Teacher's Day!

• Your first teacher is "Yourself". 
• Yourself means your
• thoughts, 
• ideas, 
• attitude, 
• spirits, 
• enthusiasm, 
• josh, 
• will to do something good, 
• will to share something, 
• will to be happy! 
• If this teacher is excellent, you would be excellent!

The Balance in Life: Look for Your Balance Point

• Imbalance is a driving force in the universe. Water flows from high level to low level, heat flows from high temperature to low temperature, thought flows from high intelligence to low intelligence and so on.
  

• In our life we are looking for a state of balance. It is at the balance that we feel the most comfortable. Mahatma Buddh gave us the middle path (Madhya Marg) in our life style.

• As a simple example, if we have no salt in our food items (say Daal, Subzi etc), there would be hardly any taste. On the contrary, if we have too much of salt, the items can not be consumed at all.
  
• A certain quantity/level of salt which is neither too less nor too much renders taste, comfort, peace etc.
• The same applies to sugar as well.
• This balance is relevant not only to material items, it also applies to emotions.
• Too much of anger is harmful to our health. Absence of anger is likely to lead to difficulties in day to day life and dealings.
• Too much of love and affection towards our children is likely to make them pampered. Absence of love and affection moves us towards depression.
  
• Money is essential for our living. Absence of finances makes us uncomfortable and too much is also troublesome.
• It is the balance of everything in life where we feel comfortable.
• In Indian scriptures we often find the five enemies listed as - Kaam, Krodh, Lobh, Moh, Ahankaar. i.e Desire or the sexual desire (Kaam), anger (Krodh) , greed (Lobh), attachment with our surroundings and environment (Moh) and egotism (Ahankaar).
• Based on the phenomenon of balance as described above, I am of the opinion that these are not our enemies but they need to be balanced in our life.
• Sex has been looked upon as sinful in various societies. If that be so, our birth and existence itself is sinful. However, since sex is essential for regeneration, we need to have a look at it from the point of view of balance.
  
• In general all religious scriptures like Geeta, Bible, Quran and Guru Granth Saheb have mentioned the importance of balance.
  
• We need to learn the balance and the methods to apply balance suitably in our life. This renders Peace of Mind.
  

PANACEA FOR TODAY: GENERATE LOVE AND AFFECTION

PANACEA FOR TODAY: GENERATE LOVE AND AFFECTION
By Col SC Sood (Retd)
(07 November 2008)

Panacea means a remedy for all diseases; a thing for solving all difficulties or adopted in every case of difficulty. All creatures in this universe by nature have a tendency to fight with each other. Strained relations between parents, among parents and children, with relatives, neighbors etc. are well known to all of us. We keep searching for solutions to all these. Broadly there are two systems for finding solutions. One is to study each problem and find solution to it. With this approach, if we were to prepare a list of all ailments and their possible solutions, it would result into too big a literature to study and people may still find new problems. The other approach is to find principles which could be applied under all situations. This is definitely a better approach for dealing with the subject in totality.

In this we would like to concentrate on problems related to interpersonal relations as mentioned above. When two people disagree on some issue, a conflict starts. Each one considers oneself to be right and, as such, difference of opinion remains. You demand something from someone, the other person may not agree.

If I am your friend, it is most likely that you would agree with what I say or you may refuse politely to my suggestion. It means, if I create environment of friendship, most likely you would agree to what I say. I would also agree to what you say. Here lies the panacea for conflicting situations: “Generate Love and Affection and create environment of friendship”.

But, how do we achieve this. It is simple. Speak softly and logically so that love and affection grow. View the world suitably, so that love and affection grow. Appreciate wherever you find something good so that love and affection grow. Do something so that love and affection grow. Go somewhere so that love and affection grow. Sing something so that love and affection grow.

It is simple. If whatever you speak generates love, it is correct, otherwise not. If love and affection grow where you go, your action is correct, otherwise change it.

Channelize Your Thoughts: Every Thought is a Force

Your Thoughts are the Driving Forces Behind Your Actions: Channelize Your thoughts

Colonel SC Sood (Retd) : 04 Nov 2009

Assume for a moment that I ask you to move some luggage from one place to another. In physics we say that work is said to be done if a body moves through some distance. Work is a vector quantity which means it has a magnitude as well as a direction. Work done (say W) is defined as the product of applied force (say F) and the distance through which the body moves (say S). i.e. W = FxS.

Have you ever thought that you move yourself (assuming your weight between 40 to 90 kg or so) from your home to office, office to home, and from place A to B etc and so on …. , where does this entire huge force come from?

All this force is a result of your thoughts. A thought makes you move, a thought makes you speak, a thought makes you do everything that you are doing. Magnitude of this force ranges from very small to very large. In fact it could be infinite. All this force drives you in specific directions to do various actions. That is why, all your actions have well defined directions and goals. So, this force is definitely a vector.

Therefore, it is logical to assume that multiple thoughts would pull you (or push you) in different directions or to do different things. Whatever we do is the resultant of these forces (refer to parallelogram law of forces in physics.). If there are n thoughts, there would be n forces each with its own magnitude and direction. Since there are infinite thoughts, there are infinite forces. It would be impractical to measure each force and hence computation of their resultant would always be unknown to us. We may call this resultant as luck. However, the resultant can change if we add, remove, or modify one or more of these forces.

If you wish to achieve something, generate appropriate thoughts pertaining to the same. Deeper the thought, larger would be the magnitude of force associated with it.

