SPARE A THOUGHT.....

At the end of winning a rat race, we are still a rat.

June 27, 2008

right or wrong?

Met a group of youth today.
They were in conflict as regards their conflicting lifestyles at home and college.
They wanted me to give a perspective on right and wrong of various activities that occur in their lives.
The way i have understood it, activity is immaterial. Any activity can be lifted to lofty heights or remain in shallow depths, depending on our state.
It is our state of awareness or a lack of it which makes all the difference. Awareness is the only morality paradigm.
-inspirations from Sri Bhagavan

experiencing...

All of us feel a need to get out of misery , boredom etc that suffocates us time and again.
We try to change the activities, the people and various other external props to escape the boredom.After a while , it is the same story. The new activity or person becomes boring.
In a path-breaking insight, Sri Bhagavan says that joy and love are in the process of experiencing, independent of the content in question.
Whatever be the event, if we are able to complete our cycle of experience , the result is joy, love and bliss. Normally , our mind filters prevent us from experiencing events and things as they are. Judgements and commentaries come in. As we watch the event, it is imperative we watch the accompanying commentary, be it labelling or judgement.
And even as we watch, we are freed of the mind clutches.
The result is our ability to see and experience things as they are, not through the prism of our perceptions.
And this seeing is joy, bliss, love; call it what you may.

The very nature of experience is bliss.

awareness

To be AWARE

  • is to be free
  • is to love
  • is to be holy and sacred
  • is to be one with the source(Divine).

- Sri Bhagavan

Awareness is a factor of our consciousness levels . The rising of our consciousness levels is a Gift of Grace, the benediction of Sri Amma Bhagavan and the Oneness Movement for one and all.

To be in a state of perennial awareness is the goal of our lives...

June 26, 2008

The Golden Ball installation


humility

A tree laden with fruit always bends down.
- Sri Amma
Real genius is always humble, so the old adage goes.The more we discover, the more humble we become....

creative excellence...

Check this link....awesome creativity....
http://www.flamingcursor.com/

leap of faith...

Prayers and wishes for a leap of faith into domains of unlimited potentials, causeless love and limitless joy for each of you who enter here....and to all those who don't.

May Grace flood all our lives....

Rising in love...

As you rise in love, you start relating to the Divine (Source). As you fall in love, you move away from the Divine.The more your love, the stronger is your relationship with the Divine.
- Sri Bhagavan
A beautiful fact of life from the Master. Colloquial expressions of love hasten our fall as they are connected to the lower consciousness aspects.We get consumed and lose our touch with the sacredness of all life. As we get tuned in to the higher consciousness, the unconditional expression of love permeates our being and in this state, we are like a river in flow , a tree in bloom. Love is our very nature and floods across all our actions as we go through our lives. Love is a state of being, not a person or activity specific episode of our lives.
Our very connectedness with people, things and events around us, our entire universe , is dependant on this evolution in us.
To discover love, we need to be aware of the conditionality of our lifestyles and lack of love in our lives. Awareness of the lack of love in our lives automatically leads to the discovery of love.

June 25, 2008

awakening triggers...

When we see the world around, we see people reading about Karma Yoga, Gyana Yoga and so many other aspects. These are outcomes, results of Arjuna being in touch with his basic suffering and getting awakened to it.
According to Sri Bhagavan, awakening to one's suffering is the first and last step; being in touch with one's real self. When we come in touch with our fundamental suffering , a sequence of processes leading to various awakenings are triggered in our lives.
But then, how many of us really come in touch with our suffering?
We have an apparent cause of suffering like a financial crisis, a heartbreak etc. We focus on this content and manage our situation. We do not experience this suffering in depth.Suffering causes events in our lives and not the other way around.Suffering is intrinsic to our existence and a constant in our lives.We can only be "liberated", when we manage we are merely altering the apparent cause externally. If a psychological problem suffocates us, it converts into a physical pain very soon. A head ache is easier to handle than a psychological condition. We can pop a pill.
All these years( nearly ages) , we have merely perfected the art of managing our sorrows, not getting liberated from them.
As we see, we will get freed with grace.
Let us awaken to our suffering, other things would follow.....Creation is designed thus...

Intelligence and Insights into our basic situation are a happening when we awaken to our suffering...They lead to breakthroughs...

June 23, 2008

integrity aspects...

