*Chapter 14 - Pride, Humility & Luck*
We need to look deeper into pride. Often we think it is arrogance and those who have arrogance think that it is their pride.
They take pride in it but there is a clear distinction between the two. Arrogance is insensitive. When there is no humility or awareness in pride, it turns into arrogance.
When there is no love or service along with pride then, too, it turns into arrogance. It is a knife.
You can either cut the butter or hurt your finger. There is just a little twist to it. You become insensitive and get lost in your joy and your pride.
Pride also brings joy. In joy there is pride, but without humility and awareness it turns into arrogance.
This is exactly what is happening in today's world. Arrogance goes with the small mind. The small mind, being unaware of the magnitude of existence, thinks it is the greatest, the biggest, and the highest.
But pride is the very awareness of goodness and beauty and of one's luck. Luck is the language of the heart. It is the heart that decides if something is lucky or unlucky.
Lucky or unlucky means - beyond one's capability, beyond one's capacity, beyond one's mind, beyond one's abilities and beyond the smallness of mind.
You call something lucky that is
far or enormous. The heart always makes everything big. Poetry comes out of the heart.
The mind knows only the facts. Poetry is exaggeration and beauty is nothing but exaggeration. There is no fact in beauty.
If you try to analyse beauty, you will be lost and the beauty, too. It is the language of the heart. It decorates, it elaborates, it exaggerates, and it's 'airy-fairy'.
When you read poetry, when you sing a song or when you describe something, it's always from the heart.
Analysis and explanations are from the mind, from the head. Justice and equality is from the head. From the heart comes uniqueness and speciality.
Everything is made special. But
what do you often do? If there is any negativity, you deal with it with the heart and if something is positive, you deal with it with the head.
If there is a problem, you exaggerate it - suffering, mistake or misery. You blow it up beyond proportions.
Right from the childhood, a small scratch would become a problem and misery. We eternalise and exaggerate it.
All newspapers thrive on this. They exaggerate the negativity. They see it from the heart. But when something beautiful and wonderful is happening, you look at it with the head.
We need to switch. Even if you see one beautiful quality, decorate it, exaggerate it and make it very big. So and so is great, excellent and marvellous.
See the negative quality in a person through your head and your mind. Analyse it. Reason out their behaviour considering that, maybe, they are tensed and stressed.
Analysis of negativity brings compassion in you. Exaggeration of the good brings waves of beauty. Whether a person is beautiful or not, it makes you more beautiful.
The one who praises becomes more beautiful. Have you seen the faces of people who are always praising? There is a beauty in them.
The bodies of those who exaggerate positive qualities get filled with it. The body which is nothing but space gets filled with that praise, and when the body gets filled with praise, divinity dawns.
That is beauty. That is what a gopi is. It means being drunk with knowledge. Their whole being is drunk. But can you be drunk if you are complaining?
People who are drunk, don't complain. They are so happy. Everything is blissful. The mind shuts off and the heart takes over. That is what a gopi is.
One who deals with the heart - gopi. Make this shift. If you see one good quality in somebody, catch hold of it. Exaggerate it.
You will see that your word, your thought and your intuition has power. That person will become the way you think. You create your world with your word.
When you see a negative quality, analyse it. Ask yourself what that person wants? And how he can get rid of it? Try to see what is behind it.
Don't see negativity with the heart. Otherwise your heart will become sore. You will have it and become miserable.
Life is very short. Time is running on. Why, should you be worried and bothered in this short period of time?
Look at your life with a broader vision, a wide angle lens. It will give a bigger picture. Then life rises in waves of beauty. If you are a small pond, shallow waves will not rise.
There will not be even a ripple. But you have great depth. Take out all the extra silt and you will see you are so deep, so beautiful.
There is nothing much to be done. That is the power of knowledge. Praise the Lord. God will not become greater by your praise but by that praise you become beautiful.
Each hollow and empty space in you gets filled with it. Whenever you have felt a sense of great beauty, that's when you have reached your home.
That's when you have been in touch with yourself, because you are so beautiful. Whatever beauty you see here and there, is only a projection of the self.
You get a glimpse of the self. A little shower comes from the self and that's why everything in the world looks beautiful.
In the experience of beauty, all 5 senses merge and whichever is dominant, that projects a little bit more.
Example - if you're hungry the moon may remind you of pancake or cheese. All the 5 senses come together in the experience of beauty.
Beauty is beyond the senses, beyond the mind. Beauty is beyond the intellect. It is in your very being. When you rejoice in beauty, the entire creation rejoices with you.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji
Waves of emotions
