The secret to my happiness is to lower my standards for others and raise my standards for me. That's a blinding flash of the obvious from sometime back that reoccurs to me this morning...still as true as it was sometime back.
I like that my daily readings this morning are all centered pretty much on the same thing...the necessary disciplining of our own mind. "God Calling" certainly comes to the point: Deal with yourself severely. Learn to love discipline.
Easwaran quotes the Hindu proverb, Nonviolence is the supreme law of life. He goes on: ....when every trace of violence is removed from the mind, what is left is our natural state of consciousness: pure love. Who's kidding whom? That takes a boatload of discipline...to just get started, I'm thinking.
Ah...here comes gratitude to save the day. It is with a grateful heart and mind that I remind me that I have been at this for a while. I tend to think of myself as I was when first I got the word that love and discipline were interconnected...baffled, bewildered and bitchin' about it, actually.
I must admit, I got hope when I learned that this was to be not by my thinking or even by my control, but by my spiritual condition. Of course, back then I was still thinking of God as the great Santa Claus...I ask, he delivers. Which isn't all that far off...it's just that today I ask, then I accept whatever he delivers, i.e., what I need which is rarely what I had in mind, but is invariably better.
He delivers by guiding us to do his will...we just supply the willingness. And where do we get the willingness? Through discipline. Self-discipline. Love it now or love it later. That's our choices.
All it takes to turn us in the right direction, away from self toward God, are those two words, Thank you.
Thank you.
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