Living Wisely Living Well | With Asha Nayaswami

Honor your commitments, even those you make to yourself. If you’ve told someone, “I’ll buy a newspaper today,” and then the news you wanted reaches you by some other means, go buy the paper anyway. Do so to honor your word—to that person, and also to yourself. If you view even your casual commitments as promises, you will gain such a power of truth that your mere word will have support from the universe.

Present the truth interestingly. Many people think that being truthful means to be blandly “matter of fact.” Bliss, however, is never dull, and is the reality underlying Cosmic Creation itself. In this respect, truth and fact are often very different! Align the truths you speak with the bliss of your own Being.

Speak the truth always, and Nature will support your every undertaking.

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Look people straight in the eyes—not daringly, as liars do who look at, but not into, people’s eyes—but rather with the wish to include other people in your thoughts and feelings.

Remember this always: Your potential for perfection is absolute! To call someone evil is to traduce what he truly is. For all of us, in our souls, are divine. Flotsam seen floating down a river soon drifts out of sight. Similarly, all things move—whether slowly or quickly—toward ultimate bliss. Compare the evil in us to that flotsam. In striving to reach any worthwhile goal, never say, “I have failed.” Say, rather, “I haven’t yet succeeded!” With that attitude, you cannot but succeed in the end.

Say what you mean, and then stop. People often drag out a thought quite unnecessarily. In writing, in conversation, and very much so in public speaking it is important to be clear, succinct, and satisfied with sufficiency!

The way you end a sentence or a paragraph is important. When reading aloud, don’t lower your voice on approaching the end of a thought. When writing, don’t end a sentence weakly: end on a note of power. When lecturing, end with a downbeat! End with a “punch line.” In classical drama, the climax at the end of a play was followed by a brief anticlimax. Good! The anticlimax gave audiences time to relax and absorb what they had experienced. Building toward that climax, however, required a gradual increase of tension, not an increase of anticlimaxes.

Accept others as they are, and you’ll attract supportive friends wherever you go.

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Truthfulness requires an acceptance of things as they are. Wishful thinking leads to wishful talking, which can bend perception to suit one’s own, and others’, mere fancies.

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Speak the truth always, but kindly and impersonally. To call someone ugly or stupid might be a fact, but it will be essentially untrue, for divine wisdom and beauty underlie all outer manifestations. Try always to speak the helpful truth.