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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Seeing God

We can see God everywhere. Do not seek for him, just see him.

~ Swami Vivekananda

Weak


We of the fluttering soul.
We who grind our teeth
to your joyous beat
and rejoice when you are grounded.
We who never slow down
and trample your soul
till our green self cackles.
We love our mediocrity.
and we would love
if you would be a part of it.
We on our pendulum of apathy
We have bartered stillness of our hearts
for restlessness of our mouths.
Silence is best served as shards
and spaces between us, as words.

~ Roop Majumdar (FB friend)

Relationships

Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.


~ Deepak Chopra

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

love story


God writes only love stories,
in it you are the lover and the beloved,
if you realise this,
there are only happy endings.


Sunday, March 27, 2011

Come, let us...


Come, let us still our words,
turn off our thoughts
and break open our silence.

Come, let us plunge within
into that bottomless ocean
called the heart of God.

Come, let us drown in it,
lose everything in it
and find ourselves in it.

Come, let us discover that
this silence is alive
and is filled with love.

Say I am you

Poem by Rumi on video

... set to soothing music and lovely visuals.

For lyrics, click here ...

look within ...

If you find me not within, you will never find me, for I have been with you from the beginning.


~ Rumi



What am I?

If I think, and therefore I am, am I just a thought?

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Rumi to music

Rumi chanted (on video)

In the orchard and rose garden
I long to see your face.
In the taste of Sweetness
I long to kiss your lips.
In the shadows of passion
I long for your love.

Oh! Supreme Lover!
Let me leave aside my worries.
The flowers are blooming
with the exultation of your Spirit.

By Allah!
I long to escape the prison of my ego
and lose myself
in the mountains and the desert.

These sad and lonely people tire me.
I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love
and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands.

I'm sick of mortal kings.
I long to see your light.
With lamps in hand
the sheikhs and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.

You are the Essence of the Essence,
The intoxication of Love.
I long to sing your praises
but stand mute
with the agony of wishing in my heart.

~ Rumi

The 'chalta-hai' attitude

Dominique: "Roark, I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between." 

~ Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead
Me neither. Why do anything if you can't do it whole-heartedly? Like my friend Usha says 'Indifference is the opposite of love'.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Our lovely planet


Great visuals of our lovey planet

Let's try to keep it that way - wonderous, beautiful, awesome...

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Spoken poetry

Great spoken poetry, wonderful talk !!!

Must see this


B
As Performed by Sarah Kay

Instead of Mom, she’s gonna call me Point B,
Because that way she knows that no matter what happens,
At least she can always find her way to me.

And I’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands,
So she would have to learn the entire universe before she could say,
“Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”

She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face,
Wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach,
But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry.
So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn’t coming,
I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself,
‘Cause no matter how wide you stretch your fingers,
Your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal.

Believe me. I’ve tried.

And, “Baby,” I’ll tell her, “Don’t keep your nose up in the air like that; I know that trick.
You’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house,
So you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him,
Or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.”

But I know that she will anyway.

So instead, I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolates and rain boots nearby,
‘Cause there’s no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix.
OK. There’s a few heartbreaks that chocolates can’t fix,
But that’s what the rain boots are for,
Because rain will wash away everything if you let it.

I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat,
To look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind,
Because that’s the way my mom taught me,
That there’ll be days like this.

“There’ll be days like this,” my Mama said,
When you open your hands to catch, and wind up only with blisters and bruises,
When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly,
And the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape,
When your boots will fill with rain, and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment,

And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you”.
‘Cause there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline,
No matter how many times it's sent away.

You will put the wind in win some, lose some.
You will put the star in starting over and over.
No matter how many landmines are up to the minute,
Be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny thing called life.

And, yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting,
I am pretty fucking naïve,
But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar.
It can crumble so easily,
But don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.

“Baby,” I’ll tell her, “Remember your Mama is a worrier, but your Papa is a warrior,
And you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.
Remember that good things come in three’s, and…so do bad things, and
Always apologize when you’ve done something wrong,
But don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.
Your voice is small, but don’t ever stop singing.
And when they finally hand you heartbreak,
Slip hatred and war under your doorstep,
And hand you handouts on street corners of cynicism and defeat,
You tell them,
That they really ought to meet your mother.”

at peace

From a healed peaceful heart humility is born,
from humility a willingness to listen to others is born,
from a willing to listen to others mutual understanding is born and
from mutual understanding... a peaceful society is born.


- Daisaku Ikeda.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Be who you are...

The Universe won't hear your resonant words.
The Universe won't be impressed by your numerous certifications.
The Universe won't be in awe by your popular writings.
But the entire Universe will genuflect in front of your heart.
So, off the masks and just be who you are.
The rest is useless.

~ Teddylight Andrea Puddu

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Love yourself

Rather than focus on whether others seem to care about you or not, and allow yourself to generate negative energy, focus on how much you care about yourself. If you are not selfish enough to love you, then you have nothing positive to give others. The way to shift energy vibration and the nature of unfoldings in the outer world is to shift energy inside. Choose to love and appreciate all that you are. We are one.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

I wish ...

