Money and it's maya

In the quest for spiritual up-liftment we constantly struggle to control our desires and try to make our mind calm and neutral.

This is not a easy task as more we try to detach from things that hinder our cleansing of mind. It is not that we should avoid it but we should not be attached to it. Leading a good life is not an hindrance to spiritual life but getting attached to these material objects is a major drawback.

Once we get attached it leads to creation of memory imprints in our mind which in-turn creates happiness and sorrow. Finally leading to accumulation of more karma.

What is the sole purpose of life then?

The only purpose of life is to clean our mind of impurities and make it blank so that our actions when we perform with neutral mind there is no future karma that is accrued. Hence we extinguish the present life karma and completely stop transmigration.

In simple works, avoid being born again and again.

So attachment to material pleasures creates roadblocks to this pursuit. Why should we cleanse our mind and escape from clutches of rebirths?

So people who are enjoying their life currently (because of previous good karma's) may think that it is ludicrous to given up their material enjoyment (because of attachment to it). But life is not always good or bad, because of our actions, future is decided based on our present actions. So this is a never ending problem in life where we have to undergo the hardship of happiness and sorrow over and over again.

One fine day we will be tired of this mechanical life (happiness and sorrow) and come to a conclusion that you want something more than happiness or sorrow as managing this is a idiotic task in day to day life.

Money is the major deterrent for this pursuit, hence we should not get attached to money. Spend, enjoy life but when going gets tough do not regret that I need money to be happy. Money is not responsible to us happy, but our mind is.

Money is important to the point you are secured, beyond that it is just a major hindrance. What I'm trying to say is that we should be indifferent/some say happy if we have money or not.  

Positive Thinking for Overcoming Grief

What is positive thinking?

This question has many answers and we can discuss about the same days together.

Simple way of looking at positive thinking is "Identifying opportunity at the time of Despair, which other people fail to see"

Why this is required?

To answer the above question I can give you an example. Suppose one suffers from a Chronic life threatening illness say Cancer, the person now has two options to lead his life. First one being he can curse about his life as to why it turned like this? Why should he suffer when others are happy and become cynical about life.

What good can we find in this approach towards? None!

Neither the person is happy nor the people around him are happy. Also this type of  outlook always invites more problems in life as negative thinking invites negative experiences.

I'm not saying that it is wrong to grieve. But we should accept what is happening to us, only then we can move forward in this life both on physical and spiritual plane.

Our life is so well designed that we have very little control over major events in life (lie marriage, birth, death etc) as law of Karma decides upon these factors and we have taken this birth just to settle the Karmic account, once Karmic account is settled we realize God and liberation can take place.

But the negative approach towards life always makes us to accrue more undesirable actions which leads to accruing more Karma. This will lead to Rebirth and more suffering.

On the other hand if we look at this in a positive way.We will realize that death is part of life and its natural and we cannot control death as Karma is responsible for deciding these things. So if one realizes birth or death is not in our hands, our mind is released from the agony of this impending event.

Once we realize this we are no long bothered and in fact we can think how best we can lead our remaining life. So that the person and people around him/her are happy.

We look at life in a new dimension and see how we can contribute positively.

The above points are my understanding of positive thinking and what I have heard from learned people. This may not convince everyone, but wanted to share my thoughts as this may be useful.