Greetings and welcome to Awakening With Brahma Kumaris. Welcome, Sister. Om Shanti. Om Shanti and welcome to Living Values. Thank you so much. It is important to continue from the previous episode. I mentioned that I had considered self-control to be a mountain or a burden. Because I don't like self-control. Because I feel there is no freedom in it. What if I woke up at 6:30 a.m. instead of 6:00 a.m.? I woke up at 4 a.m. one day and at 7:00 a.m. another day. So what? If the soul needs to experience gains If the soul needs to become powerful If the soul needs to progress on this journey If the soul needs to change its Sanskars If the soul wants to be successful in whatever it has chosen It could be inner work or outer work. In anything, success not only inside but also outside. If the soul wants to be successful, which means whatever the soul wants to do Success means whatever we desire to do Whether it is a change in sanskars Whether it is studies Whether it is career Whether it is sports Performance, profession... Whatever it is In any aspect if we want to achieve to our full capacity We all have that capacity. You mentioned last time Let us take simple example of a singer a performer An actor, a sports star They are not the same. Someone has higher capacity. Someone has little less but that is not the problem. But if we need to achieve the best of our capacity Not in comparison with other people Not that I should come first. No. I need to achieve the maximum as per my capacity. Then I need to bring in self-control and discipline in life, towards that goal. If you look at your own field of actors One who wants to achieve They display so much self-control and discipline about how they train, how they practice. How the practice delivering the dialogues What to eat, how much to exercise. How many times we need to rehearse a dialogue. When I was new in Bombay, people told me that before I get into films Since my voice was good, they recommended me to do radio spots. I had heard a few of them They gave me a script and asked me to deliver it in 8 seconds. I took 20 seconds to complete it. It was challenging because it had to sound normal, speed has to be maintained, and it should not sound like I was rushing. Every word needs to have clarity, there had to be pauses, there had to be punches. It had to be done in 8 seconds. So, I would speak in front of a radio or tape recorder in those times. After prolonged efforts of continuously practicing for 8 hours My wife and children were so annoyed. They said - Our ears are paining, please stop it. But finally, the result was that I got the best-spoken radio spot award. Beautiful, isn't it? Just having a good voice will not fetch an award. This is the proof. My Guru would say the same thing. That anyone can have a good voice. The voice needs to be trained; expression needs to be added. Feel it. My Guru taught me so much. Which means even if we have a certain speciality In this case having a good voice was your speciality. It was your gift. Suppose we even have the support system If that art runs in the family, or if there is a trait in the family. Suppose we have all the facilities required Still, when will we get success? Hard work along with self-control and discipline. Not just hard work. Many people are working hard. Often, we say there was more effort and less results. If the effort is accompanied by self-control and discipline Then success is guaranteed. As you mentioned, you need to train the voice. If you train for one day and don't do it on the second day And then you woke up late one day, and then something happened on another day. Even despite this kind of erratic lifestyle, we put in a lot of effort. But there is no self-control and there is no discipline. If there is no discipline, we will experience that efforts are more but results are less. If you attach discipline to your lifestyle You will need lesser efforts to get better results. Because discipline increases soul power. Discipline increases willpower. When will power increases, the soul can turn the impossible into possible. When will power increases we learn to say 'No'. No, you will not eat this. No, you will wake up now. No, you will not sleep more than this. No, you will go home from the party. Otherwise, we tend to stay until morning 4:00 a.m. in the party because we are enjoying. And then we have a film shoot at 7:00 a.m. So today the excuses we give ourselves - What to do, I need to socialize. It certainly gets late in the night. When I am at a party, I will be forced to eat certain things. Even well-known doctors who would attend such parties They would not take drinks even when they were forced. They would refuse saying - I have a surgery tomorrow morning. I have a surgery at 6:00 a.m. for 7:00 a.m. So, I am just having water. And I will leave. Look at that commitment. Discipline in life. Dedication towards what we are going to do. It's not just sufficient to be a good doctor. But dedication and commitment towards the profession matters. In the same scene, another doctor can behave in a very different way. He can live his life in a different way. The surgery can fail. Certain pilots have been guilty of partying and then not being able to do their job properly. Now let us look at ourselves. And see how many excuses we give ourselves throughout the day. How many excuses we give about eating, drinking, sleeping, waking up... So many people come to the centre and when we ask them to wake up early