An interesting perspective on intention, attention etc.

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

Sai Ram. I am sharing with you a beautiful and inspiring note received from my

friend, Shri Navneet Setia. We both are members of Facebook and he keeps sharing

good messages from Sri Sri Ravishankar ji, Gurudev as he is known all over the

world for Art Of Living (Loving). I liked it so much that I am sharing it with

all my friends. Thanks to Guruji and to my friend Navneet Setia. Jai Gurudev.

 

Swamy

 

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The universe functions with intention, attention, and manifestation. Wherever

you put your attention that starts manifesting in your life, if you put too much

attention on anger, anger manifests, too much attention on lust, lust manifests,

on greed, greed manifests.

 

When the intention is love, even anger is beneficial, that's what was the case

with the rishi, Dhurvasa, every time he was angry some great thing happened on

the planet, and it did not only good to all mankind. Are you with me, do you

hear what I'm saying?

 

So observe the intention where you want to put it, whatever you would like to

manifest: focus on imperfection and imperfection will manifest, focus on love in

life and love manifests.

 

Addiction starts with the repeated experience of the same sense object, repeated

experience of a particular sense object creates an addiction, or a habit. The

repeated association with a particular sense object create a sense of craving

for it. Leaving the habit become painful, but having it does not give you any

bliss, or ecstasy - this is the definition for a habit.

 

If you are habituated to eating ice cream almost every day, you get a craving

for it. Nobody is born with a craving, but you have started a habit within you

that has created the craving. Drinking coffee every day is not carrying you to

heaven, but leaving it gives you a headache. Similarly, all those who are into

alcohol and drugs, look at their faces, they are not in an ecstatic state of

consciousness filled with joy.

 

 

In fact it is the other way around, there is not joy on an alcoholics face, even

if you squeeze it not a drop of joy will come out, the alcohol has cleanly

washed out the joy with which one is born. That joy and innocence has been

robbed away, washed out.

 

So alcoholism, sex addiction, any type of drug addiction, all these are the

result of repeated experience, or association of a particular sense with the

object of sense.Again it is a fine line, when the association happens

repeatedly, desire for it arises more, and whether the desire is fulfilled or

unfulfilled, anger comes.

 

Whenever there is anger, behind the anger you will see there is a desire, a

craving, and the craving brings anger. When you become angry, the next step is

you get attached, and whomsoever or whatsoever you are angry with, sooner or

later you regret and regret brings more attachment to the person, or situation,

or to the sense object.

 

By regretting you don't move above something, you go more into it. When you

think of someone whom you hate, your nervous system undergoes such a distortion,

there is a distortion happening within your system.

 

This means you nervous system is assuming the form of the person whom you

dislike, and when you keep doing it again and again you get all their

impressions, and your system becomes like them. So when you become like them you

get drawn to them, and this is entanglement.An obsession bring anger, anger

brings entanglement, and entanglement clouds the intellect, your intellect

blurs, your wisdom is lost, judgement is lost, sharpness of awareness is lost,

and your ability to access the situation is lost.

 

The entanglement whether out of love, or out of hate, clouds the intellect. A

clouded intellect doesn't let you be in peace and such a distorted intellect

doesn't even bring up the subtle feelings in you, any feelings you'll have will

be gross feelings, violent feelings, you don't feel lighter when there is hatred

within you.Your vibration indicates what there is inside you, whether you are

light like a flower, or you are heavy like a stone, this shows up in your

vibrations, in your surroundings. Look at someone who is worried, there is such

a sense of heaviness, and heaviness is contrary to joy, contrary to love, and

contrary to all that you cherish as human values. With this the memory of

pleasant thing is lost, and life has two sets of memory, one is the memory of

unpleasant things, the other is the memory of pleasant things. Children often

have a memory of pleasant things more that unpleasant things, that's why they

keep themselves cheerful most of the time.

 

 

As we grow older, we lose our innocence, and our unpleasant memories increase

more than the pleasant ones.That is again the importance of spiritual practices,

meditation is to put the wheel back, it is bring back the pleasant memories more

and more, and to reduce the unpleasant memories to an almost insignificant

amount. When the memory is lost then the memory of who I am, what do I want in

my life, the memory of reality, the truth, seeing life in context with the

universe - that's called wisdom, and that is lost. Then there is no peace left,

and there is no happiness.However, those moments have been beneficial when you

have expressed your anger without really getting mad, or losing yourself

completely.

 

You can show anger, but not that anger in which you are lost, shivering and

shaking. In life it is impossible to deal with all situations without at least

sometime, somewhere showing some anger. Don't expect to be a sort of flat,

bland, goody-goody thing. Sometimes you have to show anger, it's alright, but

those moments have you noticed that it's not really taking away your sense of

peace, or sense of centredness. Like the rishi, Dhurvasa, he was a sage, a saint

who used anger as an exercise, to see whether in spite of anger he didn't lost

himself, or lose his centredness.So again and again, pull back your attention

from the objects of the senses and back to the sources of mind, the source of

consciousness.

 

This journey within, gives you the strength, endurance, which makes you endure

all different situations in life however unpleasant or pleasant they may be. The

practices, meditation, all these things are there to withdraw the mind, to take

it to its Source even for a few minutes, and then you see after meditation you

feel so fresh. How many of you feel like that, raise your hands? And what the

world is missing, this key to success in life, what people out there do not know

is a simple wisdom, a simple knowledge about life, of returning back to the

Source.

 

---Sri Sri