Letter # 57: "To Sisters"

To Sisters,

I am male, and therefore wild; my mother tames me. Even in her old age, she shows me how to respect the female gender. She guides me on how to love my sisters. So here's a letter to sisters:

Dear sisters,

Thanks for keeping in touch. I'm always delighted to get your loving messages. I wish you all a happy, healthy, and even more prosperous New year than the last. I wish for health and success for your children. who are our "toys"; they keep us joyfully engaged. May God bless your spouses with happiness. Don't worry about troubled relationships; with time all will be well. May you all remain happy. If we worry too much about things, it only impairs our health; so don't worry too much. Laugh as much as you can with your spouses and with your children. Good luck with your work and interests. Did you get and read my spiritual letters? Those are meant for expanding our communal wisdom, and for enhancing everyone's sense of well-being, so please take time out to read them, and contemplate on them. Mum is here with us at the moment, and is as well and as jubilant as ever, though nowadays more easily breathless and physically tired. Dad is happily immersed in his world. Read Letter # 26 again, and you might want to try the exercise in it, in order to relieve tension in relationships.

Love

Jas

PS: For your convenience, I've copied Letter #26 below:

Letter # 26: "A SIMPLE 'THANK YOU' TECHNIQUE FOR FORGIVENESS"

Does forgiveness work? For the scientific minds here's an article from the Journal of Clinical Psychology (Pubmed PMID: 17457850). Click here to view.
Most of us prefer less onerous reading material. Recently a kind friend gave me a copy of the "40-Day Forgiveness Prayer" (first described by the now deceased J. Everett irion and re-printed in Venture Inward Nov-Dec 2007 issue. Click here to view.

The "40-Day Forgiveness Prayer" can help in repairing damaged relationships, current and past, and with family members, friends, or workmates. Because the problem is in the the relationship between two people, God is left out of the prayer. You can even pray to yourself, putting your own name in.

It goes like this: "(Name of the person that your having problems with) I am praying to you. Thank you (name) for what you have done for me. Forgive me (name) for all that I have done to you."

It can be hard to say thank-you to someone that you see as hurtful or inimical but many people have reported remarkable positive results when they have dared to try the prayer. Irion writes: "One woman emphatically refused to try it when I first suggested it, but a year later said, 'Why did I wait a whole year to try that prayer? As soon as I did the 40 days, my 'ex' came to me and asked if we could just be friends. Now we are closer friends than ever before."

Here are some important tips:
1. After doing the prayer put it out of mind so that it can do its work.
2. The best thing to do is to get on with your life and to not expect any results.
3. Don't tell that person that you are praying to them in this manner. Talking about it disturbs the process at a deeply unconscious level.
4. Keep a calendar and mark off a check mark for each day you have said the prayer, for 40-days. If you miss a day, you must start a new 40-day cycle.
5. In a crisis you can shorten the 40-day cycle to 40 hours, or 40 minutes (The "40" concept comes from Jesus' 40 days in the desert, Moses 40 years to reach the Promised Land, and 40 days of the Flood).

The prayer costs nothing except humility. The pay-off is in the immense potential for healing, self and other. irion attests that many persons have been helped by the prayer. So, see if you can muster the courage to try it.

God Bless; Nanak Naam Chardi Kala Tere Bhane Sarbat Dha Bhalla, Radha-Swami; Allah Hu Akbar; and Hare Krishna.

I wish to express my gratitude for your comments, which inspire me to carry on writing. Please forgive my fallibilities in presenting this material. Also, feel free to send this message on to someone that you might think would like to receive it. If you do send it on, my only request of you is that you send it as it is, in its entirety and to not alter or modify any of the text, references or authorship information. Thus you will help to give credit or liability to where they are properly due.

Jas BhopalCopyright© 2008"Practicing goodwill makes for a good life."
Tel: 604 273 6641 (also for fax on request)
http://jasbhopal.com/

References: "The Holy Bible" Online version; "The Koran" (As translated by SV Mir Ahmed Ali 2005 ISBN 0-9761870-0-0); "The Bhagavad Gita As it Is" by Srila Prabhupada (ISBN 0-89213-268-X); "I Am That" Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj ISBN 0-89386-022-0; The Dhammapada ISBN-10:1-84483-344-5; The Sacred Sukhmani ISBN 81-7205-098-4; Wikipedia.