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The law

Revisiting - II

In the previous post, I had made the point that trying to maintain status quo is inviting degeneration. Let us dwell a little more on this point. Say, you have reached a level of abundance which you had desired and having their reached you have decided to hang up your boots and rest and indulge in relaxations thereby choosing to live on the auto earning generated by your investments. You have accumulated a fairly large kitty and you are confident that the kitty is big enough to take care of you and your obligations. While taking such a decision, we normally do not account for certain factors like inflation, the possible changes in fiscal policies by the government of your country, the unplanned expenditures which are likely to increase as you grow older etc. These gradually eat into your corpus. The worse impact is on your mind, body and soul. After a few days of mere idling and pottering about your garden, you will feel a major mental  problem - the perception of redundancy. This is a poisonous feeling and degenerates your self image very badly. I have seen lot of people going into melancholy because of this. 

I ask you never to retire. There is really no retirement in this life. Don't hang up your boots. It is fine to remove oneself from regular employment or business. But before doing that, decide how you will keep yourself engaged, preferably with engagements which generate some earning, little it may be. Such an earning could be from a hobby, from writing, from on line marketing, consultancy services, from social services like educating the illiterate or coaching students, anything. Just ensure that your mind does never get a sense that you have retired, that you have withdrawn from active living. The moment your mind gets that sense of retirement, it activates atrophy of the body and mind. Never stop growing. No age is old enough for ceasing to learn and grow. 

I am sure that most of you have read Stpehen Covey's book - "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". Some have called this book idealistic mumbo jumbo, theoretical and preachy. I recommend this book very strongly to all my friends for I have found the essence of how to attract abundance in this book. the chapter on "Beginning with the end in mind" is a revelation. Essentially it says that how abundantly you have lived your life depends on the choices that you have made - choices in relationships, choices in your profession and material gains, choices in serving others and choices in your spiritual growth. Integrating the growth  of one's physical life or health, material life or financial abundance, intellect or knowledge and spiritualism or ethics makes the way for abundance. In short it is living life wholly and completely - integrating mind, body and soul - that attracts abundance.

I would like to dwell on few issues related to the above paragraph. When I mention about choices in serving others, I am saying that serve others in such a way that they stand on their feet and take responsibility. It is not about giving alms to those begging. When I mention about choices in spiritualism, I am not talking about becoming a priest or renouncing the world. I am talking about ethics and ethical living. In difficult times, we tend to overlook the ethical principles. I am asking you to stick to ethics at all times. Do not fall in to the trap of fooling yourself by justifying the need to vitiate from ethical principles. Learn to listen to that little fella living inside you - your conscience. It is the voice of supreme being that resided wihin you - your soul. When I mention about choices in profession and material gains, I am not saying that spirituality and material wealth can not be two sides of the same coin. Material wealth is necessary for making better choices in all other areas of choice. It tends to empower you, provided you earn wealth with a view to live life wholly and completely. The hoarding mentality proves to be disastrous as no amount of wealth is "enough" - there is no sense of contentment. Such a mentality is, essentially, a byproduct of scarcity mentality which generates lots of negative feelings like greed, jealousy, dis-satisfaction etc. I will go one step further and say that the moment we realise that abundance is more about mindset than our physical circumstances, half the battle is won. 

Namaste

See you soon

Prabir