This leads us to conclude that you would be able to do whatever you desire provided you could generate appropriate thoughts with requisite amount of depth. If you start pushing a wall, your efforts may go waste. Therefore, we need to channelize our thoughts in right directions as well. The success is sure.

WELCOME THE STRESS OF LIFE

KEY NO. 2 TO HAPPINESS

WELCOME THE STRESS OF LIFE

By Colonel S.C. Sood (Retd)

(25, 26 May 2009)

I have been searching for ways and means of getting rid of stress and strain from my life since childhood. Probably, every one of us is doing the same. I am referring to mental stress and strain.

For insight into underlying principles of stress management, it is essential to recollect a biological term known as “mitosis”. Mitosis is the process of nuclear division in cells that produces daughter cells that are generally identical to each other and to the parent cell. It is a fact that a living organism remains alive as long as its body cells are in a continuous process of regeneration by way of mitosis. In layman’s language, this regeneration of cells is by way of division of one cell into two, two into four and so on. The body cells grow and eventually divide. It is worth noting here that no division, whatsoever, can take place without sufficient amount of stress and strain. In other words, this regeneration of cells is a result of growth and division under the action of stress and strain. This implies that two elements are essential for regeneration of life; firstly: growth and secondly: stress! In other words stress is an essential element for regeneration of life.

If that be so, all prayers to the Almighty for removal of the stress and strain from life are contrary to the natural system of regeneration of life. By retrospection of above analysis, I conclude that whenever I am under stress and strain, the life must be regenerating in my vicinity/environment/within me. Removal of stress means cessation of life. So, instead of cursing, I must welcome the new life energy around and rejoice.

To summarise,

I must understand that stress is essential for our growth and existence.

I must stop cursing when I am under stress and strain.

I must accept stress as a positive energy and an essential part of life.

Registering the above in my mind puts me in a state of peace and happiness. O! God, I Welcome the Stress of life. I must make the best use of this opportunity and look for new vistas.

No doubt stress is unpleasant, but we undergo so much agony because we consider stress and strain as something bad or curse or result of our sins etc. So, the stress is invariably unwelcome. The truth is beyond this. It is life giving! Understand the reality and enjoy. Get your Peace of Mind.

I HAVE THE KEYS TO BLISS: THE HAPPINESS IN LIFE

I HAVE THE KEYS TO BLISS: THE HAPPINESS IN LIFE

By Col SC Sood (Retd)

(20 October 2008)

(Enhanced on 02 May 2010)

Bliss means perfect joy or happiness. It is the ultimate goal in life and everyone is looking for bliss: the way to happiness. In general, all religions as well as spiritual philosophies aim at providing ways and means for achieving bliss. Meditation has been considered basic to pursuit of happiness. The wisdom lies in creating friendship with our surroundings. The path for journey from misery to bliss has to be found individually. The principles can be learnt from all around. The great teachers in the world have experimented and listed their findings and the same are available to us in the form of their teachings.

After lot of struggle for so many years and having read the great scriptures like Gita, Bible, Quran, Guru Granth Sahib, and so on …, alongwith the principles of scientific systems, I have learnt some aspects of human psychology that give insight into this journey.

We start with a simple communication system. Every communication system has the following essential components:-

1. Source of information

2. Transmitter

3. Medium for flow of information

4. Receiver system

5. Destination

6. System of delivery of information to the destination

7. Interpretation and utilisation of information at the destination

Suppose, I receive a phone call saying that my child has got injured, I get worried and feel stressed and troubled. Though, nothing has changed in physical environment around me, yet I experience stress. Where from has the stress crept in? Is it the source causing me the stress? No, all sources of information have their role of generating information. As such, the source has nothing to do with my stress and strain. Had the information not reached me, the source in any case had generated the information. In a similar way, transmitter has the role of transmitting the information and it can not be the cause of my suffering. From source to destination, each element has its own role and they are not the cause of my suffering. What is the destination in this case? Our mind is the destination. We have our sense organs as receivers for receiving all types of information: visible, audible, sensational, smell, taste etc. They would continue to perform their respective role. As such they can not be the cause of my misery. Which portion of the system causes stress and strain to us? Let us assume that you did not understand the language in which the information was received. Would you have felt hurt? Not at all! Every element in the system was still the same.

It is imperative to understand that the elements in the above system can not hurt us. Where does the stress come from? The stress comes up immediately when I interpret the received information telling myself “Why has this happened to my child? What a bad luck! Why is God unkind to us? People have no sense of responsibility,” …so on and so forth.

Had I received a different message that my child has received first prize in a competition, I would have interpreted and told myself “Excellent! What a great child we have.” This would have resulted in pleasure and happiness rather than stress and strain.

Had I told myself “Our child has been hurt. We need to provide immediate care. Let us do it fast.” This interpretation would have definitely kept me outside the umbrella of stress and strain.

Here lies the key to bliss. On receipt of information, it is my interpretation to myself that puts me under stress and strain or gives me pleasure and happiness. This means whenever under stress and strain, I need to change my interpretation and I would get rid of stress and strain! Try it and get back to me if the key fails. This technique for pursuit of happiness would ultimately make you happy. You must make this positive effort to be happy. If I could pass on my experience to you - is my aim in life. I am sure this would help you in stress management.

In brief, everything revolves around only one question: "After receiving various inputs i.e. on seeing or hearing something, what did I tell myself?" If I said to myself "very bad, very bad, etc" I shall be surely unhappy. If I say "It is alright, it is part of life", I'll be better off, and if I said "very good", I'll be surely happy. So whatever you tell yourself, will make you happy or sad.