SAY NO TO NEGATIVES

How many of us can honestly say we are happy? From all available evidence, it would seem that true happiness is something of a rarity in the world today. In fact, many writers assert that unhappiness is the most prevalent feeling in the world now. With an unhappy mind, how can you look for happiness? How can you hope to find it outside, when your ‘inside’ is dark and clouded? No matter who you are, no matter what circumstance you are placed in, you must realise that happiness is your birthright. You are entitled to happiness, and there are no ‘conditions’ to fulfill, no strings attached. Unfortunately, most of us are engaged in searching the entire world over for happiness and fulfillment. If we search until our last breath, we are not going to find happiness ‘out there somewhere’. We cannot wish for it; we cannot buy it; nobody can hand it over to us on a platter. It is a very personal feeling – and it must come from within! Let me repeat: happiness does not depend on outer things. Happiness is essentially an inner quality! Happiness is your birthright! But happiness must come from within you! You cannot depend on another person to make you happy or ‘give’ you happiness. This will place a tremendous strain on both of you. On the other hand, if you are truly happy inside yourself and allow the other person to feel the same, then both of you are truly bringing happiness to each other – without any expectations, without any pre-conditions, without any anticipations. The Lord says to us in the Gita: Man can be his own best friend; he can also choose to be his own worst enemy! The poet John Milton echoes this sentiment in these famous lines: The mind is its own place; and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. Significantly, the lines come from his immortal epic, Paradise Lost. When your mind makes itself a veritable hell, filled, cluttered with undesirable, negative thoughts, you lose the paradise of happiness which is your birthright. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to reclaim the happiness that is our birthright? I have a simple suggestion: Let us begin with ourselves. We are responsible for our own happiness, and the quest for that happiness which is our birthright must begin from within us! What do you think you will find when you start looking within? The mind is an instrument of cognition, of knowing things, knowing the material world. The soul is a ray of God, ‘that’ which you essentially are. The mind is an instrument with which we know, with which we try to understand things. The mind is discursive, while the soul is synergic. While the soul integrates everything, the mind analyses everything. We need the help of the mind in doing our work on the physical plane. That is why we have brought with ourselves the instrument of the mind. In your mind you have a friend who is with you 24-hours a day! You may be alone, helpless or in distress, but your mind is ever ready to help you and to guide you to overcome any situation. But it is up to you to use it in the right way. I recommend ‘shampooing’ the mind everyday! We need to cleanse our mind, we need to unclutter our mind, which often gets filled with wrong thinking and wrong ideas. And, then, the minds of so many of us are negative. We must cleanse the mind of all the dirt and negativity that we have accumulated over the years. To do this, we must get right down into our consciousness and shampoo away all the rotten negativities that hold us captive – negativities like impurity, selfishness, greed, lust and hatred, and oh, so many more! Ancient philosophers regarded man as a composite of three levels of nature – the divine, the human and the bestial. Or, to put it differently, as a creature who could rise to the level of the spiritual, function at the level of the physical, or be dragged down to the level of the senses and the passions. In simple terms, we understand this to mean that human beings are a combination of both positive and negative energy. We draw closer to the Divine in us, in the measure in which we are able to overcome the negative energies in us. For what is Divinity, but the complete absence of all negative forces? Negative energy is generated by negative emotions, which drag us down and cause unhappiness – to us and others. Constant pressure from negative emotions can actually distort our personality and our life and deprive us of our birthright – true happiness. Conquering these negative tendencies then, is the secret of inner joy and peace. At the start and end of each day, we must be able to see ourselves in the mirror, and like what we see therein; we must be at peace in the heart within; we must go to sleep and awaken with a clear conscience; we must face up to our innermost thoughts and feelings and not be filled with self-loathing or contempt for what we think and feel and do… There are very many negative emotions that cause an imbalance in our lives, like jealousy, anger, envy, greed, sloth, shame, guilt, etc. Not only do they disrupt our energy system, but also lead to mental and physical disorders. How can we conquer these negative tendencies? How may we arrest the negative energies that rob us of true joy and contentment and restore our own positive self-image? How can we live our precious life as well balanced, mature individuals? Some years ago, a group of people decided to conduct a survey on, “What I hate about myself”. They mailed questionnaires to people asking them to fill them and deposit the filled-in forms at a library – with or without filling in their names and addresses. To their surprise, not only did they receive a lot of responses, but also found that people did not shy away from revealing their identity or show any reluctance to discuss what they perceived to be their negative traits with others. What were some of the things that people hated most about themselves? Given below are a few answers: 1. I am rude to people 2. I expect everyone to love me and treat me well but I can’t do the same for others 3. I judge people harshly 4. I pretend to be good, but only to show off to people; in reality, I am not as good as I make out to be 5. I am never satisfied – with what I am, what I have or what I eat 6. I am always getting into debt 7. I hate myself 8. I can’t face trouble 9. I find fault with everything and everyone 10. I am too lazy to make anything of my life And the list went on and on… I must add here, that I think the people who responded to the questionnaire were honest to themselves and to others, in facing up to their own negative traits. After all, we often use the term, ‘the dark side of human nature’ to refer to those traits that people prefer not to talk about. Many of us have flaws and weaknesses which we hide from others; some of us prefer not to face up to them ourselves; we actually refuse to see the truth about ourselves. That is why I expressed my admiration for the people who actually subjected themselves to a self-analysis, and were aware of their own weaknesses. After all, it has been said that it is the worst man who sees himself as the best – that is, he is unaware of his own flaws and weaknesses. An animal activist (rather, a great lover of the animal kingdom) once said to me that he greatly resented the way animal traits were often used to describe human tendencies such as violence, aggression, cruelty and selfishness; according to him, NHAs or non-human animals were far less aggressive and cruel than the human animals; but he also added that it is not human nature that is flawed, but human behaviour and conduct that is, occasionally, ‘dark’ and ‘flawed’. That is an interesting observation: for we are yet to fathom the causes, the reasons for the way human beings think, act and feel. What is it that makes us selfish, greedy or jealous? Why are some of us prone to inferiority complex? What makes people suicidal? What are the causes, the origin