INTENTION, ATTENTION, AND MANIFESTATION - H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
The universe functions with intention, attention, and manifestation. Wherever you put your attention that starts manifesting in your life, if you put too much attention on anger, anger manifests, too much attention on lust, lust manifests, on greed, greed manifests. When the intention is love, even anger is beneficial, that's what was the case with the rishi, Dhurvasa, every time he was angry some great thing happened on the planet, and it did not only good to all mankind. Are you with me, do you hear what I'm saying? So observe the intention where you want to put it, whatever you would like to manifest: focus on imperfection and imperfection will manifest, focus on love in life and love manifests.
Addiction starts with the repeated experience of the same sense object, repeated experience of a particular sense object creates an addiction, or a habit. The repeated association with a particular sense object create a sense of craving for it. Leaving the habit become painful, but having it does not give you any bliss, or ecstasy - this is the definition for a habit.If you are habituated to eating ice cream almost every day, you get a craving for it. Nobody is born with a craving, but you have started a habit within you that has created the craving. Drinking coffee every day is not carrying you to heaven, but leaving it gives you a headache. Similarly, all those who are into alcohol and drugs, look at their faces, they are not in an ecstatic state of consciousness filled with joy.
In fact it is the other way around, there is not joy on an alcoholics face, even if you squeeze it not a drop of joy will come out, the alcohol has cleanly washed out the joy with which one is born. That joy and innocence has been robbed away, washed out. So alcoholism, sex addiction, any type of drug addiction, all these are the result of repeated experience, or association of a particular sense with the object of sense.Again it is a fine line, when the association happens repeatedly, desire for it arises more, and whether the desire is fulfilled or unfulfilled, anger comes. Whenever there is anger, behind the anger you will see there is a desire, a craving, and the craving brings anger. When you become angry, the next step is you get attached, and whomsoever or whatsoever you are angry with, sooner or later you regret and regret brings more attachment to the person, or situation, or to the sense object. By regretting you don't move above something, you go more into it. When you think of someone whom you hate, your nervous system undergoes such a distortion, there is a distortion happening within your system.
This means you nervous system is assuming the form of the person whom you dislike, and when you keep doing it again and again you get all their impressions, and your system becomes like them. So when you become like them you get drawn to them, and this is entanglement.An obsession bring anger, anger brings entanglement, and entanglement clouds the intellect, your intellect blurs, your wisdom is lost, judgement is lost, sharpness of awareness is lost, and your ability to access the situation is lost. The entanglement whether out of love, or out of hate, clouds the intellect. A clouded intellect doesn't let you be in peace and such a distorted intellect doesn't even bring up the subtle feelings in you, any feelings you'll have will be gross feelings, violent feelings, you don't feel lighter when there is hatred within you.Your vibration indicates what there is inside you, whether you are light like a flower, or you are heavy like a stone, this shows up in your vibrations, in your surroundings. Look at someone who is worried, there is such a sense of heaviness, and heaviness is contrary to joy, contrary to love, and contrary to all that you cherish as human values. With this the memory of pleasant thing is lost, and life has two sets of memory, one is the memory of unpleasant things, the other is the memory of pleasant things. Children often have a memory of pleasant things more that unpleasant things, that's why they keep themselves cheerful most of the time.
As we grow older, we lose our innocence, and our unpleasant memories increase more than the pleasant ones.That is again the importance of spiritual practices, meditation is to put the wheel back, it is bring back the pleasant memories more and more, and to reduce the unpleasant memories to an almost insignificant amount. When the memory is lost then the memory of who I am, what do I want in my life, the memory of reality, the truth, seeing life in context with the universe - that's called wisdom, and that is lost. Then there is no peace left, and there is no happiness.However, those moments have been beneficial when you have expressed your anger without really getting mad, or losing yourself completely. You can show anger, but not that anger in which you are lost, shivering and shaking. In life it is impossible to deal with all situations without at least sometime, somewhere showing some anger. Don't expect to be a sort of flat, bland, goody-goody thing. Sometimes you have to show anger, it's alright, but those moments have you noticed that it's not really taking away your sense of peace, or sense of centredness. Like the rishi, Dhurvasa, he was a sage, a saint who used anger as an exercise, to see whether in spite of anger he didn't lost himself, or lose his centredness.So again and again, pull back your attention from the objects of the senses and back to the sources of mind, the source of consciousness.
This journey within, gives you the strength, endurance, which makes you endure all different situations in life however unpleasant or pleasant they may be. The practices, meditation, all these things are there to withdraw the mind, to take it to its Source even for a few minutes, and then you see after meditation you feel so fresh. How many of you feel like that, raise your hands? And what the world is missing, this key to success in life, what people out there do not know is a simple wisdom, a simple knowledge about life, of returning back to the Source. Knowledge of consciousness, and human values, are what makes life rich, energetic, pleasant and beautiful.
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