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.

~ Hafiz of Persia


Monday, March 14, 2011

I will meet you yet again

I will meet you yet again

How and Where?
I know not Perhaps
I will become a
figment of your imagination and
spreading myself
in a mysterious line
on your canvas
I will keep gazing at you
Perhaps I will become a ray
of sunshine to be
embraced by your colours
I will paint myself on your canvas
I know not how and where
but I will meet you for sure
Maybe I will turn into a spring
and rub the foaming
drops of water on your body
and rest my coolness on
your burning chest. I know nothing else
but that this life
will walk along with me
When the body perishes
all perishes
but the threads of memory
are woven with enduring specs
I will pick these particles
weave the threads
and I will meet you yet again

~ last poem Amrita Preetam wrote to Imroz

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Awareness

Awareness : seeing what is in front of you and loving, accepting and honoring it without judgement.

~ Kristal McVicar

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Words that empower

The simple fact is that if one person can achieve success in any area starting with nothing but willingness and determination, anyone can...! The only thing that holds us back from achieving our dreams is our own inner resistance. Uncover what those limiting beliefs are, remove them and prepare to be amazed.

 ~ Hal Tipper

Worry

Now that all your worry has proved such an unlucrative business,

Why not find a better job.
 
~ Hafiz of Persia

Friday, March 11, 2011

Silence

Wisdom arrives in silence ...

... and silence is always there.

- The Universe

Teaching ...

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.


~ Kahlil Gibran

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Love

We will illustrate love by a triangle, of which the first angle at the base is fearlessness. So long as there is fear, it is not love. Love banishes all fear. A mother with her baby will face a tiger to save her child. The second angle is that love never asks, never begs. The third or the apex is that love loves for the sake of love itself. Even the idea of object vanishes. Love is the only form in which love is loved. This is the highest abstraction and the same as the Absolute.

- Swami Vivekananda

Sunday, March 06, 2011

All the hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

~ Hafiz

From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Saturday, March 05, 2011

We have a choice...

When it gets right down to the bottom line, we seem to have 2 basic choices in how to respond or react to circumstances. To be grateful and in wonder that we have been given an opportunity to witness whatever happens....or complain that it's not looking like our perceived ideal of the way things "should" be to feel ok?

We have a choice...
 
~ Hal Tipper on FB

Friday, March 04, 2011

My tryst with Arabia


When one thinks of Arabia, a vision of camel caravans, hot dusty deserts, mirages and oases and dark-skinned Bedouin nomads come to mind. But here I am in Abu Dhabi and none of the above are in sight. Instead, I am surrounded by nothing but tall buildings and in the intervening spaces, lots of shiny metallic cars. It is as if seeds were planted in the desert and concrete and glass trees have sprouted up miraculously. And since petrol is in abundant supply, the cars just needed an excuse to be created.

And so I sit in my hotel room dreaming of the desert, of nights around the campfire, surrounded by camels, all under the canopy of a star-studded sky shining bright in the clear desert air. To compensate for the non-realisation of the dream, I go for walks. The pavements are clean and clear of clutter. Human traffic is sparse as compared to India, and traffic is orderly. The streets come alive in the evening, when the lights in the shop windows start to glow as if the departing day had left its lighted footprints in the bulbs. People stream into the numerous malls, shops, eating places or just go for walks. The pace is unhurried and relaxed. And whatever stress I might have accumulated during the day fall off me into the twilight.

The most fascinating thing is the people themselves. I make it a mental game to try to guess the nationality of each person that I pass for there are people of almost every race to be found here. Frizzy hair, straight hair, blond and black, to be found on brown, yellow, white or black bodies. The natives themselves are the most fascinating. A wonderful blend of cultures down the ages has resulted in beautiful, smooth, olive skin draped over slim bodies rounded off with beautiful olive-shaped eyes, sharp noses, full mouths and dark hair. Especially the women, of whom (if you are lucky) you can see only the face (if not, only the eyes).


I have a feeling that my tryst with Arabia has only begun. There are so many places to visit here of differing topographical features and different attractions. But yes, must get to the desert first, lie on the sands under the starry sky and space out :)


'the book that changed my life...'

---------------- excerpt from delanceyplace newletter ----------------------------


In today's excerpt - William Kamkwamba, a Malawian inventor, speaker and author. He gained fame in his country when, in 2002, at the age of fourteen, he built a windmill to power a few electrical appliances in his family's house in Masitala using blue gum trees, bicycle parts, and materials collected in a local scrapyard. Since then, he has built a solar-powered water pump that supplies the first drinking water in his village and two other windmills and is planning two more, including one in Lilongwe, the political capital of Malawi. As the son of a subsistence farmer in his poverty-ravaged African country, his family's house had no electricity or running water, and he could not afford to go to school after famine left his family destitute. Then he stumbled upon the book that changed his life:

"Most students at Kachokolo Secondary and Wimby Primary stopped going to school during the famine. After I dropped out ... fewer and fewer classmates showed up. The teachers would call recess around 9 A.M. and then disappear themselves into the fields and trading center to search for food. By February there was no school at all.

