Righ Attitude: Harnesing Life's Difficulties for Positive Achievements

Excerpts from a talk given by Sri Daya Mata, President & Sangha Mata of Self-Realization Fellowship/YSS of India. Today (Jan 31) is Sri Daya Mataji's birthday. Wish you a very happy birthday, Ma ! :)

Love and understanding, wisdom, health, security, lasting joy - these every person is seeking. Those of us on the spiritual path share the conviction that by communingwith God we will attain these goals.

When visited by hard times, our bad habit of believing we are mortal beings makes it easy to succumb to wrong thinking - "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?" - or to feel resentment or anger over the way life treats us. Cultivating right attitude helps us to see those circumstances, no matter how seemingly "unfair", as oppertunities - created by our own personal karma, yet blessed with the underlying grace of God for the specific purpose of hastening the unfoldment of our souls.

Progress is aligned to our understanding that our difficulties come not from other people, not fro outer conditions, not from any source but God through His cosmic laws. If we can but hold to the truth we can use what happens for our ultimate and highest good, we will feel God's ever-present hand of blessing and will find that our troubles cannot touch us inwardly.

This is why it is so important to have the right attitude toward the circumstances we encounter. I would even go so far as to say that attitude is the basis of everything on the spiritual path. How we face life, how we react to difficulties, how we respond to the inevitable challenges to our well-being and evenmindedness, how we engage in our spiritual practices - these determine how close we draw to the Divine, and how quickly.

So long as we exist on this material plane, there is one thing of which we can be of certain: the uncertainity of change. This we cannot avoid in a world of duality in which we are incessantly presented with the fluctutions of maya: light and darkness, health and ill health, life and death. Their inconstancy must not cow us down with fear or hopelessness - never! Their purpose is to teach us the lesson of our own transcendent, blissful nature. They are a prod to make us exert the effort to be free of these ceaseless ups and downs. The way to rise above the law of duality is by contacting God - the unchangeable Reality beyond the realm of changes.