Balance in personal development: The Bhagavad Gita on happiness and distress April 24, 2012
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Growth Books.Tags: awareness, Bhagavad Gita, ego management, happiness, managing the ego, negative thinking, personal development, positive thinking, self-improvement, visualization
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Personal development, or self-improvement literature, is an ancient tradition. Often called Wisdom Writing, particularly when it refers to older literature, personal development writing has been applicable and beneficial throughout the ages, because essentially, human nature does not change.
The same problems and personal challenges that confront us today in the modern world of technological advancements were also matters that the ancients struggled with in their efforts to live a better and more emotionally balanced and spiritual life.
One of the tendencies of our human nature is to subconsciously immerse ourselves in a strong current emotion, such as being happy or worried and “blue” and either want the feeling to persist forever, as in the case of feeling happy, or wish the feeling to go away, as we would with feeling worried or “down.”
The reality however is that, generally, we cannot “will” a feeling or emotion to persist; unforeseen and uncontrollable good or bad circumstances can alter our perceptions and therefore our feelings. There is an old saying, “This too shall pass” and it applies to enjoyable states of emotion and to distressing states of emotion. The trick is to realize the transitory nature of the events of the world and to neither get unduly uplifted by a state of happiness or overly perturbed at a state of distress.
The ancient 700-verse Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita in Chapter 2, Verse 14 (2:14) sheds light on this (I have edited proper names from this excerpt for greater clarity) “…the non-permanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.” (1)
There are a number of websites providing interpretation and translation of the Bhagavad Gita, including an article in Wikipedia.
(1) The Bhagavad Gita: Translation source: http://www.bhagavad-gita.us
Ego management: Trying to control the future April 2, 2012
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management.Tags: controlling ego, ego management, goal setting, law of attraction, personal development, personal growth, positive thinking, Tao Te Ching
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Ego management or controlling our thinking is often difficult when it comes to the past and the future; and probably, controlling our ego in thinking about the future is the toughest.
The future, at least to the ego and our mind, is often filled with “what if’s” and “if only I could…” or less tentatively, we engage in writing, saying aloud, or thinking affirmations and make other efforts involving the Law of Attraction which usually are focused on specific outcomes that we desire for the future.
However, there is a big difference on thinking about the future positively, or planning our lives to influence a future with positive possibilities, compared with an attempt by the ego to think that we can actually control the future. We can try but such efforts will more than likely result in disappointment, and possibly psychic harm.
There is an interesting passage in the Tao Te Ching that illustrates this in a few words: “Trying to control the future Is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place. When you handle the master carpenter’s tools, Chances are you’ll hurt your hand.” *
I am not presenting this passage from the Tao from a religious perspective or saying that there is a grand deity controlling our lives and Rather, I am suggesting that if we give in to the ego’s desire to try to over-manage the future we are bound to become frustrated.
There are simply too many variables in the universe in terms of influences and events that can have an effect on our future to think that we can control the future. To appease the ego in its desire to control the future is to give in to delusion.
Planning, goal setting, efforts towards a positive approach to life, and other components of a personal development program, however, are ways to exert influence over our own future without allowing the ego to over-manage our thinking as to what we can realistically control in the future.
To paraphrase a familiar prayer, we need to develop acceptance of the things we cannot change; develop courage to change the things we can; and also develop the wisdom to know the difference between these two sets of circumstances.
* The Tao Te Ching, as interpreted/translated by Stephen Mitchell, published by HarperPerennial, A division of HarperCollins Publishers.
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