Parents dream for their children to become a doctor or an engineer. Why not find out from the child what he wants to become and then dream to fulfill that? That would help your child immensely. The day your child starts back-answering you, that day he has become a man. You have to deal very carefully with him. Spend time with him, talk to him, be a good friend and find out what he really wants to do in life. Guide him with deep love and trust. Then, make his ambition your reality and help him in achieving it. So many children tell me, My father wants me to become a doctor or my father wants me to become a lawyer. Of course, if the child is unable to decide for himself, and he asks you to tell him what to do, you can tell him what he could do based on your observation of his talents and capacity.

You can always suggest, but dont stuff anything down his throat. Also, make the child understand that you are giving him freedom and maturity in doing this and make it clear to him that there can be no blaming at the end of it. He needs to understand that clearly. You see, we are always carrying our chisel around and trying to chisel our relatives, friends even strangers, according to our own imagination. And they in turn are carrying their own chisels, which they are going to try and use on us! What violence! For homework today, I want you all to write down your ideas on how a perfect husband, a perfect wife, a perfect father, a perfect mother, a perfect child and a perfect friend should be.

Choose any five relationships relevant to yourself, and note this. Do it honestly. Im sure you will find, deep down in your unconscious, all your ideas are drawn from popular media. You watch a TV serial and start liking a particular character. The character becomes a solid reality for you. You unconsciously start expecting to see that kind of behaviour in the people associated with you in real life. People even carry the image of the ideal guru in their minds? Usually it is the image of an old man, with grey hair and a flowing beard what you see in books and TV serials! And when they come and see me, they are unable to accept that such a young person can be a real Master! So I too face the same trouble.

I too have to free people of their expectations about the Guru before they accept me! Question: But Swamiji, sometimes we feel that we have to chisel like when we are handling our employees at work. What do we do then? Do your chiseling consciously. Be aware of what you do then you will not do more than necessary. See if your expectations of your employees are realistic. Check if there is any alternate solution. Only when it is absolutely necessary, should you try to mould the other person. Whatever power has been given to you, learn to use it with awareness! Even anger and lust are great energies given to you by God. When you have respect for that energy, you will not waste it or misuse it.

Do we ever misuse money? You never misuse money, because you respect it. If a person does a job worth ten rupees, will you pay him one penny more? But with anger, you always overpay. If a person makes a mistake worth ten rupees of anger, you always pay him with fifty rupees worth anger! Why? It is because you use your anger unconsciously, not consciously. If you use your anger consciously, it will pay off and you wont feel guilty about it also, I assure you. You should never get disturbed by your own anger. If you get disturbed, it means that you have you have not gone through anger with awareness; you have allowed anger to overtake you. This is the scale to see if you have used anger properly! A small story: Once a sadhu a wandering mendicant, was passing through a village, when he received a complaint from the villagers about a cobra that was playing havoc with their lives.

The sadhu was known to have the power to communicate with animals, so they begged him to convince the cobra to spare the villagers. So the sadhu spoke to the cobra, and the cobra promised not to bite any of the villagers anymore. A few months later, the sadhu was passing through the same village when he came upon the cobra, badly bruised and almost dead. What happened to you? Why are you hurt? Asked the sadhu. The cobra cried, O sadhu! It is you who made me promise never to bite the villagers! I have kept my promise to this day. But the villagers, who were earlier in fear of me, took my mildness to be weakness. Seeing that I dont bite, they started torturing me everyday.

See what a state I have been reduced to! The sadhu replied, My poor foolish friend! I only asked you not to bite the people. Did I ask you not to hiss at them? You need to use anger in the right way in the right quantities. Anger is a tremendous energy if we know how to use it rightly.