never give up....

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was "sub-normal," and one of his teachers described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams." He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School.He did eventually learn to speak and read. Even to do a little math.

Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He was subsequently defeated in every election for public office until he became Prime Minister at the age of 62. He later wrote, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give up.''

As a young man, Abraham Lincoln went to war a captain and returned a private. Afterwards, he was a failure as a businessman. As a lawyer in Springfield, he was too impractical and temperamental to be a success. He turned to politics and was defeated in his first try for the legislature, again defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for congress, defeated in his application to be commissioner of the General Land Office, defeated in the senatorial election of 1854, defeated in his efforts for the vice-presidency in 1856, and defeated in the senatorial election of 1858. He later became the 16th President of the United States of America.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim on the grounds that it would only attract riffraff.

Henry Ford could not read nor write, failed and went broke five times in business before he succeeded.

As an inventor, Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn't fail a thousand times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive."

R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York City caught on.

Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15th out of 22 students in chemistry.

Van Gogh sold only one painting during his life. And this, to the sister of one of his friends, for 400 francs (approximately $50). This didn't stop him from completing over 800 paintings.

F. W. Woolworth was not allowed to wait on customers when he worked in a dry goods store because, his boss said, "he didn't have enough sense.

"When Bell telephone was struggling to get started, its owners offered all their rights to Western Union for $100,000. The offer was disdainfully rejected with the pronouncement, "What use could this company make of an electrical toy." And how many people have a telephone today?

Sigmund Freud was booed from the podium when he first presented his ideas to the scientific community of Europe. He returned to his office and kept on writing.

Rocket scientist Robert Goddard found his ideas bitterly rejected by his scientific peers on the grounds that rocket propulsion would not work in the rarefied atmosphere of outer space.

An expert said of Vince Lombardi: "He possesses minimal football knowledge and lacks motivation." Lombardi would later write, "It's not whether you get knocked down; it's whether you get back up."

After Carl Lewis won the gold medal for the long jump in the 1996 Olympic games, he was asked to what he attributed his longevity, having competed for almost 20 years. He said, "Remembering that you have both wins and losses along the way. I don't take either one too seriously."

Babe Ruth is famous for his past home run record, but for decades he also held the record for strikeouts. He hit 714 home runs and struck out 1,330 times in his career (about which he said, "Every strike out brings me closer to the next home run.").

Hank Aaron went 0 for 5 his first time at bat with the Milwaukee Braves.

Stan Smith was rejected as a ball boy for a Davis Cup tennis match because he was "too awkward and clumsy." He went on to clumsily win Wimbledon and the US Open...and eight Davis Cups.

Tom Landry, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh, and Jimmy Johnson accounted for 11 of the 19 Super Bowl victories from 1974 to 1993. They also share the distinction of having the worst records of first-season head coaches in NFL history - they didn't win a single game.

Johnny Unitas's first pass in the NFL was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Joe Montana's first pass was also intercepted. And while we're on quarterbacks, during his first season Troy Aikman threw twice as many interceptions (18) as touchdowns (9) . . . oh, and he didn't win a single game. You think there's a lesson here?

Charles Schultz had every cartoon he submitted rejected by his high school yearbook staff. Oh, and Walt Disney wouldn't hire him.

After Fred Astaire's first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, read, "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little." He kept that memo over the fire place in his Beverly Hills home.Astaire once observed that "when you're experimenting, you have to try so many things before you choose what you want, that you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion." And here is the reward for perseverance: "The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style."

After his first audition, Sidney Poitier was told by the casting director, "Why don't you stop wasting people's time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?" It was at that moment, recalls Poitier, that he decided to devote his life to acting.

When Lucille Ball began studying to be actress in 1927, she was told by the head instructor of the John Murray Anderson Drama School, "Try any other profession.

"The first time Jerry Seinfeld walked on-stage at a comedy club as a professional comic, he looked out at the audience, froze, and forgot the English language. He stumbled through "a minute-and a half" of material and was jeered offstage. He returned the following night and closed his set to wild applause.

After Harrison Ford's first performance as a hotel bellhop in the film Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, the studio vice-president called him in to his office. "Sit down kid," the studio head said, "I want to tell you a story. The first time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie he delivered a bag of groceries. We took one look at him and knew he was a movie star." Ford replied, "I thought you were spossed to think that he was a grocery delivery boy." The vice president dismissed Ford with "You ain't got it kid , you ain't got it ... now get out of here."

Woody Allen: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. Eighty percent of success is showing up."

Michael Caine's headmaster told him, "You will be a laborer all your life.Charlie Chaplin was initially rejected by Hollywood studio chiefs because his pantomime was considered "nonsense."

Decca Records turned down a recording contract with The Beatles with the evaluation, "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out." After Decca rejected the Beatles, Columbia records followed suit.

In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after one performance. He told Presley, "You ain't goin' nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck.

"Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him "hopeless as a composer." And, of course, you know that he wrote five of his greatest symphonies while completely deaf.

Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college. He was described as both "unable and unwilling to learn." No doubt a slow developer.

Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant by her family.

Emily Dickinson had only seven poems published in her lifetime.

18 publishers turned down Richard Bach's story about a "soaring eagle." Macmillan finally published Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. alone.

Jack London received six hundred rejection slips before he sold his first story.

21 publishers rejected Richard Hooker's humorous war novel, M*A*S*H. He had worked on it for seven years.

27 publishers rejected Dr. Seuss's first book, "To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street."

reality check

Ramesh is all sweet and caring when he talks to his wife, but it is only on the surface. If he looks inside , there is deep resentment and hatred for her nagging ways.

What really manifests in their shared space.....it is only his resentment and hatred. So it is with all our life...our inner dialogues at various moments are in stark contrast to what we project outside with various people.

In our various intearctions outside, we are in PERFORMANCE mode.We are not ourselves.We wear masks and become the people we would like to project ourselves as in the perception of our audiences.We show different sides to different people.

Can you see this burden we carry day in and day out?

It is in the gap between what we are and what we project ourselves to be that misery arises.

And our worlds become dull, lethargic expressions.

awakening 2 suffering

There are so many things we try to DO....we create activity and use knowledge systems to achieve our objectives.Technical knowledges and skills are important but they are not the only thing.Merely being technically competent cannot achieve success.

State is more important than skill for success.

And to achieve a manifesting state of success, we have to awaken to our fundamental suffering...This awakening leads to a series of processes finally culminating in awakening of action, distinctly different from activity.At such a moment , we are in flow....and life is full of joy, love and YES, success.....

