Thought of the week :)

“ God expects but one thing of you, and that is ..you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being and let God be God in you.”

- Meister Eckhart.

In those moments when we forget ourselves- not thinking, “ Am I happy?” but completely oblivious to our little restless Ego- we spend a brief but a beautiful holiday in Heaven.

The mystics tell us that the joy we experience in these moments of self- forgetting is our true nature, our native state.

To regain it, we simply have to empty ourselves of what hides this Joy: that is, to stop dwelling on ourselves, our desires, our likes and dislikes, our preferences. To the extent that we are not full of ourselves, God can fill us- in fact, the Mystics daringly say, He has to!

And as Rumi , the world’s Beloved Mystic beautifully says, “Once you forget yourself, God remembers you, once you become His slave, then you are Free.”

Thought of the Week :)

“ A devotee who can call on God while living a householder’s life is a hero indeed.God thinks: “ He is blessed indeed who prays to Me in the midst of his wordly duties. He is trying to find Me, overcoming a great obstacle- pushing away, as it were, a huge block of stone weighing a ton. Such a man is a real Hero.”

-Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa.

To lead a Spiritual life, it is not necessary to give up our jobs, our relationships, leave our family, change our religion, or to travel to distant lands. We start wherever we are, not running away from society, but right in the midst of our chaotic, noisy lives.

Whatever context we find ourselves in, is a suitable one to overcome our problems and grow to our full potential as humans. We tend to overlook upon the other home as peaceful, that other couple as perfect, the other parent-child relationship as ideal, but this isn’t likely.

Everyone has certain liabilities as well as assets.

Everyone has imperfections and have committed mistakes and learnt that vital lesson of life.

For I truly believe that we all are in the Right Place, at the Right Time learning the Right Lesson :)

Some flowers grow best in the Sun while others do well in Shade.

Remember, God puts us where we grow best and accordingly gives us people and situations to grow with!! For He is the Best Teacher we could ever have.

His Mystics too are loving realists.

“ Don’t wait for ideal conditions. You’ll never find them,” they admonish. “ Begin! And the conditions you seek and need will come to you.”

Thought of the Week :)

A man once asked the Mystic Bayazid Al- Bistami:

“Who is the true Prince? The man who cannot choose, said Bayazid :

But the man for whom God’s choice is the only possible choice.”

The Lord is extending the Gift of Immortality to each of us, but we do not reach out to take it because we are holding a few pennies in our hands. I don’t knowif you have seen infants in this dilemma; it happens at a particular stage of development, when they have learned to grasp but not quite mastered the art of letting go. They have a rattle I one hand; you offer them a toothbrush , and for a while they just look back and forth at the toothbrush, then the rattle, then again at the brush. You can almost see the gray matter working: “ I want that toothbrush, but how can I take it? My hand is already full.”

Similarly, all of us look at the Lord’s Gift for a while, asking “ What is this? How do I know its real? Give it to me first ; then I’ll let the pennies go.”

The Lord smiles and waits. He can offer the Gift, but for us to take it, we have to open our hands. And there comes a time when we want something more than those pennies so passionately that we longer care what it costs.

Then we open our hands finally, let go of our possessions and discover that for those pennies we have dropped, we have received an Incomparable Treasure :)

Lord Krishna says in The Bhagavad Gita,
( The Sacred Scripture of Hinduism)
" It is indeed impossible for any embodied being to abstain from work altogether. But he who gives up the fruit of action, he is said to be the Relinquisher." Chapter xviii- Verse 11

The Gita insists not on the renunciation of actions but on performing duties with renunciation of desire for the fruits of such actions.

" An action which is obligatory, which is performed without attachment, without love or hate by one undesirous of fruit, that is said to be of Goodness." Chapter xviii- Verse 23

Thought of the day :)

" God remembers us, though we remember Him not." the Master said.
"If He forgot creation for a second, everything would disappear tracelessly. Who but He holds in the sky this mud ball of earth? Who but He impels the growth of trees and flowers?
It is The Lord alone who maintains the beat of our hearts, digests our food, and daily renews our body cells. Yet how few of His children give Him a thought! "
"The mind, " Paramahansaji said, "is like a miraculous rubber band that can be expanded to Infinity without breaking. "

-Sayings of Sri Paramahansa Yogananda (PBUH)

The Cosmic Audition

In India, we have a story about a man who was the perfect model of respectability, who always did what the letter of the law demanded. When he died, he was taken before Chitragupta, the Cosmic Auditor.
Chitragupta looked at the man’s record. There was not a single entry on the debit page. He was impressed. Then he turned to the credit page and stared in astonishment. This page, too, was completely blank. Chitragupta didn’t know what to do. The man had never helped anybody, never hurt anybody, never offended anybody, never loved anybody.
He couldn’t be sent to heaven, but he couldn’t be sent to hell either.

So Chitragupta took him to Brahma, The God of Creation, and said, “You made this guy. What shall I do with him?”

Lord Brahma looked at the statute books and couldn’t find a precedent to cover the case, so he said, “Take him to Krishna.”
Lord Krishna said, “The buck stops here.” He examined the records very carefully and there, almost illegible, was an ancient credit entry: “Gave two cents to a beggar at the age of six.”

“There,” Sri Krishna said, “Return his two cents and send him back to earth to try again.”

Until we have learned to give freely of ourselves, we have not learned how to live. Give to the world what you desire the world to give you... and do that with all your love because Love has no errors, for all errors are the want of love :)

And as The Corinthians 11 states beautifully, “God loveth a cheerful giver.”

True helpfulness comes from connection, not from words.

" Words alone dont help. It is what God speaks in our hearts when we read or hear words that helps. That's why familiar passages from sacred scriptures often mean something new each time we re-read them. And that's why it never works for me to decide what someone else needs to hear. If i want to be of use today, I must focus on my feelings of connection with others, because God is heard within the experience of Love."

-Hugh Prather

" It does not seem right that The Heavenly Father should allow so much misery in the world," a student remarked.

Paramahansaji replied: "No cruelty exists in God's plan, because in His eyes there is no good or evil- only pictures of light and shadows. The Lord intended us to view the dualistic scenes of life as He does Himself- the ever joyous Witness of a stupendous cosmic drama. Man has falsely identified himself with the pseudo-soul or ego. When he transfers his sense of identity to his true being, the immortal soul, he discovers that all pain is unreal. He no longer can even imagine the state of suffering."

The Guru added: " Great Masters who come to earth to help their bewildered brothers are permitted by God to share, on a certain level of their minds, the sorrows of mankind; but that sympathetic participation in human feelings does not disturb deeper levels of consciousness on which Saints experience only changeless beatitude. "
-Sri Paramahansa Yoganandji (PBUH)

The Timeless Wisdom of Kahlil Gibran

"The angels keep count of every tear shed by Sorrow: and they bring to the ears of the spirits hovering in the heavens of the Infinite, each song of Joy wrought from our affections. There, in the world to come, we shall see and feel all the vibrations of our feelings and the motions of our hearts. We shall understand the meaning of Divinity then within us, whom we so condemn because we are so delusioned by Despair."

Thought of the day :)

" Far have i travelled,
Long have i struggled,
Following the impulse of my restless will
Seeking! Seeking! Seeking!
In quest of happiness i sought through life's mansion...
But happiness i found not there.
I found happiness nowhere till my self-will was lost in His Will "

- Swami Paramananda