Wherever I went, on my travels through Hungary, Croatia, France and England this year, the subject of relationships seemed to crop up everywhere.
How do we feel about our relationships with other people, with ourselves and with the situations around us? It is easy to let our relationships be affected by hurt, jealousy, anger or sadness. It is not so easy to put aside old feuds, to forgive and to try and improve our relationships by concentrating on calming the situation, or the people involved, rather than causing even more irritation. Our pride can cause us to be stubborn when we’ve been hurt; it can be difficult to see things in a new light, or to start again with a clear conscience.
On a micro level we are concerned with the relationship between mind and body. Do they co-exist harmoniously or is the mind forever critical and dissatisfied with the body? On a macro level in the world the major problem is not so concerned with whether or not we can touch our toes! Most of the world’s problems arise from our attitude to something or to someone, i.e. our relationship to that person or thing. But most of these problems are publicized in the light of negative human traits rather than promoting and developing the positive, spiritual qualities. It seems that we can kill our fellow human beings easily enough, but to show unconditional love towards them presents more of a problem.
"The biggest problem is not the warming up of the planet, but the increasing coldness of the human heart." ≈ Paramahamsa Niranjanananda Saraswati
But we can change. Below is a list of observations made by the people attending classes since September last year: