Attracting better aspects of one’s luck

Luck means inherent tendency of attracting certain kind of events & things, and also of falling under certain kind of natural laws in course of one’s life. Mechanically and unknowingly the inherited tendencies determines the course of one’s life.

Human inner world (i.e. thinking, feeling & actions) is governed by various types (qualities) of inner energies, which attract corresponding outer situations & events in the course of one’s life. The interplay of these various energies is like a flux, and it fluctuates moment to moment; one moment one energy is active inside, and the next moment the another energy is active.

The lowest & crudest energy that works in human being is connected with negative impulses of hatred, depression, anger etc. When it is active in one, one tends to express whatever negative emotions & reactions one is feeling inside, and has no control over his behavior, and that time anything can happen with him.  This crudest energy attracts & creates crime, depression & such many other destructive activities & events.

The 2^nd higher level of Energy is connected with intentional, practical and right thinking.  This 2^nd level of energy attracts & creates good civilized life, business success, good social stature etc.

The 3^rd higher level of Energy is connected with fine emotions, at home-ness, doing & enjoying the activity of one’s like & excellence, and not brooding or worrying much about anything.  This 3^rd level of energy attracts & creates extra-ordinary excellence in particular area of life like art etc, relaxed & kind of fulfilled life, and what we generally call good-luck, that is, tendency to attract good things in life with ease.

The 4^th higher level of Energy (perhaps the highest & finest energy human being can work with) manifests as sex energy in ordinary human being,  but when transmuted (in highly evolved human being) it reflects  as non-identification (i.e. spiritual detachment), intense overall wordless clarity about the thing in question, peace, un-imposed self-discipline, and spontaneous joy.  This 4^th level of energy produces what we call great & timeless work. Though, there is still higher & refined energy, but ordinary human being can not understand or deal with it.

Paradoxically the “Luck” is both predetermined & is also in the hands of human being; predetermined in the sense that it is inherent & very deep (sub-conscious) tendency and very difficult to break, and it is in the hands of human being in the sense that if one knows & understands this interplay of energies, by right & consistent efforts one can modify it little by little. However, as per the ancient wisdom one can not change certain aspect of one’s life like birth, childhood grooming, physical characteristics, kind of person one would marry with, death, etc.

When one deeply understands this interplay of energies by one’s own experience of life, and understands that everything has degrees, he starts becoming more & more aware, and little by little starts attracting better influences & impressions, and by that attracts better aspects of one’s luck. However, this is a very long process, and needs right understanding & consistent right efforts.

One way of approaching & dealing with this issue could be by intentionally choosing, moment by moment, to make one-self fall under higher inner energies. It would create the possibility of attracting corresponding better aspects of one’s luck.  Rightly understanding and consistently practicing the following may bring one more near to the 3^rd higher level of energy, and attract better aspects of one’s luck:

(1) Learn to live according to your inner-likes. Don’t worry about what will happen; things will fall in place. This is Universal Law; deepen this trust inside more & more.

         (2) Learn to mind your own business, keep focus on your capabilities, and don’t compare yourself with others.

(3) Simply remain vigilant not to believe & express (i.e. understand that it is not mandatory to believe it as true & express it) the emotion of revenge, doubt, depression or any other such king of negative emotion when it occurs inside. Learn not to focus much on negative emotions & negative things.

   

(4) Understand & feel that I am gifted with special extraordinary inner ability (in fact everyone is, it may be hidden & unexplored, find out yours), don't seek the approval of others for that, as your life itself has many times given enough verifications of this; trust and keep such verifications alive.

(5) Understand that there is no need to doubt other people & situations unnecessarily, learn to evoke the emotion of friendship inside and deal with people through love, and learn to leave the mean logic & its profit-loss apart.

(6) Develop the attitude of giving. Learn to evoke the emotion & inner state of giving by focusing more on intention of giving (i.e.  by asking oneself, how can I give more?), rather than intention of profiting.

At the moment when the 3^rd higher level of energy is circulating & active inside one, that time rightly understanding and practicing the following may bring one more near to the 4^th higher level of energy, and create the possibility of attracting still better aspects of one’s luck:

Learn to abandon your doership, make efforts and still leave things & results on the intelligence of higher invisible influences & THE ALMIGHTY. Learn to keep the Mind wordless, and the Heart non-reactive & non-judgmental. Let the higher invisible influences penetrate inside and unfold the wordless understanding.

- From the book
All & Everything in Diagrams

Destiny & Free choice

Destiny and Free Choice co-exist and is inter-connected. The Destiny is not something that is absolutely fixed. Destiny is more of one’s overall natural inherent tendency. Within that given limit one has Free Choice. We can understand this by an example. Suppose a person is put into a very large and rich palace and someone locks the palace from the outside. Here he will have Free Choice to go to one room or the other, where to dine, in which bathroom to take bath, in which bedroom to sleep and so on, but this all his activity shall be within the limits of that palace.

And, if he realises that he has been jailed in this rich palace, he may try to seek somehow the help from outside and try to break the jail, instead of merely indulging the luxuries of that palace. Here in this allegory, that person’s being locked in the palace is Destiny, and his doing anything he wants within that palace is his Free Choice.

Destiny is one’s natural inherent tendency, and it reflects in the way one feels, reacts, relates and thinks. This tendency is the result of accumulated effects of thousands and thousands of choices one had made, knowingly or unknowingly, in the past up till now, including those made in the past lives (if in fact they exist!). So the Destiny is the result of Free Choices one has made in the past. And fortunately, all this also mean that there is possibility of altering certain (not all) aspects of the Destiny, if one understands it rightly & decides to.

Science of Karma, Destiny & Evolution

(1) Inner psychological structure of Human being

To feel & understand the meaning of Karma and its effect on one's life & destiny, first we need to briefly understand the structure of human psyche in nutshell from any one point of view. Human being is made up of three aspects (1) the conscious, (2) the sub-conscious and (3) the unconscious.

The conscious aspect here means visible & known aspect of one's life, and it includes activities of Thinking faculty, Emotional faculty and Physical Impulse.

The Sub-conscious means that which is stored up deep down in one's psyche and is not visible or known directly, but manifests as one's inherent tendencies, nature, or roughly what Gurdjieff calls as the Essence (However, the Essence encompassed many other aspects), and which determines the destiny & quality of one's life.

The Unconscious is that about which one has no direct experience though it is a part of one's overall being, that is, realm of one's Soul or Atman, which in its purest form is untouched & uncontaminated by one's conscious & sub-conscious.

Vikarma, Karma & Akarma

Let us try to understand The Bhagwad Geeta's concept of Vikarma, Karma & Akarma. Vikarma means any human action originating from one's like, dislike, learned psychological programming or tendencies of one's inherent nature, be it propelled by thinking faculty, emotional faculty or physical impulse; and it encompasses almost entire spectrogram of human activity. If one's entire life is filled with Vikarma, then one's inner richness & inner quality will not change, even though the circumstance of life may change.

Karma means action coming from one's intentional & deliberate decision, overcoming one's inner psychological compulsions of like, dislike, programing or tendencies of one's inherent nature, etc. For example, if one has deep-rooted tendency of, say angrily reacting or cheating or lying or over self-indulgence or of lethargy (be such tendency is developed either by pressure of life situations, childhood grooming or inherent nature), and one decides to act against that tendency and successfully carries out that decision in real life situation, at critical moment, then this would be a example of Karma, and such accumulated Karmas have power to effect & modify, little by little, one's inner richness, one's sub-conscious & one's destiny, over a period.

Akarma means transcending Karma, it is not merely an inactivity; it becomes possible only for one who has complete mastery over Karma. For us, at present, it is difficult to even feel & understand the true meaning of Akarma.