in the morning They say - What to do sister? I sleep quite late at night. So, we tell them to sleep early at night. Again, they say - What to do? We come back home so late from work or from office. Sometimes when we attend parties and get late. Now pause and check - Why am I coming late from work or business? Lifestyle has become that way. And the intention is that we want to earn more so we work till late. We will earn more money, but here we will deplete energy. Even the body will suffer. After a while we will realise that we have more money We have more external success. We have less happiness and less health. And they will affect relationships. Let us balance it today itself. If we come back home early in the evening, we will go to work early next morning and complete work. Look at students. They study all night. They say because of studying throughout the night they score good marks. Full night. We just have to check. When we wake up in the morning, even if we wake up late as we were awake the whole night If you wake up at 11 a.m. or 12 noon or 2:00 p.m. If we wake up at 2 in the afternoon From 2 p.m. to 12 midnight, if we do everything that we were supposed to do. And we sit down to study at 12:00 a.m. midnight And we say we will study throughout the night. But from 2 p.m. till 12 midnight, what has happened to the mind which is like a blotting paper? It is saturated. So many thoughts are been created throughout the day. And now we sit to study. Which means we will put more efforts but get less results. Let's do the opposite for one day. Instead of sleeping at 4:00 a.m., wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning. When you wake up at 4:00 a.m. in the morning the blotting paper (mind) is clean It has not absorbed anything yet. Nothing has happened because the day is yet to start. All the other minds are quiet and your creativity is at the highest. Concentration power is at the highest. Now study. The school essays which I would write early in the morning Written at 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. were the best And when I have to memorize the dialogues of my plays I would do it at 5:00 a.m., and it would be very quick. It has become a comfort zone for us Which we need to break with a little effort today. It cannot happen immediately and easily. When we move out of one comfort zone and enter a different lifestyle There will be a period where we experience withdrawal symptoms. We are actually giving up an addiction. We are giving up one particular way of living. The mind will repeatedly want to go back to the old ways. Stop. This is not happy and healthy and right for me. How can I do it this way? We will need to do this for a few days. The Chairman of Nagarjuna Fertilizers, Mr. KVK Raju once came to the centre at Mount Abu. I am talking about the 1990's. When he came there, he observed the lifestyle at the centre. He was a chairman of a company. He was among the Who is Who of Hyderabad. It was obvious that he had a lot of socializing, interacting with different people and managing huge factories. He saw the lifestyle at Mount Abu for one week. When he went back, he took this back with him that I need to wake up at 4:00 a.m. every morning for meditation. But that meant changing everything. We can't sleep at 12 midnight and wake up at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. So, he changed everything. He changed the time of socializing. For the late-night parties, he clearly said - No, I cannot come. He had no fear of social pressure about what people will think if he skipped those parties. He said - I just need to think about my profits now. I need to work sincerely but not fall under social pressure. My lifestyle will not allow that I stay outdoors after 9:00 p.m. He said - This is old belief system. To run the business, to build network, it is not necessary to attend parties. That's an old belief. I will not live with that belief. It's about each soul having its own way of doing things. Now he said - I want to sleep between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. every night. And I need to wake up at 4:00 a.m. every morning. With just this one shift that soul experienced With just this one discipline, he said he feels victorious over so many old habits. With just discipline in one aspect of life. And because of its other things changed, like disciplines of eating, drinking, sleeping and waking up. All other disciplines came about because of this one discipline. So much energy saved as well. After some days, there was some problem that came up in his factory. It was a very big crisis. People got together and had discussions after discussions, meetings after meetings. It was a very big thing. But solution is not coming out. And then one of the days when he just got up at 4 a.m. in the morning He shared his experience later. He said - I woke up at 4 a.m. and that matter was really disturbing me. I felt even if I sat in meditation, I will not be able to find the solution to it. Because is that issue has overpowered my mind so much, that I cannot even sit in silence. But I had made a rule This is where discipline helps. He said - I created this discipline, so I told myself I should not break it. Whether or not I can meditate, I will not break the discipline. I woke up at 4 a.m. and sat for meditation. I could not meditate, so I just started conversing with God. What kind of problem is this? I am just not finding a solution... He said - Like