Rajesh was busy studying for his exams. His mother wanted him to run down to the local shop which was in the next building for some grocery purchase. Rajesh created a huge scene as to how his folks were disturbing him while he wanted to study.
His mom felt hurt and went by herself to the shop.
Rajesh's hand phone rings. It is his college friend , Shruti.
The conversation carries on for about 30 minutes.
Rajesh is unable to see now that his concentration flow was getting affected.
Such reactions happen from our inner conditionings and controlled behaviour patterns from our unconscious.
The doorbell rings. It is 8 pm and the family is sitting down to watch its favorite TV show.Unexpected guests have arrived and they indicate they would like to join in for dinner.Outwardly they are warmly welcomed. Inside, the dialogue is different.It is irritated, resentful of the intrusion. This is our reality of the moment. Just watch it.
John sees himself as a clean and moral person. He cannot accept the fact that the new receptionist in his office is triggering lustful thoughts in him. He tries to deny that he can have such thoughts...the thoughts only seem to increase with his denial.
Inner integrity is our ability to see such everyday realities.........and accept it..not deny seeing the actual people we are. It is acceptance which will enable a de-clutch not a suppression or a denial. Resistance will only strengthen the uncomfortable thoughts.
When we see things as they are , we are freed of their control.

June 20, 2008

Announcement of a new device....sounds pretty useful...

Announcing the New Device - Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge , Otherwise Known as the BOOK!
It's a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use even a child can operate it. Just lift its cover. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere--even sitting in an armchair by the fire--yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM or more.
Here's how it works: each BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable) , each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. These pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. By using both sides of each sheet, manufacturers are able to cut costs in half.
Each sheet is scanned optically through your eyes, registering the information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet. The book may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. The "browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward and backward as you wish. Most come with an "index" feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.
An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open the BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session--even if the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers.
Portable, durable and affordable, the BOOK is the entertainment wave of the future, an many new titles are expected soon, due to the surge in popularity of its programming tool, the Portable Erasable-Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus...

perception shift...

The way we view life makes all the difference.
Normally, we see ourselves as human beings who seek "spiritually"
Bhagavan inspires us to see ourselves as spiritual beings going through a human experience. Our entire centering of witnessing shifts!!!!!!!!!!

developmental approaches...

The inner and outer worlds demand entirely different approaches when it comes to addressal of various issues.
The outer world aspects demand you to project your needs as a part of the process of their actualization.You need to achieve something, it is important you have a vision of it.
On the other hand, the inner world requires us to stay with what we are in awareness. Fear is our inner reality at a moment. We cannot do anything about it. Normally, we try to escape it by indulgence in some activity.We try not to face the fear and do everything in our means from situations which are causing the same for us.
Moving away from situations or events is merely that; removing a symptomatic manifest. The fear remains where it is , looking for another opportunity to manifest itself through another event.When we have fear inside, events manifest outside which causes the fear to surface.Thus, the thought of fear is the creator of the event and not the other way round.
In the inner world, we have to stay with the fear in an active, dynamic passivity.We do not create fear, so we have no control over it. It has just arisen and we are helpless against it. Staying in the fear with a feeling of helplessness is our reality of the moment.
Any attempt at justifying, defending, blaming is moving to the past; any attempt at projecting a solution or wishing it away is a move forward, in the future.
Solutions occur neither in the past nor the future.
When there is a total experiencing of the here and now, we are totally in the present.And it leads to a dissolution of the pain and its transition to joy and bliss. Anything,(irrespective of content) when experienced totally leads to joy, bliss and love.

June 19, 2008

what's love got to do with it?

The recent murder of a media executive in Mumbai revolving around an aspiring actress and her boyfriend has drawn tremendous media attention with people pontificating with their own perceptions on it.
Come to think of it, it could be the story of any 3 average , intelligent , ambitious people of the world, each consumed by their need for power, thrills, success and so on.It has nothing to do with love...
When a need consumes the mind, the mind is capable of anything.Fear, anger, possessiveness and so on control and overpower our lives day in and day out.It is rarely morality factors which keep us in check; it is rather the fear of social ostracization.
The average human life is a careful maintenance of these balances.
Each of us , when consumed by our needs is a potential source of danger to the world.When the unconscious controls us, we are capable of anything. As unhappy people , we are only capable of spreading unhappiness.
Awareness is the key, to be able to see ourselves just as the people we are, and not mask ourselves into the people we would like to be.When we wear our masks, after sometime, we fool ourselves into believing that we are the people we would like ourselves to be.
And the burden of our masks become unbearable after sometime and we collapse....
We mask the addressal of our needs as LOVE for our spouses, parents, children etc. If we are able to see it for what it is and our manipulative lifestyles using people unabashedly to achieve our objectives and accept ourselves for what we are, life would be a different ball-game.
Integrity is the key to a good life...a life of awareness , imo , is the highest morality...
Love and joy , emerging as a state of our being is the natural outcome of a life led in a dynamic awareness....

pragyaparamita hrudyam sutra...

The truth is when you see a dancer, there is no dancer, only dance; when you see a river, there is no river but only rivering; when you see a tree, there is no tree only treeing. When you see a smile, there is nobody who is smiling, there is only smile, smiling.When you see love, there is nobody who is a lover, only loving.
Life is a process.
- Osho's translation of The Buddha's words.

oshospeak

The Buddha refers to klesas, impurities; the egoist is always in search of something to brag about or to feel hurt about.

