The first step to restoring your self confidence is to know :that you are different in your personality and that you must try and accept yourself the way you are. This idea may take a while to settle with you.

We may feel shy to express what we feel only because we do not know how it will be received. We may be judged for our views, or we simply are not sure of our feelings. One effective way to develop self confidence is to express what we feel to someone we feel safe with or to someone we know will accept us no matter what. As we are encouraged by our elders, peers or mentor- slowly we will get the courage to express our views in a wider circle of people.

It is vital to know the spiritual truth – that each person is Divine at their core and that when we interact with people we are not alone. We can draw upon the inner strength of God, that is already present within us. My guru, Swami Chinmayananda was initially shy and may have felt meek in front of His master, Swami Sivanandaji. I am told that Swami Sivananda used to stroll in the ashram courtyard with Him, placing His hand on the shoulder of the young initiate Chinmaya, saying, “Chinmaya roar like a lion.” One who heard my master after a few years of this episode, could not have believed that He was ever shy, as His oratory skill and forceful delivery of words came from not only a bright intellect, but straight from His heart. So I encourage you to speak from your heart and know that you will be able to overcome self consciousness eventually. Invoke the blessing of the Divine to do that ! Good Luck!

1. Avoid distractions of surfing the net. Take a vow that for the next 6 months you will only go online for 2 hours a day. Stick to that resolve. Limit your time on the phone – promise yourself that you will only spend x amount of time on each call or refuse to answer the phone at the time of study. Vows help to make your will power stronger.

2. An effective way to train the mind to concentrate – is to sit at your altar or in a fixed place everyday – seated in a lotus pose or on a chair – but with your spine, neck and head in an erect posture. Light an oil or ghee (clarified butter) lamp. Keep your eyes open and stare at the flame. Your mind may wander – bring its attention back to the flame. Do this consistently for only 10 minutes everyday.

3. Every morning before you enter your school mentally affirm : “I have the power to concentrate and focus and I know by Divine Grace that I can achieve my goals with ease.” [It is important to add the word with ease].

Good Luck!

Positive and negative are two states of our mind. If we are positive we learn to see the situation for what it is and act accordingly. There is no need to be negative about the financial situation. The true assessment of the situation enables man to think creatively and take the right action as the occasion demands. Negative people generally act out of fear. Actions taken in fear will never in the long run lead to constructive gains. In fact, one may be pessimistic right now. However, if one sees this situation from a different angle and realizes tha t there is a higher perspective to it

Either way - anger is destructive to ourselves and others around us. Letting go of anger is by no means an easy task. Releasing anger does not mean expressing it. We need to release the negativity in a healthy way. With patience and perseverance it can be done. Watch your mind. What makes you angry? Is it worth it? As you witness the quality of your own thoughts without judgment, you can become more detached from it and understand that others have a right to behave the way they want- allow them, but don’t let their actions determine your mood. You stay in your center.

To calm our mind: • We can mentally ask for forgiveness from the person – or even out loud. • We can write a mantra (LIKHIT JAPA) - one page per day for at least 40 days. This helps calm our mind and heart and surrender it to God • Or meditate with visualizing the person in front of us and sending them love and light. • Surrender to God and ask for help for us to say the same thing in a calm manner

We must choose some method that is suitable for us to try and change ourselves.

Hope this helps. Many Blessings!

From Gold only Gold can come. From Love, Knowledge and Existence only Love, Knowledge and Existence can come. Still we see this creation with all its imperfection and misery.

First of all, who is asking this question? You imply that you are the questioner and are different from God. When you really discover who you are, or when you come face to face with God this question will not exist. When a seeker reaches the state of God Consciousness the creation is no more seen as separate from oneself and in that final merging there is no one left to ask the question! In fact at that moment all creation dissolves. The question is similar to: Why does the snake get created from the rope? (In the darkness you MISTOOK the rope to be the snake). Now all your suffering, fears etc. are a product of your IGNORANCE. Once you awaken to the knowledge of the rope - the snake vanishes in an instant. The snake was never real. So too this world APPEARS as a miserable place with people struggling and suffering. On making a deep inquiry you discover that in reality there is no world. The world is a mere illusion from the standpoint of the Absolute Reality. You had a dream. Who created the dream? The waker, forgetting himself, identifying with the ‘dream creation’ , himself became all the rivers, mountains, animals and beings in his dream and came to suffer. Once he wakes up, how real is his dream? During the dream you don’t doubt the reality of your dream. So too you are unable to doubt the reality of this world in your waking state. How can the mind which has itself created this world accept it as unreal?

The world is neither, good or bad. The world simply is. There is much speculation about creation. No final answer can be given to the intellect. One hypothesis is that Consciousness which is one without a second manifested itself in order to know or experience itself. It manifested as total goodness. The creative power of this consciousness called God, created beings with basic consciousness, yet essentially infinite and eternal. Consciousness forgetting itself identifies with the Body, Mind, Intellect and its’ own creation. Not knowing the Truth, it projects and then comes to suffer. At any moment God is not suffering. You, who are asking this question, are suffering in your ignorance. We beings have to evolve to discover their inherent divinity, which is already in us, but is simply covered due to ignorance. My mind creates my world. As my mind, so is the experience of the world. Everyone’s experience is subjective. The same situation can bring pain to one and joy to another (example: smoking). So it is evident that my experience and perception of the world is purely subjective. The individual mind projects its’ individual world. At the Macrocosmic level, the Total mind projects the Total world of names and forms.

Consciousness, through this Total Mind appears to be distorted. The Absolute is apparently conditioned when viewed through the prism of Time and Space. If you examine closely, all sorrow is created by our mind. We perpetuate our mental beliefs, act accordingly and start a cycle of events. All of life is an effort to resolve our imperfections and mature to a higher state of being which is our true nature.

God Energy manifested as the world so that It could experience Itself, which is Perfect Love, Perfect Suffering, Perfect Creativity, Perfect Agony.

Due to our own ignorance, we forget. We awake from our sleep thinking “I am tired, I am sore, I am worried, I am sad.”

Those of us who remember our True Self, wake up thinking, “I am Love, I am Eternal, I AM THAT.”

Everything, every feeling, every thought we have is a manifestation of Perfect Love.

To answer your question: Pure Consciousness manifested all aspects of itself as this creation and then identified with them. That is why we all have this essential divinity in us. In our error, we have wrongly identified with our own thoughts and we come to suffer. In order to retrace our steps to our Infinitude we have to experience this finitude.

To discover our Limitlessness we must undergo all limitation and through this self imposed conditioning we can slowly ascend into our ultimate nature which is total freedom and bliss. How else can we know who we are? Everyone is happy and blissful, we just don’t know it, because our mind is too extroverted at this moment! Once we discover our glory, the world is seen in its correct light.