Positive Thinking 21 – Go DEEP – Desire Envision Endeavor Pray

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Welcome back to our discussion on positive thinking.
We are now discussing the energy sutra, E-N-E-R-G-Y, in which we are discussing cultivate smart expectations, expectations. So in this, we discussed about how we should treat the world as a hospital, not a hotel and that way we can avoid getting carried away by unrealistic and frustration inducing expectations. Now, if we say that the world is like a hospital, we say that does not mean we have to be passive.
We can also be proactive in our activity, but with a moderate and realistic understanding of our expectations. So for that, we can consider the formula go deep in your life. Deep is an acronym D-E-E-P.
So desire, envision, endeavor and pray. When we say we have to moderate our expectation, that does not mean that we should not have aspirations. That does not mean that we should not dream, but we have to focus.
So D is desire. No, there are basically two broad options that we have. Do as you desire or desire as you do.
That means if we have the choices in our life, then we should definitely do what we desire. Many times we feel that we should have a particular kind of career. We should choose we should develop a particular kind of hobby and we should grow a particular talent and fulfill our potential in a particular direction.
So if we have a desire for doing something, something constructive, doing justice to our talents, making constructive contribution, then we should act on it. Nothing is going to happen if we just keep things at the ethereal level in the form of some fondly cherished fantasies. We need to act on them.
So do as you desire. So if we see that we have a talent, we have the interest to move in a particular direction, then we should move. At the same time, we cannot always do as we desire.
There are inevitably times in our life when we are forced to do things which we may not like to do. So at that time, we need to desire what we have to do. That means that if we find that there are certain duties which we have to do, say if we want to get a particular degree, we may like a particular subject and we may like the career that we get after getting the degree, but we may not like some subjects.
But then we have to clear the other subject also which we don’t like. Similarly, in everything that we do in life, there are some things which we don’t like and we need to persevere. For that, we use our intelligence to change our desires by contemplating on how something is important, how something is going to give a result that is going to be beneficial for us.
So Krishna says that some things taste like poison in the beginning, but they will taste like nectar in the end. So we may not desire to do something right now because it tastes like poison. But if we know that there’s going to be nectar in the end, we can persevere based on using our intelligence and directing our desire based on that nectar coming at the end.
So therefore, if we don’t do as we desire, then whatever our talents are, they’ll never be realized. And if we don’t desire what we do, then we will be internally dragging our feet, doing things half-heartedly. And then if that thing has to be done, we will anyway have to spend time doing it.
And if we do it half-heartedly, we may do or we will probably not do it well. And therefore, we’ll have to spend more time doing it. So therefore, desire, whatever we are doing, we should channelize, we should synergize the power of our desire with the power of our actions so that both can propel us forward speedily.
Then, that is desire. D.E. is Envision. Desire is often a vague amorphous, okay, I want to become, I want to get, whatever it may be, I want to become a topper in my class, I want to get a very lucrative job, I want to get to this post or whatever.
Whatever it is that we have in Envision, we need to, this desire is not enough. The desire has to be translated into a vision. Vision is much more step-by-step, systematic.
So it is said that vision without action is a dream and action without vision is a nightmare. So vision without action, if I just keep, oh, this is what I’m going to do, this is what I’m going to do, I’m not going to lead anywhere. And the other hand, action without a vision.
Sometimes we just work, work, work, but we don’t know what we are doing, why we are doing, and we just wind up wasting our time. It’s like a fan, it keeps moving round and round and round, but it gets nowhere. So like that, we don’t get anywhere despite our endeavors.
And thus, we end up in action without vision is a nightmare. So Envision. Envision means we can plan out steps, we may not be able to plan out all the steps, but at least the next few steps you can plan out.
What do I need to do to move in that direction? If you are given a watermelon to eat, we cannot swallow the whole watermelon, but we can cut it down into small eatable pieces and then eat those pieces one by one. So like that we can, if we have a big aspiration, big ambition, we can set it down, we can break it down into small manageable goals and move towards achieving this goal. So this will give us a sense of development and achievement as we keep moving forward towards our goals.
And then E is, the next E, we are discussing deep, D-E-E-P, go deep. So endeavour, then the third E is, the third, this is E, endeavour. So endeavour, nothing is achieved, nothing worthwhile is achieved very easily in life.
As they say, no pains, no gains. In the Sanskrit literature, there is a subhashita, nahi suptasya sammasya pravishanti mukhe brudaha that if the lion stays sleeping in its cave, then the deer is not going to come into its mouth and say that, please eat me. The lion is the king of the jungle, the lion has the capacity to catch a deer and eat it, but still even that lion has to plan, has to chase, and then eventually the lion has to get.
So that is endeavour, we all need to endeavour. And there is this phase of endeavour, which is vital for translating talent into achievement. They say the talent is here, achievement is here.
The bridge between talent and achievement is built through commitment. So we endeavour, endeavour is not just trying, endeavour is trying in a focused and sustained way, that is commitment. And then after that is pray.
So the things are not in our control ultimately, but still they are in God’s control. And prayer is not an escape from reality, prayer is a refuge above reality to face reality better. When we pray, we don’t ask God to magically remove all our problems and to magically give us everything that is our heart’s aspiration.
No, when we pray, we ask for God to give us the strength to deal with whatever situations we are going through in our life. And by going through these situations, in a prayerful mood, we will be able to raise ourselves above our situations. That inner connection with God, which we get through prayer is far more consequential than the outer change that may or may not result because of the prayer.
Sometimes if we wed a prayer to its result too much, then we may avoid praying because we may think that if I pray to God and God does not give me the result, then what is the use of the praying? I may lose faith in God and we may stop praying. No, there is no need to do like that. We should know that the primary purpose of prayer is the inner connection with God.
It is not the outer solution to the problem. The outer solution may or may not come and all prayers are actually answered. But the answers may not always be in our terms according to our expectations.
But still, the real answer that we get, the most empowering answer that we get through our prayer is the inner peace, the inner strength that comes when we connect with God within our hearts. And thus, when we adopt this acronym, go deep, desire, envision, endeavor and pray, then whatever it is that we are planning to do in our life is to cultivate smart expectations. Another point, so what is, so if we decide, okay, this is what I want to do and I endeavor to do it.
So how do we go about this? By these four steps, then our expectations will become smart. They will become not just realistic in the sense of being too low, but they will become realizable in the form that we will be taking systematic steps towards achieving them. Thank you.