Don’t get attached to a label called religion which society has stuck on you. After all, the Life-giving source – the breath that you and I take and what keeps us alive – is the same. Which is why, religion and rituals are totally avoidable. Yes, there’s a Higher Energy that governs all of us. It is both the creator and the destroyer. So, as part of celebrating yourself, if you want to go to some place to celebrate that Higher Energy (if you believe the Energy is location-specific) – Sabarimalai, Ajmer Sharif, Velankanni, Amritsar, Mecca, Vatican, wherever – simply go. But please don’t get waylaid by people who tell you that religion dictates or rituals demand this and that from you. Do what you feel like to enable your communion with divinity. Just be sure to be happy doing what you are doing. Nothing else – and no one else – really matters!
Other Quotes by "AVIS Viswanathan"
Your job is to set out on Life’s journey as a voyager, which you already have by having been born (an act that, well, happened beyond you!). Life’s job is to reach you to the shore, which it eventually will, but not before it has tossed you up and down and churned your insides several times over. So, don’t sweat over anything. It is simply not worth it! Remember: your Life’s happening exactly the way it must. Train your mind to be non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. Be happy! Let Life take over, you simply go with the flow…!
Even if the world says so, and you know it too, that you have genius, don’t allow it to carry you away. You are, just like anybody else is, ordinary. You are a mere instrument that Life uses to express itself. ‘Your’ art is actually not even yours – it comes from a divine Source, flows through you, so it can touch the world. So, no matter how talented, famous and wealthy you are, know that you are just a microphone, a messenger, that is amplifying a message that is passing through you. How can a messenger ever take credit for the message? This doesn’t mean you must not celebrate yourself or market yourself well or profit economically. Surely, you may! But do it being fully aware that without the Source choosing you, without ‘your’ art flowing through you, there would be no acclaim, no recognition. So, stay humble, stay grateful!
Don’t grieve that your child has a problem. Don’t wish for the problem to go away either. And certainly don’t imagine that ‘bad times’ have befallen your child owing to ‘bad karma’! The truth is that no matter what you do or wish for, your child has to go through what they have to go through. Just as Life happened to you in its own unique way, it will happen to your child too. You can’t change that reality. Nor can you live your child’s Life. So, be practical. Be available for your child surely and invest in prayer. A crisis is Life’s way of coaching your child. So, pray that your child learns to face Life, not fight it or run away from it! Pray that your child evolves spiritually from the experience – often growing stronger, wiser and happy from it.
When you wish pain and suffering on someone who wronged you, what is actually happening is that you are still cooking within yourself. You are the one who is suffering. And you are expressing this suffering by wishing that your perpetrator must also suffer. Now, this reaction is normal; it is human to feel this way. But if you pause and reflect quietly, you will see the futility of causing your own suffering. If you must fight your perpetrator legally, do that. But do that dispassionately, without acrimony; let it simply be a clinical process. You don’t have to even forgive the person if you really are not feeling like it yet. But stop wishing that they suffer. That’s a big step forward in your own healing. When you take this step, over time, you will realize that Life always serves retribution at its own pace and that nothing liberates you as much as forgiveness does!
When you are confronted with many problems at the same time, don’t be overwhelmed or emotional and attempt to solve all of them at the same time. You simply can’t. Approach your problems with basic project management skills. Sort your problems into different buckets: A. which ones cannot be solved ever B. which ones cannot be solved by you C. which ones can be solved by you over time and D. which ones can be solved by you immediately? Obviously, go to work today on bucket D, while planning to schedule time and collaborations to address buckets C and B. Of course, learn to accept those in bucket A with humility and equanimity and move on. This is the only way you can focus sharply, be calm and find strength in a storm and be happy!
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