30. How to bring peace and happiness in all your relationships from a spiritual point of view?
Be it any relationship whether it is brother – sister, children – parents, wife – husband, friends , colleagues, etc , the most important thing is unconditional love. If your love is based on expectations then all the happiness and peace will go away in one instant the moment your expectations are not met. So it is important to love unconditionally without any expectations, and this has to happen from both ends. Even if it is not happening from the other end , you should keep doing it from your end.
The second most important aspect in any relationship is forgiveness and acceptance. Nobody is perfect , everyone will have their own set of faults and weaknesses. We have to accept it and forgive them. If you will not forgive and keep holding negativity and anger in your heart then you will never find any happiness and peace in your relationships. It should happen at both the ends but if it is not happening at the other end, atleast you keep doing it at your end. This will give you peace.
Third most important thing in any relationship is space and freedom. If you dont give each other enough space and freedom and try to control each other then you will never find peace and happiness in your relationships. Never do anything which is against the free will of any individual. Never force anyone to do anything against their wish. By doing this you will acquire lot of bad karma. You can always give a loving advice to each other but not force that advice on anyone. Dont try to control each others life , rather live and let live ! Even in the guru disciple relationship , disciple surrenders himself to the guru and accepts to be guided by the guru with his free will ….no guru can force him to do it . Once the disciple has surrendered to the guru, only then the guru has the right to guide him, teach him, advice him and even for that matter scold him if required.
Fourth most important thing is respect and understanding. You need to understand that everyone is at a different consciousness plane , meaning their consciousness level can be low or high and they are all coming with all kinds of good and bad karma of the past. This is the reason they are behaving differently . You need to understand them. It is usually difficult for the people on the lower consciousness plane to understand people on the higher consciousness plane. If they cant understand, then they need to simply accept them with unconditional love. But people on the higher consciousness plane can easily understand people on the lower consciousness plane because they have gone through those stages or planes before. Usually for such people understanding and acceptance and forgiveness comes naturally. For example a person who is behaving like an animal , is a person who is at a consciousness level of an animal. Till his consciousness grows , he will act like an animal only, so you need to accept that and forgive them. You can pray for such people so that their consciousness level rises. You can try to help them to raise their level of consciousness but cannot force it to happen. It will happen when it is meant to be so dont get frustrated.
I am not saying that you allow people to do wrong to you in your relationships . No, instead you have to make sure that nobody in your relationships takes undue advantage of you or do anything wrong towards you physically , mentally, emotionally or spiritually. Only you are blamed if you allow people to do wrong to you, you can always stop that once you are an adult and grown up. Even as a child you have to ask someone to help you if someone is doing wrong to you.
Also dont take anyone for granted in your relationship. Be always grateful for whatever you are receiving from the other person whether it is physical, material, emotional, mental or spiritual. All the unresolved issues in relationships can be resolved through understanding and forgiveness from your end even if it is not possible to happen from the other end. This will help to end the karmic cycle between you and the other person.
Last but not the least please communicate and express your feeling openly. Dont suppress or hide it because it will cause lot of problems in the long run. The more open you are about how you feel or think about a certain thing , the easier it becomes for the other person to understand you. If you will not do that then people in your relationship will not be able to understand you correctly and it will cause lot of misunderstandings and lot of assumptions will be made about you and your behaviour which may not be true at all. You might also be doing the same thing by assuming things about people which may not be true at all.
Dont get too much ego in relationships because that will definitely destroy the relationship completely. Have self respect but not ego. Self respect only means not allowing anybody to do wrong to you. Beyond that everything else is only ego. The more the acceptance, understanding , unconditional love and forgiveness, the less the ego and vice versa.
