These Conceptual Tools help me Stay Sane

I would like to in this article explain some concepts that I have learnt from Spirituality and which I have found not just helpful but also essential and vital to my well being.

1. First concept is that when you are the target of malice and spite it is perfectly ok for you to feel upset. I actually learnt this from a Dick Francis novel (Enquiry) and not from a Spirituality or Self Help book. Feel bad for some time. Your feeling upset will end in due course and you can then get back to your regular work.
2. A related point is that you must never do any thinking or take any decisions when you are feeling upset. It is perfectly okay for you to feel bad but if you take any decisions at that time, it is likely that it will not be a balanced decision that takes all factors into account. The key principle is that your feeling upset will not last very long. But if you take any hasty or unbalanced decisions then you may regret it later. So make it a practice to do your thinking and take decisions when you are feeling calm and balanced.
3. A third concept that I have found useful is telling myself that I have not created the Universe and I am not running it. So it is not in my hands to mete out rewards and punishments to people who (I feel) have treated me well or badly.  Everything is a mixture of good and evil. The individual persons whom you meet are also partly good and partly bad. It is in the hands of God almighty to reward or punish them. Only God has the power and the wisdom to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to deciding between good and bad. I have neither the information nor the wisdom to decide soundly nor the power to distribute rewards or punishments. And I will be held to account only for my own actions and not anybody else’s.
4. The next point I would like to make is an insight that I came across in a Spirituality book which said that all of us are seeking love, bliss and happiness and that understanding or insight is just a booby prize. We have been put on this Earth to seek God or the Divine which only humans can do and not the other life forms. We are here to experience Life (and the Divine) and not to make intellectual theories explaining the mysteries of existence. There are intellectuals, philosophers and scientists who do that sort of work but those are only means of livelihood and not the reason for our existence.
5. Lastly, we all need a purpose in life. In one of the Terminator movies Arnold says, “Without purpose a man is worth nothing. There is a form of psychotherapy (called Logotherapy) that tries to help people by finding out their purpose in life. Please read Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr Viktor Frankl for more on this subject if you are interested.

I’ll end here. Please explore this blog for more articles on Self Help, Spirituality and Politics. Please comment on the articles if you liked them or even if you didn’t. Feedback from my readers keeps me going.

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