“Be aware that you are a traveller and a guest in this life. There must be no selfishness. Any desire for respect, name, or fame is selfishness. When a person gets stuck in such selfishness, he or she cannot be truly generous.”
Dadi Janki
An illusion is a false belief that we take to be real — so real that we have faith in it and live by it. Illusions deceive us into believing they can make us happy and bring meaning to life. For example, many people believe ‘the more I have, the more I am’ — that achieving prestige, wealth or position creates value, especially in the eyes of others. Such illusions ‘drug’ us into dependence, especially on the need for approval, which if not realised, can lead to fear, jealousy, depression and feelings of rejection. Such illusions impair our capacity to reach the authentic roots of our being.
Reaching our spiritual roots, or original identity, is the aim of silence. By practising concentrated silence, we can see illusions for what they are and be liberated from them. As we sit in the quiet concentration of silence, we can begin to see what illusions we are harbouring that stop our minds from being in peace.
The greatest barrier to freedom is we ourselves. Someone else does not make us angry, does not appreciate us or oppose us. How we choose to react to what others do or say determines whether we remain caged or become free. The bars on the cage are our own responses, not the incidents themselves.
We find this idea difficult to accept because we have learned to escape responsibility by blaming ‘the other’. If we sincerely want to become free from this pattern, we will quickly begin to perceive these patterns and use the third eye, the intellect, to observe the mind and work out what is happening, and then decide what to do. In this way, the intellect checks and then changes the direction of thoughts.
First, we need to decide this is what we want to do, to become free, to change and then take a moment in silence to bring it about. Learning to be quiet is the first practical step in freeing the self from the illusions that are blocking the spiritual journey to self-realisation.
Excerpt from Seeking Silence by Anthony Strano © 2011 by Brahma Kumaris Information Services, Ltd. Visit www.inspiredstillness.com for further details.