"But as the dowe and pumpkins became ready ... students began returning to school and classes resumed ... because my family still couldn't afford my school fees, I was forced to stay home doing nothing.

"I remembered that the previous year a group called the Malawi Teacher Training Activity had opened a small library in Wimbe Primary School that was stocked with books donated by the American Government. Perhaps reading could keep my brain from getting soft while being a drop out.

"The library was in a small room near the main office. A woman was sitting behind a desk when I walked in. She smiled, 'Come to borrow some books?' she said. This was Mrs. Edith Sikelo, a teacher at Wimbe who taught English and social studies and also operated the library. I nodded yes, then asked, 'What are the rules of this place?' I'd never used such a facility.

"Mrs. Sikelo took me behind a curtain to a smaller room, where three floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with books. It smelled sweet and musty, like nothing I'd ever encountered. I took another deep breath. Mrs. Sikelo then explained the rules for borrowing books and showed me the collection. I'd expected to find nothing but primary readers and textbooks, boring things. But to my surprise, I saw American textbooks on Eng­lish, history, and science; secondary texts from Zambia and Zimba­bwe; and novels for leisurely reading.

"I spent the day combing through the books while Mrs. Sikelo graded papers at her desk. Despite the variety of titles, I left that afternoon with books on geography, social studies, and basic spell­ing - the same textbooks my friends were studying in school. It was the end of the term, and my hope was to get caught up before classes started again.

"At home I planted a thick blue gum pole deep in the ground near the mango tree out front, then made my own hammock out of knotted maize sacks. For the next three weeks, I began a rigorous course in independent study, visiting the library in the mornings, and spending the afternoons reading in the shade. ...

After about a month, the school term finally ended and [my friend] Gil­bert was free to hang out. One morning we went to the library to kill some time - we often stayed for hours, just sitting in chairs and reading-but today Mrs. Sikelo was in a rush.

" 'You boys spend hours in here taking my time,' she said, 'but today I have an appointment. Just find something quickly.'

" 'Yes, Madame.'

"The reason it took so long was that none of the books were arranged properly. The titles weren't shelved alphabetically, or by sub­ject or author, which meant we had to scan every title to find some­thing we liked. So that day while Gilbert and I looked for a good read, I remembered an English word I'd stumbled across in one of my books.

" 'Gilbert, what's the word grapes mean?'

" 'Hmmm' he said, never heard of it. 'Look it up in the dictionary.'

"The English-Chichewa dictionaries were actually kept on the bottom shelf, but I never really spent much time looking down there. Instead I asked Mrs. Sikelo. So I squatted down to grab one of the Dictionaries, and when I did, I noticed a book I'd never seen, pushed into the shelf and slightly concealed. 'What is this?' I thought. Pulling it out, I saw it was an American textbook called Using Energy, and this book has since changed my life.

"The cover featured a long row of windmills - though at the time I had no idea what a windmill was. All I saw were tall white towers with three blades spinning like a giant fan. They looked like the pin­wheel toys Geoffrey and I once made as kids when we were bored. We'd find old water bottles people threw away in the trading center, cut the plastic into blades like a fan, then put a nail through the cen­ter attached to a stick. When the wind blew, they would spin. That's it, just a stupid pinwheel.

"But the fans on this book were not toys. They were giant beauti­ful machines that towered into the sky, so powerful that they made the photo itself appear to be in motion. I opened the book and began to read."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author: William Kamkwamba

Title: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope

Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition

Date: July 27, 2010

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heaven and hell

I sent my soul to the invisible, some letter of that afterlife to spell.
And by and by my soul returned to me
and said, 'you yourself are heaven and hell'.

- Omar Khayyam

Haiku and poems of Ikkyu

Why do people
Lavish decorations
On this set of bones
Destined to disappear
Without a trace?

Many paths lead
from the foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.

If at the end of our journey
There is no final
Resting place,
Then we need not fear
Losing our Way.

No beginning,
No end.
Our mind
is born and dies:
The emptiness of emptiness!

Rain, hail, snow and ice:
All are different,
But when they fall
They become the same water
As the valley stream.

- The Haiku and Poems of Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481)

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Listening

An open ear is the only believable sign of an open heart. ~ David Augsburger

Patiently Love awaits ...

Patiently Love awaits as we rush about, search, seek, do, want, think, study, hope, dream and so much more.
Love awaits.
In the exhausted moments when there is nothing left to rush after it is there.
In the quiet moments when thought has ceased it is there.
All We Ever Sought Was But A Veil From All We Ever Were Or Will Be.
Love.
You Are Love, now and always.

- From FB friend Kristal's Wall

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Find the gap ...

Between each thought, there is a gap. Look for the gap between everything. That is when the mind momentarily keeps still. That is the place of no-mind. Try to extend these gaps, so that more time is spent in no-mind. Then stillness can't help but be yours ......