We bypass this fundamental and struggle to achieve in the outside world.

and life remains an eternal struggle....joy, happiness and success eluding us everytime inspite of our constant endeavours.

if we are looking for something we acknowledge we have yet to experience, it calls for extraordinary responses from us..not mere knowledge and memory reactions from accumulated reservoirs of conditioning.

experiencing versus understanding

Understanding is an intellectual exercise.It does not help to alleviate pain from its roots.It merely manages the pain through an understanding of it. By doing it we escape experiencing the pain just as it is, without any defence, alibis, excuses, justifications, projections and so on.

Pain just IS.

And we have to JUST experience it, not explain it.It is just there all the time across a host of events and people.

And when we experience, teh miracle happens for "the nature of experience is bliss". It is independent of the content of experience.

healing

when you hurt one person, you hurt all of humanity, when you heal one person, you heal all of humanity.

- Shahrukh Khan, quoting from the Quran

All of us like to look at a huge problem and are more often than not overwhelmed.

It starts and ends within each of us , influencing our behaviour to each other.What emerges in the collective is a mere reflection of what is within us...are we oriented towards healing ourselves and others or correcting others and strengthening our positionalities.Our hurts and fears make us unconsciosuly violent.

If the soil around a tree is poisoned, no amount of polishing the fruit can rid it of its toxicity.Cosmetic changes are passe, let us address the need for changes deep within us.

words from the Master

Q) "What can we do as individuals in the face of inhuman violence, terrorism?

"We wake up to another day’s revenge, retribution and rancor. The violence and brutality that surrounds us is the result of the destructive effect of fragmentation – one individual against another, one group against another, religiously, socially, culturally and economically. We are brothers and sisters, children of the same mother, inheritors of the same collective destiny.

What we do to another, we do to ourselves.

Why then do we behave as though we are inhuman warring tribal factions? How can we hunt or kill another? Is not the experience of pain same for all? Do not all living beings dread fear? How then can we perpetrate violence and pain on another? Will we today take the time to teach our children that division in any name whether sacred or secular is a crime? Will we tell them that we are human beings and not labels that divide us? Will we in this moment of crisis mould their young minds to be citizens of the world and not narrow bigots?

Ideological differences are at the root of the violence that is robbing sanity and endangering survival. When we become concerned with our own individual survival, with the survival of our group, our belief, we are being divisive and threaten the actual survival of the whole.Let us have a deeper insight into truth. The violence and conflict we are witnessing is a dramatization of the unspeakable inner violence of humanity. We are not individuals, separate. What happens to us happens to all of humanity, all of life. Physically we might live isolated in our secluded homes, screening our domestic violence from the eyes of the world but psychologically we are inseparable from the whole of mankind. The poisonous fumes of our inner turbulence seep through the collective consciousness of humanity. The violence within us, between parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and at work is the very source of danger and destruction.

Let each one of us respond with a sense of immediacy.

Let all of us, the atheist and the God fearing, the peasant at the plough and the mother beside the cradle, the office goer and the laborer, let us all own responsibility for what is happening around us. What ‘can’ we do as individuals now? What ‘must’ we as individuals do now?How can each of us be content to see some heroes and professionals sacrificing their lives to protect the safety of others while we remain passive onlookers watching the drama of terror unfold right in front of our eyes?

The specialists, whether from the armed forces or the political systems can alleviate the pain of the moment. They can remove the symptom but the cause of the violence lies simmering within our consciousness. It lurks as conflict, suppressed anger, divisiveness and spite within every one of us. Until this issue is addressed, violence would continue to unfold in the world’s nations in one name or the other. The real solution therefore is to turn our attention inward, can we recognize the violence within and give way to peace. Even if 10 million among us who belong to a nation of 1 billion will get into peace, violence will subside. If 10 millions will move into a higher state of consciousness, a state of total inner non-violence, peace and wellbeing would be possible. Though the causes of violence would continue to exist, they will not translate into acts of violence. We are the triggers of violence or peace. We cannot return to business as usual without steering away from our own inner strife.The destiny of every human being known and unknown is tied up with us. In the crucible of terror that surrounds us, let us recast ourselves into a new generation of human beings. Let us move from the dark night of division towards the dawn of co-operation and Oneness. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

- Sri Bhagavan

(from www.breakthru.co.in)

out of the box...

I think it was Phyllis Mitchell who urged us to contemplate "What is our age if we did not know our age".......

A great eye and life process opener...

We try to fit in our lives into concepts we already know.Predictable and condfitioned reactions are the order of the day.

We hold on to known tenets because of the illusion of security it offers us.

It is the domain of the unknown that is beckoning us now.

Maybe it has a lot more on offer.

Knowledge is a product of conditioned processes.

Intelligence is our ability to tune in to universal processes, our sense of connectedness with the universe around and within us.

Being knowledgeable does not imply being intelligent.Infact knowledge can be an impediment to intelligence more often than not. The tribals exhibit much greater natural intelligence than knowledgeable people.

Let not knowledge limit us..let us break free into domains of intelligence...Life demands a response in intelligence, not in knowledge.

decision making

We normally take decisions when they are forced on us. Our disturbances influence our decisions - they are reactive in nature. It has been traditionally advised to let the disturbamce subside which would enable a solution to emerge in calm and tranquil conditions.

There will always be things which demand immediate attention in life.

However, if we closely observe, our whole life is architectured by the pain within us. The edifice of our achievements is anchored in our traumas. When we become aware of this, the edifices start crumbling , this is a transient phase leading on to a celebration of creation in joy and love. The transient phase could be frightening - as illusionary concepts come crashing down.Long held security paradigms get shaken - this is an opportunity for the shift of security into more certain domains - the core aspects of existence, rather than in shifting ideals and concepts.

The next few years present this opportunity to man as fundamental existential paradigms undergo a sea change in their manifests.the rate of change will be very high and demands the highest integrity from each of us.

While bandaging the symptoms, please go deeper - into roots of issues; it is a back to basics time for all humanity as far as inner world aspects go.

correcting vs healing

at a time when sparks are flying and blame games rampant, it is a time to see whether we are looking to merely correct or looking to heal.Correcting emerges from a positionality of the mind and is violent in its expression, the key objective being to prove. "I am right and you are wrong" more often than not.

Healing on the other hand is like a balm, it rectifies but in compassion.The underlying sense of connectedness is not lost...and there is a personal sense of stake in holistic improvisation of situations.

Correcting more often than not adds fuel to the fire, provoking it into inflammation - healing is assertive yet compassionate.

dangers...

