Truth

 Why have we arrived at a stage when we hate truthful people? The whole social wheel accepts “sweet lies”, pandering to egos, and people pleasing.

Of course, people pleasing again bans any truth. Some of us can dish it out but are unable to take it. We do not like looking at any dark corners within ourselves; we just want to point out those of others.

It could be conflicts where one is generally responsible for starting them but retaliations pile up to camouflage the intrinsic core of the truth.

Masks, false smiles, saying nice things about each other but talking the opposite behind! No courage there!

Where is the truth in all this? There is a real dearth of real and truthful people because it takes great courage to speak your truth. Because if you do, you definitely stand isolated. However white you may be in the eyes of God, society can paint you black on account of your speech.

Surekha Kothari

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Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Inner World

 In every nook and corner, there are people indulging in judging and gossip and this is directly proportionate to the insecurities and complexes they carry.

Education, satsang, spiritual studies also don’t help. Basically, even kindness and compassion belongs more in the camp of empaths. As long as we are nowhere near conscious, aware people, we cannot become empaths and there is the block right there.

People would relish advising you without even knowing your side of the story.

Typical! There is a power there: of thinking they know enough to counsel even with a somewhat polluted heart.

It is incredible! Seems like God never gave us an inner world to tackle at all. It’s all about putting others on a weighing scale.

Sometimes, I think someone must do a PhD on this topic.

Surekha Kothari

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Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Silence

 Holding your head high tells people that you are the lead character of your own story. Confidence is liberating from external Validation. Walk tall and create your own space. Don’t shrink into someone else’s world.

Respect starts with you. Don’t give energy to anything negative. People will test your boundaries, try to judge you and control you even, and fail to see your worth. Or it may not suit them to see your worth so, they would try to push you down.

Silence to any external negative stimulus is the apt response. Silence in thought and silence of any reaction.

Owning your own life is the biggest step forward.  Let everything come from within and grow on your own elevating benchmark every day, based on your own increasing wisdom. Learning and growth are products of personal experiences. No one can live your life for you, however supportive they may be.

Surekha Kothari

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Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Compassion

 You can either look at someone and choose to find it in your heart to blame or criticize. OR, you can use compassion to understand the behavior. But let’s remember that this is the reaction of your mind which is already programmed in a certain way.

It is really a fact that if you suffer, you suffer alone. People might sympathize superficially but to feel someone’s pain is not an attribute with people.

Hence, the recommendation to understand that isolation from people is creating space for God within your energy.

Surekha Kothari

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

www.instagram.com/author_surekhakothari/

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Confidence

 The web of relationships is intricate and before you know it, your inner peace begins to depend on external validation. Seeking approval to cultivate your own identity becomes vital to your well-being.

Ground your sense of self-worth in your own values, not in the opinion of others. This does not mean you let go of relationships. It only means you respect who you are and your faith in yourself does not get shaken each time someone chooses to disrespect you. Your value for yourself comes from within you.

And external validation also gives others power over you. You need to reclaim that power and keep it with yourself.

Are you living in alignment with your own values and principles? If you are, that is all the confidence you need. All the validation you need.

Your life will get stuck if you don’t actually walk the path. Life will always have challenges but if truth be told, if you take charge of your life, you will be surprised how much you can achieve.

We are so much more than our minds and intellect, our ego and our sub conscious. That one consciousness that watches our lives as witness consciousness is what we need to satisfy. It is the weighing scale that balances us if we are aware of it. Many aren’t, unfortunately.

Living a life replete with self-created toxicity and negativity will just amount to a wasted life where we could have become brilliant versions of ourselves but got stuck in a quagmire in which we became so comfortable that we never thought we should extricate ourselves to find ownership of ourselves.

Overcome your own person rather than someone else, which comes out of thinking others are better. Not true. Self-doubt is a big culprit.

No one really cares as much as you think they do. They are busy dealing with their own challenges, their negativities.

Think! How much have you feared the criticism and judgement of others and have tried to fit into a mould someone else created for you!  

When will you have the courage to pursue something meaningful just for yourself?

Surekha Kothari

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

www.instagram.com/author_surekhakothari/

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Karmic Cycle

 It is a blessing if we can handle the last phases of our lives with important learning. Life teaches us but we don’t learn or it takes us a long time to learn. But learn we must.

The reason why Vanaprasth and sanyas are advocated is because entering these phases with inquiry enables us to work on the control of our desires . It is desires that remain within our subtle bodies and which return with our next birth through the causal bodies.

To detach is difficult when so much attachment has piled up due to ignorance. To unlearn all of that and to relearn new lessons of surrender to the divine and not to human relationships is not easy at all.

So, after a certain age, during the last phases of this life, it becomes imperative to gradually detach from the causes and effects cycle, and become conscious of the time, space and causation which keeps us coming back here again and again.

Being aware of your karmic cycle is extremely important. Most of our lives are tied to this cycle.

Surekha Kothari

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www.instagram.com/author_surekhakothari/

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Growth

 A daily, mindful search for answers can be really worthwhile in your life. And I mean a spiritual search for the truth.

Of course, acceptance of what you cannot change is one aspect of life. But living a depressed life is no answer. We have a higher self, an alter ego so to speak, within us which has a completely different vision of who we are and should be if we are not.

To tap into it, perhaps we need to rise above all environmental influences and all of our own mental aberrations. Also important is getting to your own truth, untainted by what others think about you. Every judgement is shallow and not to be entertained. No one has the complete knowledge or experience of you more than yourself. And even then, we are vast and so much is yet unrevealed. So why deplete your own power and sense of worth?

