Spirituality is common to all religions. It is what keeps the enthusiasm, courage, confidence and the smile alive in our hearts.
Chapter 7 - Environmental Management
Day 15
All things that make up our environment, the plants and the animals are sacred. Everything that exists on the planet is valuable. It is not just the spirit, but also the instrument through which the spirit manifests itself, that is important.
Knowledge and money are sacred too. It is human beings alone who pollute this planet. In a forest, there is no pollution. No animal ever causes pollution.
No animal uses plastic. Birds know how to take care of the environment. Cats know how to keep their surroundings clean and pollution-free. We have forgotten how to be this way because we have moved away from nature.
We live in a mechanical, conceptual world rather than in the real world. When we are tense and agitated, we pollute the environment by emitting vibrations which are not
harmonious.
Environmental damage is not caused by external objects alone, it is also a product of subtle factors within human nature.
If we are in a room, feeling angry, agitated or depressed, anyone who enters the room will also feel depressed because the environment is charged with the vibes we give out.
This is a big way in which we adversely affect our environment every day. A child may be upset and may cry or throw a tantrum, but the next minute he is happy and cheerful again.
But when we are upset about something, it takes time for us to come back to our normal state of mind, sometimes even a week or a month.
It takes us such a long time to smile and be cheerful with people around us again. Thus we go around filling the environment with negative vibrations.
Walk in a red light area or a drug peddling haven in a big city, it gives you such a heavy and horrible feeling. The atmosphere is so bleak that you want to run away from there.
You just don't want to drive on such roads. Instead, when you drive through an area where there may be a school, or a temple or other place of worship.
there is a distinct lightness, a certain positive energy you can instantly feel in the atmosphere. This is the difference in the effect of the vibrations we send out into the environment.
As we succeed in life, we become more rigid, more unfriendly and more strict. People wonder what happened to the friendly person of the past.
As we grow in wealth and fame, we progressively harm the environment by spreading greed, anger and frustration around us. The influence of the company you keep is indicated by your frame of mind after you consult them about your problems.
After you have met and talked with them, do you go back feeling lighter, feeling that the problem does not really exist anymore, or do you feel heavier in your heart?
If you have the ability to take everybody along with you and move forward, then you are preserving the pristine spiritual make up which we are all born with.
Everyone is born with an inclination towards spirituality. As we grow, this trait gets lost somewhere. Our whole effort is to bring back that innocence, simplicity, joy and friendliness.
There are certain simple techniques by which you can come back to your natural state of being. Let us give it a name which everybody in the world can accept Art of Living.
There are basic principles of wisdom that you could follow to stay elevated, happy and enthusiastic. Isn't it strange that we haven't taught our children how to be friendly with everybody?
We harbour almost militant feelings towards other people. We are prepared to go to extremes even in day to day matters - we would rather die than drink water at somebody's house.
If you harbour anger and hatred
towards somebody, who do you think will lose? Revenge just chews you up. It destroys you before it destroys the other person.
We need to learn how to get over our negative impulses and go back to being as pure as a child. It is vital that we truly understand the connection between spirituality and the environment.
Understanding cosmology is part of this connection. But as a society, somewhere along the way, we have got lost in consumerism. In earlier times, plates were made of leaves or similar bio-degradable material.
Cups were also bio degradable. So too were our pesticides, we used neem as a pesticide. We attached a certain sanctity to these things.
We prayed to Shakti, the Mother Divine to keep us healthy, to destroy viruses and bacteria without polluting the environment. But today, we do not seem to understand the damage we are causing our environment in the long run.
Nowadays, people the world over are thinking about burying the dead. There will be little place left on the planet if we do this. Cremation is much better as it does not affect the environment.
It will save our planet in many wavs. In earlier times, in the Middle East, there was hardly any wood available, naturally, to light fires. This was because of the desert-like environment.
So, they had to adopt the practise of burial but now there are electric crematoriums which can be set up anywhere. We need to educate people about the rites they should opt for, irrespective of their religion.
Ultimately, we must make a distinction between spirituality and religion, as it applies even in our everyday lives. Religion is like a banana skin and spirituality is the banana.
Spirituality is common to all religions. It is what keeps the enthusiasm, courage, confidence and the smile alive in our hearts.
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