Feeling like your world is collapsing?

Adapted from "Guaranteed Solutions" on Love

If you have seen children play, you might have seen them building castles with cards. They will place the cards at a certain angle to each other and build several layers of such patterns in a pyramid shape. It will be beautiful to look at. But if you remove even one card from the castle, from anywhere, the whole castle will collapse! The higher the castle, the more the chances of collapsing.

Just like this, we build our own self-image like a castle, out of people’s opinions of us. We collect certificates or signatures from our father, mother, boyfriend, girlfriend, teacher, friends and what not, and arrange all these certificates and build a castle to form our self-image. The image will look beautiful and we will feel happy. You will feel in ‘love’!

But if even one person withdraws their certificate, what happens? The castle collapses! You start feeling miserable about yourself. You feel depressed. You feel that the whole world has come to an end, that nobody loves you!

At least in the case of the children, they build their castles with their own cards. But we build our castles with others’ cards, with others’ certificates!

The solution: start investing a little more time and energy in knowing yourself. Give yourself an appointment from time to time! This way, you will never get deceived, and you will never depend on others to feel in love.

Drop 80% of your problems!

Adapted from "Guaranteed Solutions" on Love

80% of our problems is due to this asking for attention or approval. If you just sit and write down, in a day how many things you do to get a good name, to maintain your reputation in family and society, you will see.

You will find that all the 24 hours, all your lifetime, you are involved in getting approval from others. All your life, you are on a signature campaign, getting approval signature from family and society.

In a big register you make a column: Good Father, and for everything that you do for your children, you expect their signature of approval under that column! Then you go to your wife, to your boss, to your friends. You prepare columns with suitable headings like Good Husband, Good Employee, Good Friend…etc, and wait for them to sign under it.

Of course, all these people also come to you for your signature! You too need to sign on their registers under the columns applicable to you!

We spend so much energy in maintaining our certificates of approval. Why? Stop it, that’s all. 80% of your problems will wash away. You will see, your life will suddenly feel so light and free!

A small story: Love Wealth and Success

Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success

Once an old woman saw 3 old men with long white beards sitting in front of her house. She did not know them. She went upto them and said ‘I don't think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat.’

‘Is the man of the house home?’, they asked.

‘No’, she replied. ‘He's out.’

‘Then we cannot come in’, they replied.

In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened.

‘Go tell them I am home and invite them in!’

The woman went out and invited the men in’

‘We do not go into a House together,’ they replied.

‘Why is that?’ she asked.

One of the old men explained: ‘His name is Wealth,’ he said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one, ‘He is Success, and I am Love.’ Then he added, ‘Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home.’

The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. ‘How nice!’, he said. ‘Since that is the case, let us invite Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!’

His wife disagreed. ‘My dear, why don't we invite Success?’

Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own suggestion: ‘Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!’

‘Let us listen to our daughter-in-law's advice,’ said the husband to his wife.

‘Go out and invite Love to be our guest.’

The woman went out and asked the 3 old men, ‘Which one of you is Love?
Please come in and be our guest.’

Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: ‘I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?’

The old men replied together: ‘If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would've stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!

Are you psychologically handicapped?

Now, what happens when we don’t get the attention from the other? How do you feel?

Just imagine waking up one morning, and your spouse totally ignores you. Or if you said I love you to a dear one, and you get no answer back… We feel down, depressed, low on energy.

But if we do get the attention, some nice words, ‘I love you!’ Then we feel good, we feel high and energetic.

What happens when we depend on the others to feel in good spirits? When you are dependent on external sources for energy, you become psychologically handicapped. When you need physical support, you are physically handicapped. When you need psychological support, you are psychologically handicapped.

With a physical handicap, you know that you are handicapped because you can see it clearly, but with psychological handicap, you don’t even know that you are handicapped. When you are not aware of it, you will not know the consequences that it can give rise to. When the real consequences or dis-ease happens, you will wonder what the reasons are.

Meditation is the best way to become free of this handicap. Look for 'techniques' in this blog!

True meaning of love

A Devotee's perspective

Right from childhood, we are programmed to believe that certain morality helps create a good life. Even the new age self-help promotes the idea that whatever we give to the universe comes back to us. We are taught being loving as in being kind to others and helping others is a way to live a good life. However, to be honest, how often does helping others doesn’t leave us feeling used? The kind person is actually a victim of manipulation? On the other hand, even if we succeed in serving others it adds to our ego and arrogance. Isn’t it a paradox?

During my days of teaching school students I realized that whenever I was lenient with students, encouraging and motivating them, they used to take advantage of it and although, harsh treatment would get good results, guilt of ill-treating small kids was the price to pay for it. It was a double-edged sword.

Why is it that love doesn’t work in our lives? How long do we need to ‘try’ and ‘make’ these truths work for us? And if these are the ‘truths’ they should work automatically.

Swamiji explains the basic flaw in our approach in this video.