Every bit is work only on the self. Nothing more, nothing else. And your answers come from within once you have gotten over the phases of anger, denial and bargaining with the self.

It is just like when you are in darkness and out of the blue, a light shines and illuminates everything. 

Meanwhile, keep letting go. Don’t hold on to anything that hampers your growth.

The last few moments of breath before life ends are the most crucial. We have to work towards a clean and detached mind without any pining for any aspect of life, or clutching on.

LET GO!  And keep letting go every minute.

Surekha Kothari

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www.instagram.com/author_surekhakothari/

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Consequences

 A simple fact which eludes us at the best of times. We are not here to make ourselves comfortable in this world. If that were the case, there would not be a constant fire under us, designed to make us move, even jump.

It is like an obstacle race which is mandatory for all.

Be aware that there are consequences even if we don’t participate.

What we call wisdom is to recognize this fact, enter the race and go by its rules. Like a marathon, it is wisdom to complete it in the right way, with the right rules. Ranking does not matter. And don’t say you did not know the rules!

The tragedy is, we all have a conscience which tells which way to go, but soon, that voice of conscience is silenced by us. And after that, it is anyone’s guess where we will land up.

Surekha Kothari

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

www.instagram.com/author_surekhakothari/

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Humanity

 It is high time we realized that we are completely responsible for the decadence of our minds. Man against man and woman against woman. All this jargon about it being a man’s world needs to be looked at. Who is responsible?

It starts with parents favoring a boy child. The power that parents in law use to mishandle the woman who leaves her parental home to integrate herself into a non-accepting and even abusive family. Maybe, they know no better. Ignorance is the worst affliction humanity suffers from. In extreme cases, this can result even in suicide later!

This is one side. Now, to the parents of the girl they marry off in a hurry, often into a non-compatible family. And they refuse to support her. She is then left to fend for herself in a hostile environment. We see the atrocities committed on her every day. We love preach that what can’t kill you makes you stronger. Talk to the person who faces abuse!

Look at the evils in society. India is said to be a forerunner in crimes on women, rape and sadism ranking the highest at this time.

Worst of the lot is women against women instead of supporting each other. Petty squabbles, comparisons of all kinds. “Friends” who abuse and so called “friends” who watch friends being abused! Sibling rivalry over looks and property! (by the way, men are equally guilty). Women in women empowerment organizations, politicking with each other and disempowering themselves in the bargain!

In business groups, where women who marry into such “family” owned businesses, where they have no rights once their spouse is no more.

What kind of mind and attitudes are we sporting, that we are completely out of control? Virtues like mutual respect, boundaries among genders, trust, faith are all wiped out and the few who value them are actually the butt of ridicule.

We are busy at parties, get together, speech platforms, spouting words defaming all of this, but WHO is responsible when humans attack humans? Does ANY finger point back with a deep realization? No! Always at others.

We never stop to think that it is each one of us with our polluted personas that contributes to this dirt in the world: the situation that is called Kaliyug.

Look within and clean up. This is the way the energy around you will reflect your environmental cleanliness. People will talk ad nauseum about how it is impossible to reverse the trends of today but no one will start the process of reversing them. We have lost the connection with the divine energy which is all around us but we never tune into that frequency, with terrible and disastrous results.

What kind of a world are we leaving behind for the future generations when humans themselves are incapable of managing the very institutions of humanity, service and justice that they are the custodians of, custodians, I have to say, without caring and compassion for people who depend on them due to their own powerlessness? Custodians who don’t care about fulfilling the mandate they are given and they have committed to verbally and even on paper. Forget the power of the spoken word.

Surekha Kothari

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

www.instagram.com/author_surekhakothari/

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Realization

 They don’t say “old is gold” for nothing! It takes a long time for feelings to percolate down into your heart and only then can you bypass the idiosyncrasies of a person and let them find a place in your heart. It takes a long while and a lot of letting go of the superficial nature to find something deeper.

But once in a while and rarely, you do come across a soul match that was waiting for the right time to come into your life.

When you are down and out, this happens strangely and quite suddenly!

Life is full of unexpected twists and turns, with a realization that nothing is in our control but the one who rules our destinies also is merciful enough to put up with many foolishness’s of his children who are riddled with ignorance and yet, so loved by HIM, giving us innumerable chances to see HIM clearly by doing HIS bidding.

Counting all the blessings every day.

Surekha Kothari

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www.instagram.com/author_surekhakothari/

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Perspective

 There is no healing like a free and fair discussion between two people who have had an issue. You should value a relationship enough to keep the bonds going.

Always opt to build a bridge first. There is never any point in being drastic. And always try to see the other point of view. Even if you don’t agree with each other, talk it out, understand that perspectives are different, amicably agree to disagree and close the episode. With a little love and caring, you can do so. This attitude has maturity.

Of course, there is always the usual ego reaction which borders on the breaking of ties. This is rampant but very sad. It need not be.

This world is suffering from a major disconnection. And it is not doing humanity much good. Old ties are breaking and new ones forming. A natural family is getting diluted and friends are being called “extended family”. Isn’t that contradictory, this calling friends “family” when the original family is being torn apart? Ironic!

Our thinking is so topsy turvy, we don’t realize it’s all negative thought inspired by the ego, and nothing else.

Surekha Kothari

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

www.instagram.com/author_surekhakothari/

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari