When you study these steps of the Yoga, try to practice them to the best of your ability. -- Swami Abhedananda

1. Ahimsa: Anyone who has conquered the feeling of injuring others, has conquered fear from either animal or other human beings in his presence.
2. Satya: We are stating the ideals of a Yogi. These ideals are very high. We should try to be truthful when ever we are not forced into the opposite feeling.
3. Astey: In the first place, we will remember that the feeling of possession arises from a strong attachment to our petty animal self. First of all, that attachment is to the physical body, and then to anything that is related to the physical body.
4. Brahmacharya: Continence is the next virtue. We must not waste our energy, which is dissipate in most cases by men and women who do not understand the laws of life.
5. Aparigraha: Non-receiving of any gifts is also a virtue. Here the gifts, of course, do not include those that are given by friends or relatives through love, but only such gifts as to obligate and bind us, because there is the motive of getting better things in return.

#hindudharma #swamiabhedananda #yogapsychology

Epicurus on Happiness

• Make good Friends.
• Develop Self-sufficiency. Freedom.
• Have time to analyze, to  reflect. Be free of other's opinions.

Montaigne on Self-Esteem

• Be comfortable with your body as are animals. That is a wisdom to be learnt from animals.
• To be wise: Humility, modesty and acceptance of one's intellectual limitation.

Nietzsche on Hardship

• Our worries are vital clues telling us what is wrong with our lives and pointing the way to our ultimate improvement.
• Dare to take challenges in manner similar to climbing a mountain overcoming hurdles.
• That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

Seneca on Anger

• Pre-meditation on something uncomforting that might happen lessens the surprise and can help control the anger.
• Anger and frustration are irrational responses to setbacks and the only rational strategy is to stay calm about the fact that things do go wrong.

Socrates on Self-Confidence (Plato was his student)

• We should not be too swayed by the opinion of the others. Sheepish.
• Five distinct steps that anyone who wants to develop distinct thoughts should follow:

1. Look around for common statements that is stated to be common sense... like "Best jobs are the highly paid jobs"...
2. Look around for an exception.
3. If an exception is found then the statement is incorrect or at least imprecise.
4. Try to nuance the statement to take the exception in the account.
5. Continue this process... try to find exceptions to the common sense statement.

I had a nice dream today. I am writing about it. Unlike normally I remember my dreams and am mostly conscious that I am dreaming. I can choose to wake myself up from that dream. I hear the sounds around me even in my sleep and am aware that certain sounds are not the creation of my dream. Most of us would not have noticed that dreams that occur in a peaceful place with no sounds around us! Characters in such dreams do not speak. My dreams are mostly mute. Characters happen to communicate through thoughts but that is occasional, often they are not in sync. Today I saw divine Mother Sarda in my dream. And the first thought was that I want to serve her in some way, to please her in some way, and I sat near her feet. It was this thought that made me peaceful. I did not desire anything. I was happy to wait there. A sense of completeness and being at peace, accepting all.. was there. And I was aware that it is a dream. The emotions were very strong, I had to wake up.  Now I was thinking how I may continue to stay in that peaceful state? Answers were coming to me.

First visual was about serving my parents. Next I saw some friends. I thought about an orphanage we had visited sometime back. I tried going back to sleep and fall into that state again. I could not. It was about four o’clock and my sleep was over. I still tried - it was greed in my mind. As I tried falling asleep some random thought would start a new dream but I would wake up myself every ten minutes and try to fall asleep thinking about the joyful dream. I did not have success and finally I woke up at five o’clock.

There is something related to this topic that I may write here. I have the demerit of getting jealous. I still find difficulty in controlling this emotion. I had devised a remedy for it. When I felt jealous of a person I would deliberately force myself to do a good act to the person. It did not change things completely but it did prevent me from brooding over that person. Another observation I made is that i would get jealous of someone when I resent some action of theirs. Presently I have a different perspective. I understand that the permanent solution for me is to accept people around me as they are. All paths lead to the the same goal. Everyone wants to be happy and to give happiness to others. It is foolish to judge people. We cannot help anyone. We may only serve and in doing so we are helping only ourselves. We all have demerits but teachers say we are all essentially divine. Sometimes due to ignorance and limited knowledge we overlook this beautiful understanding. We can always choose to help each other progress on our individual journey.

Thank you for reading this, if you have a comment you are welcome to write it. Your views are most welcome.

#dreams #emotion #emotions #friends #ignorance #knowledge #mother #paths #peace #perspective #sarda #spiritual #teachers