How do we overcome our desires given the scenario of our personal growth seen in the last Post? How can we progress in life without any desires and means to actualize them? Can we live in this world created for us by God without being a part of the mainstream of life? These are valid questions we must find answers for as objectively as possible. It is necessary to aim to overcome those desires for acquiring objects and developing relationships that are detrimental to the smooth flowering of our inner potentialities contained in the fundamental desires. It is not that we should not acquire things or wealth necessary to live in this world, but that we should not be slaves to them. As Jesus said since no one can serve two masters at the same time, we have to choose our master very carefully. We, as images of God, have all the necessary powers within us to subdue and enslave all the other powers in the world and make them serve our purposes. Here comes the need of overcoming our unruly desires that cover up our real power from within. Our intellect is the faculty to discriminate between what is beneficial to us from what is harmful. For this we need to depend on the Word of God and wise sayings handed down to us through generations. The gradual addiction to the material world at the expense of our spirit has to be resisted. As there are De-addiction Clinics for alcoholics and drug addicts, all religions should serve as De-addiction Centers for curing the vices that dissipate the life giving energy from within each of us. This is achieved through the practice of detachment even as we use the things of this world. Our addiction should only be to God and thus we are able to love Him wholeheartedly. This is the meaning of the injunction of Jesus to leave father and mother, wife and children and everything to follow him. It can be practiced by even by those who live in the world provided they develop the capacity to be detached from everything. It is practiced by those monks and nuns who genuinely leave the world, as a special gift from God, in an eminent and exemplary manner. Detachment is no disinterest; on the contrary, it is a very balanced and sensitive way of looking at everything without being bound by the actions we perform.
Some people look at happiness as if it were a commodity to be bought from a common pool easily available in the world unaware that the source of happiness is in their own selves. Both happiness and unhappiness are infectious in the sense that other people are affected by both happy and unhappy people in their own ways. A step further, there is a tendency in happy people to seek out others who are happy as the unhappy ones go for others who are unhappy. A drunkard goes about looking for other drunkards and a drug addict seeks company from another drug addict. Therefore, one should not bank upon finding happiness in other people or things ignoring the store of happiness, however dormant it may be, in oneself. This is especially applicable to people who believe that they will turn out to be happy once they marry such and such a person. Such a person tends to marry someone who thinks in the same way and coming together of two miserable people will end up in a kind of hell on earth. Opposites attract on physical laws and yet when we go beyond mere physics, other laws like birds of the same feather flock together hold. Laws of human psychology and behavior are still more complex and thus the like-minded tend to come together in human affairs. The best way to attract happy people to us, therefore, is to be happy from which starting point we should begin a new life like in marriage. The Greek Philosopher Socrates advised his disciples in his discourses thus: " By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher." !
God has deposited in each of us a seed that strives and struggles to break the ground to come out as a plant to grow into a fruit-bearing tree. There are obstacles like the hard ground, external threats, thorns and thistles waiting to crush the tender plant besides lack of sustenance like water and manure hampering its growth. Above all, it should not be shielded from the sun light and should be exposed to it. The basic hardness of the earth is no problem for the seed since it is equipped by God with power from inside that no force on earth can stifle. Where it needs assistance is in removing the rocks on the ground, protecting it from marauding attackers, keeping it in good health by supplying manure and water and allowing the sunlight to fall on it. Periodic cleaning of the surrounding ground by removing the weeds, thorns and thistles around the plant is a must for its growth. The same rule applies to our personal growth since the seed is the Word of God containing the Kingdom of God in an embryonic form waiting to be released with full power. Since every human being is created in the image of God , this seed is already inborn in the very conception of an individual. This is the reason why the Church vehemently upholds the sanctity of every human life from the moment of its conception. We are not able to be at peace with ourselves until we allow God's purpose in creating us is set in motion. Looking for peace and happiness we tend to run after acquiring things in the world, always being frustrated after achieving the same. Our desire for happiness is genuine as it is deposited in our hearts by God Himself and yet in finding it we often fail because we become slaves to objects without practicing detachment. In this context it is beneficial to remember what John Dryden said: "He who trusts secrets to a servant makes him his master."