If we look deep within, we are currently nothing but hurts, fears, anger and such other which surface at the drop of the hat.The triggers maybe different but our underlying dissatisfaction, discontent and sense of melancholy are residually intrinsic. With this content within us, we are a source of individual and collective danger for those around us.

We share with the world what we have, we cannot share anything else. As unhappy people, we share unhappiness. each of us is harbouring a reservoir of pain within ' we call its' manifests through different names. It is our trauma and pain which architecturing our lives and creating our universes.

This pain has been elaborately managed over ages. It is slowly but surely acquiring unmanageable proportions in what I perceive to be an aspect of grace. It is when something becomes unmanageable that we are forced to look within.

Management is stress, it is not a free life....Relief from various stresses is teh need of the hour , not mere management of it. Management is bandaging, handling...

It is cosmetic and palliative...

The pain within us has to express itself - the platforms of expression may differ; if today it is the terror attack, tomorrow it maybe a epidemic outbreak...

Each of us has to address the pain within...and resolve it, not merely manage it..

this is the way forward for humanity.....

thought is the creator

terrorism is riding on the back of misguided religious and spiritual interpretation and wreaking havoc..Please let us also not fall into the trap..

The Gita defines ACTIOn as against mind created conditioned activity..we cannot selectively use it indiscriminately..we need action and not activity and action emerges in visions beyond realms of the mind..instead of us using the mind, the conditioned mind is today using us wherever we may be..

To me, this is the root of all terror...it begins in the mind..we should guard ourselves against the vicious trap we can fall into..becoming the very entities we so much resent..the laws of karma stipulate that we become what we hate or what we fear unconsciously.

Yes , we need to ACT, but action is very different from activity in spiritual realms.

Terrorism is a product of deep rooted positionality processes of the mind..if we carefully observe history, the contents of the mind have never changed..the mahabharat, the ramayan,the bible , the Quran and many other have episodes of brothers fighting each other, terrorizing situations for the masses, abuse of humanity and other aspects time and again...The universe is a multi-media classroom and is repeatedly trying to show us our erroneous ways..we always tackle symptoms and never go to the roots..without intending to create fear, I feel people have an opportunity to rise to the challenges within themselves which are manifesting outside.The universe is a tough, yet compassionate teacher and we can expect the lessons to continue until we learn and grow as humans...

needless to add, my shares are not in a argumentative or confontationalist mode but my life experiences in disaster management and human crises at individual and collective levels have thought me unforgettable lessons..

God bless each of you..take care...

redefining terror

I believe each of us in india and maybe elsewhere today has a challenge - to rise above reactive pettiness or to transcend into relams of real healing and peace creation.

India is a concept , an idea that represents amongst the highest ideals of co-existence and acceptance. I am proud of being born into this idea as conceived by the visionaries of yore. The greater the vision , the greater the challenges in achieving it.But then, challenges should not deter us, weaken us. States of dis-ease require medication, treatment, surgeries and healing. Hurts within humans and teh pain within are the cause of strife outside. Each of us who are able to transcend that hurt within are helping win the war on humanity's collective suffering.

I do not believe for a moment that India has ever been weak.Acceptance demands understanding beyond superficial symptoms asnd India as a collective has demonstrated this.

There are dips and pauses as in any process but the trend in wholly consonant with the highest spiritual ideals as espoused in various wisdom of the world.

I identify with this heritage and see myself as a global citizen. If you take the history of India, we have never been an aggressor. We have embraced even our attackers and inetgerated them into our culture.We have lost battles but won wars.

This can be either of two things - we are too weak or we are mature in our understanding. I feel aligned with the latter.I beleive India and Indians have a destiny to fulfil and the sacrifices we are called on to make in the realization of this destiny would naturally be greater. I see India playing a global role today, something which would evolve into a leadership position it has to take on.The birth pangs are natural.

I connect to my higher vision and see myself as a critical player in its actualization.

While battles are going on, I am relating to the fundamental war within every human - the war on inner strife and conflict..It is easy to behave as every one else and compromise our standards. Genius and Excellence have always come at a price and lessons learnt the hard way.

I know the war will be won.....The terror seeds within each of us would be destroyed and the seeds of genuine peace, not managed peace created..silencing anyone does not transform them - if at all it strengthens them; a rubber ball bounces higher each time it is hit on the ground.Symptomatic repressions are not the need of the hour , sustainable solutions are at the very root.....

The content of the mind has never changed . The Mahabharat and the Bible and the Quran all indicate strife and terror and rift.Its a cosmic opportunity today in realms of grace to declutch ourselves from the tyranny of the mind; management processes are rendered impotent.

This is the only solution for humanity..........and it starts and ends within each of us...We are either weapons of breakthrough or breakdown...we are at cosmic crossroads....

platitudes and performance...

I have been following various debates on television as also the thread of thoughts on various blogs.I have had the occasion to serve as the civilian area commander representing the NGO space during the communal riots as also during the blasts. I was mainly working in the Dharavi Behrampada area.I have also been on the spot during various natural disasters at various locations across india.

i beg to differ from the tirade against politicians; i believe we as citizens cannot escape from our apathy and indifference to events beyond our individual peripheries.If we do not help douse the fire at our neighbours, our house will soon catch fire.For me, politicians are not a black box, they are an intrinsic part of a corrupt and non-integral society. We are getting the politicians and leaders we deserve, they are mere reflections and emergences from ourselves.

I have seen corporate leaders and so called intelligentsia from really close quarters and they are no different.While in the thick of operations at Dharavi, I have been pulled out for a cocktail launch of an NGO formed by some prominent citizens which thankfully does not exist today.I have seen the political establishment used by businessmen for narrow objectives of protecting their own establishments. Their presence at various citizen's chapters was just to expand their networks for fulfilment of personal agendas.Like our politicians these people never exposed themselves to line of fire - they came in hordes for photo-ops later.More efforts of the volunteers on the field went towards provision of safe water for our distinguished visitors.

Who are we fooling? is this rhetoric any different from those of our politicians? I hold no brief for the politicians but would like to re-iterate that they are mere scape goats for an epidemic situation in society.Individually and collectively, we have become immune and indifferent.For me, we are really no different from the militant we are fighting.Under a different set of circumstances he may have been an efficient general manager of the very hotel he chose to destroy.

