Achieving our goals requires having a clear aim, the enthusiasm and determination to achieve it, a systematic plan for the same, and disciplined and sustained efforts. Self-help books list various strategies and steps for achieving our aims.
When we set an aim for ourselves, it is a recognition of the fact that there is some distance between where we are and where would like to be at some point in future. Our planning and efforts thereafter are meant to bridge the gap between our present position and the one we aspire to.
When it comes to career or material goals such as acquiring a new skill or buying a house, we need to have knowledge, training, and the other resources needed to achieve our objective. In most cases we clearly know what we lack and how far we have progressed towards our aim.
But when it comes to self-improvement at the spiritual level, the process of achieving our object is a little different. That is because when we aim to become a better person, we are not really wishing to be something that we are not. We are merely returning to our original goodness.
First, it helps to recognise and accept the fact that we are souls, not bodies. The soul is the sentient energy that gives life to the body. Consciousness resides in the soul, which thinks, sees, hears, and expresses itself through the physical medium of the body. The soul is innately pure, peaceful, and loving. Our shortcomings are acquired traits that do not belong to us or define who we are.
Setting out to become a better person, therefore, is actually a journey back to our original self. In the beginning, our flaws are very much apparent to us and others, but we need to see them for what they are: “This is not who I am. I am originally flawless.”
Suppose I wish to be free from anger, which I know has given me and others great pain, damaged my relationships, and robbed me of peace of mind, then I need to remind myself that I am originally a soul and peace is my innate quality.
If I repeatedly think about my anger, feel guilt and remorse for my angry outbursts, and keep telling myself that I will not get angry again, I am going to have a difficult time achieving my goal. When I forget that I am originally a peaceful being, and instead think only of the defect that I have acquired, I am making that defect a part of my identity. By endlessly rewinding the angry scenes from my life in my mind, and experiencing the emotions associated with them again and again, I reinforce the anger. It is like trying to remove a stain from a cloth and at the same time staining it again and again.
Any goal which involves purification of the soul is about moving to a higher level of consciousness, whereby we see ourselves and others in a new, better way. The easy method to bring about this shift is to focus on our original goodness.
I do not have to “become” peaceful; I am peaceful, as that is my natural state of being. When I regularly remember this, with conviction, I begin to experience my truth – that I really am peaceful – and anger feels like an unnatural and uncomfortable state of being. I detach myself from the anger, which now feels alien to me. The longer and deeper I think of and meditate on my innate peace, the more I experience it. My consciousness is coloured by this experience, and that is then reflected in my speech and behaviour, which become peaceful. Anger gradually fades away and vanishes eventually.
If I tell myself that ‘I want to be peaceful’, or ‘I will try to be peaceful’, I am essentially reinforcing the belief that I am not peaceful at present. That may appear to be the case superficially, if I look only at my behaviour. But the deeper reality is that the behaviour is an aberration, based on wrong ideas I have created or picked up from others. Peace is my intrinsic quality. Accepting this creates a foundation for a new – and true – belief about the self, which in turn influences my thoughts and behaviour.
The key is to ‘be’ what we aim to become, rather than just wanting or trying to be that. By this method we easily regain access to the purity, courage, compassion, and other treasures that lie within us.
B.K. Asha is Director of the Brahma Kumaris’ Om Shanti Retreat Centre, Distt. Gurugram, Haryana.