The obstacles standing in the way way to happiness, expressed metaphorically above in the example of a plant, are negative thoughts like anger, envy, lust, revenge, pride, greed etc. emanating from our hearts. The thoughts themselves are harmless until we nurture them and allow them to produce fruits defiling us. They may be turned into opportunities to purify us if only w try to control them by our higher faculties of intellect and will. Intellectual enlightenment is like the sun light giving energy to the plants. Our will power is the power of determination that decides what we should do with our lives. These two powers in us are able to over-rule the dictates of our mind and the process is called sublimation. Sublimation takes place when the higher powers are in control of the clamor of the lower powers. The heart is metaphorically designated as the center of all these activities. Practice of self-control is central to any improvement of persons not only spiritually, but also psychologically, emotionally and physically. (To be Contd)
Some people look at happiness as if it were a commodity to be bought from a common pool easily available in the world unaware that the source of happiness is in their own selves. Both happiness and unhappiness are infectious in the sense that other people are affected by both happy and unhappy people in their own ways. A step further, there is a tendency in happy people to seek out others who are happy as the unhappy ones go for others who are unhappy. A drunkard goes about looking for other drunkards and a drug addict seeks company from another drug addict. Therefore, one should not bank upon finding happiness in other people or things ignoring the store of happiness, however dormant it may be, in oneself. This is especially applicable to people who believe that they will turn out to be happy once they marry such and such a person. Such a person tends to marry someone who thinks in the same way and coming together of two miserable people will end up in a kind of hell on earth. Opposites attract on physical laws and yet when we go beyond mere physics, other laws like birds of the same feather flock together hold. Laws of human psychology and behavior are still more complex and thus the like-minded tend to come together in human affairs. The best way to attract happy people to us, therefore, is to be happy from which starting point we should begin a new life like in marriage. The Greek Philosopher Socrates advised his disciples in his discourses thus: " By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher." !
God has deposited in each of us a seed that strives and struggles to break the ground to come out as a plant to grow into a fruit-bearing tree. There are obstacles like the hard ground, external threats, thorns and thistles waiting to crush the tender plant besides lack of sustenance like water and manure hampering its growth. Above all, it should not be shielded from the sun light and should be exposed to it. The basic hardness of the earth is no problem for the seed since it is equipped by God with power from inside that no force on earth can stifle. Where it needs assistance is in removing the rocks on the ground, protecting it from marauding attackers, keeping it in good health by supplying manure and water and allowing the sunlight to fall on it. Periodic cleaning of the surrounding ground by removing the weeds, thorns and thistles around the plant is a must for its growth. The same rule applies to our personal growth since the seed is the Word of God containing the Kingdom of God in an embryonic form waiting to be released with full power. Since every human being is created in the image of God , this seed is already inborn in the very conception of an individual. This is the reason why the Church vehemently upholds the sanctity of every human life from the moment of its conception. We are not able to be at peace with ourselves until we allow God's purpose in creating us is set in motion. Looking for peace and happiness we tend to run after acquiring things in the world, always being frustrated after achieving the same. Our desire for happiness is genuine as it is deposited in our hearts by God Himself and yet in finding it we often fail because we become slaves to objects without practicing detachment. In this context it is beneficial to remember what John Dryden said: "He who trusts secrets to a servant makes him his master."
The obstacles standing in the way way to happiness, expressed metaphorically above in the example of a plant, are negative thoughts like anger, envy, lust, revenge, pride, greed etc. emanating from our hearts. The thoughts themselves are harmless until we nurture them and allow them to produce fruits defiling us. They may be turned into opportunities to purify us if only w try to control them by our higher faculties of intellect and will. Intellectual enlightenment is like the sun light giving energy to the plants. Our will power is the power of determination that decides what we should do with our lives. These two powers in us are able to over-rule the dictates of our mind and the process is called sublimation. Sublimation takes place when the higher powers are in control of the clamor of the lower powers. The heart is metaphorically designated as the center of all these activities. Practice of self-control is central to any improvement of persons not only spiritually, but also psychologically, emotionally and physically. (To be Contd)
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