(from "A Jewel From My Mother's Crown"):
The ritual is a process of training by which you try to understand yourself, by which you try to relate yourself to the world around you, by which you can say, “yes”, I have lived a rich, harmonious, empowering life for myself. For those around me, for whomever I have come in contact with, I have tried to help them in whatever way I can, to enable them to have this kind of feeling — the ritual is useful.
Conducting your life with happiness is a ritual. Everything is a ritual. When I talk with you it is a ritual. When I gesture, it is a ritual. When I take a bath it is a ritual. When I take food it is a ritual. When I get up from the bed it is a ritual. Life itself is a ritual.
You can invoke anything into yourself. You can invoke all the evil in the world into yourself. You can invoke all the good in the world into yourself. It is your choice. How you want to live your life and whether you want to make your life happy for yourself, or a disaster for yourself and others, is in your mind. What kinds of thoughts you entertain — that is the kind of situations you attract to yourself. That is the reality which you manifest for yourself.
This is where the paths differ. Those paths which make you and others happy are called the right paths. Those which make you unhappy and those around you unhappy are called the wrong paths. The wise ones choose the right paths and try to avoid the wrong ones. This is where wisdom lies.
You are wise if you can learn from your own experiences. You are wiser still if you can learn from others’ experiences. You are a fool if you don't learn even from your own experience! And most of us never learn even from our own experiences. We develop a pattern of repeating the same mistakes again and again foolishly, compulsively.
We continue foolishly with our old patterns of thinking and old moulds of behavior, of finding fault with others, as if we are free of them! I am a repository of faults. But not a single fault of mine appears to me. The slightest fault of another appears to me.
Sai Baba keeps telling people, “Don't find fault with others. If there is some little good that you can find in others, tell it to your friends.” Forgive and forget the faults of others. This way you can increase the area of harmony and cooperation; even with those that restrict you, you can increase your heart space in which you allow others to come into you.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” Jesus once said. Do you like to be criticized? You don't. Then why do you criticize others? Do you like to be loved? Yes. Then why don't you love others?
What you give, you receive. If you don't give, you don't receive. The best thing to give is love, intimacy, affection, a kind word. We find it difficult to do this. Do you like to be rejected? You don't. Then why do you reject others?
This is the kind of understanding you must have. What applies to you, you must apply to others and see that you are always engaged in such actions which attract similar actions to you.
What you like to happen to you, you must do to others. You wish to get wealth? Give it to others. You wish to gain knowledge? Teach others. You wish to be praised? Praise others.
Praising others is praising God. If you praise God, God praises you. What better than having God on your side?
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