Presentation on Swami Chinmayananda
11th January 2014Learning through relationships
11th January 2014Only Love is real. Love is an energy of incredible power and strength. We are all made of this energy.
Love is absolute. Love never ends, never stops. The purest form is unconditional love, expressing your love and expecting nothing in return. By giving love away freely you become a spiritual millionaire. When return home, we take only out thoughts, our actions, our love, with us. We are always loved. In fact, we are love.
Meditation is the art or technique of quieting the mind so that the endless chatter that normally fills our consciousness is stilled. In the quiet of the silent mind, the meditator begins to become an observer, to reach a level of detachment, and, eventually, to become aware of an higher state of consciousness.
We are in our bodies for a while, but we are not our bodies.
Spirits as well as people, are of many levels. Those of the lower levels can transmit misleading or even harmful messages, usually to people with limited mediumistic ability or lack of proper spiritual development. Spirits of higher levels seem to be accessible only to those people with higher spiritual development and/or those with proper intent, those without ulterior motives for self-gain at the expense of others. A profound shift in your consciousness can occur. The word will seem different, filled with unseen helpers and bathed in a loving energy that refreshes and renews your soul.
The life review is done in a loving way, without judgment or criticism. However, you feel emotions deeply, both your and the other person’s and thus you learn at a profound level.
If you genuinely helped another person in a time of need, you feel the person’s gratitude and love coming back to you. But if you hurt or injured others, emotionally or physically, you experience their anger as well as their hurt. What a wonderful learning opportunity. You and your committee, which is comprised of the loving guides, masters, angels, and others who have helped to guide you over eons of time, plan your next life, so that you can rectify the wrongs you have done.
Redemption is the process of enlightenment and liberation from the cycle of physical life and death. Redemption is a gradual process, inexorably leading us to our spiritual home. Redemption comes from love, not from suffering. When our hearts overflow with love and our love flows to the others, we are in the process of redemption. We are fulfilling and canceling our karmic debts. We are being drawn back to the bosom of God. Who is ultimate love.
Happiness comes from within, not from without, not from the reflection of what others think of you.
Hope is fine, expectations is not, because when expectation is present, disappointment is always lurking nearby.
We can never really be harmed, because we are immortal and eternal, because we are spiritual beings, not physical bodies. Because we are always loved and protected. Because we are never alone. Because God and an army of loving spirits always protect us. Because we are all of the same essence. And so there is no need to fear. Indeed, this truth is the secret of our security and out joy.
When a negative emotion is understood, when its roots are illuminated, the energy behind the emotion diminishes and even disappears. When you feel angry, the healthy response is to learn what caused the anger, to rectify the situation if that is possible, and then to let go of the anger.
Love can Heal, Stress can Kill.
Forgive the past. It is over. Learn from it and let go. People are constantly changing and growing. Do not cling to a limited, disconnected, negative image of a person in the past. See that person now. Your relationship is always alive and changing. Being actively loving the other right now. Do not grieve or regret not loving in the past. The past is over. Begin right now. It is never too late to express your love and compassion.
Never act or speak from anger. Words have a lasting effect and power, and they are not easily forgotten.
Winning an argument can be losing if ego is involved. Doing that which promotes love, understanding, and cooperation is true winning. If you promote negative thoughts and emotions; fear, anger, guilt, shame, sadness, anxiety, worry, and hate, either in yourself or your partner, then you have lost.
One of the most important of life’s lessons is to learn independence, to understand freedom. This means independence from attachments, from results, from opinions, and from expectations. Breaking attachments leads to freedom, but breaking attachments does not mean abandoning a loving and meaningful relationship, a relationship that nourishes your soul. It means ending dependency on any person or thing. Love is never a dependency.
Relationships are a living laboratory, a field test to determine how we are doing, whether our lessons have been learned, to discover how close we are to our pre-determined life plan. In relationships our emotions are evoked, and we react. Have we learned to turn the other cheek, or do we retaliate with violence? Do we react out to others with understanding, love, and compassion or do we react with fear, selfishness, or rejection? Without relationships we would not know; we could not test our progress. They are wonderful but difficult opportunities to learn.
We are here in physical state in order to learn and to grow. We learn traits and qualities such as love, non-violence, compassion, charity, faith, hope, forgiveness, understanding, and awareness. We must unlearn negative traits and qualities, including fear, anger, hatred, violence, greed, pride, lust, selfishness, and prejudice.
It is primarily through relationships that we learn these lessons.
More learning can occur when there are many obstacles then when there are few or none. A life with difficult relationships, filled with obstacles and losses, presents the most opportunity for soul’s growth. You may have chosen the more difficult life so that you could accelerate your spiritual progress.
It is important to remember that karma is about learning, not about punishment. Our parents and other people with whom we interact posses free will. They can love and help us or they can hate and harm us. Their choice is not your karma. Their choice is a manifestation of their free will. They are also learning.
A hard life is not a punishment, but rather an opportunity.
Grace however, can supersede karma. Grace is divine intervention, a loving hand reaching down from the heavens to help us, to ease our burden and our suffering. Once we have learned the lessons, there is no need for further suffering, even if the karmic debt has not been fully repaid.
We are here to learn, not to suffer.
You progress by paying debts. Some souls progress faster then others. If something interrupts your ability……..to pay that debt, you must return to the plane to recollection, and there you must wait until the soul you owe the debt to has come to see you. There will be many lifetimes…..to fulfill all of the agreements and all of the debts that are owed.
Karma is an opportunity to learn, to practice love and forgiveness. Karma is also an opportunity for atonement, to wipe the slate clean, to make up to those we may have wronged or hurt in the past. Every thought and every action have inevitable consequence.
We are so much wiser than we could ever imagine. All we need to do is to remember.
We choose our circumstances and establish a plan for our lives before we are even conceived. Destiny is another name for the unfolding drama we have already chosen.
There are reasons for everything and no coincidences exists on the path of destiny. Although every human being has a life plan, we also have free will, as do our parents and everyone with whom we interact. Our lives and theirs will be affected by the choices we make while in physical state, but the destiny points will still occur. We will meet the people we had planned to meet, and we will face the opportunities and obstacles that we had planned long before our births. How we handle these meetings, however, our reactions and subsequent decisions, are the expressions of our freewill. Destiny and freewill co-exist and interact all the time. They are complementary, not contradictory.
We never really die; we merely change our levels of consciousness. Because our loved ones are immortal too, we are never really separated from them. This realization of our true spiritual nature is a powerful healing force.
We choose our parents, who usually are souls with whom we have interacted in prior lifetimes. We learn as children, adolescents, and adults, evolving spiritually as our bodies evolve physically. After our souls leave our bodies at that time of physical “deaths.” Our learning continues on higher planes, which are really higher levels of consciousness. We review the lives we have just left, learn our lessons, and plan for our next life. Learning does not end with the death of the body.
There are many levels of Consciousness we visit when our Soul departs the physical body. One important level is the learning stage, where we review our lives.we re-experience every encounter, every relationship. We feel the emotions of the people whom we have helped or hurt, loved and hated, or affected positively or negatively. We feel their emotions very deeply, because this is a powerful learning device, a sort of instant intense feedback about our behavior while we were on earth, in physical bodies. We learn through relationships, and thus it is important that we understand how we have touched others.
Happiness comes from within. It is not dependent on external things or on other people. You become vulnerable and can easily hurt when your feelings of security and happiness depend on the behavior and actions of other people. Never give your power to anyone else.
Love is absolute, unconditional and timeless state that asks for nothing in return