Becoming Free From The Desire For Praise (Part 2)

1. Always remember that as an actor in the world drama, I have to perform all actions to my best capability, but it is not possible to always please everyone with my performance all the time. This is because we have woven webs of negative karma with a large number of souls in our previous births as well as in our present birth. Because of this sometimes even our good actions are seen as negative ones or sometimes not noticed by some. When we understand this hidden secret of karma, we will perform nice actions only for our happiness and not to please others or receive their respect, which may or may not come. Suppose I talk lovingly and sweetly with someone who is negative and angry with me, do they always respond in the same manner? So, should I also stop being nice to them? So praise for my actions from others is less important than praise from myself and even God, who is always noticing what I do the whole day and how I behave.
2. We are all also brothers at the spiritual level. As brothers, we share a bond of spiritual love with each other and to love, care and respect for each other is our natural spiritual duty. But when we consider serving others as something for which we should get recognition, we have forgotten the same. God serves the whole world in different ways. He helps us in different ways, but sometimes we do not realize it. Does He look for recognition? No. So, as God’s children, our duty is to serve everyone we meet with our goodness in every thought, word and action and not expect goodness in return. We commonly say we are misunderstood by this person. And then we feel hurt because the other person did not appreciate us. So serving selflessly is the key to contentment and inner freedom from the desire for praise.  

(To be continued tomorrow …)