Changing Attitudes
Our attitude is the window through which we view the world, and our first-hand experience of it. We all have an attitude – sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad.
We often consider attitude to be a relatively short-term expression of our emotion relating to a particular situation, person or event. Actually, our attitudes are far deeper than fleeting emotional outbursts. Over the years they become ingrained as aspects of our personality and ego. However, our attitudes can change. And by changing our attitudes we can alter our lives. Put simply, a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
As satsangis we are aware that the outer aspects of our lives cannot be changed. Regardless of our attitude, we must undergo what destiny dictates because our karma must be fulfilled. Although we may not be able to change the karmic circumstances in which we live and operate, much of our environment is experienced through our attitude. So by changing our attitude we can improve the conditions we experience.
Attitude affects everything in our lives: how we interact with other people, our environment, our daily tasks and our responsibilities. In fact, attitude affects the way we negotiate our karmic circumstances, and it even shapes our success and happiness, both in life and in our meditation.
A negative attitude often perpetuates the circumstances that caused it, while an upbeat, optimistic attitude is the result of positive thinking. The way we think directly affects the way we feel, our attitude and ultimately our life. So it is imperative that we control our thoughts in order to maintain a positive attitude.
The contemporary American author Wayne Dyer put it this way: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
The memories of everything we have experienced in life are stored in our subconscious minds. Our past does affect our current thinking so that we tend to produce the same attitudes and reactions day after day. We need to ask how relevant our personal history and outdated habits and attitudes are to our current daily life.
We know by now that following the spiritual path is a process of reinventing ourselves, and that adhering to the first three principles of Sant Mat will help us become better human beings. If we want to develop spiritually, we must change the old persona we created – the ego, with all its beliefs, perceptions, attitudes and unpleasant mental and emotional habits.
We often hear about letting go, and perhaps we associate this with letting go of material things – the clutter and materialistic burden of our lives. Letting go, however, is actually more relevant to our thinking, attitudes, perceptions and the impressions that we have embedded in our subconscious mind. We need to change the person we were when we came to Sant Mat – the person we persist in holding on to day after day. The person we were at the time of our initiation is simply not capable of launching us into the realms of spirituality that we seek.
We are so attached to our mental image of who we are, with its conglomerate of flawed thoughts, feelings, emotions and worldly trivia, that we simply can’t let go – we seem to find the necessary change beyond our capability. Our attachment to ourselves is so sacrosanct that it is an indication of how bound we are to who we believe we are – the physical me.
We all say we want to become a better person, but seemingly, only on our own terms. We want to control what we let go of and what we keep. We want to control who we want to be. If we haven’t managed significant change since our initiation, why do we think that by continuing our old habits, attitudes and conditioning we can do it now?
What if we could reinvent ourselves and become that spiritual person we so want to be? Is that not what the Masters promise us? For as Maharaj Charan Singh said:
What greater miracle can come in a disciple’s life than that his whole attitude towards life is changed? What greater miracle can there be than that? He becomes blind to the world and opens his eyes towards his home. He gets life!
Light on Saint Matthew
To embrace the spirituality we seek we have to let go of the old persona with its antiquated thinking and move forward in our spiritual life. That change is inevitable. Not only can we change, but we must change, and our attitude is going to determine how successfully we do that.
Introspection is not easy. It means that we must take an honest look at ourselves, our attitudes and habits, and consciously analyze our thoughts and feelings. We do, in fact, have the ability to choose one thought over another – to choose one direction over another. Actually, all it requires is that at every crossroad we ask the question: “Will this decision take me closer to my Master or further away from him?” And then, act accordingly.
By doing this, and with the Master’s guidance and grace, we can make the changes that are needed to redirect ourselves from the world outside to the world inside.
But it does require tremendous discipline on our part. In Light on Sant Mat Maharaj Charan Singh tells us “There is no habit or weakness which a man cannot successfully overcome, provided he has the grit and the right mental attitude.”
We may talk eloquently about the inner life, but do we touch it? We love to talk about the path and meditation, spouting words of wisdom borrowed from books, but the actual practice is very different from the words that slip so glibly off the tongue. The aim of our concentration is to put the persona aside for a period and practise what we preach.
Most of us would probably like to simply upgrade our mind to one that is more supportive of our spiritual aspirations. It might be rather nice to just trade it in for a new one!
Actually, that is what we are trying to achieve in our meditation. We want to break the habit of being ourselves and create a new person, free from the rigid, inflexible, stubborn and reluctant self, clinging to the habits, perceptions, ideas and beliefs that are no longer applicable.
Perhaps we also need to revisit our attitude towards sitting. Rather than meditate we may appear to practise the ‘art of laziness’ because it is easier to allow the mind to wander through a maze of day-dreaming rather than put in the effort to mobilize and engage our mind in simran.
The challenge we face is to quell the senses, calm the mind and put our constantly recurring worldly thoughts on hold. These things capture our attention, preventing us from discovering our real selves. The result is that our attitudes remain rooted in self-interest. When we come to understand this, we will realise that a more positive attitude will have a significant bearing on our experience in meditation. As Maharaj Charan Singh explains in Light on Sant Mat : “Spiritual progress depends on our mental attitude.”