Please spare us the "holier than thou" platitudes.Even today, we are incapable of feeling for those who perished - it is hogwash; we are only reacting from the fear that has surfaced through events in our doorsteps.For me, we are no different- each time i see a prominent adworld chief being touted as a citizen's representative, I feel like puking for i have had the occasion to see him at extremely close quarters. for me, he is a terrorist in mind- he would not carry a gun in his hands but he spouts venom with his every action and the elaborate masks he wears.Rather than derive our energies from our blame games, let us awaken to the death within each of us where we are indifferent to the needs of our immediate neighbour while we cry hoarse about remote events.

We live in a world of plastic smiles and hollow gestures. We have become incapable of feeling, living in a projection of who we would like to be, far removed from who we are deep down.And the further tragedy is, we are unconscious of it.

We can wake up people who are asleep but what do we do with people who are pretending to be asleep and doing a damn good good job of their performance, cloaking it in platitudes. We are escaping our responsibility and responsibility is not about merely casting a ballot.We have taken so much from this city and this country - how many of us pay heed to feeling gratitude for the same and returning something to it.We abuse its facilities for our own benefit in the same way we use our parents and peers.

Let us look beyond ourselves and strive to be just human.

In the words of a President of a country where a lot of our peers are chosing to spend their lives after acquiring their basic skills here, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country...." Whether we be politicians, business men, media personnel or any other, we can never really give back to our country what it has provided and given us. We are no different from those we blame..They are mirror images of us...let us collectively rise to the challenge..

are we alive?

The recent events in mumbai are media events. And "media" and "performance" are so deeply linked.

Where is all our naturalness gone? Our "unconscious" controls us making us reactive and mechanized beings. We are zombies, robots in action, with our behaviours following predictable patterns. We are in essence no different from the militants. The violence and the hurts within us , if we can only be aware of it, is the venom that is manifesting in the world outside. Different people relate to different concepts and acquire their positionalities. And each believes they are right. For God's sake, let us separate facts from concepts.

It is an unfair and unequal world. Privileges are so varied. Consequently, events such as what has happened have to occur according to various laws of karma and principles of existence.Each one of us is a part creator to it through our lack of integrity and our basic sense of disconnect with our identities just as humans.We are constant "performers" , projecting ourselves far removed from what we actually are and our masks are the burdens we carry day in and day out.

If humans can just "BE" , our outer worlds can be the paradise we wish for deep down.

Yes, it is time for us to awaken within, reach out to the natural fountainheads of healing within and start to live, not merely exist.

The choice to create our universes is with each of us, not in symptomatic external changes.

The crisis of today is an opportunity for us to revisit ourselves and trigger the life force within.

Come let us move from conditioned , suffocative death to a vibrant life....

heaven of freedom....

Please check out this link....

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=M5OVMrad5iQ

fear of death

We cannot really fear death because we do not know what death is. What we are afraid of is losing the known. When we see a white strand on our head or a wrinkle on our face, deep down we are afraid of losing our power of attraction over others.

similarly in every situation.we are afraid of letting go of teh known, concepts we are comfortable with..however, concepts are just that - concepts...

Our ability to deal with and flow through changing circumestances, anshoring ourselves in the unchangeable is what elimates vulnerability in our lives.Life is a process of constant change.

-inspirations from Sri Bhagavan

The Golden Age

The dawn of this new civilization, which we may call the Golden Age, is the single most explosive fact of our life times. We have a destiny to create - A state of consciousness that is oneness with all that is.

- Sri Bhagavan

We celebrate today as Gratitude Day for all the learning and blessing that has crossed our lives.When I look back, the breakthroughs in the movement from perception to fact has been awesome.

Thank You Amma Bhagavan, thank you ,all of creation for this journey in exploration and discovery in realms of consciousness....

one move is all it takes!!!!!!!

A 10-year-old boy decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident. The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master.

The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training, the master had taught him only one move.

"Sensei," (teacher in Japanese) the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?"

"This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you'll ever need to know," the sensei replied. Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training. Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament.Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals. This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a time-out.He was about to stop the match when the sensei intervened. "No," the sensei insisted, "Let him continue." Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.On the way home, the boy and sensei reviewed every move in each and every match.

Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind. "Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?"

"You won for two reasons," the sensei answered. "First, you've almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. And second, the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm."

The boy's biggest weakness had become his biggest strength.Sometimes we feel that we have certain weaknesses and we blame God, the circumstances or ourselves for it but we never know that our weaknesses can become our strengths one day. Each of us is special and important, so never think you have any weakness, never think of pride or pain, just live your life to its fullest and extract the best out of it!

self - an illusion

Deep down, everyone knows he is no one and nothing - he is only pretending to be someone and something.

-Sri Bhagavan

The wave in the ocean thinks of itself as separate - it is only an illusion.

oneness

when we experience the oneness of all suffering across events, we are on the way to experience oneness with the world around us. All suffering is ONE within us - we see it as different across events; one day it is relationships, the other day it is money, yet another day it is physical pain - it is the same underlying pain..we move cosmetically across it, but the basic pain is a constant.

It is this basic pain we have to get liberated from....not from its symptomatic manifests...

XChange

In a  recent talk, Sammadarshini, the Director of The Oneness University said, "We have become adept at exchanging people".

What a hitting statement; when things don't suit us, we move away from situations and people only to find the same patterns repeating elsewhere. It is like changing television sets because we cannot handle a movie. While the television sets are being changed, the DVD player is the same.

Our outer worlds are created by our inner states. Rather than  addressing the issue there, we keep changing our outer situations - we change projects, spouses, jobs etc while the underlying pattern continues with the same manifests.

Cosmetic changes - the great illuion of Xchange.

performance/validation

The "self" needs validation for its sustenance. Consequently, all our relationships , be it professional or personal operate from the "need to feel needed" platform. It energizes us and secures our existence.
If the boss says he cannot live without you @ work, you are thrilled for his dependency creates a sense of security for you. Similarly, in personal relationships, we enhance the other's need for us through our actions for our own security. We want to be brighter, smarter, sexier,richer etc so that the other depends on us more and more. Every moment, our striving is to increase the dependency quotient of the other on us. And this is miserable, for never is such a moment achieved. It is an eternal struggle between the what is and the what should be, a product of our imagination.
Relationship is an "as is where is" and an "as is how is" phenomenon.It is experiencing and accepting the other just as s/he is, not as we would like to see them.It emerges in our acceptance of ourselves the way we are, unique and validated creations.
We do not need to validate our existence, to re-inforce our "selves". We are not on a stage where our performance is being watched, though we put ourselves in such a situation.The rose is fragrant, it does not try to be.
Caterpillars transform into butterflies in such moments of awarenes and acceptance. Great human artforms are the result.

need of the hour

Individual transformation is world transformation.

