Being angry with god, fighting grief with the name of god.

March 14, 2008

Hi Everybody,

I would be grateful for some advice please. I have read lots of things that say that any of our emotions can be turned to god if they are problematic and to increase devotion.

Can I ask please how to actually do this? Say for example that I am angry with my mother; I bite my toungue and try to say nice and respectful things to her anyway. If I am angry with the dog I might shout at and even swear at him. If I am angry with my boss I pretend I am not.

Did Sri Ramakrishna say anything about what we should do about this? What if we consider Sri Ramakrishna to be God? Are we really allowed to shout, swear and call him names?

Also could I please ask; when Master told a lady devotee to fight grief with the name of God. What did he mean? Is the name of God to block out the thoughts of grief of trauma or are we just praying to God by repeating his name to help us with our suffering?

I very much appreciate your consideration of these matters.

Yours in the Eternal,

Russ

Rise to the challenge for Sport Relief with for Good

March 15, 2008

2 things.First and foremost, trust that whatever is happening is for us to learn lessons, useful lessons. Transform every experience into learning. We can do this "if and only if" we believe that the purpose of every incident, experience, situation, coincidence, meeting etc is to make us a better person every day. We have to reason out our anger, and this reasoning out, will make us understand ourselves (and others or vice versa) better and better. We will understand human nature better, we will know ourselves better. ( when we understand aspects of human nature, managing people and situations that arise thereby, is easy) .When anger arises become aware of the anger arising inside and I have

seen that when i become aware, the anger becomes passive, then I am in a better position to reason out, understand the problem in hand and then solution is easy. (this becoming aware thing is to be practised and i believe this is most important of all spiritual practises. Being aware becoming aware. (And you Russ Kennedy, when you have raised this question, that itself means you have started becoming aware).Secondly, there is the Supreme force acting on all of us. Trust in that supreme force Sri Ramakrishna, All that is happening is just for our good, only as long as we are aware and we learn consciously.Sri Ramakrishna, when he told the woman to fight grief with the name of God, he must have believed that she needed the path of Bhakti according to her nature, so Sri Ramakrishna prescribed her that method. That need not necessarily be the right method for everyone. Because if reasoning is your predominant nature and you take up

bhakti just because it was prescribed to someone else for the same problem, you might actually be taking the wrong path not in line with your nature......no catastrophy may happen , but this would prolong the time taken for a person's spiritual progress or may become a hindrance.If reasoning, logical thinking is predominant in our nature ( which seems to be the case with you Russ Kennedy, since you have asked these questions as a part of reasoning things out) then study of psychology and some amazing books that give us understanding of human psyche should also prove to be useful.Praying is magical. The names and personalities of the Holy trio are magical. The very thought and complete faith in them gives all the courage needed to take the spiritual path. I think of Swamiji's words on strength and weakness everytime there arises a difficult situation that threatens my self confidence and it becomes magical.Hope this

helps.Best wishesSunil NimmalaRuss Kennedy <w.russkRamakrishna Sent: Saturday, 15 March, 2008 1:44:15 AM[sri Ramakrishna] Being angry with god, fighting grief with the name of god.