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- Managing Work and People Without Harshness and a Domineering Approach - by Submitted on Apr 08, 2025 from santosh krinskyThere is an apocryphal story involving the Mother, a sadhak and a bullock. The sadhak complained that the bullock was being obstinate and not cooperating. The Mother asked the sadhak to bring the bullock so she could observe it. After doing so, she indicated there was nothing wrong with the ...
Views: 1 - Distinguishing an Attitude of Equality From One of Indifference - by Submitted on Apr 07, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe mental framework frequently wants to find an “either/or” option rather than looking at the nuance needed to resolve multiple views of pending questions. Thus, when we are asked to consider achieving a poise of equality in the face of provocation of any sort, positive or negative, we will ...
Views: 2 - Wisdom of Heraclitus - by Submitted on Apr 07, 2025 from Scott & Stephen PetulloHeraclitus (500 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher. He influenced ancient and modern Western philosophy, through Plato, Hegel, Aristotle, Heidegger, and others. The main ideas of his philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. Below we list some words of wisdom ...
Views: 2 - Creating Harmony and Understanding Requires a Change of Consciousness - by Submitted on Apr 04, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe mental consciousness believes, first of all, that the particular viewpoint held by an individual is ‘correct’ and that other viewpoints are ‘wrong’. The vital nature wants to assert itself and gain dominance. The limited and linear framework of the normal human consciousness ensures that ...
Views: 4 - The Need to Maintain Calm Equality in One’s Relation to the Circumstances of Life - by Submitted on Apr 03, 2025 from santosh krinskySomeone says or does something we do not like or which we find offensive. They may do things to harm our reputation or our relationships, or they may affect our financial well being, possibly cheat us or interfere with our lives in some other way. The natural reaction is one of anger, even ...
Views: 4 - External Interactions Provide the Seeker a Mirror to His Inner Characteristics and Traits - by Submitted on Apr 02, 2025 from santosh krinskyWhat we see in others in many cases is a mirror to what we contain within ourselves. We understand what is taking place because we are able to receive the vibration and internalize it and translate it into something that resonates in our being. In Western psychology there is a concept called ...
Views: 6 - The Parable of the Mote and the Beam and Its Relevance for the Spiritual Seeker - by Submitted on Apr 01, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe spiritual seeker often finds that he can see weaknesses and faults in others. If he fails to recognise that his reaction may be due to harboring those faults and weaknesses within himself, he can take an attitude of hostility toward the other person who is exhibiting those things. He may try ...
Views: 6 - A Positive Focus Is More Productive Than a Negative Fixation for Spiritual Growth - by Submitted on Mar 31, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe go wherever we focus our attention. If we focus our attention on difficulties, we wallow in those difficulties. If we focus our attention on growth and development, then we draw to ourselves those opportunities that support that growth. There are examples. Certain traditions make the rooting ...
Views: 7 - Humility and Self-Confidence - by Submitted on Mar 30, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe play of the three Gunas is active at all times in the life we live here. We may believe that the aspiration, or an act of consecration overcomes this play, but if we examine closely we can see that, in actuality, even the quality of our sadhana, our spiritual effort, is very much controlled ...
Views: 8 - The Need for Patience and Perseverance - by Submitted on Mar 29, 2025 from santosh krinskyIn today’s modern societies, people expect instant results. They want things to be fast and easy. They respond to ads claiming they can lose weight easily in a few days’ time. They want deliveries from stores to be overnight, if not ‘same day’. They would prefer to receive their enlightenment ...
Views: 9 - Balancing the Spiritual Practice Between Positive Focus and Addressing Faults and Weaknesses - by Submitted on Mar 28, 2025 from santosh krinskyThere is a tendency among human beings to react with extremes. Something is either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. ‘black’ or ‘white’, ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. This occurs due to the linear nature of the mental consciousness aided by a vital nature that wants to assert itself by being ‘right’. For the ...
Views: 10 - Praise, Criticism and Comparing Oneself With Others - by Submitted on Mar 27, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe vital nature generally craves praise and becomes upset with criticism. This habit has been increased by the rise of social media with the ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ that appear on various posts, videos and blogs. People work hard to increase their ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ and make that almost an ...
Views: 11 - Addressing the Tendency to Overlook One’s Defects - by Submitted on Mar 26, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe vital nature in particular has a strong hold over the mentality. It uses this hold to find ways for the mind to justify various things that the vital desires. In many cases this occurs through a process of deflection and in others through a process of development of excuses and ...
Views: 11 - Becoming Aware of Our Faults Is the First Step Toward Overcoming Them - by Submitted on Mar 25, 2025 from santosh krinskyIt is difficult for an individual to see his own shortcomings or faults. Many times we see them reflected in others and we externalise them to such a degree that we take exception to the other person, not recognising that we are seeing our own faults displayed in front of us. If we have a ...
Views: 12 - The Change in Standpoint That Puts the Seeker in Harmony With the Divine and its Intention in the Universal Manifestation - by Submitted on Mar 24, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe frequently hear people complaining about how they are locked into and trapped in the lives they are leading. They feel like there is nothing they can do and nothing can change it. This was exemplified in a motion picture called ‘Groundhog Day’ which told the story of an individual who ...
Views: 13 - A Prayer of Aspiration, Consecration and Peaceful Receptivity to the Divine Impulsion in Life - by Submitted on Mar 24, 2025 from santosh krinskyAs long as we focus on outer circumstances and involve ourselves in them, we are participating in what some have called the “illusory” life of the world. The world is not illusory in an ultimate sense, since it is a manifestation of the Divine consciousness, but it is illusory in the sense that ...
Views: 14 - The Path Is Fulfilled Through the Cultivation of Inward and Outward Peace - by Submitted on Mar 22, 2025 from santosh krinskyIt is a frequent occurrence. Someone takes up the spiritual path and tries to follow the dictates set forth in that path, down to the smallest detail. They treat goals and aspiration as a type of ‘rule-book’ that needs to be followed. If, as is to be expected, they do not succeed in each such ...
Views: 14 - The Soul’s Aspiration for Adherence to the Divine Will in Manifestation - by Submitted on Mar 21, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe most direct way to align oneself with the Divine Will is to treat the soul, the psychic being, as the standpoint from which the being takes its stance. This is not a mental analysis, a desire of the vital or a physical need or impulsion; rather it takes the form of an aspiration, a prayer, a ...
Views: 15 - The Process for Gaining Equality in the Face of Outer Circumstances - by Submitted on Mar 19, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe question of how to achieve the status of inner equality to all outward circumstances is one that occupies the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere. In his book Bases of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo devotes the first chapter to the questions of achieving calm, peace and equality, as these are ...
Views: 17 - The Need to Achieve a Calm Equality Not Shaken By Outward Happenings - by Submitted on Mar 18, 2025 from santosh krinskyIf we examine our reactions to circumstances that occur daily in our lives, we will see we generally go through a range of feelings from elation when something we deem positive occurs, to depression when it seems like the house is falling in on us. Major events, such as achievements in school, ...
Views: 17 - The Sometimes Fortunate Nature of Misfortune - by Submitted on Mar 17, 2025 from santosh krinskyOne of the core principles of spiritual growth is the development of ‘equality’ in the sense of accepting whatever comes into one’s life with equanimity. This does not mean that the proper standpoint excludes action against injustice or oppression; rather, that one recognises that sometimes the ...
Views: 17 - Ideal Expectations, Real Life Results and Divine Grace - by Submitted on Mar 16, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe think and plan and harbor expectations as if we are the sole arbiter of what happens in our lives. We then judge the results from the standpoint of our ideal expectations and express either dismay or disappointment that what we hoped for has not come to pass. What we frequently fail to take ...
Views: 19 - Understanding the Higher Guidance That Directs Our Actions Towards Our Spiritual Destiny - by Submitted on Mar 16, 2025 from santosh krinskyWhen we rely on our surface impressions, which are very much based on and influenced by our background, family, society and the values inculcated into us by those relationships, we only are able to truly understand a fraction of what is actually occurring, and generally this is conditioned by ...
Views: 19 - Understanding the Higher Guidance That Directs Our Actions Towards Our Spiritual Destiny - by Submitted on Mar 15, 2025 from santosh krinskyWhen we rely on our surface impressions, which are very much based on and influenced by our background, family, society and the values inculcated into us by those relationships, we only are able to truly understand a fraction of what is actually occurring, and generally this is conditioned by ...
Views: 19 - Dealing with Dualities - by Submitted on Mar 14, 2025 from santosh krinskyOur experience in the world is one of dualities, hot and cold, wet and dry, happy and sad, love and hate, darkness and light, etc. We recognise that we cannot have the one without the other. The Chinese symbol of In/Yang illustrates the intertwined nature of these dualities and that even in the ...