Just watch the mind - for what its goes on searching, then the coverings, the avernas would reveal themselves.

There are either incomplete acts, or impurities; or the third is called ghaya avernas - beliefs, opinions, ideologies, knowledge coverings. They don't allow you to know; they don't give you enough space to see.These 3 coverings, when dropped lead to "nothingness".

- Osho in heartsutra

June 17, 2008

decision making....

Decision making is a traumatic process for most people. Conflicts sap our energies and we feel tired and resign to the inevitable. Sometimes too much analysis paralyzes us into inaction.
Normally, we focus on the content of the conflict and debate on it's right and wrong, the pros and cons. It leads us nowhere.
We have to rather focus on the process of conflict.
Conflict is intrinsic to decision making of the mind when it involves inner world aspects like joy, fulfilment and love.
One has to just watch that the mind is functioning and the conflict would just drop. Conflict is a quality of the process , nay of content.
In our colloquial worlds, we take decisions when we are disturbed , agitated, restless.
It would help us is we watch the disturbance, the agitation, the restlessness.As we watch, we get de-clutched and we sublime into a creative silence. it is this silence which is capable of decisions. Decisions just flow through us, it is not a struggle. It is not a fight ; it is rather a flow, an explore of a new experience. And irrespective of the outcome of the experience, we are always richer with the learning.
Sometimes, we have already decided, a disturbance within has consumed us and coerced a decision. Then, we try to fit our reality into this decision. A conditioning within you hates a person. This becomes a positionality and consumes us. Whatever the person does will necessarily be viewed negatively by us. This is an automation of the decision making process.In such a situation, our relationship is only with the image of a person we have created within us.There is no actual relationship. The reality of most of us today...
The inner silence. a state of nothingness where all chatter ceases enables us to live; else it is our various disturbances that is taking decisions - fear, lust, guilt etc...Do not fight them; make friends with them and as u be with them, the de-clutch occurs....

June 16, 2008

bulla ki jaana main kaun....luv it...

the mystical bauls....

I know of the Bauls through Osho....He writes of them as the "sahaja purushas" - natural beings.
Some of their songs are so mystical(like in sufi tradition) and thanks to Osho's translations, we get to know them...
a sample:
Only a connoisseur of the flavours of love
can comprehend the flavours of a lover's heart;
others have no clue.
The taste of lime rests in the core of the fruit
and even experts know of no easy way to reach it.
Honey is hidden within the lotus bloom
but the bee knows it.
Dung beetles nestle in dung, discounting honey.
Submission is the secret of knowledge.......

inter-galactic travel...

My cousin gifted me a fish tank with 6 fish yesterday. They travelled by his car in their glass house to their new abode.
i was wondering at their experience. How would it feel to be transported alongwith our house as we are inside, to a distant planet. the uncertainty, the anxiety, the fear and so on....a kind of weird and spooky feeling..
Or , is it that the fish only experience the water around them?
They were restless a while.....now they seem ok....must have been akin to an earth shattering experience!!!!!!!!!!!

June 15, 2008

Dear Dad,

Dear Appa,
We did not have Father's day during the time we spent together.It seems so long since you are gone.Remember, I was 14, you were 47 , mom was 37. I cannot forget that Saturday. I had just entered college after having topped my school division. You had hosted a party for all my friends.
And then your sudden exit from our lives. We were left shocked and gaping for surviving our next day.
Dad, we were so caught up in our struggle, that we never ever expressed our gratitude for all that you did for us. Thank You seems such a small word.
I am releasing this gratitude in the collective consciousness in the hope that I reach out to you.
I need your blessings and guidance every second of my life....and a capacity to get mom out of impacts of a series of shattering episodes in her life.
Pada Pranams to you...I hope you are happy with the way I have shaped up....

die to live...

The man did not like the movie he was watching. He decided to change the television.However, after a few changes , the movie continued.He was desperate.

It never occurred to him that the dvd required changing, not the television.....

Sounds stupid?

How sane it is then to keep seeking changes on the outside when our inner hard disks are playing the same movie? We then wonder why the same underlying patterns are getting repeated across seemingly different events?

The outer worlds are mere reflections of our inner worlds..changing events in the outer worlds can really lead us nowhere..in a while, we are back to the fundamental theme of our lives; repetitive and monotonous.

A hunter went to the forest and hunted down a baby bird while the mom managed to escape.He caged the kid in his house, she appeared forlorn and sad. One day , he returned to the forest where he came across the mom. She enquired of her child. The hunter mentioned that she was very sad. Hearing this, the mom fell down, apparently dead.

