Is Goddess Laxmi partial to some and not to others?
Nanik Lahori, C.P.L.C.
Certified Professional Life Coach
Diwali is an auspicious occasion when most Hindus perform Goddess Laxmi Puja to be bestowed with good health, happiness, peace, and prosperity. All are necessary and desirable goals.
To achieve any goal, we must plan and do our Karma. Expecting to achieve our goal without doing our part of the Karma is only wishful thinking. You must have heard the saying “ God or Goddess helps those who help themselves.” Those who their part of the Karma, Goddess Laxmirewards them with the desired results. No partiality in divine kingdom.
Diwali is also an occasion for introspection, vowing to replace our faults with virtues. Unfortunately, such vowsare short-term, as our resolve weakens in a short time and we go back to our previous state of mind. Any change is very hard as there are deep grooves created in our brain by our past habits.Therefore we must devise an action plan and be persistent until we achieve the desired change.
We Hindus and many others believe in the Law of Karma. During Diwali time, what can be a better vow than making a conscious decision to avoid bad Karmas and perform good ones. We all have heard the sayings, “What goes around, comes around.”, and “As you sow, so shall you reap”. If we sow a bitter seed, we can’t expect a sweet fruit,
The Law of Karma is Eternal, mathematical and very precise. Those who believe in reincarnation or not, this eternal law is applicable to all such as the Law of Gravity. We carry only our accumulated Karmas with us after we die and receive the appropriate birth in our next life. Let us plan to avoid bad Karmas and accumulate good Karmas from this Diwali onwards.
What are bad and good Karmas? The rule of thumb is to follow a “Golden Rule” prescribed by all world religions. Golden rule says that to avoid bad Karma, “Don’t do unto others, what you don’t want others to do unto you.” Logically, to perform good Karma “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”
Is it not wonderful to imbibe the concept of bad and good Karma in the minds of small children as young as one or two years old?When an older sibling pushes younger one, ask how would they feel when some other older child pushes you? Same way, when a child doesn’t share a toy with his or her sibling, ask do you want your sibling to share the toy with you.
This approach needs patience, but is surely better than getting angry and affecting creativity and creating confusion of right and wrong in the child’s innocent mind.
Looking from a medical point of view, bad and good Karmas are also responsible for the release of two neurotransmitters in the brain: CORTISOL and SEROTONIN. There are many others but for simplicity, we deal with these two.CORTISOL is also called Stress hormone and SEROTONIN as Good Feeling Hormone.
Normal release of Cortisol is good to manage day to day stress. Bad Karmas generate guilt, fear causing excess stress which releases high quantity of Cortisol which has very harmful effects on our life. It causes loss of sleep, high BP, high blood sugar, loose immunity to infections, generates high calorie food craving, craving for sweets, resulting in weight gain etc.The worst part is it depletes the levels of Serotonin leading us to depression, irritation and anger.
If life is highly stressed, there are several ways to reduce one’s cortisol level and increase one’s serotonin level.Effective ways are relaxation, meditation, yoga, good sleep, being in the company of good friends, doing some community service through school, temple or community service organization etc.
In Chapter 6 sloka 5,of Bhagwat Geeta, Lord Krishna says that we are our own best friends and we are our own worst enemy. Those who perform bad Karma produce high level of Cortisol, becoming their own worst enemy. And those who perform good Karma, produce high levels of good feeling serotonin, becoming their own best friend.
To make this world a better place for us and our future generations, let us take a conscious decision on this auspicious Diwali occasion, not to support those who indulge into wrongful bad Karma.
Keep up the Diwali spirit of victory of good over evil.