 

Practical Application of this knowledge

The practical question is, how to move from Vikarma to Karma. First one need to think & feel that this is possible for me. Then, one need to gain control of one's attention, and try to be aware of oneself, try to be aware of one's inner & outer activity, try to bring back one's attention to oneself, whenever & wherever possible. This is what the 4th Way teaching describes as the practice of dividing attention (dividing attention means, keeping part of one's attention on oneself, and simultaneously keeping another part of one's attention on whatever one is doing in the moment); this is the chief thing, and is so important that everything else depends on this. If this becomes the way of life, it would bring about the self-remembering, and one would experience moments of different level of consciousness, where unconditional love, wisdom & spontaneous joy happens on its own.

Generally, one's action is propelled & dominated either by thinking faculty, or by emotional reaction, or by physical impulse depending on one's Center of Gravity, that is, one's general outlook towards life & inherent predominance of any one of the three in one's psyche. Chief weakness of human action is that it is unduly dominated either by thinking faculty, or by emotional reaction or by physical impulse, and it does not involve the harmony of thinking, feeling & physical impulse. If one realizes this fact by one's own inner observation, and try to bring harmony & simultaneous involvement of all three in one's actions wherever and whenever possible, it starts becoming Karma and would touch one's Sub-conscious or Essence, and little by little this would bring about the Unity in one's being.

One way for this is to let go & loosening of one's too much, unnecessary & uncontrolled thinking, if one is predominantly a person of thinking-type, and letting the fine emotion to emerge, this will lighten the heaviness of head, and little by little new emotional perception will open up.

If one is predominantly a person of emotional-type, one need to let go & loosen the inner emotional reaction that arises moment to moment, by seeing it in perspective and realizing & verifying that this is not real and is only my subjective reaction, and there is nothing to loose in letting it go and in not acting it out. This will bring inner peace, and new level of emotional depth & sensitivity will open up, which we all need for inner richness.

If one is predominantly a person of physically impulsive-type, one need to let go the impulse arising in the moment, and think & feel before acting, and bring attention in one's day to day physical activity; by this one's thinking & feeling faculty will start participating in one's action. Irrespective of one's type, at some point time, one need to work on all three practices.

Above practices will bring about little by little the harmony & simultaneous functioning of all three faculties, and one's action will start becoming Karma, touching the core of one's inner being, the sub-conscious. the Essence, and would little by little start altering the destiny, in the sense of developing new possibilities & new capabilities in one's being.

Still another simple way is to be aware of oneself, not to brood or worry much about anything, keep one's eyes open, not to complain, doing one's best, and then leaving the rest & results on the Invisible, the Almighty. Though simplicity needs much more consciousness & harmony, fortunately, it is possible for all of us, if approached rightly.

- 25/08/2014

Shakespeare's Sonnet 146

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Fool’d by these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
     

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And, death once dead, there's no more dying then.

Explanation:

 

O poor soul, the center of my sinful body (earth), fooled by these rebel powers that you array (arrange in a pleasing way), why do you pine within, and suffer dearth (lack), by painting your outward walls (body) so costly gay?

Why do you spend so large cost upon your fading mansion (dwelling place – body), having so short a lease (life)? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess (i.e. residue of body) eat up your charge? Is only this your body’s end?

Then, soul, live upon (i.e. transform) your servant’s loss (i.e. body’s suffering), and let your body pine to add (aggravate) to your richness (store); buy divine terms by selling hours of dross (i.e. use efforts of body for earning divine worth), be fed within, without be rich no more (i.e. don’t try to ornament the body from outside any more).

This way you shall feed on Death, which feeds on men, and, once death is dead, then there is no more dying (that is, by willingly accepting, absorbing & transforming sufferings that life may inflict, you shall feed on death, which feeds on men, and, once you have transformed the fear of death (- that would be the death of Death), then there is no more dying).

- From the book

Sonnets of Shakespeare Explained