In listening to the voice of our own ego, attributing it to an aura of divine guidance one soon learns that no matter how much misguided rationalization one uses, nothing can lessen the karmic responsibility of wrongful actions. This is why the saints and sages say children should be started on the path at age three. This is the age that their habits start to form. Renoir, the great exuberant French painter said, “I loved women even before I could walk.” Now that is a seemingly shocking statement isn’t it? But no, it is a scientific statement because at the age of three years old your bad habits begin to gradually probe and guide your life automatically. There are pictures of a boy at sixteen months old smoking a cigar and another of an English boy, about two years old, smoking a pipe with great delight.
The masters tell us of the truthfulness that man cannot be held accountable for being tempted. Maya (cosmic illusion) some call it “Satan” injected into the perfect framework of human beings the possibilities for horrible enticements that continuously urge man to go astray spiritually and morally. Ordinary people languish spiritually so easily that they are tempted to do things that will end up in hurting their “self.”
Through the instinctive love of parents flows the motherly aspect of God to protect the child. But when a baby grows up the time comes when it has to exercise reason by protecting itself. If he misuses his reason an evil outcome is precipitated, if guided rightly by good judgment the growing individual becomes happy. How is it then that some of these children are born with tendencies of weaknesses and some with particular tendencies of self-control prior to having any opportunity in implementing or using them.
Some agnostics, atheists and intellectuals declare confidently that it is heredity that is responsible for good or evil traits in children. Very often the parents unnecessarily blame themselves for the child’s physical or mental infirmity and many times the parents are unjustly blamed. Sometimes intelligent parents have moronic offspring and likewise ordinary parents have wise children. These seemingly unpredictable and erratic events are not freaks of nature but evidently these souls have variable evolutionary progress and it permits them to be born in the same family. If you ask a doctor the reason he would say “if a boy is a mental patient and his mother or father is unstable he probably inherited the affliction.” If you ask a sage or metaphysician he would say “that the boy’s soul was attracted to the unbalanced, mentally ill parent with a tendency of madness or insanity as a result of bad actions from his past incarnations.”
It is impossible for an impartial God to bestow one child with a dysfunctional mind to do only evil under the convincing influence of bad or evil physiological instincts and another child with a good heredity creating a good mind prone only to good tendencies. The answer is found through the cosmic dispenser of justice, the law of reincarnation. The law of cause and effect and its corollary of karma govern the action of people. When a child fails to make the grade at school, he has to return back to his earthly school again and again to pass all of his examinations. As it is with souls who fail in their performance of detachment, morality, spirituality, self-control and calmness must also return back to preserve their perfection in the schools of mortality to bring out their spirit-nature.
Accordingly with this law, the soul magnetizes to itself either good or bad mentality or a good or bad heredity according to habits and desires formed in past incarnations determined by our “astral-blueprints.”
We are told by the great ones and spiritual masters that a human being has been endowed with only twenty-five percent of free will. Where is the remaining seventy-five percent? It is broken up between your karma, pre-natal and post-natal habits deeply buried within your subconscious mind. You can test yourself by taking five of your strongest habits being either good or bad and try to break or stop even one of them for a month. You will soon find out the futility in doing this. It takes seven years to make a habit-groove in your subconscious mind and it also takes seven years to rid yourself of one of where the temptation is no longer there
The power of habits good or bad presents the consequences due to the good or wrong judgments in man, an apt example of the evils of bad habits are ill health, indiscretion or overindulgence and being seized by the grip of temptation, and only arise when man forgets himself by an act of erroneous judgment and by repeated transgressions that permit the bad indulgence to become a habit in the subconscious mind.
Ever since early childhood we have convinced ourselves by our conceited egotistic habits into amnesia of whom we really are and have forgotten our divine nature or soul. You are not a woman or a man. If you live in a boarding-house do you call yourself a border? But because of the body-identified ego you have succumbed to the hypnosis of what your bodily house labels you to be. You are nothing else but pure spirit. With open eyes you identify your consciousness with your body and all your limitations and moods. You have forgotten your true self. But with closed eyes you don’t see your body any longer so you are able to feel the invisible consciousness that resides in that form.
What Is The Greatest Gift A Parent Can Give A Child?
From early childhood we are trained not to fear things and psychological studies tell us that most pains in the body would be greatly lessened and actually disappear altogether if a child was brought up fearlessly. But because of past incarnations you will see some very fearful children who have brought with them these fear complexes from their subconscious mind even though these children are not children but old souls of countless past lives.
Although these children are all given a fresh start in every new incarnation, they still bring with them some unwanted excess baggage of attachments and habits very well covered up and with latent phobias from the past they can become chronically terrified for no apparent reason. Some thought or word can trigger this dread reaction that is deeply buried within the subconscious mind. If you are a parent never instill fear in your children.
Never use scary stories as threats to correct the behavior of your child because you can impair their outlook on life and create such nervousness as to paralyze their everyday progress. You can embed a sense of caution instead of fear. Teach your children and yourself to fear “fear.” Thoughts are powerful mental vibratory designers and whatsoever you intensely think of comes to pass.
The fear you dwell on creates a mental image that begins to manifest as the very same mental image you are afraid of. When you continually have the fear of accidents they are more likely to happen as that fear paralyzes your nerves. Your mind will be more troubled with worry than with caution and instead of doing things right you will attract the misfortune you fear the most.
Many people have been healed by removing fear from their minds. Many diseases can be cured by healing through fearlessness and just as the pendulum swings the other way, people can be scared to death as was noted in World War II as in severe cases from dire fear the heart has stopped and the hair turned white. Unfortunately mental healing is not an easy thing to do, that is why the masters tell us that those who have not mastered their minds should keep on conditioning themselves and take physical aid. Most attempts to heal by mind power do fail as the mind continues entertaining fear. From the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda
Are You Telling Little White Lies?
Unfortunately, the real meaning of Truth is not plainly understood by most of us. The real meaning of truth is its exact correspondence with reality. The opposite effect happens when people develop the bad habit of telling little white lies all the time. If you travel this road you will find it difficult to ever be completely truthful in any statement you make. Speech must be clear and persuasive with just the right amount of measured conviction. Those who exaggerate or lie suffer from talkativeness; their words are as useless and ineffective as toy bullets shot from a toy gun.
With words that are always truthful and sincere, they will have just the opposite effect. People that have good thoughts and who are adapted in doing good actions automatically store good habits in their heart, and their actions and speech reflect that kindness. A wicked person, who does evil actions, produces wicked habits and a taste for sin in his heart and when he acts or talks, wickedness is spoken within.
Slick, silken-tongued liars are abundant, and these lordly egotists are easily riled, often defensive and will offensively repel those who seek entry into their private thoughts. The success or failure in trusting that person lies within you.
Those habitual liars never realize the importance of telling the truth it doesn’t even dawn on them they are lying, it then becomes impossible for them to see any real truth in any circumstance because their own imagination becomes their truth when a little white lie every now and then helps to get along wonderfully. How disappointing!
Realize the difference between truth and fact and be always truthful for there are no harmless lies, avoid them. Do not encourage a pattern or habit of becoming untruthful. Truth can also be harmful sometimes; never reveal distasteful truths or facts that cause pointless suffering to others. Is it ever okay to lie? It is always better to just stay silent or play dumb than to promote something that will have an evil outcome. It is better to speak pleasing truths and avoid unleashing distasteful utterances. When addressing a handicapped crippled person “hey you, crippled man,” that might be factual, but it is unpleasing and a destructive truth and that includes gossip, the cancer of the spiritual path. From the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda.
