Mirror mirror on the wall the whole world is a reflection after all

Once a dog walked in to a room of mirrors, it looked at its own reflections in the mirrors surrounding it and thought it was being attacked by many dogs. It became frantic and started attacking the dogs in the mirror, it tiered itself in the act and fell unconscious.

After a while a man walked in to the room, he looked at his reflection in the mirror, saw his reflection and casually corrected his hair, saw the poor dog and took it out in to the open.

Each one of us knows that the person we see in the mirror is just a reflection. We fail to grasp the fact that the whole world we live in is just a reflection of our own self a projection of our senses. The happiness we feel is just reflective happiness and the sadness is also just a projection of our thoughts, prejudices and perspectives.

A wise man knows this and focus on realizing the true self by diverting his energy to his inner self using meditation, there lies the true happiness.

Conquer your tongue and the world is yours

The tongue has two primary functions one is to help us to express our thoughts and  the other is to enable us taste the food. Controlling tongue is very important as it plays  major role in the soul development as mentioned in the ancient Scriptures.

We need nutrients is to live and perform our daily activities,and the stomach really does not care how they taste. But the tongue craves for the various tastes and says “No admission with out my permission“.This leads to unnecessary craving there by becoming slave to the sense of taste.Diet plays a key role in spiritual growth.The major goal of any spiritual practice is for the mind to conquer all the sensory organs.

Gandhiji in one of his speech said that there is lot of air and water around us.But we only breathe and drink what we need.But when it comes to food,why don’t we do same?

Adi Sankaracharya in his scriptures said that every day we get a disease called hunger and we should treat with a medicine called food implying that we should eat only the amount we require.

Conquering sense organs is not easy .It requires daily Introspection and Meditation.

 

Fearlessness is the key

A student once asked his master Swami Vivekananda what was Lord Krishna first suggestion to depressed and worried Arjuna among the entire Bagavathgeeta ?

Swami Vivekananda told that Lord Krishna’s first suggestion was Fearlessness.He first asked Arjuna to get up and stop crying.He said that the mental weakness is the worst  thing that a man can have as it drives a person into vicious circle of thoughts there by leading person to failure.

So the brain  focuses on the infinite worst probabilities which will never happen instead of  focusing on the solution to the problem at hand.When ever  fear arises in our mind,we have already half failed.So he said that not to get scared and resume  further with positive attitude and Joy.

This suggestion is not only for Arjuna but for every individual.One needs to apply this in our everyday lives .

Hands in the society, Head in the forest

Have you ever seen a native Rajesthani dancer, dancing while a pot filled with water rests on her head?

She moves gracefully, bends, jumps and lights her face up with a lot of expressions but underneath all that show she has utmost concentration on the pot of water which rests on her head. While she does everything to please the audience, her focus is on not to spill a drop of water.

In our everyday life we balance so many things, our family, social obligations, personal goals etc. while we do all those to be the social animal ,our ultimate focus should be on the almighty, in realizing the divinity with in us.

As the great saying goes “hands in the society, head in the forest”.

Idea from a speech about Sri Sankaracharya.

Less luggage, more comfort makes travel a pleasure

The golden rule of travel, “less luggage, makes a travel more pleasure”, very much applies to our journey called life, with our final destiny is to reunite with divinity.

While on this important journey we should minimize our luggage comprising of worldly pleasures, bodily pleasures and fancies of our mind. When we succeed in doing so we are left with our Atman, the source of infinite bliss.

Union with god

Once a gentleman was walking on a river bank, he noticed a fish which fell out of the water. The fish was thrashing, the gentleman had a kind heart so he picked up the fish and took it home. In his house he tucked the fish in his bed and gave it some juice to drink, the fish died.

We are like the fish in the above story,  who have fallen out of our union with god, we should strive to reunite with the divine and realize our true nature. All the momentary pleasures are like the juice in the above story which would not help us reach our destiny.

Stimulus and Response

Between stimulus and response,there is a space.In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose  our response.In our response lies our growth and our happiness.What a meditative mind does is to increase that space for us.

~Vicktor Frankl

Intellect ,Love and God

Well I use to wonder what  is the need for intellect in Spirituality ?God is supreme and we need to reach him in our own ways .But yes there is a need to use some reasoning or intellect in finding God after I witnessed some of the blind meaning less rituals and superstitions . I am not judging nor commenting anyone but just expressing what I feel. Rituals are important and I do respect them but they should be a good reason behind that and it should help towards the development of Soul rather than satisfying your desire.We need to use our Intellect so that we don’t fall into blind beliefs and get carried away by promises which lead you away from the god path. What good are rituals which harm animals and which don’t teach you to treat everyone with the same respect.

The other day when I read a book written by Swami Vivekananda ,he said that our intellect is just like the Policemen who protects us from any disturbances in the proper functioning of Society.like wise our Intellect prevents us  from falling into blind superstitions and rituals. God is beyond Intellect ,our intellect is not sufficient to find him .But our Pure love alone can find God.So the comparison of  our Intellect with Policemen seemed so apt.

Search within yourself

A very inspiring video by Chade-Meng Tan which talks about small changes which can have a positive impact on us.That is the seed of World peace and harmony.

Failure is one of the best teacher if you are willing to learn

Failures are part of every ones life.But the question is are we learning from our mistakes?Some of the Successful people when asked about  failure.

Benjamin Barber said that he would see people as learners and non-learners rather than Successful or failure.Successful people pull themselves out of their setbacks and continue their lives,armed with new knowledge.Non learners stuck in a stage of failure ,mired in feelings of anger or blame or shame and complaining from the past rather than learn form it.He said “the question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure,but weather you are learner or non learner”

The former king of Silicon Valley Nolan Bushnell  said that if Success isolates us form human condition,failure re-introduces us to  humanity.

Tennesse Williams after the huge failure of his first play  said that “if he has not had a failure,he would never have written Glass Menagerie.

Larry Atlas Said”Knowing you can survive defeat makes you risk active failure,and that also can lead to greatness”.

So lets cheer up and move forward by learning from our past and trying not to repeat them.