To close our current chapter on overcoming likes and dislikes, Easwaran emphasizes a fascinating connection with freedom in personal relationships. In our modern age of loneliness, he writes, “Being able to go beyond your own likes and dislikes helps immensely in restoring the personal relationships that make life worth living, for it enables us to be patient, cheerful, and loving with those around us.”
Again the mantram can come to our rescue: “If we can repeat the mantram when we find ourselves falling into competitiveness and invidious comparison, it will help greatly to keep our minds calm and our relationships secure.”
Our reading this week is pages 87–91 as we finish chapter 6 of The Mantram Handbook.*
Is there some tip from Easwaran in this reading that you tend to skim over because you have already heard it many times before? Try focusing on it this week.
We have been making a second pass through our mantram exercises and looking for ways to deepen them, for example by practicing more consistently or via a bit of extra effort or preparation.
This week have the goal to begin repeating the mantram as soon as you wake up in the morning. Devise a strategy for making this happen, and devise a way to check to see if this is happening.
* For those using electronic versions of The Mantram Handbook with different page numbering: this week’s reading starts with the subheading “Learning to Drop a Job at Will” and continues to the end of chapter 6.
