What picture do you hold of yourself? Do you focus more on your negative patterns or your positive qualities? Do you believe that the brush is in your own hand?
The brush is in our own hand. You can paint the most beautiful, powerful, vibrant and cheerful picture that you please. There are no limitations, apart from the ones that we impose on our own selves.
*Best of all is to see myself based on the understanding that I am first and foremost – along with everyone else – a being of peace, of love and of happiness.
Of course initially I am just creating an image, next is to grow into and be all that I would like to be. Possible? Definitely if you adopt a positive and powerful attitude with faith in your success.
“Many a man with herculean strength has nonetheless been terrorised into abject helplessness before the onslaught of a Royal Bengal (tiger). Thus the tiger has converted the man, in his own mind, to a state as nerveless as the pussycat’s. It is possible for a man, owning a very strong body and an immensely strong determination, to turn the tables on the tiger, and force it to a conviction of pussycat defenselessness. How often I have done just that”.
This quote is from Tiger Swami who lived about a hundred years ago in India. He got his name because his hobby was to knock out tigers with his bare hands, at which he was very successful. Eventually he retired from this and became a monk. This quote very much describes the strength which we have in ourselves, if we care to believe and emerge it.
There is one wonderful principle: whatever I am aware of, is what I am becoming. In this there is no distinction between positive/negative. If I am focusing on negativity -my own or others’ -my being aware of that negativity means that I am developing that myself. If I go around saying: this person shouldn’t do this/be like that/etc. what I am doing is noticing their weakness(es) and holding them in my consciousness. The result? A bad feeling? Maybe anger or another negative feeling? This feeling soaks into my consciousness and eventually I develop that weakness too.
It works the same way if we focus on our own and others positive traits this is then what will soak into my consciousness and I will become.
An example, it is another Indian story. It is the custom and system in India for the son to stay living with his parents and when he marries the bride comes to the house. A new bride came into this household and her mother-in-law constantly told her; do it this way! This is how to roll a chappati, to make bread, to clean etc. The bride became fed up with this and begun complaining, “My mother-in-law is constantly telling me this is how you do this/that.” Now the bride had a baby son and the mother-in-law became even more earnest in her teaching of what should be done and what shouldn’t be done and the daughter-in-law’s complaints became even bitterer. Now some years went by and her son grew up. He married and his new bride came to the house, and she begun telling the new bride, look this is the way you do this/that. Even though she didn’t like what she had been listening to over such a long period of time she had become the embodiment of what she didn’t like, and was sharing it with the new daughter-in-law.
So what do you want to become? What are you going to be aware of? How about choosing to be aware of your and others’ original qualities and goodness within? Often we can easily give a long list of our defects but only a very short one of our qualities or specialities. However, this is only because we focus more on our defects not because they aren’t there. To begin, recognise that your foundation is peace and that all you need is within you, whatever I need to know and whatever I need to experience is actually accessible from within.
