THE GENDER OF GOD

In a large number of religious traditions, all over the world, God is always referred to as a male entity. But, just as the soul does not have a gender and is neither masculine nor feminine, God's i.e. the Supreme Soul's gender is neither male nor female specifically. Therefore, as a soul, a spiritual child of God, each living being can come close to God without any inhibitions or difficulty, which he or she may experience in any relationship in the physical world, due to the gender of the body they occupy.

Supreme Being or God is both a Supreme Mother and a Supreme father.

The Supreme Being is the Supreme Mother who provides spiritual sustenance and whose love is full of unconditional acceptance. No matter what has happened or how each of our nature or personality is; each living being experiences unconditional acceptance from God. It's the love that strengthens and purifies all.
At the same time, God is also the Supreme Father, a very powerful entity, who provides protection and fills the soul with the inheritance of divine qualities and powers. It's a question of just being an innocent child and claiming that inheritance.
These are the first two relationships that have to be experienced with God.

The Supreme is a balance of being feminine, having the qualities of caring, giving and full of good wishes and masculine at the same time, having the qualities of power, authority and fearlessness. These two relationships with God, whereby God plays both the roles of both parents shall be the basis of spiritual development.

Spirituality introduces to us, the concept of taking a new spiritual birth to the Supreme Father and Mother. This birth is based on a change of consciousness. One needs to let go of the negative, impure and sorrowful past and develop a new consciousness, based on the present introduction to spirituality, which is positive, pure and blissful.
The awareness of the self as a soul, changes my way of looking at the material things immensely, but the consciousness of being a child of God, who is the Mother as well as the Father and seeing others with that vision brings respect and love for  the self. Then all these qualities shall start showing in our actions and interactions as well.

Disclaimer: This article is an edited version of the original article by Brahmakumaris. Daily articles under the subject "Positive Reflections For The Day" can be subscribed by sending an email to awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org.

ANALYZING SUCCESS AND FAILURE

You feel positive and joyful when you realize that you are successful. However, when failure comes to you, you feel defeated. The definition of success and failure varies from one person to another and according to the stage of life that you are in. It is important to have success and failure well defined for yourself, because, based on your definition, you feel greater or lesser inner wellbeing, happiness and wholeness. There are also different levels of success and of failure. For example, for some the greatest success is to be happy and radiant, whatever happens inside or outside. If one manages to keep happy in the face of failure, for them it is a success. Because to be happy means that I am connected with my essential worth or inner self, my being is awake and alive. Failure does not reduce my vitality, my contentment levels. The greater or fewer external achievements do not reduce the quality of the inner being or of being happy. The important thing is that you believe your own definition of success and failure. Some ideas can be shared that can act as guidelines, but, in the end, each person has to create their own guidelines, definitions and factors leading to success and failure. Basing ourselves on these guidelines and beliefs, we evaluate our successes and failures.  You can reflect on what true success and failure mean for you and, according to those meanings, centre your attention on the values and efforts that lead you to achieve your objectives.

For many, society has conditioned us to look for success through the path of our career, achievements, profits, praise, financial wealth etc. That way, we have learned a narrow view of success. Running in search of this kind of success and pursuing it, we come to exhaust ourselves, get burnt out and depressed. In order to achieve these successes we have stopped caring for the inner being (the soul) and relationships. That has meant and means stress, pain, anxiety, family break ups, personal and relational disintegrations, the destruction of the environment and planetary and climatic imbalances. As a consequence, we feel empty. Although we achieve the applause, the income and other successes, the soul is malnourished and has the sensation that it is lacking something. Reaching fame, financial wealth, the power of a visible position, and reaching it with a broken soul, broken up family and a sick body, causes depression which explains why, in our recent history , famous people have ended up committing suicide.

If we want to redirect our personal and collective lives toward true wellbeing and wholeness, we have to re-evaluate and redefine our beliefs and factors that lead to success and failure. Before asking yourself what success and failure mean for you, it is important to be clear what context you want success in. Depending on the context, the dimension and the meaning of success and failure will be different. For example, in the work context, a failure will be different to that in the family context. In the personal context or in life in general, the way of perceiving success or failure varies.

Disclaimer: This article is reproduced from "Positive Reflections For The Day messages sent by the Brahmakumaris".  Daily articles can be subscribed by sending an email to awakeningwithbks@bkmail.org.

Also you can access Vijay Karanam's similar article WISDOM OF SUCCESS published in his other blog http://swetha-hrudayam.blogspot.com/