of us have a different area in which we want to improve. Just take a look at two aspects. First of all the area we want to improve in terms of say anger. We are very irritated, we get very angry easily. I say start at home first. Start at home because at home most of us have our guards down. We can be very rude to our spouse, very rude to our children, very rude to our love ones. Why? \u201cThe person is staying with me so I can scold the person and the person cannot go away.\u201d So start from home. How? By telling yourself for today for the whole day I want to be very careful not to get angry with anyone. That is how you apply. You must have an action plan. For you to do anything you must have an action plan. My plan is not to get angry with anyone. Not even with my children, my wife or my husband or whoever that comes along the way. I shall remember not to get angry. Now, how not to get angry? Focus on God.<\/p>\n
Have love, have goodwill. It is repeated so many times in our prayer book, have love, kindness, understanding and goodwill for all. These four things are always there. So if you have this in mind, when you apply and then at the end of the day you say \u201cOk maybe two to three times I lose my temper. Tomorrow I will try again and again and again.\u201d You will see the results. As long as you don\u2019t have an action plan, you will never see results. I am telling you where to start today. Pick one thing; say tomorrow you want to have kindness. You want to experience kindness. So for tomorrow you say \u201cI am going to be kind to everyone, human beings and all living things,\u201d and then you apply, you practice kindness with people. People smile, you smile back. Open the door for people, at lift, let others go in first, at MRT trains, let others have the seat. You experience this. That is how you apply.<\/p>\n
So as long as you don\u2019t apply, what you know is just like what you have in the recipe of chicken curry, you cannot taste the chicken curry. You can say \u201cI have the best recipe.\u201d Of what use is it if you do not attempt to cook it.<\/p>\n
You know you have the best recipe today because the Human Relations Approach to God is about interacting with people. That is what our Guru had taught us. Human relations approach to God is applicable in our day to day living. Every day I have to talk to someone, every day I have to meet someone, whether at home, in the work place, on the bus, I have to talk to someone. Be it the cashier at the supermarket, whoever, don\u2019t be rude to the person. Maybe for that day the person has something in mind and serves you without saying thank you. It is Ok you need not be rude or scold that person for not saying thank you.\u201d So if you look at all these little things, understanding comes in. So as long as you take one word every day, be it kindness, understanding or love or if you have issues, you get very irritated by someone\u2019s rudeness, or if you are rude to everyone, say \u201cFrom today I shall make sure I will remember not to be rude. If I am rude, I am rude to God.\u201d Tell yourself that and that\u2019s how you practice. If I am rude to someone, I am actually rude to God.<\/p>\n
That is application. As long as you don\u2019t apply, you cannot taste the fruit of your action. The taste you get is the joy, the happiness, the harmony, the peace of mind you get when you apply all these things. Then you realise people are kind to you, people are gentle to you. The people are gracious to you. Why? Because you are the fountain of love. As you give, you get back but here we want to get all these things but we don\u2019t want to give. We want love, we want kindness. We want people to be nice to us but we don\u2019t want to give.<\/p>\n
You are the starting point, doesn\u2019t matter whether the person is kind to you or not, that does not matter. Doesn\u2019t matter if he says thank you or not. You are the generator of that love, kindness, understanding and good will. So if you start the day having an action plan and say \u201cToday I want to be this.\u201d I want to do this or I want to experience this quality which we talked about. Just take any quality, \u201cAnger\u201d and then at the end of the day you take stock and say \u201cMaybe for that whole day I have done this and I will do better tomorrow.\u201d Then tomorrow you start again until you are satisfied with that action plan of yours. Move on to the next one and that\u2019s how you experience. If not forever you have this wonderful recipe that you have but we don\u2019t know how to cook it. As long you don\u2019t cook it, you cannot taste the food that you have cooked.<\/p>\n
Your spiritual life is exactly the same thing. Going to places of worship, going to temple, chanting mantras, singing Bhajans are all the fertilizer for this soil. The foundation that you need because when we do all these things, when you are kind to someone and that someone is not kind or no kindness return, you are unaffected. Why? Your foundation is very strong, why? You are doing for God. If I say hello to someone and he did not say hello back to me, I don\u2019t mind. I am doing for God. I won\u2019t say \u201cWhy you did not say hello back to me<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t aspect anything from anyone when you give. This is unconditional love, you give love kindness, generosity, and understanding and do not expect anything in return and then you will be a happier person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the past few Sundays we talked about transformation. The spiritual journey is a journey of transformation. Transformation of the mind and heart. Now let\u2019s talk of the transformation of the mind. Before you can transform your mind, you must know how you are thinking, your mental habits, what you are thinking about. We have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divineoneness.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}