LIGHT ON THE PATH - 47 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 4

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 47 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 4 🌻

210. There are two objects with regard to the position of the body during meditation. First, it should be comfortable, so that one can easily forget it, for that is what one wants to do. Secondly, it should be such that if in meditation we leave the body – which may happen at any time – it will not hurt itself. In such a case the effect on the body will be as though, we had fainted.

The Indian who is sitting on the floor simply falls backwards, and no harm is done. When we meditate we shall do well, therefore, to sit in some sort of armchair, so that we may not fall out of it, if the body loses consciousness. The recumbent position is not good if it increases the tendency to sleep.

211. There are joys of the emotions and of the intellect, and many people who would despise the idea that their physical comfort mattered to them in the least, are yet exceedingly unhappy when they are not emotionally comfortable, that is to say, when they imagine that they are not getting the response they deserve to their emotions. Many people are painfully sentimental and expect the rest of the world to be equally so, and are much hurt because it is not.

They pour out what they call affection, but it is often tinged with selfishness. They will create all kinds of disturbance, and even do things which harm those whom they profess to love, all for the sake of what they call the return of their affection.

They do not understand that there are different types of affection, and that it may be absolutely impossible for the person concerned to return it in their particular way. This difficulty comes from the insistence of the desire for emotional comfort, which should never be permitted to interfere with our own progress or that of those whom we love.

212. In the same way there is intellectual comfort. People want others to think exactly as they do, so that they may rest mentally content, without disturbance. Constantly we come up against that difficulty. There will be some promising young person deeply interested in Theosophy, for example, who wants to join the Society, but his parents vigorously oppose him.

They would not be intellectually comfortable if they thought that their son or their daughter were adopting a line which they could not share. They feel sure that they are right and that there can be no real wisdom outside the limits of their own particular opinions.

Therefore if a son or a daughter thinks differently from them they are quite outraged, not realizing that the fact that an ego happens to be born in their family does not necessarily mean that he is of the same temperament as themselves.

Continues...

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹


09 Dec 2020