Evolve and Elevate: Hope has two daughters, controlling your senses, one line that can change our lives completely

Idea of the Week

Hope has two daughters

“Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”

Saint Augustine

Lesson of the Week

Controlling your senses

Bhagavad Gita says:

Unless one is spiritually awakened it is not possible to control the sense enjoyment. As per the rules and regulations. controlling the sense enjoyment is just like restricting an ill person from certain types of foods.

But this, however does not make the patient lose his taste for the restricted food items and he does not like such type of restrictions as well.

Similarly sense restriction by some spiritual process like Ashtanga yoga which includes Yama,Niyama, asana, pranayama, Pratyahara, dharana, dhyana etc is recommended for the ones who haven’t built a better control over their senses.

But one who has tasted the beauty of the supreme Lord Krishna, in this journey of his advancement in Krishna consciousness no longer has a taste for dead material things.

Therefore, the restrictions are there for the less aware people in the spiritual advancement of life but such restrictions are only good if one actually has a taste for Krishna consciousness.

When one is actually Krishna conscious, he automatically loses his taste for pale things.

Inspiration of the Week: 

One line that can change our lives completely

Don’t control the situation, control your response to it.

From all the good to bad to worst experiences that I have had in life, I sum up that the learning is:

Our situations do not harm us as much as our reaction towards them do.

The moment we take our reaction into control, we make the situation powerless.

Let me give you an example:

I was in a boutique to collect my dresses from Kamal (the tailor) who has now become a good friend of mine. While I was waiting, a middle-aged couple came to collect their dresses. When they asked Kamal for the dresses, Kamal responded that they weren’t complete and told them that she would get them done by tomorrow.

To this, the couple reacted weirdly, and their tone was rude. The man spoke ill and told Kamal, you were supposed to give it today, this is not acceptable. They almost belittled Kamal.

Their reaction was enough for Kamal to shout back at them but she chose to be patient and make the situation powerless.

She responded very submissively accepting her delay and promising to give it the next day. As the couple did not receive any lashback from Kamal, they could not continue blurting out those rude words.

Her silence barked on them more powerfully.

And I was looking at Kamal in complete awe.

I witnessed how Kamal avoided the commotion that the situation had every chance to turn into.

What is important to understand here from this experience is, that Kamal did not just dodge the unnecessary drama but also blocked all the chances of post-drama mental torture.

I saw the situation failing because Kamal succeeded in responding right to it.

And this is what we can do in every life situation, not give power to it.

When we focus on solving a problem, the fearful thoughts of being in a problem start fading away.