HOW TO OVERCOME TEMPTATIONS - 12

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HOW TO OVERCOME TEMPTATIONS – 12

Practical suggestion number eight:

Take care of your food. See that your food is satvic, pure, earned by honest

means, without doing violence to anyone.

Practical suggestion number nine:

Take care of your breathing: breathing has a direct influence upon the mind. Let

your breathing be deep and rhythmic. Some day, perhaps, I shall speak to you in

detail concerning these two important factors of life, food and breathing.

Practical suggestion number ten:

Never succumb to temptation. Try to overcome it but, in spite of your best

efforts, if you fail, you must not think any more about it. When a little child

learns to walk, not unoften, he stumbles and falls. But immediately, the mother

comes and lifts him up and asks him to walk again. When you fall, pay no

attention to it, but immediately rise and move on, ever onward, forward,

Godward!

Practical suggestion number eleven:

You can not overcome temptation by fighting it, in the ordinary sense of the

term. The more you fight it, the more you direct your attention to it. The

stream of life flows in the direction of attention. If you direct your

attention to temptation, forces of life will tend to flow towards temptation,

and will only strengthen it. This will increase your troubles.

To give an illustration, when the body suffers from pain, the more we think of

pain, the greater it grows. But when we forget it by absorbing our attention in

some other activity, such as painting, or music, pain completely vanishes,

It is the same with temptation. The less we think of it, the better for us. On

the other hand, we must not thoughtlessly yield to temptation. We must be

sinless. To be sinless, our lower self must be cleansed, washed, purified. The

lower self must be transmuted into the Higher Self.

This leads us to practical suggestion number twelve:

Whenever we are assailed by temptation, let us turn to God. What is meant by

turning to God? Turning to God means directing one’s attention to a Power,

Intelligence, Wisdom, Love greater by far than my own. Turning to God means

directing one’s attention to a Being who is ever above, beyond, transcendent,

and yet who is also closer to us than breathing, nearer to us than the nip of

our neck.

How may this turning to God be accomplished? Through the top of the head or the

point a little behind and between the eyebrows. When we turn our attention to

the top of the head, or to the point between the eyebrows, we rise above the

physical and the psychic, and contact the spiritual, and divine forces begin to

flow in and through us. The light and wisdom and power of God flow into us and

help us in living the new life. Everyone who seeks to contact God will find his

own way of doing so. The way I have found helpful is this. I close my eyelids

and turn the eyes in their sockets upward, to a point above the apex of the

head and, immediately, I feel the divine forces flowing into me, strengthening

me, washing me, cleansing me, making my heart pure and clear. Or I turn the

eyes in their sockets to a point a little behind and between the eyebrows, and,

again, have the same experience. Try this experiment and you will find wonderful

things happened to you.

(To be concluded; Author: Sri. J.P. Vaswani)

Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya......

The question was asked: "How much did Rockefeller leave behind?" Only one

student answered: "Rockefeller left every penny behind!"

The wealthiest man here may become the most destitute hereafter. The best way to

transfer money to your account on the other side is to spend it in the service

of the poor and broken ones.

Here, on the earth, people judge your greatness by the number of servants you

have. There, on the other side they will judge your greatness by the number of

people you have served.

Serve silently! Serve lovingly! Serve humbly! Serve without seeking any reward –

not even a simple word of thanks.

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