When there is a serious occasion in life like -when a man’s debts rise to double the level of his worth, or a poor girl at the age of thirty-six wishes for marriage, or not getting a breakthrough in job or business and many other such things coming under that category happen- normally he dwell on the misfortune.
Sri Karmayogi says this as “negative attention”. He says any problem has a refractory character. When you think of it, it draws your energy through that attention — a negative attention – and starts growing in strength. Man is not made to forget his misfortunes. But we can see when the exam is impending; the otherwise freaky boy does push away all his cares and concentrates on the exam.
To evoke a serious response from Mother in such type of occasions we need such type of concentrated effort on positivities, as boy who is studying for the exams. Many experience that their calls are answered. Many other people say there is no response for their call. It only means the call; the strength of the call does not match or overcome the strength of the problem and our imagination about the problem.
It seems to be easier said than done. When I see many in practical life, when a daughter is bit late instead of thinking any positivities the thought starts from all the accidents, to love affairs, to everything we know about today’s culture connecting to the daughter, eventually consoling ourselves that our daughter is not like that. Similarly, if anybody cannot repay a debt or credit in time and when the collection agent supposed to come the thought will be always on how much he will misbehave or shout or what the neighbours think etc. Similarly, even for small palpitation in chest leads to think of every disease we know in the world.
We are living in negative attention every moment. To whatever we give attention it grows. Negative attention is because of fear. In fact, we can term faith and fear with same definitions. For example, faith is believing that what we cannot see will come to us. Fear is also believing that what we cannot see will come to us. But when we are in full of hope and enthusiasm, we are imagining future scenarios with positivities. When we are fearful or in despair, we are also imagining future scenarios with negativities.
The following statements though looks positive can be seen in this context as how much negativity is there in it. “I do not want to be sick. I do not want to fight with my wife or husband. I want to stop procrastinating. I just want to get rid of this weight problem. I want to get out of this job. I do not want to be insecure. I do not want all those weeds in my garden. I am tired of being exploited all the time. I do not want to feel trapped. Etc.,
We can see from the above examples that how much we still be giving attention on what we do not want. That is why Sri Karmayogi says what ever thought comes to you regarding the problems just immediately think of Mother. It is one way of surrendering the problem to Mother. And in other way it is giving attention to Mother. Attention to Mother grows Mother in us. That means our faith on Mother increases. We all know that faith increases only when our problems are solved.
When we move our intention away from negative circumstance, offer it to the Mother, and forget about it, life responds positively soon thereafter. Often, when it resolves this way, we will forget the problem we had in the first place!
We enjoy the drama of life, including the negative. However, we can also learn to enjoy pure Being, i.e. absence of intensity, which will give us the confidence to overcome any difficulty if it should arise. From a deeper poise, a Witness Consciousness within, we will more readily “let the intensity go,” i.e. overcome our negative attention. Life will then flow far more smoothly with endless positive outcomes.
Sri Karmayogi says-many of regular behaviour which we do unknowingly are also a form of negative attention. He asks-to replace domination by humility, discipline by self-discipline, obedience by affection, custom by rational requirement of the hour, reducing delay to increasing speed, reducing wastage to maximum utilization, accomplishment to understanding the process of accomplishment etc.
In life also we can see above average personalities respond to our attention and the relationship will be good. Whereas below average personalities are spoiled by attention or recognition ex: from workers to sons and daughters. He says- like circumstances, persons also will move heaven and earth to catch your attention. In fact, if we go through Sri Karmayogi’s advice in its full spirit we can live entire live by one rule- attention or neglect- only if we can draw the exact line.
Last month I was asked to distribute an import substitute product, which had far superior finish and looks-than the imported one. I was so fascinated by that- to the point of taking extra care in cleaning it daily and looking at it often and even caress it.
In spite of my best effort, the product being competitively priced, being user friendly than those available in the market – market did not accept it. I was making all the permutation and combinations of all principles of life I know –and suddenly I had a thought –Is that my attachment towards that product is having any bar on moving it out of my premises? I intended to give it a try-went to the warehouse and started speaking to the product- that I am not going to take care as before. So move out of this premises.
From the next day I started receiving the orders for that-and today I am going to order next consignment. I do not know whether it is based on some principle or mere coincidence-but it worked.
