The need to grow emotionally is a constant need. As a child, we have childish emotions of a very unstable nature. As we grow older, we are expected to also grow or mature emotionally. However, some never do. They age, but they never mature emotionally.

We grow emotionally as we slowly change our ways. We need to refocus our values in life. We must learn to live today as today really is and not try to fit yesterday into today. We cannot become a more mature person without letting go of some of the less perfect desires and attitudes. One change of attitude can change one hundred bad habits that we hold.

To the degree that we increase our insight, we must also give up the things that belong to the lack of insight. This then becomes a matter of the focus of awareness or consciousness. If we decide we wish to grow, then we must be willing to let go of that which we have outgrown.

Some say this means to abandon the things we most cherish. When we start to grow, our values change from within ourselves and then we start automatically to grow and mature emotionally. Because we are slaves to our emotions, to meet the object in life of becoming a master of our emotions is no easy task for us.

Our desires are directly tied to our level of consciousness, and so are our emotions. The attempt to grow and mature outwardly is a trying and difficult experience and usually we meet with defeat. However, when we go within and grow from the inside out, it becomes an automatic growth.

As our emotions become more mature, we gain a greater serenity within ourselves. Also, less effort is needed in order to maintain our own integrities and inner calm. We now find that we are no longer buffeted by every breeze that blows. Whatever may be the external order of the day, we maintain an inner peace.

At first, we feel we must exercise a supreme effort to maintain control, and in the process, we often become very discouraged and half sick, because now our sense of values tells us that we must maintain control over our emotions at all costs. And this can be costly.

As we continue to meditate, however, we gradually discover that it is becoming easier, and less and less effort is needed to maintain control. Our emotions may still nag at us, but they no longer control us, and that is a tremendous and welcome change. A positive attitude is now replacing the negative attitudes, and now, we feel so much better and life starts to go so much easier.

Suddenly we find that we are no longer prostrated by those seemingly impossible situations of life. Life seems to flow, and we no longer need to force anything. We are now slowly and surely maturing.

As our interior life matures, we find on the outer that there is now a quietude and calmness in our approach to the daily vicissitudes of life. We are now becoming a better person, and those around us rejoice and rightly so. Our negative psychic content is changed. No longer do we identify with every situation that confronts us. The slave is now becoming the master.

The war or conflict that goes on within ourselves sets our attitude and behavior pattern toward all others. Because all of nature is positive, all humans have a natural inborn resentment toward negativity and negative people. Many people collapse from the mental and emotional stress they place upon themselves. Transcendental Meditation counters this and brings forth our own true positive nature.

The reason for our present condition, for the most part, is due to the fact that we never coped with previous situations. We never faced the problems and now we are haunted by them. We have mostly been evaders. We have been dropouts from the discipline of life. As a result of this attitude, we have not developed strong nervous systems; rather we have allowed them to become weak.

If our nervous system has become too weak, we cannot face too much of anything in relation to the problems of life. As a result, we are not strong people in the present times of stress. Transcendental Meditation, however, will change all of this as we continue to meditate. To a strong person, an emerging or trying situation is a challenge to be met - to the weak, it is an impossibility. Life is a challenge, and if we cannot handle the present situations, we will be in very poor shape to meet and handle the future ones.

The thoughtful person is strong, patient and tolerant. The thoughtless person is weak and quick to condemn all except himself. When we start to meditate, we start to strengthen the nervous system, no matter what we are expressing when we start.

There is, and always has been, a basic spiritual mentality in us. It has long been latent, but, thanks to Transcendental Meditation, it is beginning to shine forth in full splendor, and we are now appreciated by one and all for the change that is incurring in us. We are appreciated for what we now express and the world appreciates the warmth and glow from the eternal light which now shines in us.

We have, at long last, embarked upon the path whereby we are becoming the master of our emotions and no longer the slave, constantly driven. We are now able to stand vertical in the sunlight of spirituality and no longer dwell in the horizontal shadows of despair.