Strength of sacrifice

 

Sacrifice is letting go of something that you are holding on to or that you are attached to giving up something that gives you pleasure for something bigger that would bring good. Sacrifice brings strength in life. Life without sacrifice is stagnant. Sacrifice gives you a quantum leap, to a higher pedestal. 

Often people think sacrifice makes life dull and joyless. In fact, it is sacrifice that makes life worth living. The amount of sacrifice in your life brings out your magnanimity and helps you move out of misery. A life without sacrifice is worth nothing. Zeal, enthusiasm, strength and joy all come from sacrifice. 

Some people complain, “I have sacrificed so much”. That is good. The thought of sacrifice has given them the strength to complain. This saves them from blaming themselves, otherwise they would be more depressed. Sacrifice never goes unrewarded. There can be no love, no wisdom and no true joy without sacrifice. Sacrifice makes you sacred. Become sacred. 

True surrender comes with bhakti

 

Self-reliance requires enormous courage. When there is nobody else or you want to depend on yourself for everything, you need a lot of courage. Surrender takes less courage. A person who cannot surrender cannot be self-reliant either. If you don’t have enough courage to surrender, then it is not possible to be self-reliant, you simply fool yourself. If you do not have a hundred dollars, you cannot have a thousand dollars. Even a little fear is detrimental to self-reliance. Self-reliance contains surrender. Fifty dollars contains ten dollars.

Often people think that surrender is a way to escape from their responsibilities, then they end up blaming the Divine for all their problems. In fact, true surrender is taking total responsibility for everything. How? Take full responsibility and then pray for help. Surrender eventually leads you to self-reliance because there is nothing other than the big self.

In the word bhakti there are four letters “bha” “ka” “ta” and “I” (ee). “Bha” means fulfilment and nourishment. “Ka” is a means of knowing. “Ta” means redeeming, saving, salvation (tarana). “I” (ee) is shakti, or energy. So there are four components to bhakti: fulfillment and nourishment, a means of knowing, salvation, and energy. Bhakti nourishes you. Bhakti is the right knowledge, the means of knowing. When bhakti is there, doubts do not come.

Bhakti saves you. Bhakti gives you the most energy. Bhakti contains the seed of all these qualities. All the emotional upheavals one goes through are because one doesn’t know bhakti. A river has two banks that allow water to flow in a particular direction. In a flood, water is scattered all over. When your emotions get flooded everywhere, your mind is in a mess. When all your intense feelings flow in one direction, that is most powerful, that is bhakti. A sign of intelligence is bhakti and surrender.