It is our thoughts, attitude, and behaviour that have made the world what it is. Consider this, when there are loving relationships in a family and everybody lives together happily, people say that their home is heaven. Instead, if there is constant stress, shouting, and violence within a family, their house is called hell.
Who creates the heaven and the hell? It is the people living there. When their thinking and actions are influenced by vices, their life becomes hell, and when their life is informed by virtues, it is heaven. The same holds true on a larger scale: we all make this world heaven or hell, by the way we think and behave.
Once we have understood this, can we take responsibility for making our home a heaven? We would probably think, ‘But what about the wife (or the husband), and the kids? Who will change them?’ We cannot change others, but we can make our life peaceful and happy by changing the way we see things and other people.
We just have to change from the taking mode – expecting from others respect, politeness, understanding, and much more – to the giving mode. That means having good wishes for others, unconditionally. Can we do it? Can we wish someone well regardless of what they have done to us in the past? Can we bless someone who has deeply hurt us?
Actually, it is easier than we believe. Someone may have used harsh words and hurt us a great deal, but they did it just once. We multiply the suffering by holding on to it in the mind – repeatedly thinking about it and experiencing the pain again and again. Then we blame the other person for making our entire life miserable. The longer we hold on to old hurts and unhappy memories, rewinding the scenes in the mind and creating the sorrow, anger, perhaps even vengefulness, time and again, the deeper is their impact on our emotional and physical health. The biochemical processes triggered by the negative emotions we frequently create eventually manifest in the form of an illness. This is how psychosomatic disease begin. Similarly, we hold on to harmful habits. If someone in the family is short-tempered, the others keep pointing it out to that person, and others: ‘He is always angry…’, ‘He keeps shouting…’ and so on. With everyone around them highlighting their habit of losing their temper, it gets reinforced.
But if someone is angry all the time, what else do we say about them? Well, that may be the current reality, but do we want them to be angry the rest of their life, or would we like to see them calm and amiable? The key is to direct the energy of our thoughts to what we want to create. Suppose we have two pots, with a plant growing in each. If we want one plant to grow, and wish to get rid of the other, what do we do? We water one and ignore the other, and soon that plant shrivels up and dies. Similarly, we need to focus on the qualities we want to see in ourselves and others, and nurture them with positive thoughts and good wishes. When we see the angry person and remind ourselves that every soul is originally peaceful, and have the pure wish that this person rediscovers his innate peace, our vibrations will slowly but surely make an impact, and they will gradually become calmer. Similarly, if a family is poor, instead of lamenting their wants, if they create abundance in their mind, their positive attitude will attract opportunities that will bring prosperity.
When we consciously, purposefully, and consistently create positive thoughts for the self, focus on solutions rather than the problems, then we can give concrete shape to the reality that we want to see. This is the way to turn one’s life from hell to heaven.
B.K. Shivani is a well-known motivational speaker and Rajyoga teacher.