Living Wisely Living Well | With Asha Nayaswami

Don’t compare yourself with others to either your advantage or their detriment. On a freeway, as many cars precede you as follow behind. Once you are in front of one cluster, you will only find yourself last in the next one. Resolve simply to go your own way, intent wholly on reaching your own destination.

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Receive praise good-humoredly. Reflect that whatever compliments you receive today may become brickbats tomorrow! Even deserved praise, if accepted too personally, may only add to one’s already-heavy burden of self-definitions. In your quest for happiness, neglect no opportunity to lighten that load.

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Think before you speak. Be circumspect both in speech and in deed. Don’t, by unseemly haste, expose yourself to misunderstandings. Why embroil yourself in unnecessary controversy?

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Give praise sincerely, but understatedly. Never flatter anyone. Praise the God in others, but not their egos, for you, as their friend, ought always to support their aspirations toward the spiritual heights.

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Have the courage to embrace the unexpected. Life is an ever-new drama. If you meet it with positive expectations, you will turn every challenge to good advantage.

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Seek guidance less from reason than from inspired feeling. For although suppressed emotions will distort the clarity of your perception, inspired feeling is intuition. In everything you do, tune in to that clarity, and you’ll always be guided correctly.

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Inspire others more by your example than by what you say. Next, seek to inspire them even more by your vibrations than by your example. An act of kindness may not be understood in the spirit you intended, but vibrations of kindness will influence people’s feelings, changing them from within. Kindness is a vibration of consciousness, and therefore has no boundaries.

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Before making an important decision in life, enter into your inner temple of silence, and there consult your higher Self. If your mind is focused, you may get your answer in an instant. Direct your question to God through the spiritual eye in your forehead. The answer will then appear in your heart as a deep, calm intuition. If you are not yet sure, ask, “Is this the right decision? If not, what ought I to do?” The correctness of the answer will depend on how one-pointedly you focus your energy. Some people take months to reach a conclusion they might have reached in a moment, if they’d concentrated deeply. Often they reach wrong conclusions anyway, simply because they expected their answer to be reasonable!

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Be graceful in your movements. Awkward or jerky gestures reflect, and also induce, disconnected thinking. But grace of movement will help bring a smooth flow to all your thinking.

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Make no special effort to be stylish. People reveal in modishness their own lack of taste. One wonders if the styles displayed in the fashion sections of newspapers and magazines aren’t actually intended to shock. Their message seems to be only, “Look at me! Look even in horror and dismay. But look!” It is difficult to imagine a stylish person being humble. Good taste seems to go with understatement. Indeed, understatement is the very essence of good taste.

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