Hello, my friends, we spoke about domestic violence, psychological disorders. Attention Deficit syndromes, all those kinds of things. Where are all these things coming from? We discussed that in the last episode. I decided to take this to one more episode because this is very important. It’s about our stability. If we are stable at home, a house where there is a lot of love, there’s a lot of stability; the society sees that happening as well because these people bring that stability to the society. We need a lot of stable people. We need stability, within us, in our household and in society. We must, while we can.
So, I was talking about how I was experiencing life. Many times, in childhood, in youth, and also during my work life, I have faced failures, in fact, tremendous failures. And each time I faced failures, I realized that there is hardly any company! People don’t appreciate you when you fail, rather they don’t appreciate those who fail. They only want winners. The criteria used to assess winning is money or richness in materials that are visible; even something like a good pen or a car. But how they earned it, we don’t know. Sometimes, some people have compromised their conscience to earn, but people do not have a problem with that.
I have experienced trusted people either cheating or otherwise betraying me. And society sometimes supports them. I am so surprised that society has no problem, even if they do something wrong, such as putting someone down, betraying, cheating or stealing. Society has no problem if they bribe and get their way through.
So, we are looking at a corrupt society with aberrations. We can’t look at society and decide how we should be, because that’s probably not the right benchmark. What we should be is what helps our conscience. Do we feel good? Are we stable in our conscience?This is a good benchmark to talk about because if our conscience is clear, I think we have a good existence.
When we are violent in the house when we abuse our family members, we are angry and fighting with them or maybe ignoring them, disrespecting them, we don’t feel good; our conscience is affected. And we must understand why it’s happening. Sometimes we need external help or counselling. We must get it. We must go for it.
Every time domestic violence is happening, we should not just blame the person; we should look at the psychology of the person. Probably, that person has gone through many sorrows, many disappointments, many betrayals or many rejections. This frustration is boiling within and domestic violence could be the expression of the same.
Beginning from school days we must counsel children. We must reward them for small things; recognize them for their talents, appreciate them and bring them up with confidence, where their own talents are what they need to give to society, not what the society wants. You know, it’s not about the marks in school; It’s not about the grades, not even about succeeding exams, it’s about their own talents, how well they can own it. They will then be peaceful and settled from within. If such little appreciation does not happen early on, then even large appreciations, later on in life will not have value. Every small thing should be appreciated.
I’ve experienced different difficulties. One is the workplace competition, discrimination. I even had a situation where there was a hardship allowance, which is granted when you have to work in countries that are fragile and have difficult conditions. At that time, it was Iraq. Iraq was a very difficult place and they decided to give me a set of hardship allowances and a different set to my colleague who was a British person. When I asked why there was a difference, they gave me some lame excuse, which did not hold water. I had to tell them, “See, this is not good because everybody’s life is the same. All of us value our lives equally. And this is not good; having two different sets of hardship allowances in the same office is discrimination!”
Such things happen. I was not feeling good about it at that time but still, I did my job. I decided, “Okay, forget about all that. A job needs to be done and it should be done”. I don’t believe in protesting and ignoring my job, so I did it well and that earned the company money. I believe that we should not ignore our work and we should do what we have to. I continued despite workplace difficulties.
The point I’m trying to make is, we can do a lot in the world, in OUR world, to bring balance in people’s lives. We can easily implement in our life, qualities such as equality and equanimity, where nobody’s higher or lower; where everybody is appreciated for their good work. You know we appreciate, we respect, we reward, we recognize; all these things can help stabilize.
And society brands you very easily. When I lost my daughter in 2000, I also lost many other things of life in the following years. The best of friends were not available then. They were busy with their own lives and did not really want to spend time with a loser of society. I experienced all this and was wondering how deep is our love? How deep is our friendship, commitment, conviction? How deep is our companionship? How deep is our ability to love, unconditionally or against all odds? All these questions were happening, and I decided, they are not worth a thought. What you can do is work on what should stabilize you; your expression; that’s your stability. I was completely focusing on myself. I ignored the world around me and that stabilized me.
The questions that came are connected to domestic violence. I will not deviate from that, I will talk about it and conclude. Suppose you have no appreciation from home; what would you do? You have to love yourself. You have to accept yourself; you have to really consider and respect yourself as a great personality. It has nothing to do with other people’s appreciation or rejection. So, if you really believe in yourself, if you really appreciate, even small aspects of yourself, such as your heartbeat, your breathing, that you are eating, you are sleeping and you have so many good things happening in your life, such as shelter; you have a roof over your head, you have food to eat. All those things can be considered as merits. Just count on what you have. Or even the Mohanji platform; the platform gives you a lot of opportunities, connections, visibility, and so many other good things.
If you are looking at what you don’t have, you will always be sad. Instead, look at what you have and start walking; that’s the only place from where you can start walking. This is what I did. When adverse situations were pulling me down all the time, I got up and started walking again. Many times, I got knocked down but I got up again and walked. And that’s exactly why you have Mohanji today. It wasn’t easy. Because many whom I trusted the most, betrayed me and decided to go against me. Yet, I continued to walk. I didn’t ask them why. I didn’t even discuss with them. “If that is the experience you want with me, go ahead, have it”, I thought. I can’t change whether one chooses to love or hate me and I will have nothing to do with it.
If somebody hates you, abuses you, have nothing to do with it. Instead, you can be kindness. Your answer to this world should be your kindness, your consistency, your compassion and your conviction in what you do. If you answer in this way, eventually, the world will look at you with the same effect. This means that all that you express, will come back to you. My suggestion is, do not believe, ”I can’t do these things because my family does not approve, etc.” You can still communicate. If you have a laptop, if you’re talking, if you’re using your phone to communicate, communicate, If you can’t do it at home, because the people at home don’t approve of your meditations and other activities, you still have a phone, you have an internet connection, you have your laptop. Talk about it, connect to people, network, and communicate. Now today, you can’t really go to a place and meditate because of the COVID-19 situation. So, we have to use our internet facilities, our Skype and all these portals where you talk to various people through the internet through the laptop. We have to keep looking at what we have, not at whether the other person approves or not; then fight, get frustrated and then depressed; that’s not the way to live. We have to just keep flowing like water, like a river; we should keep flowing, and this is our ability, we have to really keep flowing.
When I felt discrimination in my office, I did not stop working. I did not protest, I just told them, “It’s unfair!” Then I left it because I expressed my thought to the concerned person. And then I left it because then it’s up to them. But I did not stop working. I worked hard and proved myself. I did my best. Similarly, in every situation, you can prove yourself. You can actually make a difference in your own environment, by expressing conviction consistently, with a lot of determination.
So, we can change anything. I think there is nothing we can’t change. Change your attitude. If you change your attitude, you can change anything. If we don’t change our attitude, then we will just sit and complain. I believe that there’s no room for complaints. God has given us so many facilities. We must appreciate them. What we don’t have, leave it. If it comes, it does, if it doesn’t come, no problem. But what we have we must appreciate, and we must really use it well. We have that capacity.
You have friendships, great friendships in the Mohanji platform also. So this you can use very well. And then, collectively, you can create great things. There is the Early Birds Club and through these, you add value to the lives of many people. Your life too will have more value; you will feel that reciprocation, rather it will be reciprocated. This means that when you deliver, you also get a lot of rewards. So, if your family cannot see you as a great personality, society will see you; that is compensation.
I leave this thought on your plate. Contemplate on it. Improve your life, change your attitude. Be powerful.
Lots of love! This is Mohanji.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopal
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