Living Wisely Living Well | With Asha Nayaswami

Notice how quickly the human voice reflects the feelings behind it. An angry person’s voice is tight and rigid. Avaricious people tend to speak harshly, almost in a croak. The voice of someone who is arrogant or contemptuous assumes a slightly nasal quality. The voice of one in whom self-interest predominates develops a certain thickness. If one is indifferent to others, his voice will sound flat and dismissive. These tones and many others show the extent to which the voice is both a sounding board for the speaker’s state of consciousness, and an affirmation of that state. Listen especially for the warm tone of voice in those who love God. Project outward, through your own voice, a note of kindness, good humor, and generosity. Project above all your devotion to God. The more you focus on letting these qualities vibrate through your voice, the more they will deepen in yourself.

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Enlist support for your suggestions, but weigh any disagreement carefully, and listen open-mindedly to counter-suggestions.

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Relax upward, toward the spiritual eye in the forehead. Don’t try to force your concentration to that point. Think of it, rather, as your natural center of being.

Affirm always, as my Guru taught: “What comes of itself, let it come.” After every disaster, no matter how great, life goes on—if not in this world, then in some other. An attitude of relaxed acceptance toward whatever happens to you will bring you great inner peace and happiness.

Never reduce people mentally to stereotypes. Everyone is, in his own way, unique. To typecast a person is to impose limitations on him that may paralyze his progress.

God's nature is childlike in this sense. He loves us without in any way conditioned by our feelings toward Him. He wants nothing from us. His unceasing hope is to welcome us to His infinite home. He is without the slightest ulterior motive. He wants nothing from us but our love. And being complete in Himself, He knows He also has our love though it be misdirected toward an infinity of worldly desires. He knows it, because what all of us seek is His Bliss. 

God's consciousness is center everywhere, circumference nowhere. In that fact lies the  secret of Divine simplicity. We can most nearly approach simplicity by imagining God as a Person who has nothing to defend and nothing to promote. Who accepts everything as it is. Who rejects nothing, who wants nothing from anyone. Who sees everything in relation to its eternal changeless reality. Who is wholly without self importance. Who never condescends and who waits patiently for us, His creatures, to untangle our psychological kinks and who recognizes that we belong to Him alone. Such is the nature of absolute Bliss.

Invite the participation of others when possible in the decisions you make. The more you involve them, the more they will take an interest in and commit themselves to, working with and helping you. 

Intuition is simple because it involves direct perception and is not a process of joining thoughts and ideas together painstakingly like a jigsaw puzzle. People usually become increasingly complex with the acquisition of knowledge.  Learn instead to approach your problems not by puzzling them through but by withdrawing to your own center. There, offer your problems up to that pivotal simplicity. Never feel that you have your answer, until you have reached in your heart a sense of its perfect rightness. 

To know God it is said that one must possess the simplicity of a child. How, one wonders, considering the vastness and complexity of the universe, can simplicity be a part of any equation involving true wisdom. The metaphor itself supplies the answer. A child is simple because although it observes it doesn't prejudge. Thus it lives in the present. Far more so than most adults whose tendency it is to dwell on the past or the future. For such adults the present is hardly more than a connecting bridge. Be childlike in the sense of living in but not for the present. Be childlike but not childish. Not overreacting, that is to say, to pains or slights.