a flash, the entire solution came and stood in front of me. And then I asked myself, for so many days. Why was I not getting the solution all these days? Because when I actually got the solution, it looked like a very obvious one. Why did I not think of it earlier? And then the sisters of the centre shared with him that Throughout the day when you were searching for a solution You were looking for it in your conscious layer of mind. You were sitting in an environment of stress and anxiety, while looking for the solution. Because everyone was stressed and looking for a solution. So even if the solution is right in front of us, we cannot see it. When you woke up at 4:00 a.m. in the morning, the environment was very peaceful. In your own subconscious mind, the original Sanskar of the soul is wisdom. We need to use that wisdom. And at that time our connection with God is established and we get the touching from God. That factory underwent a complete shift because of the solution that he got at 4 o'clock in the morning. And he said I would have probably never got it otherwise. It is that time. Just like that is not given the name Brahma Muhurat or Amritvela Gurandhe vela is another name. It is the most elevated, pure and powerful time of the day. Now we need to ask ourselves How many of us are awake at the most powerful and pure time of the day? It means we are not using the most pure and powerful time of the day. And in the time after that, we are putting in a lot of effort. We are not taking advantage of the situation, isn't it? The benefits we could have got from the environment The benefits from connecting with God at that time We are not using that. In fact, we are doing it the other way around. That we go to sleep at that time. We are going to sleep at 2:00 a.m. 3:00 a.m. We should not break self-control and discipline. Let us do what you mentioned in the last episode. What does the consciousness say? What is right for the mind and the body? Is this right for me? We need to bring them to our habits of eating and drinking also. We want a Satvik mind because we are talking of values. We want happiness, purity, peace. Which means we want high energy. To create high energy, whatever is going inside us That also should be of high energy. We need high energy input All the resource material that is going inside It needs to be high energy. But if we put in tamasik things But you started putting in those things which The consciousness is very well aware that It is not good for the mind, it is forming a wrong habit, It is an addiction; it will be difficult to overcome this tomorrow. We know everything. Still, we are putting it all inside. By doing this what are we doing to soul power? Somebody has beautifully said - My body is not a graveyard to bury the dead. Still, we made it a graveyard and a dustbin. We put in garbage. For both body and mind. Even on the mind, a lot of past incidents and unwanted thoughts. Which means if we want elevated results Whatever is going in should also be of elevated energy. Recently someone sent a beautiful message on WhatsApp. If we find even a hair in the food that we eat We scream at the person who cooked that food. We say - I don't want to eat this, take this away. And if there is a fly, I will straight away throw that food. What about when we are eating the entire body of an animal? What all we eat and what are we putting inside? We cannot use dead energy. And create elevated, pure energy. It is like saying you cannot light a candle with a candle whose flame is put off. How is it possible? Similarly, we are using death to give ourselves life. How is it possible? A person who is awake and wake another. A lighted candle can light another. Knowledgeable person can share knowledge. But we eat a dead body and say we are becoming stronger. And today we have become so conscious that we buy organic food. Organic grains, organic vegetables We drink mineral water. The animal which we cut and eat as food, at that animal eaten organic food? What are we putting into our body? What system have made a part of our own system? It's very valid point that whatever we are eating. Those animals are being given so many medicines to make them fatter. So many chemicals and steroids are given to animals so that their weight increases. And they are held in cages so that they don't move much. That animal must be so much in pain and sadness. When we consume such tamasik, non-vegetarian food We are eating two things. One is, we are eating the body of the animal. If we pause and check - What food is its body made of? Has it been given pure food? It is hardly made of food. What food has created the body of that animal? We need to check this. How was the mind of that animal? Because the mind of that animal creates its vibration. And now that vibration becomes a part of our mind. It means when we are eating something like this We are consuming the mind and the body. Now I understand the meaning of what I had read somewhere - You are what you eat. You are what you eat. If we are eating and healthy things, we become that. It becomes a part of our system, isn't it? Its vibration becomes a part of the soul. Its body becomes a part of our body. My God. Are we not putting it inside? It is going into our body. Is not becoming a part of our system? Why are we drinking mineral water today? Because we want pure water to go into our body. That is the intention. It's a different story that there are chemicals in it. But the