All of us think of changing the world around us. Sri Bhagavan reminds us that change , if any, has to only occur within ourselves.

In a beautiful event at the BSE convention hall in Mumbai, yesterday, various people shared their awakening through the Oneness process.

Yes, we are on the threshold of unprecedented changes , bringing in its wake both challenges and opportunities.

Man cannot stagnate. He evolves or decays.

Our ability and capacity to cope with change would determine the journey of the next few years. The rate of change is huge.

Anchoring in centeredness is the need of the hour.

pic courtesy: mastione.com

carry over

A Sadhak once asked his teacher, "Master, Why can't I remain peaceful, in spite of doing so many spiritual sadhanas. Why can't I be devoid of suffering in spite of reading so many spiritual books and listening to religious discourses? Is enlightenment possible for such as I?"

'To be liberated from suffering you must first understand what suffering is'. Sri Bhagavan says, "Suffering is nothing but the continuous thought processing that happens in the mind over an event or incident of the past. Suffering is nothing but the 'carry over' of the past events of our life.

There are two kinds of people who have walked on these sands, enlightened and unenlightened. Enlightened ones are those who are 'ordinary' and unenlightened are those who are 'extraordinary' (extra suffering). An enlightened one, does not suffer because he is constantly living in the present, experiencing every bit of what life is offering him. But for those who are unenlightened, life itself is reduced to nothing but suffering.

To be aware is to be enlightened. The whole purpose of life itself is to live life moment to moment. If one observes the thought process in oneself, then it can easily be discovered that the 'CARRY OVER' is the suffering. For instance, there were two friends who were very close right from their childhood. Out of sheer misunderstanding, they landed in a bitter quarrel and they broke up. The fight by itself is nothing but mere 'calling names'. But it doesn't end there, the event continues to plague the mind, be it at kitchen, office, watching TV or even at a party! It follows… It continues. The suffering springs only when our mind indulges in unnecessary thoughts about living in past or future, without living in the present. This constant commentary or dialogue in the mind is the cause for all suffering, where even after an event has ended, it is continued within where we still talk to the other person, who has hurt us.

An enlightened person experiences everything, which makes his life rich, eternal and ever fresh, but for an unenlightened, life is mechanical and repetitive, hence boring. One who is enlightened enjoys the ice cream whereas one who is unenlightened does not enjoy the ice cream because he would be busy with the question – who made the ice cream? Which factory? Which cow's milk? Which grass did the cow ate? One who is living will never question the purpose of life. Why would he! He is only experiencing.

Now the question is how to end this unnecessary thought process. Any effort in this direction is a futile endeavour, because any effort to silence the mind would only create more noise - "THOUGHT CANNOT END THOUGHT".

Buddha was Buddha not because he read books. Venkataramana didn't become Ramana Maharishi because he attended religious discourses. Enlightenment is something that is beyond the purview of the mind. It is not transformation within the mind; Enlightenment is a state where you transcend the mind and its limitations. 

Such a happening is a benediction.

Fact is different from Perception.....

'Hello?' 'Hi honey. This is Daddy. Is Mommy near the phone?'

'No Daddy. She's upstairs in the bedroom with UnclePaul.'

After a brief pause, Daddy says, 'But honey, you haven't got an Uncle Paul.'

'Oh yes I do, and he's upstairs in the room with Mommy, right now.' Brief Pause. 'Uh, okay then, this is what I want you to do. Put the phone down on the table, run upstairs andknock on the bedroom door and shout to Mommy that Daddy's car just pulled intothe driveway.'

'Okay Daddy, just a minute.' A few minutes later the little girl comes back to the phone.

'I did it Daddy.' 'And what happened honey?'

'Well, Mommy got all scared, jumped out of bed with noclothes on and ran around screaming. Then she tripped over the rug, hit her head on thedresser and now she isn't moving at all!'

'Oh my God!!! What about your Uncle Paul?'

'He jumped out of the bed with no clothes on, too. He was all scared and he jumped out of the back window and into the swimming pool. But I guess he didn't know that you took out the waterlast week to clean it. He hit the bottom of the pool and I think he's dead.'

***Long Pause*** ***Longer Pause*** ***Even Longer Pause***

Then Daddy says, 'Swimming pool? Is this 486-5731?'

SORRY, WRONG NUMBER.............................................

lets wake up to real crises

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Barcelona
Losses are great, and continuous, says the report
The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.
It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress.
Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.
Capital losses
Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets.
"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News.
Teeb will... show the risks we run by not valuing [nature] adequately."
Andrew MitchellGlobal Canopy Programme
"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year."
The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU presidency, with the European Commission providing funding.
The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems.
Stern message
Key to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.
So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available.
Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost.
The Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on the forest, especially in tropical regions.
The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through losing a natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.
Just as the Stern Review brought the economics of climate change into the political arena and helped politicians see the consequences of their policy choices, many in the conservation community believe the Teeb review will lay open the economic consequences of halting or not halting the slide in biodiversity.
"The numbers in the Stern Review enabled politicians to wake up to reality," said Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Programme, an organisation concerned with directing financial resources into forest preservation.
"Teeb will do the same for the value of nature, and show the risks we run by not valuing it adequately."
A number of nations, businesses and global organisations are beginning to direct funds into forest conservation, and there are signs of a trade in natural ecosystems developing, analogous to the carbon trade, although it is clearly very early days.
Some have ethical concerns over the valuing of nature purely in terms of the services it provides humanity; but the counter-argument is that decades of trying to halt biodiversity decline by arguing for the intrinsic worth of nature have not worked, so something different must be tried.
Whether Mr Sukhdev's arguments will find political traction in an era of financial constraint is an open question, even though many of the governments that would presumably be called on to fund forest protection are the ones directly or indirectly paying for the review.
But, he said, governments and businesses are getting the point.
"Times have changed. Almost three years ago, even two years ago, their eyes would glaze over.
"Today, when I say this, they listen. In fact I get questions asked - so how do you calculate this, how can we monetize it, what can we do about it, why don't you speak with so and so politician or such and such business."
The aim is to complete the Teeb review by the middle of 2010, the date by which governments are committed under the Convention of Biological Diversity to have begun slowing the rate of biodiversity loss.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

