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Return to sender

"As a breeze carries the Ocean inside it,
so underneath every sentence is:
‘Come back to the Source´."

~ Rumi

Why we do what we do

and how we can do it better.

A fascinating TED Talk by Tony Robbins.

Watch the video here

 

Alchemy

It so happens -
when I sit and watch
the fire eating up the logs,
licking at them, fiery tongued,
exultant, ebullient,
in a mad dance of destruction,
I find I have to make dinner.

It is a different kind of alchemy,
this bringing together of things.
Peeling and paring.
cutting and chopping
and preparing a meal,
with the application of heat.
A grand symphony of creation.

Yet, I linger, mesmerised,
ignoring that for this,
as wood crumbles
and ash glows
and light dances
and curves and flows
until I am all lit up from within.

~~~

Points to ponder

What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter. 



~ Albert Einstein


"What use is so much knowledge to you, Arjuna?
I stand sustaining this entire world
with a fragment of my being."



~ Bhagvad Gita


The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

~ Oscar Wilde

A late night movie

A niggling something
burrows relentless
through the blanket of sleep
wakes me up

I search the crevices of my mind
for clues
for thoughts, put aside,
feelings, unfelt, unexplored

They flicker and crackle
like a B-grade movie
with disjointed parts
and a bad ending

I toss and tumble
through the unexpected twists
until sleep rescues me
from the debris of my past

I know they wait
for an encore
weaving another movie
for another night

Time trickles

Time trickles through my fingers
in bits and pieces
a moment here, a moment there
leaking away in spurts
like through a punctured artery

I watch in mild trepidation
resolving to staunch the flow
of moments gone
beyond reach, recall
or even redemption

Fire and smoke

Have you noticed
the burning of a thing,
the destruction of it,
how it produces beauty?

Tongues of fire, luminous,
crackling, cackling, gleeful,
turning into shapeless ash
a thing with shape and form.

And smoke, its soul,
flowing out, spiralling up,
scattering its fragrance,
its every single memory.

Fire and smoke,
dance of the elements.
Ashes, the last remains.
Then, life begins anew.

The power of presence

When you have all the time in the world and no fixed agenda then the tendency is to while away the time. But then I realise that this thought is coming from a pre-conceived notion that time should be well spent. And I also can see that the satisfaction that comes from doing something also arises in the mind. It is the mind that says, ‘I must do something’, ‘this or that is the right thing to do’ and it is the mind that says ‘well done’ or ‘you have wasted your time’. When the mind is still, I find that the urgency to do anything does not arise, there is no desire for movement, no desire to fill the moment with accomplishment. Things arise naturally and get done naturally. Because there is no agenda, there is no disappointment. There is no feeling of achievement either because I had not set out to do anything. There is however a feeling of fullness. Whether anything is done or not, whether anything is accomplished or not. I realise, the fullness comes from being present, present in the moment. Because presence fills you up. You are already full of it. You become aware of  your own fullness. Which is quite different from the flush of achievement that the mind conjures up, which lasts for a while and then disappears. Which then prompts the mind to find another goal, another milestone to cross, so that it may revel in its own importance.

The sun plays hide and seek from behind the clouds. A bird calls out. Its call, crystal clear and sonorous falls on my ears. For a brief moment we connect. But then, are we really separate? The collection of atoms that I call my body and which I perceive to be different and separate from the collection of atoms that is the bird gives the impression of separateness. But this perception is being projected by the mind. When the mind is still we do not perceive ourselves to be a collection of atoms with sense faculties. There is a presence which has no physical boundaries and may yet be one with the bird, with all of everything. To think of ourselves as just a physical entity with sense faculties and a mind-created self-image, concepts and belief structures seems very limiting. And a travesty. So then what is the truth about ourselves? The mind cannot conceive it, nor grasp it, let alone explain it. It can only be reached in stillness, when the mind is put away. Then silence yields the truth.

The elephant whisperer

The remarkable story of how a herd of wild elephants came to grieve and pay tribute to their friend, the elephant whisperer. And the remarkable story of a remarkable man.

Read story here

Fear

Fear arises through identification with form, whether it is a material possession, physical body, social role, self image, thought or an emotion. You are trapped in object consciousness unaware of the dimensions of inner space which alone is the true freedom.

- Eckhart Tolle

Love all of Creation

Love all of Creation
The whole of it and every grain of sand
Love every leaf
Every ray of God’s light
Love the animals
Love the plants
Love everything
If you love everything
You will perceive
The divine mystery in things
And once you have perceived it
You will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly
More and more everyday
And you will at last come to love the whole world
With an abiding universal love.

~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Perspective is everything

A fascinating TED talk about how our happiness depends on our perception or rather how perspective is really all there is to everything :)