intention is to consume pure water. Likewise, we are eating organic food because we don't want to put chemicals or pesticides into our body. Our intention is right. Despite getting all this knowledge If we say I cannot let go of something We have the knowledge that it is affecting the soul and the body. We consume tamasik, low energy food We don't know what its body is made of. We don't know what was its vibrations. And as you said when the animal is kept in a slaughterhouse, we know what the vibration of that place is. Anger, hurt, hatred, resentment What chemicals and medicines were given to that animal? Even a prison will have more freedom than in a poultry farm. The chicken is tortured in different ways. Today if parents have to give medicine to their children When children are 2 or 3 years old Parents think so much before giving medicine. Not just the expiry date but they avoid and don't want to give it to a child. But in the name of health, if we are giving them chicken soup or egg We don't know how many chemicals were given to that animal. We have the intention of giving health to our children. But what are we feeding them? So, pause and check. After taking a decision That I need to put in only whatever is Satvik There will be a small phase where people will try to influence you otherwise There will be peer pressure. Family will pressurize. That is exactly when we need to hold on to self-control and discipline. Very soon Satvik lifestyle itself becomes our new comfort zone. After that we don't need to think or work hard Many people today say - I want to give it up but I can't live without it. I cannot live without it. The moment we say this to ourselves We need to also tell another line How weak am I the soul? How weak I am? If I cannot live without something, what is going to happen to me? Nothing absolutely. It's only a saying. Repeatedly saying this what did we do to ourselves? Leave it, you cannot give it up. There is no such thing at all. Who cannot survive without eating tamasik food? Everyone can. Take the decision. If we will go to a certain place where only rice and dal available Then can we say I cannot live without the other food? Suppose there is a health issue because of the doctor asks you not to eat that particular food You will not say that you cannot live without it. In some people the dependency is so high because of repeatedly eating something That even if there in the hospital, they secretly eat it. They pay the staff and get it inside, and eat it. Which means what level of dependency have we reached? Although it is dangerous for our health, we consume it. Maybe the word is slavery. Dependency sounds like a softer word We have become a Slave. When we say the line anything - I cannot live without this Pause because this line is making me weak. There is no such thing or no such person There is absolutely nothing without which we cannot live. Live with everyone and do everything but the line - I cannot live without this This is a simple way to tell myself - No will power. It also means that I don't want to change. If you don't want to change, don't give an excuse. By giving excuses we don't get right answers. Tell yourself that I don't want to leave it. And then next step again is, tell yourself - But there is so much harm happening with this habit. If the mind again says - I don't want to leave it. Again, talk to it the next day. One day it will give up that habit. But if we tell ourselves - I cannot live without it. Then the mind will not even sit down on the next day to reflect. That is not right for me. Because you have given an order to your mind and body I cannot live without it. The other day I was talking to a psychiatrist. A sister came to him and she was at the borderline of depression. It was still that little face of deciding whether the treatment should begin or wait. That sister would attend parties and sometimes take alcohol. The doctor lovingly told her - Your depression is at the border line. So, I don't want to start you off on medicines. You still have the space to get out of it. But you are not supposed to consume even one drop of alcohol. Because alcohol is a depressant. If you consume alcohol, your chances of going towards depression will increase. At that time, I will have to give your medication. Look at this knowledge which that soul got. I was talking to her and I told her - You are so lucky. That you are still not on medicines. If you just take care of yourself, you will be fine even without medication. There is only one restriction that you should not consume alcohol. She just looked at me and asked - Should I never take alcohol again? I said - Yes, you just heard it. You are at the border line. Otherwise, you will go on the other side towards depression. She said - I will think about it. I was a little surprised. I asked - Do you think you have the margin to think about it? She said - You don't know how our parties are, Sister. You don't know how friends are, in parties. I have to take alcohol at least in parties. This. If we don't tie ourselves to self-control and discipline Even after seeing that the disease is standing in front of us. It is a sign that we are very weak. Let us quickly pick up a small aspect to practice self-control and discipline. Which increase soul power. When we increase it in smaller things Then it becomes easier to follow in bigger scenes of life. We will certainly do it, Sister. Thank you so much. Om Shanti. Thank you so much.