perfection vs wholeness

The following story, attributed as a true one narrated by Rabbi Rabbi Paysach Krohn, illustrates the power of human concern--even in the face of intense competition.
In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning-disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire School career, while others can be main-streamed into conventional Jewish schools.
At a Chush fund-raising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended.
After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, "Where is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is God's perfection?"
The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father's anguish and stilled by the piercing query.
"I believe," the father answered, "that when God brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that He seeks is in the way people react to this child."
He then told the following story about his son Shaya: One afternoon Shaya and his father walked past a park where some boys Shaya knew were playing baseball. Shaya asked, "Do you think they will let me play?" Shaya's father knew that his son was not at all athletic and that most boys would not want him on their team. But Shaya's father understood that if his son was chosen to play it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging.
Shaya's father approached one of the boys in the field and asked if Shaya could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said. "We are losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can beon our team and we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning." Shaya's father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly. Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play short centre field.
In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya's team scored again and now with two outs and the bases loaded with the potential winning run on base, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would the team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game?
Surprisingly, Shaya was given the bat. Everyone knew that it was all but impossible because Shaya didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it. However, as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shaya should at least be able to make contact.
The first pitch came in and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of Shaya's teammates came up to Shaya and together they held the bat andfaced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shaya.
As the pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung the bat and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shaya would have been out and that would have ended the game. Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far beyond reach of the first baseman.
Everyone started yelling, "Shaya, run to first. Run to first!" Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the baseline wide-eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out Shaya, who was still running. But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head. Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second."
Shaya ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriouslycircled the bases towards home. As Shaya reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in the direction of third base and shouted, "Run to third."
As Shaya rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, "Shaya run home!" Shaya ran home, stepped on home plate and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit a "grand slam" and won the game for his team.
"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."

I have always felt "perfection" is only a concept - a projected ideal; every speck of creation is total, complete and a whole by itself.

inspirations from Sri Bhagavan

The saying read, "Life is eternal."
"Are problems any different?" he mumbled to himself. He was bamboozled. He felt as if all problems in the world had connived to assault him at the same time. He was thrown out of his job when his finances were drained to its last drop, his wife blamed him for everything that went wrong under the sun, his children seemed hell bent on making him feel terrible for having begotten them, his relatives and friends loped from his sight, lest he may burden them with his quandary, mentally or materially; and added to all this was his own body, which chose to revolt back at him, at this anomalous hour.
There once lived a poor farmer in a village. His elder brother was a rich merchant and his younger brother was an equally rich landlord. His everyday routine included tilling new soil, watering the fields, grazing his owner's cattle and cursing God, life and himself.
One day his mind switched into a prayerful mode. With deep pain he spoke to God, "I have never enjoyed anything in life as my brothers did. I haven't experienced the love of my mother as my brothers did. I don't have a roof over my head, which I can call my own, as my brothers do. I don't have the money, name and fame that my brothers enjoy. Why are you so biased?"
His prayers were heard and God spoke from heaven to all the villagers. "I am going to emancipate all of you. Till all your problems into a bundle and bring it to the village temple. There you can exchange your bundle for any other bundle of your choice. Henceforth your life would change according to the bundle you choose."The jubilant farmer packed all his problems into a bundle and marched out of his house with dreams of a colourful future. He freezed in disbelief as he stepped out. His elder brother was carrying a bundle five times the size of his own bundle. Following him was his younger brother who had employed a servant to carry two of his extra bundles not able to carry them himself. Thus swaggered the whole village, each one looking at the other in disbelief. When everyone had gathered at the temple the most unexpected thing happened. No one came forward to exchange their bundle with anyone else, however big their bundle was.Well, why would a rich merchant want to exchange his bundle with a poor cobbler, though the cobbler's bundle was much smaller? With the problems would leave his hard earned comforts and possessions. It was a tuffle between attachment and liberation. Each bundle was a package, and had desirable and undesirable state of affairs. No one could find a bundle that best matched his or her fantasy. Everyone returned home in contemplative silence and joyful acceptance. The farmer returned home merrily, never to lament again."

There are two ways to end a problem." says Sri Bhagavan. "It could either be solved or dissolved."The first method is to find a solution for the problem in the external world. If you have a big nose and a dark skin, of which you are embarrassed and cursing your stars for, the external solution would be to shell out money and set it right by doing a plastic surgery. There is also a straight forward and painless alternative that comes free of cost, simply to accept it! The problem remains externally but ends internally. The problem ceases to be a problem.Peace and happiness are the two things that one aims to achieve by solving a problem. Sadly, man is stuck with the idea that an end to his problem is possible only when it ends externally, least aware that an external solution is not the only criterion for a peaceful and happy living. A solution may put an end to the problem, but it may not bring permanent joy, as life is ready to bowl another problem. It is like a man trying to battle the waves of the ocean. No sooner than one subsides, the other is ready to swoop any minute. Anticipating a 'one-day-I-will-be-problem-free' thing is ignorance. If one cannot be happy in the 'now and here', one can never be happy anywhere. Happiness is an internal state. It does not depend on external situations. This is the reality of an enlightened person.It was this state of Enlightenment that kept Ramana Maharshi and Ramakrishna Parmahamsa equanimous inspite of their cancer. It was this state that kept the Buddha stress free in spite of facing lot of troubles from the king and his monastery. It was this state that made Christ say "Lord! Forgive them for they know not what they do" even he was tortured.
Enlightenment could make one either into a saint or a sage. It is a state where one lives and enjoys life completely without the burden of thought. For an enlightened person, his very existence is joy, unlike an unenlightened person who searches for umpteen reasons to be happy.
But this state cannot be attained by spiritual practices, penance or severe austerities. When you do get enlightened it is only through Divine grace.
Even for the Buddha, Mahavira and other enlightened masters, it was only a benediction.

osho speak

"In a single moment, in one stroke, you can become enlightened. It is not a gradual process, because enlightenment is not something that you have to invent. It is something that you have to discover. It is already there. It is not something that you have to manufacture. If you have to manufacture it, of course, it will take time; but it is already there. Close your eyes and see it there. Be silent and have a taste of it. Your very nature is what I call enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something alien, outside you. It is not somewhere else in time and space. It is you, your very core."
- Osho

seeing ...the key to declutching...

seeing is not analyzing, it is not labelling, it is not judging...it is just seeing things as they are, not justifying, defending,projecting, wishing, praying ......................

u see a tree..normally you label immediately and judge...labelling and judging are aspects of the mind...

seeing is experiencing things as they are...just being - the experiencer is an intrinsic part of the experience...

creation....

our thoughts create our worlds, our universes. Even when we seemingly relate to the other, it is all happening within us. When we relate to another person , we create an image of the other person within ourselves and develop our relationship with that image. When this image gets shattered in real time, the relationship breaks. Actually, the relationship was never there, it was a concept, an idea we had projected and started relating to.

