The Resilience of Good

In these tough times, we see so much struggle around us. Our loved ones are struggling, our friends, our colleagues, many are struggling with what the pandemic is bringing about outside as well as within us. And we are struggling with them.

We get to hear of the shocking, the unforeseen, the unexpected, and the magnitude of the calamity reveals itself in new dimensions every day. The sheer deluge of information is often disturbing and unsettling, raising new and deeper questions as we read about happenings around us.

In this deluge we also hear of people’s response to the struggles they are facing.  So many of those responses build hope in the future of mankind, but we read about many more people who are callous, mismanaged, self-serving, or shortsighted at best, in their behavior.  It is very easy for us to lose sight of the goodness of our fellow humans in this deluge of negativity.  It doesn’t mean however, that the good isn’t there.

Good has always been less seen, less heard of, less spoken of, in the clamor for attention by the common Bad.  It has long been known, and we need to understand too, that Good loses to Bad because it isn’t loud enough, or juicy enough, or because Good doesn’t push itself ahead like Bad does.  This is the truth of this age of Kal-Yug.  It is also the reason why we need to pray for Good to emerge, for Good to be stronger, to be more prevalent, and to win over the world. 

We need to be discerning in the attention we pay, and in the winds of change we blow with every action of ours.  We have the power to cause Good, and to encourage goodness all around us.  Our power lies in our resilience, and how well we recognize, protect, and encourage Good!

May Good be with you 🙏

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Faith? At a time like this…

It is paradoxical and extremely unfortunate that there are elements among humanity who seek to take advantage of the heightened faith that we humans tend to have at times like this, when we don’t really know the cause of our suffering, or its remedy… the ‘fake news’ pandemic is what we see growing all around us, and we are likely victims of it with every other message we receive…

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/scamsters-make-hay-amid-pandemic-5165994

It is a very opportune time I feel, for each one of us to recall that the only Truth is what we believe in.  Truth is what we give credibility to.  Even the dictionary defines Truth as a Definite set of beliefs.  So what is the truth?  Lets talk a little more about what it is not.

Taking advantage of the faith and belief that we, the people repose in them, scamsters like Baba Ram Rahim (an example from some months ago), and thousands before and after him, grow in their influence and prosperity.  Our faith also needs to evolve to keep pace with their increasingly ridiculous statements, until we can safely label our faith as ‘blind’, after which there seems no remedy to our future.  I can recall many living ‘legends’ who may qualify in the category who we repose faith in as ‘lay’ people.. Heads of state the world over are joining this club.. Or have we been pushing them towards it ourselves?

So called ‘God-men’, and they abound in every part of the world where they have people to believe in them, were the founder-members of this club.  In fact even in play, we realize that GOD actually stands for ‘Greater On Demand’… the one we demand to be greater becomes God!  We just need to realize the ways we are demanding them to be greater, and we will get all the answers to the questions popping up in our heads. We, the herd, have been pushing forward the sheep who don the lion’s skin at the front, and make sure the herd always believes in their own ignorance (sheep-like). This ignorance of ours is what gives them their power over us.

Many years ago I had thought FAITH was the Feeling of Adoration Inspired by Trust and Hope.  I do not discount for a minute, the possibility of hope arising out of helplessness, ignorant faith being confused for trust, and sycophancy being mistaken for adoration.  Let’s us be mindful of the monsters we create ourselves.

So what is the Truth?  What can we have Faith in? What must our behavior be like?

The answers lie within us, within every one of us.  Discerning, meditative inquiry, and mindful behavior lead us to the manifestation of our Truths, while at the same time protecting us from what is not the truth.

• Discerning, meditative Inquiry
• Mindful Behavior

Stay mindful, stay safe, stay enlightened… the ultimate responsibility is our own!

Want to Grow? Change the words you use…

Take more responsibility, be more responsible, how to use language which helps you take responsibility, even makes you take responsibility rather than give it away at every turn?

Hindi is my mother tongue, but there was something my Father used to say which struck me in a flash of insight years later!  Our language itself points us to give away responsibility and to not take it.  If what we say is also what we hear, every time we use such phrases or statements, we are telling ourselves that we weren’t responsible.

For example, take what happens when we misplace something.  In Hindi we say “cheez kho gayi, mil nahi rahi hai”.  Now note very carefully what we have done by framing our words like this.  The fact that the thing (‘cheez’) has been misplaced is expressed as if the fault was its own that it is not being found (‘mil nahi rahi hai’).

This needs more thought from us to figure out why we as a people of one language, or some other people, of another language, speak and behave differently.  One more responsible than another.  And I go back to one of my earliest writings Career Self-Reliance, where I had realized that growth happens when we take more responsibility, not when more responsibility is given to us.