Power of Positive Attitude

A thief can take away our money, disease can take away our health, time will take away our years - everything will be taken away from us inevitably - but there is one thing that no power in creation can take away, and that is our free will.

According to how we use our free will, we become conditioned to think in a particular way, to see the world in a particular way and to act in a particular way. We become conditioned by whatever we associate with using our free will.

For example, you use your free will to smoke cigarettes. When you start it, it tastes horrible, but by your free will you keep doing it until your free will is so much conditioned to surrendering to that experience that you become addicted, and then it practically seems that you do not have a free will anymore.

By this addiction, you are practically being forced. "I have to do it-- I must do it," until finally, "I cannot live without it." Alcohol abuse and drug addiction is the same thing. You use your free will, you do it enough times, and soon you become so conditioned by the modes of nature that you willingly surrender to that. It now appears that you lost your free will. But in fact, you have not lost it.

So whatever our consciousness is, whatever our way of thinking is, we should understand that it is not our nature eternally, it is our acquired nature. It is the nature of the characteristics that we have created ourselves according to what and who we choose to associate with in our lives, both in this life and in our previous lives.

So when we associate with people who are positive and when we choose to engage in a positive perspective with positive activities then we reconditioned ourselves positively. The special virtue of human life is that we always have a freedom of choice. We may not be able to control our environment, but we do have full control over how we are going to respond and react to that environment.

If we are on a boat, we may not have control over which way the wind blows but we do have control over how we want to control the sails of our boat. How you are going to respond? You have a choice. When very unpleasant things or unfair things come upon us, we can either choose to be a victim of anger or we can choose to learn a lesson; we can choose to complain and bring everybody else down, or we can choose to look for the positive opportunity in that apparently miserable condition.

One person says, "Look at this Rose bush. It is full of thorns." He keeps on grumbling about the thorns on that Rose bush. Another person rejoices, "Look at this thorn bush. It has a Rose". They are seeing the same thing. But are they seeing the same thing? No. Similarly, if you have rose-colored glasses, everything will look rose- colored; if you have yellow colored glasses, everything will look yellow; if you have green colored glasses, everything will look green; and if you have clear glasses, you see everything as it is. So yes, according to our state of consciousness, we have certain attitudes and we will perceive reality according to our acquired attitudes. What attitude we choose to adapt in a situation is what is going to determine our consciousness, and our whole perception of the world.