Tuesday 24 July 2007

The importance of being true to yourself

On a spiritual path it is so important to be true to yourself. What does this mean in reality. It means being very clear about your own thoughts, feelings and actions. This is the first step in knowing ourselves. When we have a mind which is aware of every single, thought, feeling and behaviour then we are on our road to mastery. What is this mastery? It is mastery over our thoughts, feelings and actions so that we control and direct them and are not controlled and directed by them. But this doesn't happen overnight. It takes self-discipline, courage and commitment. It is not an easy thing to do and the mind will find lots of ways not to do it. The message of this blog today is to commit to doing this and persevere. One day all of the effort will pay off, of that I am certain.

I've just got an example. A woman in another office got married last week. There was no collection for her so a woman in my office bought her a bottle of champagne. She showed me and I said that I would give her some money and go in with the gift. She agreed to this. We gave the woman the gift and left.

The woman came back to the office after getting married. I was passing through the department saw her and congratulated her and asked her how it had gone. She was n0t emotional and didn't say much about the wedding. In my head I had got annoyed and was saying 'you miserable cow, I contributed to champagne for you, tell me how it went' these were my thoughts. I saw that this was what I was thinking and was feeling upset but I recognised this and because I recognised this was able to stop myself from saying things, choosing instead to say 'well done again' and leaving. This is a concrete example of how to monitor all thoughts and feelings, not to judge them. I didn't judge these thoughts as being right or wrong, I acknowledged they were there and as a result increased my level of self-awareness. This is what the spiritual journey is all about.

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