The hunter returned home and conveyed the same to the kid. Hearing this, the kid fell down, apparently dead. The hunter slowly opened the cage. Seizing the opportunity, the kid flew off.While going, it told the hunter, "To attain freedom in the world , one has to die as one is. This was my mom's teaching for me."

So it is with us....freedom has no halfway measures. Pain never decreases or increases in our lives. It is a constant - physical + psychological + spiritual. When we say we have solved something, we have merely changed it's apparent cause. The pain remains intact.Notice, how after deep psychological suffering, we end with a headache. The psychological pain transmutes to physical which is more manageable.We can pop a pill.

As we rise in consciousness, we get de-clutched from the fundamental pain, not it's apparent causes. This process is liberating, not managing. It is not a moving across concepts; it is moving beyond concepts and watching everything as a concept and dissolving our acquired positionalities vis-a-vis the same.It is not a transformation within the mind, it is a moving away from the mind, a reformation - creation emerging in emptiness....the mind stops using us, we could use the mind where required.

Awareness is freedom, liberating, a death of the old....It is radical...

An old zen story says that a man was going to the market and on the way became liberated.He went to the market and finished his shopping. Everything is seemingly the same, but the vision is different. Before enlightenment, the trees are the trees and the rivers are teh rivers. During enlightenment , nothing seems real. After enlightenment, again the trees are the trees and the rivers are the rivers.But everything has changed in the way we see them and feel connected....

osho humour - the world changeth....

perspectives change with time....once upon a time people used to hide their playboy magazines within annual reports or the bible...today it is the other way round..people hide their bibles inside their playboys!!!!!!!!!
-inspirations from Osho

June 14, 2008

Sri Bhagavan has said "Don't try to change another.It is not possible". This can be misinterpreted by some. Suppose your 10 year old child has recently exposed himself to the habit of smoking. As a parent , it is important for you to try and stop him. On the other hand, if your mother has a habit of being constantly critical of another or judging another, do not try to change it through advice; for it can backfire.She will get angry or may try to control her behaviour.After a while , it is back to square one. It is here that Bhagavan's statement comes into play. It is futile to try and changing another. It is prudent if we can accept them.

Also , on the aspect of accepting oneself; it does not apply to events in the outside world. if one has committed fraudulent behaviour anywhere, we will have to pay for it, today or tomorrow.On teh other hand, if one experiences a sense of lust, one should not deny it. One should accept it.The seeds of change lie in it's acceptance , not in resistance.We have to accept our inner world situation as it is.There is no point in trying to change it. It is an impossibility. Watching in awareness and accepting it, enables us to respond, not react. It is the same with anger. Reacting in anger is very destructive; however, one can respond discretionally in anger.

- from talks of Sri Sammadarshini.

Carry Over....the root of suffering...

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."To experience is to believe.' Enlightenment is a benediction bestowed today upon thousands by Sri Bhagavan and Sri Amma . Come ! Alive into the waters of immense grace and experience, because….."Man cannot make it on His own … It has to be given to Him."
- inspirations from Sri Bhagavan

June 13, 2008

feeling the presence....

Life seems to flow more harmoniously when we are in touch with our source, deep within.
Tuning in to the higher consciousness is the key to enable this.When lower consciousness aspects stifle us, we have to just watch, be aware.When we watch, first the judgements come in, comparisons against our accumulated concepts of right and wrong.This also has to be watched.it is a happening, a recording emerging out of our conditioned inner hard disk.It is on auto play and we cannot control it or stop it. As mentioned in an earlier posting, this outflow from our unconscious is 2 million times more powerful than our conscious mind.
The ONLY way to get de-clutched is to watch it helplessly. As we watch, its hold on us is released.It could be like watching a cyclone..as the flood from the unconscious envelopes us.We have to complete the cycle of the experience.The nature of experience by itself is bliss; it is independent of the content of experience.
And as the cycle is completed, what remains is joy and bliss....our intrinsic nature....beyond realms and layers of conditioning which prevent experiencing...
As we are watching, we are filled with the WITNESS, the presence or call it what you may...
Lot of people say we are guided by our higher consciousness, but we have to be cautious that we are not mistaking a play of the mind for the same.When we are guided by the higher consciousness, we always experience bliss and joy....There is no residual misery or doubt. There is a sense of completeness, a fullness which translates as oneness.....

June 12, 2008

patterns...

If we closely observe, the same kind of patterns keep repeating subtly or loudly in our lives.A certain kind of event, a certain kind of person or an event-person combo etc.
Such underlying patterns control the drift of our lives and we are more often than not unconscious of it.
Closely observing and becoming aware is the key to de-clutching ourselves from this control.
We cannot de-clutch ourselves through conscious intent as the unconscious is 2 million times more powerful than the conscious.We may decide to act or behave in a certain fashion when an event occurs, but we find ourselves drawn into the whirlpool of the pattern.
Awareness is freedom..just watching can de-clutch us...