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about it, not just intone affirmations, but really do something about it: study, read, work, sweat, bleed, think, reflect, network, be creative, take risks, knowing that with personal faith, all your efforts will result in the fruition of your desires, that your inferiority has been turned into superiority. And once you do this, when someone tells you that you were once inferior, you can say yes, thank you! And be proud of it, because without it you wouldn't be where you are. And if someone insinuates that you are inferior even now, reflect on it and realize that, yes, you are inferior to your future self because you still have much evolving to do, and sincerely thank them for reminding you and keeping you from becoming passive and self-contented. Such positive-ness is what will propel you toward complete spiritual fulfillment.
This kind of positivity is extremely rare. Most people just simply do not have it in this present age, but it is more than possible; think of it as being inevitable. Just persevere. Keeping striving to be positive and it will manifest itself little by little, and one day you will look back and be amazed at your own growth.
Life and Death, Happiness and Despair
Life seems to be so full of ups and downs. There is poverty, then success, illnesses, triumphs, downfalls, deaths, victories, wonderful love affairs, disastrous breakups, failures, mistakes, joy and prosperity -- over and over again in lives upon lives. It seems few are able to settle into a life of total unbroken happiness and well-being. Is such a thing even possible in this life? Can happiness last forever? The immediate answer seems to be no. Loved ones are going to die. Bad things are bound to happen. Inevitably, the facts are that we are all going to face material death.
However, in the cosmic balance, good is measured by the bad, the bad by the good. How high you rise is relative to how low you sink. How good you feel is relative to how bad you felt. All lives in all of history have had good times and bad times. We are caught in a cycle of highs and lows that it seems we cannot transcend. No matter who you are: king, queen, president, rock star, movie star, business executive, billionaire, guru, street person, ordinary guy -- pain and suffering, doom and despair is going to be at least a part of your life, or so it seems.
The sages had an answer to this. Don't be enticed into leading a life of ups and downs. Don't be happy when good things happen to you, and don't be sad when the bad comes into your life. Lead a life where you can be aloof from judging things that happen to you as good or bad. Make the graph of your life like a straight line, rather than like waves of peaks and troughs. If you don't get happy you won't get sad. If there is no joy, there is no sadness.
On an intellectual level, this doesn't seem like such a good idea because it would mean leading a boring life without the contrasts that make life exciting and worth living. It would be a drab life without color, highlights or shadows; a life of mediocre sensations. Of course, it is easy to say this if you haven't experienced excruciating misery.
It is by looking at this from a spiritual level that it makes sense. Material life is dominated by cause and effect, by ups and downs. To every action there is a reaction. In a sense, karma. It is by going to the spiritual level that we can transcend this. From the material standpoint, we take an eye for an eye, from the spiritual perspective we can return good for evil. In the material world, every cause and effect is inextricably linked. We light a match and a flame results as a product of chemical combustion. We pound our fist on a table and everything on it jumps up. To those who live a life based on this material reality, they respond similarly. They get hit and they hit back. Evil is done to them and they do evil back. They receive good and they give back good. It is only by manifesting the spirit that we learn to give good back even if we receive evil. It is only within spiritual reality that we can abrogate the limits of cause and effect, of the highs and lows, the ups and downs of material reality. It is by choosing spiritual values that we can transcend the cycle of ups and downs. And our Personality has the power to do this.
This is accomplished by going within and being one with the spirit. Many religions have formulated a technique for this at one time or another, even though some of it has been degraded into becoming merely a ritual. It's something that I like to call worshipful meditation. A process where a person begins to identify with the All, to become one with the universe and its universal personality - the Creator. All major religions must have or once had this practice at their core, and maybe it is still practiced in those faiths by the members who have transcended the fear, guilt and narrow mindedness associated with dogma, but I do not see them display its fruits much in the world.
True worshipful meditation is manifesting the eternal in the now, the now in the eternal. Initially, it may happen for only a split second, but constant practice can lengthen the time you can be in that state. The methods to accomplish this will be discussed later but suffice to say for now that this transcendence of the present and the material to become one with the eternal and the spiritual creates the fractal pattern which can dominate your life for all eternity. It can overcome pain, suffering, grief, depression, and all ailments of the material state of being, all the up and downs, even if it is just for that one moment. I personally experience this state for some moments every day and the time spent in that state is increasing. During the time I am not in that state, I must still experience the ups and downs to a certain degree like most people. I do find that the better I get in maintaining that state during my times of worshipful meditation, the more control I have throughout the day over the highs and lows of my emotional and mental state, which results in increased levels of self-mastery. The effects
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