The power and importance of respect | Mohanji
Great scriptures said worship or respect your mother primarily; that’s the first level. The second level, respect your father. The third level is to respect your teachers or respect your life – that is, the highest teacher. And anybody giving information, anybody giving you understanding, anybody giving you awareness is your teacher. It could probably be a small child telling you something that is a teacher. That is why Dattatreya had 24 teachers; they were all from nature. Everything in nature can be your teacher; respect all that. When you live with respect, you can’t be disappointed. There’ll be no disappointment.
Respect stabilizes you, equalizes you, aligns you.
Finally, respect your guests. People who come into your life, respect them. This is very important. Some people come to give you pleasure – happiness; some people come to give you pain – unhappiness; respect both.
Why should we respect those who give us pain?
They are all giving you experiences, and they are also cleansers. Imagine you have a lot of egos. We don’t know whether we are expressing a lot of egos, but when these people come, we will stop and start thinking.
When pains happen, that’s the time when you reflect on yourself. That’s the time when you contemplate. In times that are sad, we always think of God. When we are very happy, we don’t think about God; we go to the pub. Otherwise, we go to the mosque, the church, the temple, to the places where we call God. When you are at the height of misery, you remember God every moment.
Everything in life has its value. I mean to say that respect everything; every aspect has its value. So when you respect your mother, father, guru, God, and visitors (visitors are not only people – it could be cats, dogs, anything), they all have value in your life. They are all adding something to your life.
Respect everybody, every being, so your life will be a life of respect. Then where is the time for gossiping, criticizing, judging, comparing, complaining? Is there a time for that? It’s a complete waste of time doing all that.
When you have such deep respect in every aspect, you will be respecting everything. There will be no guilt, no regret. There will be no regret, no guilt when you accept life completely. Why am I saying regret and guilt so many times? They are very heavy, and if you have heavy emotions in life, you can’t see the truth. If you have heavy expectations, you will not experience love.
If you respect, you are light.
When you are light, you are bright.
Be light, be bright.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Padmini Ravikumar