Living Wisely Living Well | With Asha Nayaswami

Select music for its pleasing or uplifting melody, rhythm, and harmony. A melody can do more than entertain: it can uplift; it can fill you with longing; or, alternatively, it can depress you. A rhythm can calm, invigorate, or disturb the nervous system. Harmony can evoke deep, calm feelings of peace, love, and happiness, or incite to anger, haunt with loneliness, torment with anxiety. Choose your music wisely, for its influence on you can be deep. A woman once tried to commit suicide. She had a near-death experience in which she found herself in a hellish region where the vibrations, as she reported later, were very similar to the beat of heavy rock ’n’ roll music. Later, she devoted her life to warning people against the insidious influence of such self-lowering music.

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True happiness is not the fruit of years of painful struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession, rather, of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment. As my Guru said, “The minutes are more important than the years.”

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There are two kinds of innocence: that of ignorance, and that of wisdom. A little girl, asked once by a little boy, “Are you a virgin?” replied, “No; not yet.” Hers was the innocence of ignorance. Such innocence may in time be undermined. The innocence of wisdom, however, follows upon the complete conquest of ego. Such innocence, though childlike, can never be undone. Its strength, though flexible, is indomitable.

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Sound and light affect our consciousness, for we (like them) are composed of vibrations. Music therefore is more than entertainment, and lighting, more than something to see by. Sound and light actually affect our consciousness, and help direct it toward spirituality, worldliness, or depravity. Be sensitive to the subtle effect of vibrations. Protect yourself from disruptive ones by listening to inspiring music, or by singing (even mentally) songs that are uplifting, and by surrounding yourself with calm, soothing, or brightly cheerful lights and colors.

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To break a person’s will is a sin before God. Allow others to develop at their own pace, to make their own mistakes, to learn their own lessons. How else will they ever evolve, spiritually?

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Let others feel your support in their worthwhile undertakings. Even if they do something of which you don’t approve, let them feel your support for what they are.

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Be grateful always—to others, to life, to God. Express appreciation for everything. Appreciation and gratitude—even for such tests as suffering—will attract to you the blessing of increasing abundance.

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Sow seeds of faith, where others have sown doubt.

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Keep a spiritual bodyguard, especially when circumstances require you to mix with uncongenial people. The magnetism of two is stronger than that of one. When moving in a crowd, try never to go alone; always have a few friends around you. If you must be in crowds, imagine yourself haloed by an aura of light. Consciously emanate vibrations of love and joy all around you. One evening, years ago, I was obliged to enter the nightclub district of San Francisco. As I went, I silently chanted, “Sri Ram, jai Ram, jai jai Ram.” I was aware of tentacles of negativity reaching out to grab me, but they slipped by without even touching me.

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A principle of magnetic interchange between people is that the stronger magnet always influences the weaker, never the reverse. Unless your inner strength is great, never think yourself capable of uplifting others merely by the exercise of good will.

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