Living Wisely Living Well | With Asha Nayaswami

When troubles beset you, seek both their cause and their solution in yourself. Karmic law rules supreme everywhere. Your actions of the past represented movement in opposite directions from an unchanging center in yourself. That movement always returns, with equal force, in the opposite direction. Though hindered by what my Guru called “the thwarting crosscurrents of ego,” the law must always, sooner or later, be fulfilled. Those myriad back-and-forth movements seldom proceed in a straight line; instead, they create eddies that draw into themselves the debris of countless desires and involvements. Don’t upset yourself with life’s complexity, but seek the divine simplicity of oneness with God’s joy. To do otherwise is to court endless troubles.

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How shall you define God? Think of Him (or Her) as the highest potential you can imagine for yourself. God is all that, and much more. As the Indian scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, states, He is, in all things, their supreme manifestation: Perfect Power, Wisdom, Love, Joy, Peace, Fulfillment, Satisfaction, Beauty, and Contentment.

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Concentrate on the details of what you do. At the same time, refer those details constantly, not only to your overall purpose, but to a higher end. Keep the will tuned to life’s true goal: This is one of the secrets of genius, which comes from the superconscious and is inspired by God. Whatever you do, offer your efforts up to Him for higher guidance.

Never complain, no matter what you have to endure. Misfortune lies in your perception of things, not in things themselves. Should you suddenly lose all your wealth—perhaps in a stock market crash—the time may have come in God’s plan for you to experience poverty. One positive lesson to be learned from every loss is calm detachment. Another is to become more whole in yourself. Success and failure, equally, are part of life’s flow. So too are all the pairs of opposites: wealth and poverty, fame and ignominy, gain and loss of every kind. Accept them with a smile, for only in God can one rise permanently above duality. Meanwhile, whatever your lot in life, accept it with good cheer. Remember, all this is a show—a cosmic dream; a drama. To your deeper Self, life here on earth has no reality.

In life’s race, compete only against yourself. Sooner or later, no matter how skilled you are, there will always be someone better. Every record will be broken; every “best” will be bettered. In the battle between good and evil, seek victory over your ego. Be calmer today than heretofore. Be kinder, more forgiving, more accepting, less judgmental. Whatever your faults or virtues, give increasing energy to that which, in the end, will bring you bliss.

Truth cannot be learned: it must be recognized. If you want to guide others to the truth, state your thoughts simply; get people to respect them rather than you for having stated them. Speak the truth in such a way as to bring it back to people’s remembrance. The sage Patanjali defined enlightenment as smriti: memory.

Pay little heed to people’s opinions—even to your own! Truth is not a matter of opinion: Truth simply is.

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Make a special effort, today, to break out of some self-enclosure—whether of selfishness, or timidity, or personal preoccupation. The growth toward maturity is a matter of escaping from one’s ego-prison. Expand your awareness to include the needs of others. Then expand your feelings, by sympathizing with those needs. Next, expand your self-identity by helping people to fulfill their needs. Finally, release yourself from self-identity altogether by telling yourself, “It is not I who help anyone: I am only a channel for God’s grace.” The feeling will come to you at last: “He alone is acting through me; He alone is the Doer.”

See yourself, when you help others, as a gardener watering his plants. Whether the plants be bushes, grass, or flowers, all of them need water. And human beings, whether haughty or humble, harsh or gentle, ignorant or learned, provocative or submissive, dryly brittle or richly humorous: all of them need nourishment. If you nourish them with the nectar of kindness, they will thrive.

View your problems dispassionately, as if from a mountain peak. Perspective is lost in the valley of personal involvement. How tiny life’s problems are, compared to your spiritual reality! If you allow them to loom large, they may overwhelm you. But if you view them dispassionately, you will see them merely as little specks on the vast panorama of life.