While thought is the creator, it woudl be intersting to see where this thought comes from. We do not create thought. It seems to come from a huge reservoir, a bank from somewhere; seems to have always existed, we merely tune in to it.

Being aware of the arrival of any thought even as it arrives is the key. It gives us a few extra seconds which is all the difference between reacting and responding.It transports us from being a mechanized dead automaton to an aware alive being.

It would mean we are declutched from the control of the unconscious...and as we progress, it would enable us to manifest the life we would like to create for ourselves, not from the recesses of our conditionings.

words of a genius...

I read this on a friend's blog and decided it was too valuable..had to be stolen without her losing out!!!!!!!!!!!!!. It still is on her blog.


After a certain point, money is meaningless.
It ceases to be the goal.
The game is what counts.
Find a priest who understands English and doesn't look like Rasputin.
I have no friends and no enemies - only competitors.
If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
The more you own, the more you know you don't own.
The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
To succeed in business it is necessary to make others see things as you see them.
We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest.
We must learn to sail in high winds.
- Aristotle Onassis

suffering is in the perception, not in the fact....

It was my mom's birthday yeterday. since it was coincidentally a Saturday, I invited all my uncles and aunts to join us for a simple home chill out session. I felt it would give mom great joy.

Mom turned 66 yesterday. In the morning, I found here lacklustre. On prodding , I found the cause for her misery. We do not normally celebrate birthdays, except for key milestones. So , she was uncertain on my motive. She asked me whether I felt she may not be around next year and hence the celebration.....

Can you see suffering emerging from perception of a fact....

Anyways, we had a great family celebration at the end of it all....

process desirables (maybe needs) for enlightenment.....

The first is Inner Integrity. You have to be completely honest about yourself to yourself. It does not matter who you are or what you are. What is important is … can you confront yourself? Can you face yourself? Can you be honest? Can you be authentic with yourself?Since most people have never been honest with themselves this is easily said than done. You are frightened of yourselves. You don’t want to see this about yourselves. You would like to put all the internal ugliness under the carpet. That is not really going to help you.The second thing you need to understand is that you have come down here to play your whole life as a game. In cricket when Indians and Pakistanis confront each other, it is more like war. They play as though their life depends on it. But then they also know it is a game. Similarly you have to live life seriously. Life has to be taken seriously, but you have to live it intensely, but you should know it is a game. You can’t be too frivolous, you can’t be irresponsible, can’t be careless. You have to be serious; at the same time know it is a game. If you could develop this perception, it would be of immense benefit in the process of Enlightenment.So when you do become enlightened you will see how beautiful, how perfect this world is, you will really start playing it like a game. You will start living for the first time. As of now, you do not live. Your sail on, birthday after birthday comes and finally it is all over. You have hardly enjoyed anything. This is what most human life is. You should truly understand your purpose as to why you have come down here.You have been sent here to have a good time! But you have made a mess of the whole thing. Once you are enlightened no matter what your situation in life, you will have a good time. That’s what life is all about. That’s why we use the word ‘LEELA’ – just to play. When I look at you I see the bag each one of you is carrying. your burned and pain keeps hitting me all the time.So I hope that a few days later you will be rid of your baggage and you would all be singing and dancing and go out into the world to play your games. With this perception you could go into your meditation. DON’T TRY TO MEDIATE. Just see, all that you have got to see here is, “To see, to realize you cannot mediate!” YOU DO THAT, I WILL DO THE REST!If you try to mediate, if you think you can mediate, I cannot help you. But, if you were to realize that you cannot mediate…then, meditation would happen!

- Sri Bhagavan

Sri Bhagavan speaketh...

Q: Bhagavan, what is the purpose of life and why have we come away from the light if we were once part of it?

Bhagavan: The purpose of life is to live. There cannot be any other purpose. But what it is to live, you have no idea about it. Enlightenment is to help you to live. You are not living now. You think you are alive. Actually I and the Dasas here, we can actually see that you are dead. We are only dealing with dead people. Only when you become enlightened you will really start living. You do not know how to live, that is the purpose of life. Now, why do we come away from the light? Some of you who have gone through the higher processes would be knowing, there are stages when you will feel that you alone exist. You alone exist. It is not such a nice thing. So how would God or the light continue to be like that? It has to bring about this creation, so that some kind of separation then we can start playing. So, you have basically come down to play and to enjoy. But nobody seems to be playing. Everybody has become serious. That is the unfortunate thing. Think of it. Billions of years of creation, complex processes, all that has happened, and what do you with your life, you sit in the office, put ink on paper and you are doing something. What is that? You are born and very soon you land up in school, you have to climb so many things, your homework, then quickly fall in love, quickly get married and then have children and take them to school, stand in a bus stop with tiffin carriers packed with the mid day meal. You rush through that and you come back home tired and you are not even able speak to your wife. What is all this? Your life is just terrible. The marvel is you continue to live and you will say you are enjoying life. That is the big miracle. I am seeing the whole world, it is full of miracles. And this is the miracle that you are performing. You get attached to property. To me do you know it is a miracle? How can somebody be attached to something, it is a miracle. Because that is empty, you are empty and you feel that you are so solid and you are so attached to it. It is indeed that you are performing your own miracles. So, life goes on, it is a mediocre life, and you have achieved a little bit of name and fame, and you are very satisfied with that, or you want more name and fame, but what is all this about really? It is all dead. A dead man, all these things are dead. There is no life in them. You don’t live at all. Unfortunately you do not know what it is to live. And you think this is life and it goes on. I am not saying you should not do these things. You can do these things but still you can live. You can still go to office, you can still do all those things, you can still carry your tiffin carrier, run behind buses but it is a terrible society, but still you can live. But if you cannot live what is the point? So, my pain is that you are not living. That is why this whole work, to help you to live. To help you to really know what you are here for. You are here to have a good time, to play. Life is a game. It is a beautiful game and you must learn how to play, and you must play. People enjoy playing a game knows? But then all of you have become dead serious, you are serious about everything. If something goes wrong, immediately you collapse. But if it were a game would you collapse? You wouldn’t. So the only way to make you live is to make you enlightened. There is no other go. Whatever form of enlightenment does not matter, but you must become enlightened. I don’t want to go more into it because it gives me pain when I focus too much on that.

Kabir Kahe....

"Where do you search me?