View the talk here

The fear of the second

THE LINE ENTITLED ABOVE OCCURS in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and refers to the unitary experience—the supreme spiritual unity of everything. This unity is in our true Self; its nature is pure Consciousness. This unitary knowledge is the goal of our spiritual search. When the spiritual seeker thinks of this goal, any idea of duality becomes an obstruction and a matter of fear. The seeker's constant effort is to merge all objective experience into his or her own infinite Self—the source and support of everything. Therefore, the grand maxim of our spiritual struggle is: "There is fear from the second."

We have an innate urge for unity. If there is discord around us we cannot really function effectively even in daily life. There must be a sense of unison, a harmonious cooperation, among the different elements of our lives. Take the case of the body. When the body is healthy we feel it as a unity. There is no disharmony among the different functions. If, however, there is some trouble in some part of the body—the head, or the foot, or the stomach—that balance is lost. We feel that an intruder has crept in—a "second" has entered the scene and disturbed the unitary experience of our bodily well-being. If aliens ("seconds") in the form of aches, sores, and abnormal pressures assail the body, there is fear.

So also the case of a happy family. The roof of the house is not leaking; there is perfect understanding between the husband and the wife; the children are well behaved, and there is a decent income. What is the subjective feeling of the family members? A feeling of unity. You, the master of the house, feel as though you have extended yourself to the whole family—even to your house, the gardens, the furniture. There is nothing to disturb you; you are really peaceful. But, if some disturbance occurs in the family—for example, if one child becomes boisterous, refuses to go to school, and wants to be in bad company, then what happens? The peace of the entire household is disturbed. A "second" thing—namely, the disruptive behavior of the child—has intruded into your feeling of unity.

Source ~ internet

 

Daughters are precious

A shocking program about the female foeticide rampant in India...

Watch the video here

Outstanding

The outstanding ones have all the fun :D

Attention

There is a knock on the door
I do not answer

sales talk seems intrusive
in the silence

feeling open and expansive
I do have the heart to say ‘no’
 

But then I realise
by not responding
by turning away
from a possibility
my ‘no’ had been just as emphatic

A shimmering chance
had risen momentarily
and withered into oblivion
by my withheld attention

Life blooms where we direct our attention
life follows our intention
it has no other choice

It is strange

It is strange how
your mouth tries to form words
and only silence falls out
like ghosts of words
that never lived
and yet somehow died
and turned into ashes

It is strange how
the web of silence is stronger
than the words it snags
or that words are like smoke
mere spectres
that rise and dissolve
into nothingness

It is strange how
when you are utterly still you can see
the dance of the atoms
and beyond that
the symphonies of silence
and you realise
there isn’t anything else

The almost shot

This is today's daily poem which I almost forgot to post coz it also went with the daily photo.

The almost shot

Here I had stood

in the gathering dusk

pointing my camera

at a passing train

There you had been

looking up from the newspaper

out the train window

directly on to my lens

Our gazes had clashed

on the viewfinder

and I had stood dumbstruck

forgetting to click

The train had swiftly

whisked you away

and the moon had dropped

into waiting trees.

And I had walked on

train rumbling in the distance

trying to fill the emptiness

of a shot not quite caught

Riverdance

Riverdance the final performance

Simply awesome!

the sound of flight

heard a new sound today
or maybe I had heard it before
and hadn’t noticed

blown along by the wind
dead brown leaves
racing along the road

in gleeful laughter
they chased one another
in wild abandon

the sound of their feet
like fire crackling
or rain splattering

my heart started to sing
in tandem
in surprised recognition

their arabesques on my heart
echoes still
of such are riches

~~~

Gems of wisdom

We are built to travel the bandwidth of consciousness and to enlarge it when we wish to live in a larger universe. Better still, change perspective through meditation, reflection, or focus, and discover yourself to be the latest flower on the tree of the cosmos, ready to bloom. This requires the sun and rain of attention, a conscious dwelling in the midst of eternal fecundity. What had been there dimly as background awareness, then moves to the foreground. In this state anything that you concentrate on opens up—objects, ideas, relationships, business, governance, even grand designs. We awaken to the wealth of being and the A-HA experiences keep on coming.

~ Jean Houston



There are angels to your left and angels to your right; angels above you and angels below you; angels ahead of you and angels behind you. You are encapsulated in divine vibration, surrounded by love and eternally blessed. Go forth in confidence and go forth in peace...all is well.


~ Marianne Williamson


The practice of patience guards us against losing our presence of mind. It enables us to remain undisturbed, even when the situation is really difficult. It gives us a certain amount of inner peace, which allows us some self-control, so that we can choose to respond to situations in an appropriate and compassionate manner, rather than being driven by our disturbing emotions.

~ Dalai Lama