THE SOUL'S STRENGTH

One of the strongest elements is our soul. For this statement the stanza of the Rigved 10/151/4 states that - "Shraddha (truth) is the symbol of the high sentiment of the heart. With it man's spiritual life becomes successful and he becomes happy by earning money".

Message: Faith is our life's most tender, pleasant and excellent experience. There are three steps of progress in life- faith, trust and love. Every issue becomes achievable with faith. Trust makes even a difficult task easy, and love makes it the easiest. By imbibing these three good qualities and putting them into practical conduct, our life's path becomes free from all types of difficulties and hardships. A faithful man achieves success in every task.

Tulsidas also began the salutation prayer to his beloved God by saying "shraddha vishwas rupeenow" (like faith and trust) and then successfully wrote the great epic Ramcharit Maanas for the benefit of the common people. God manifested from the stone-idol given to the medieval princes saint Meerabai because of her sheer faith and the same idol absorbed the poison which Meerabai was made to drink. Ramkrishna Paramhans fed th eGoddess, Mother Mahakali with his own hands - so helpless did she become by his faith and love for her as God in the form of Mother.

A man thoroughly immersed in faith invariably achieves success in whatever task that he carries out. The company of faith is the biggest company in a man's life. The main pillars of our life are faith in mother, father and Guru (spiritual teacher), faith in religion and 'sadachar' (good moral conduct) and faith in one's own work. It increases man's self confidence and develops firmness of resolve; la ziness and lethargy disappear and by total involvement of mind, the path for the fulfillment of the resolve becomes wide open. The hypocrisy of success and wealth also crumbles to dust before faith. Whatever the hardship and howsoever tough the situations, they can never become obstacles in our path.

A combination of faith and trust gives rise to cheerfulness in the mind. A man with cheerful heart is like the mid-day sun, whose rays drive away the darkness of sorrow in the hearts of countless sorrowful people and fills their hearts with cheer. Cheerfulness is like the fragrant sandal paste - when applied on the foreheads of others, it makes our own fingers fragrant.

The flame of faith must always be kept kindled in our hearts. Without the flame of faith we are not able to complete any task successfully. Our life should be soaked with faith and no task should be undertaken without faith, in fact, every task should be completed with total faith. Prayers and rituals such as sandhya-pujan must be performed with faith. The reign of faith must be present at every time, every moment, i.e. all the twenty-four hours of the day in our lives.

By becoming faithful, money, strength, knowledge, intelligence, credit or fame, all this is obtained, and success is achieved in every task. We should never give up the support of faith but at the same we should also save ourselves from bline faith and blind trust. We must faithfully believe whatever is praper, but only after discriminating between the proper and the improper. Without giving proper thought any task performed by imitating others is blind faith only and is harmful also.

The so ul's strength or self-confidence becomes strong with faith only.