Are You Your Friend Or Your Enemy?🔗

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THE SPH NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM

You are your own friend; you are your own enemy

For him who has conquered the Self, the Self is the best of friends; for one who has failed to do so, his Self will remain the greatest enemy

We have complete freedom to face the day with bliss or with suffering

For one who has conquered the self, who has attained tranquility, the Supreme is already reached. Such a person remains in this state in happiness or distress, heat or cold, honor or dishonor

Conquer your senses, the supreme self is already achieved

jñāna-vijñāna-tṛptātmā kūṭastho vijitendriyaḥ vijitendriyaḥ yukta ityucyate yogī samaloṣṭāśma-kāñcanaḥ

A person whose mind is contented because of spiritual knowledge, who has subdued his senses and to whom stone and gold are same and who is satisfied with what he is having, is said to be established in Self-realization and is called an enlightened being

Living is a power. If we want to live, we must learn how to stand on our own two feet, learn how to be complete with ourselves

A person is considered truly advanced when he regards honest well-wishers, affectionate benefactors, the neutral, mediators, the envious, friends and enemies, the pious and the sinners all with an equal mind

We need to we see everyone equally

The essence of the whole Gītā: You are your own friend and you are your own enemy. If you know the technique of how to lift yourself by yourself, you will become a friend of your Self. If you let yourself down, you will become an enemy of yourself.

When we start anything new, we will always have three phases. The first is resistance. The second is avoidance. The third is acceptance. When our being resists, if we allow the resistance to grow, we are our worst enemy

If you have fallen, if you have failed, if you have forgotten, don't worry. Again and again, lift yourself. Don't give up on you. Don't feel depressed and don't have guilt. Don't get dejected thinking you will not be able to do it. Don't doubt your self. Again and again, lift yourself.

We have one thing that we can choose—and that is our inner space. Just try this tomorrow morning. Just decide whether you want to face your normal routine with bliss or with suffering, with joy or with the usual long face. You have the choice.

How can happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor be the same? When our senses do the work, we decide 'yes' or 'no' only based on our past experiences, the experiences with which we have grown. When we just try to conquer the senses, we will fail again and again. We need to learn the science of completion to conquer the senses.

We always complain about the senses. No, we are corrupting them. Just look into your life. It might be late at night, even two a.m., but we will still watch our baseball or cricket game on television. Our eyes are begging for some rest, but we continue to watch the game. We abuse our eyes, our senses because we want to enjoy ourselves. All we need to do is control the mind, not the senses.

Understand, if we suppress something, it will automatically express itself in our dreams. If we do completion with our root patterns and out of completion when we enjoy with the senses, we will never become tired. But when we suppress our senses, our being suffers in our dreams.

We know about ourselves only through others' words and their opinions. Our identity is built based on others' opinions. We understand and identify ourselves through others. If everybody says, 'You are beautiful,' we get that certificate. If everybody says, 'You are intelligent,' we get that certificate. We collect all these certificates and we build our personality with them.

Our root thought patterns is about why we get depressed, why we are in conflict, why we repeatedly fall into a powerless state. It is because our energy source is others' certificates. We don't have any self-respect and self- completion.

Kṛṣṇa gives us a beautiful technique to heal the problem. He gives us a method to complete with the root thought pattern and go beyond. All we have to do is understand the root thought patterns; understand where we are caught and where our incompletions lie. When our mind is under our control and complete we develop equanimity. We look at everyone the same way. When we become enlightened our being will start respecting, loving and enriching everyone automatically

To understand never to give up on yourself and on people.

❖ When are you your own enemy?

❖ What are the 3 phases we go through when starting something new?

❖ When we fail, should we stop trying?

❖ When someone else fails, should we give up on them?

❖ When you are frustrated at other people's failures, what are you really frustrated about?

❖ What decision can you make every day so that you live a blissful life?

❖ Can we conquer our senses?

❖ What happens when we suppress our senses?

❖ What are dreams?

❖ What are thoughts?

❖ How do we use others' opinions to build our identity?

❖ What do we use as our energy source?

❖ How can you heal root thought patterns?

MATERIALS NEEDED:

PROCEDURE First step is to draw half their face on one side of the paper with a neutral expression, not smiling or frowning. Do this on both papers, only half of their face on each paper with a neutral expression.

Second step is to get the children to draw the other half of their face, this time with an expression. On one paper they draw the other half of their face as a friend, and on the second paper they draw the other half of their face as an enemy.

INFERENCE You can be your friend or you can be your enemy. Don't give up on you.

MATERIALS NEEDED A few strong smelling items such as:

PROCEDURE Get children to smell the smelling items one at a time and say what thoughts, memories, reactions, like or dislike that they have for each one.

INFERENCE Our mind decides for our senses We cannot suppress our senses, we need to complete our mind

VAAKYARTHA SADHAS

Get the children to hold Vaakyartha sadhas on: The times you gave up on you and when you gave up on others. Talk about how you could have done this differently

Don't give up on you and people! When you lift yourself after failing you are your friend. When you give up on yourself you are your own enemy.