Views: 20 - Does the Universal Manifestation and Our lives Have Any Meaning? - by Submitted on Mar 13, 2025 from santosh krinskyRene Descartes famously proclaimed the fact the he existed by stating ‘I think, therefore I am.’ In today’s world, however, that method of proving existence is under pressure as we grapple with more subtle possible answers to how we exist, why we exist and what this entire existence means, if ...
Views: 20 - The Action of the Higher Grace - by Submitted on Mar 12, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe normally judge things based on our own individual egoistic standpoint, basically, how a particular event or circumstance affects us in the moment. We build up expectations and plans, and suddenly, something gets in the way and destroys or diverts those plans. We naturally become disappointed, ...
Views: 22 - The Law of Attraction and Spiritual Practice - by Submitted on Mar 11, 2025 from santosh krinskyIn recent years there has been a lot of focus on what is called the ‘law of attraction’. It has been mainly used to act as some kind of a ‘wish-fulfilling action’ that one undertakes by focusing on specific affirmations or visualizing results which then are ‘attracted’ to your focus and create ...
Views: 22 - As We Become Aware of the Extent of the Challenges, We Come Nearer to the Solutions Required - by Submitted on Mar 10, 2025 from santosh krinskyIn the preceding page, a passage from The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo was cited. The Mother is commenting on her impressions while reading that passage. The challenges involved in changing the awareness and consciousness radically enough to recognise that the apparent primacy of the ...
Views: 23 - The Challenge of Changing Human Nature - by Submitted on Mar 09, 2025 from santosh krinskyThose individuals who take up the practice of yoga for the purpose of transformation of the nature and the development of wider and higher states of consciousness inevitably find that the influence of the physical and vital basis upon which human life is based represents one of the greatest, if ...
Views: 22 - The Ascent of the Consciousness Beyond the Preoccupation With Material Existence - by Submitted on Mar 08, 2025 from santosh krinskyIt is difficult to both understand and appreciate the apparent regression from spiritual heights to a world in which the physical being and material focus reigns supreme and predominates in the entire world to an overwhelming degree. It is likely that the intellectual and then the spiritual ...
Views: 25 - The Cycles of Social Development and the Swing Away from a One-Sided Focus on Materialism - by Submitted on Mar 07, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe do not usually recognise or appreciate how much influence our environment, our surroundings, the society we live in, the customs and life-ways of that social system impact what we think about, how we focus our attention and what we do with our lives. The Mother puts this also into the process ...
Views: 25 - Overcoming the Bias of Materialism In Our Viewpoint About Living a Meaningful and Happy Life - by Submitted on Mar 06, 2025 from santosh krinskyWestern civilisation has a distinct bias in favor of what we may call a materialistic viewpoint. Money, possessions, status and power based on monetary power, a drive to own ever newer possessions, and the need to try to increase our enjoyment and satisfaction of life through these factors leads ...
Views: 24 - Understanding the Differences Between the Vital Desire Soul and the Psychic Being - by Submitted on Mar 05, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe can observe, in our own lives and in the lives of various individuals we see on the ‘world stage’, the difference between those who are driven primarily by the impulses of the external vital nature and the ego-personality, and those who have made contact with the inner being and has developed ...
Views: 25 - The Journey from Ignorance to Knowledge Through an Attitude of Continuous Learning and Receptivity - by Submitted on Mar 04, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe live in the world without fully appreciating or understanding it. This is not something new that we are experiencing, but a statement of what we may call the ‘human condition’. The Rishis of the Rig Veda faced these same issues. In the Hymn of Creation, Mandala X, Sukta 129, Verses 6 and 7 ...
Views: 27 - The Way Out of the Existential Dread That Accompanies Lack of Knowing Oneself and One’s Purpose in Life - by Submitted on Mar 04, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe development of existentialism as a philosophical viewpoint on human existence in the world took place primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. it focused on the apparent lack of meaning in the universe and thus, human significance had to be developed from an individual standpoint of ...
Views: 29 - Acting from the ‘Right Spirit’ - by Submitted on Mar 02, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe Mother provides another example of the need for insight and flexibility to address changing circumstances. Most people want to have a fixed routine provided for them. ‘Do this, and you will achieve that.’ This process, while comforting to the mental consciousness that normally functions ...
Views: 28 - The Essential Nature of the Inner Attitude in Relation to Meeting the Challenges or Deciding on the Direction of One’s Life - by Submitted on Mar 02, 2025 from santosh krinskyIn the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna asks how one can identify a realised soul. His question indicates there should be some outward sign that can be observed. Sri Krishna, however, demurs and indicates it is not by any specific outward action or formation that such a soul can be recognised. Everything ...