I am with you

Not in pilgrimage, nor in icons

Neither in solitudes

Not in temples, nor in mosques

Neither in Kaba nor in Kailash

I am with you o man

I am with you

Not in prayers, nor in meditation

Neither in fasting

Not in yogic postures

Neither in renunciation

Neither in the vital force nor in the body

Not even in the ethereal space

Neither in the womb of Nature

Not in the breath of the breath

Seek earnestly and discover

In but a moment of search

Says Kabir, Listen with careWhere your faith is, I am there."

not anywhere, yet everywhere............

facts recognition

The ability to see things as they are beyond limiting aspects of our acquired perceptions is an important part of the liberation process.

If we are able to see everything in life as a concept, an idea , it is easy to lose our limiting positionality on it. Positionality is the source of our major miseries in life.It paralyzes and inhibits us deeply. It makes us conditional in our behaviour to others and bruises relationships.

take the eg of language. Can you first visualize man creating sounds and then developing meaningful associations around it. This gradually led to the creation of various formats , each of which became a "language" of communication.Each is a beautiful creation , but can easily become over-bearing and burdensome, if one fails to see it as a concept.

Actually, "zero" is a concept on which our entire science, technology and what have you is pivoted. The first two postulates in mathematics are never ever challenged which define "zero". It is an assumption taken for granted.

Organic chemistry emerged in Kekule's dream of inter-twined serpents.A huge concept got created around it.

It is so fascinating and awesome if we look at this.

The same holds true for so many of things which control our everyday lives, our traditions, our perceptions etc.Like, we automatically ascribe sacredness and morality to the institution of marriage. How many ghastly abuses find shelter under this label?

Pause to reflect and see how many such concepts have a gripping and suffocating control over you? Inner freedom is the result of the "seeing" process and it leads us away from suffocation and an illusory movement across concepts to realms of genuine freedom.

violence within.....

yet another serial blasts episode in delhi....kind of a routine now...
when will man see the violence within him which collectively causes the events outside?
each of us is a potential human bomb with the kind of hurts and anger we carry within us and this is where a solution has to emerge, not through peace committees and mind exercises....

Om Poornamadha....

Every moment is whole by itself and moments strung together constitute life. Every moment in itself is eternal. Life is about living each moment fully in awareness.

inner dialogues....

every moment in our lives , two tracks are in operation - what we show ourselves to be externally and what is our real situation within...even teh words we speak externally are divorced from our thought patterns within.
and it is the inner world thought patterns that manifest outside.
A person i know has a serious relationship problem with his sister.He keeps telling me that he speaks so well to his sister but she never responds. I keep telling him to look within, see what his thoughts are even as he speaks sugary sweet to his sister.
He admits his feelings for her are venomous within.
And this is what his sister responds to, the venom within...
can you see this happen every moment of our life....the asynchronous syndrome between our inner and outer worlds...the fundamental conflcit which needs to be addressed by awareness...

from my inbox

The Extraordinary Gift of Inner Spaciousness
Written by Jafree Ozwald and Margot Zaher
www.EnlightenedBeings.com

Have you ever looked at the stars at night and been utterly amazed by the infinite spaciousness of this Universe? Just as you notice the vast expansiveness of your outer world, this same spaciousness exists in your inner world. This inner spaciousness is where you can finally rest and find inner peace. You may have noticed that your mind is always thinking, thinking, thinking. It constantly lives in a narrow contracted state, always projecting, interpreting and holding onto a random selection of thoughts and ideas. To bring the mind into harmony you need something extremely spacious and infinitely peaceful to balance it out. This balancing agent is the experience of pure consciousness. Whenever you access a state of pure consciousness you begin to shift from living up in the constant thinking machine of the head, to resting in The Source of pure awareness in your Heart.&n bsp; By learning how to abide in the heart of Consciousness, you'll tap into one of the most Divine, expansive, spacious, and precious experience a human being can have.

"When you calm your mind and your senses, you become conscious of your always-present inner Self." ~Remez Sasson

This vast spaciousness can be instantly found when you practice resting in the space between your thoughts. The more you can relax here, the easier it is to deal with everything life throws your way. When an emotional situation arises, you are able to sit back, give it some space to percolate, experience it, and then let it go! Everything you do throughout your day becomes easier when you live with a "spacious awareness". This does not mean you're becoming more of a "space cadet", you are actually being MORE present to what is happening in the here and now. You are genuinely happy and can experience just about ANYTHING that is happening without getting upset or triggered. The spaciousness also allows you to feel a sensation of timelessness, so that you can relax when facing a deadline, and find peace no matter what pressure life's agenda may have on you. With the gift of spaciousness, you'll naturally become a more centered grounded human being who is able to observe your experience, rather than be desperately driven by the reactive ego-demanding personality.

"Even more impressive is the creation of an unlimited spaciousness within the meditator. This infinite spaciousness exceeds the concept of ‘self’—our normal limits. Thus, our abilities and wisdom also become limitless.” ~ Master Jinbodhi

Another beautiful gift you'll find from cultivating this inner spaciousness is a healthy sense of detachment from the outer world. When the vast eternal presence that you are is found, you no longer become overly-attached with appearance of things (your car, house, body, clothes, money, etc..) of the outer world. Sure, you may intellectually know that you are much more than these things, yet when you live with this feeling of spaciousness within, you can access a happier healthier connection with your physical world. Spaciousness allows you to truly enjoy this world, because you can step back from it. It's much easier to have compassion for others and be free from their opinions, when you can effortlessly access inner peace within yourself. You can remain curious about expectations and projected outcomes. You become the Divine watcher of every little event life offers, and can see the Bigger Picture of how it all fits together. It's as if you are sitting in the backseat of the mind, watching your personality driving down the road, making left and right turns along the way, while trusting completely and truly enjoying the experience of it all.

"By entering Witness consciousness we're able to de-condition the mind and body, freeing them of the many negative habitual responses we're bound by." ~ Laurence Edwards

The secret to remaining at peace in any situation is daily meditation. The simple act of watching your thoughts creates a "gap" in between your thoughts for you to rest in. As you vigilantly observe each thought fly by, something inside you eventually surrenders to the "space" in between the thoughts. The more you watch, the more grounded and spacious you become. You are naturally present to life because the great stories your mind is creating are no longer sooooo important. Meditation allows you to access the most amazingly calm and empowering place inside you where you can experience the truth of who you are; the vast boundless presence that is the God Source itself. With daily practice, you will soon discover how to live each moment of your day from a place of peace.