Live the Ideal- Swami Chinmayananda

You are not, unfortunately, what you think yourself to be. You think you are successful; others in your office are attributing your chair, perhaps, to the greatness of your father-in-law. You think you are efficient and strict; others consider you as weak and bad tempered. You count yourself to be a kind father; others say that you are spoiling your son. You imagine that you are a great Romeo to your neighbour’s sister; She takes you to be a lunatic though of an interesting and entertaining type!

Thus, what you estimate yourself to be and what others judge of you from your own actions are poles apart from each other. Your so-called estimate of yourself is but your intellectual belief in some ideal picture of yourself; but in your dealing with the world outside you are acting just the opposite and the only one who is totaly unconscious of the ugliness is yourself.

© "Tapovan Prasad" (December, 2002) published by Chinmaya Mission, No.2, 13th Avenue, Harrington Road, Chetput, Chennai 600 031. (Website: chinmayatapovan.com). Reprinted with permission.

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