Views: 31 - Addressing the Process of Evolutionary Change Within the Embedded and Established Habits of the Past That Pose Obstacles to Progress - by Submitted on Feb 28, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe mental consciousness tends to look at things with a linear perspective. It expects things to systematically roll out in a continuous, directed stream. It becomes upset and disoriented when what appears to be a settled result gets suddenly disrupted or upset by new circumstances, forces or ...
Views: 30 - Self-Growth Through Yoga: A Journey to Mind, Body, and Soul Balance - by Submitted on Feb 28, 2025 from Luke DouglasSelf-growth is a lifelong journey that allows individuals to discover their true potential, build resilience, and foster a deeper connection with themselves. One of the most profound ways to embark on this journey is through yoga. More than just a physical exercise, yoga blends movement, ...
Views: 27 - Overcoming the Power of External Circumstances on the Inner Life - by Submitted on Feb 27, 2025 from santosh krinskyMost people have very little, if any, real control over circumstances that arise in their lives. They are born into a family, a community, a society, a religious background, an ethnic background, an economic system, an educational system and a raft of customs, traditions, habits and lifeways ...
Views: 29 - Transforming Pain and Pleasure Into Spiritual Calm and Bliss - by Submitted on Feb 27, 2025 from santosh krinskyAll sensations carry signals through the nervous system to the brain, which then can interpret the signal. The signal may be more or less intense. It may be interpreted as pain or pleasure. Intensity of the sensation has something to do with the experience and its interpretation. There is a ...
Views: 26 - One’s Attitude to Events Affects the Impact of the Event - by Submitted on Feb 25, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe tend to evaluate events or circumstances based on their relation to our personal identification with the external ego-personality, and our prevalent idea about ourselves at that point in time. In retrospect, we frequently find that those things which we considered to be ‘bad’ were actually ...
Views: 25 - Coincidence or Control? - by Submitted on Feb 24, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe mind, with its need to correlate facts, gather evidence and develop proofs, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to credit ideas that seem to fall outside the logical reason based on the mind’s limited understanding of the oneness of the universal creation. The mind sets up certain ‘rules’ ...
Views: 29 - Does Everything That Happens, Happen for the Best? - by Submitted on Feb 23, 2025 from santosh krinskyMany people believe that once they become adherents of a particular religion or spiritual tradition, they need no longer make an effort. The idea that someone else is “taking charge” and taking on the burden of one’s life is particularly enticing for people. They frequently then accept that ...
Views: 29 - The Human Power of Discontentedness Helps Open the Door to the Inner Consciousness - by Submitted on Feb 22, 2025 from santosh krinskyThe drive in the human individual to find out who he is, what he is here for, and how he can grow and become what he is intended to be in the creation sets him apart from the animal. Even in the midst of an almost complete immersion in the external life and its lures, somewhere deep inside, the ...
Views: 29 - Inner Attitudes Towards Life, Towards Oneself and Others, Towards Work and Towards Difficulties - by Submitted on Feb 21, 2025 from santosh krinskyWe have previously explored the attitudes of the external, outer being in relation to these various issues. This is the opportunity to compare that view with the attitude of the inner being. At a certain point in an individual’s journey the development takes him beyond his initial fixation with ...
Views: 30 - Understanding the Stages of Coping and Mastery in Response to External Events - by Submitted on Feb 20, 2025 from santosh krinskyAt some point in life, the individual becomes aware that the former methods of reacting to circumstances and events are not only counter-productive, but actually harmful to their own health and well-being and the successful resolution of the situation. Struggling and striving, fighting and ...
Views: 32 - Understanding the Stage of Striving and the Role of Instincts in Response to External Events - by Submitted on Feb 19, 2025 from santosh krinskyBeyond the stage of “flight or fight” we see in panic and the eventual recoil into inertia, where we see the initial reactions of instinct at play, the stage of ‘striving’ begins to harness energy of response by the vital being, albeit still very much under the influence and control of the power ...
Views: 32 - Understanding the Stages of Panic and Inertia That Arise When Facing Difficulties and Obstacles in Life - by Submitted on Feb 18, 2025 from santosh krinskyBoth panic and inertia are responses to situations that arise in the life of individuals. They come about when something new or unexpected comes forward to challenge the individual. In the case of panic, there is clearly a perception of danger, and the rising of fear in the being. This drives ...
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