Love Never Walks Alone ...

One Woman saw 3 saints in front of her house. And she was not knowing any of them.

Woman said –  “Kindly come inside and have food”

Saint replied – "Is your husband inside the house? ”

Woman – “No, he has gone out”

Saint –“Will come inside the house only when he has come”

In the evening the woman's husband comes home and she tells the complete story about the saints.

Husband – “Go and tell them I have come home and invite them inside the house.”

Woman went out and called the saints inside the house.

Saint said – “We all don’t go inside anyone’s house together. ”

“but why?” – Woman asked

One of the saint replied – “My name is wealth”

Then he pointed  to other saints and said – “these two saints names are prosperity and love. Only one of us can come inside your house! “

"You go in and discuss with your family and decide which saint you want to invite ”

Woman went inside and told all this to her husband.

Her husband became too excited

And said –“If this is the matter then let us invite wealth! our house will be filled with happiness”

Wife – “I feel we should invite prosperity”

Their daughter was in the next room , she was listening to all this discussions.  She came close to them and said –

“I feel we should invite love. Beside love nothing is important”

“You are  right, we should invite love only” – her parents agreed.

Woman went out and asked saints – “Between you all who is love please come inside the house”

Love started walking towards the house! 

Other two saints started following love.

The surprised Woman asked the saints – “I only invited love then why you two are coming inside the house?”

One of the saint replied – “If you had invited prosperity or wealth, then only that particular saint would have entered your house.

But you have invited love!

Love never walks alone, Where ever  love is, there is always prosperity and wealth. They all go hand in hand.

Reverence Protects Life

Reverence Protects Life - Gary Zukav

 

As you work toward becoming reverent, your tendencies toward harming others and other forms of life diminish. As you acquire a sense of reverence, you develop the capacity to think more deeply about the value of Life before you commit your energy to action. When you are fully reverent, you cannot harm Life, even (if/)though you are unempowered. Without reverence the experience of being unempowered can become a very cruel one because a dis-empowered person is a frightened person, and a frightened person is a person with no sense of reverence, he or she will harm or kill indiscriminately.

 

Reverence is a level of protection and honor about the process of life so while a person is maturing toward the journey and through the journey of authentic empowerment, he or she harms nothing. Because we have no reverence, our journey to empowerment often includes the experience of victimizing life. Therefore, there are victims and victimizers. The process of destroying Life while we are learning about Life that has characterized our evolution would cease, or at least would be very different if we approached Life with a quality of reverence.

 

It is because(/when) we have no sense of reverence, no true belief in the holiness of all of Life, that Life is destroyed and tortured, brutalized, starved, and maimed while we journey from unempowerment to empowerment. If a sense of reverence were brought into the process of evolution, then as each of us, and our species, moves through the cycle of being unempowered to becoming empowered, the many learnings that are contained within that growing process of evolution would not likely produce violence and fear to the extent that it is now experienced.

 

[...]

 

If we perceived Life with Reverence and understood the evolutionary process, we would stand in awe at the experience of the physical Life, and walk Earth in a very deep sense of gratitude.

About the Author: The above is excerpted from "Seat of the Soul." Gary Zukav is a renowned American spiritual teacher and the author of four consecutive New York Times Best Sellers. Gary now works through The Seat of the Soul Institute, which assists people across the world in creating meaning and purpose, creativity and health, joy and love. 

Double Up With Laughter

Double Up With Laughter - ...it’s only human, says OSHO

Laughter is one of the things that’s most repressed by society all over the world. Society wants you to be serious. Parents want their children to be serious, teachers want their students to be serious, the bosses want their employees to be serious, the commanders want their armies to be serious. Seriousness is required of everybody. Laughter is rebellious.

When the teacher is teaching you and you start laughing, it will be taken as an insult. Your parents are saying something to you and you start laughing — it will be taken as an insult. Seriousness is thought to be honourable and respectful. Naturally, laughter has been repressed so much that even though life all around is hilarious, nobody is laughing. If laughter is freed from its chains, from its bondage, you will be surprised — on each step, you will find something hilarious happening. Life is not serious. Only graveyards are serious, death is serious. Life is love, life is laughter, life is dance, song.

Why So Serious?

But we will have to give life a new orientation. The past has crippled life very badly; it has made you almost laughter-blind, just like there are people who are colour-blind. The constant repression of laughter has made you laughter-blind.

Situations are happening everywhere, but you cannot see that there is any reason to laugh. If your laughter is freed from its bondage, the whole world will be full of laughter. It needs to be full of laughter; it will change almost everything in human life. You will not be as miserable as you are. In fact, you are not as miserable as you look — it is misery plus seriousness that makes you look so miserable. Just misery plus laughter, and you will not look so miserable!

Just look around at life and try to see the humourous side of things. Every event that is happening has its own humourous side, you just need a sense of humour. No religion has accepted sense of humour as a virtue. I want a sense of humour to be a fundamental quality of a good man, of a moral man, of a religious man. And it does not need much searching; you just try to see it, and it’s everywhere...

Laughter, The Best Medicine

Seriousness has become almost part of our bones and blood. You will have to make some effort to get rid of seriousness, and you will have to be on the lookout — wherever you can find something humourous happening, don’t miss the opportunity.

Everywhere there are people who are slipping on banana peels — just nobody is looking at them. In fact, it is thought to be ungentlemanly. It is not, because only bananas slip on banana peels.

Laughter needs a great learning, and laughter is a great medicine. It can cure many of your tensions, anxieties, worries; the whole energy can flow into laughter. And there is no need that there should be some occasion, some cause. Even just sitting in your room, close the doors and have one hour of simple laughter. Laugh at yourself. But learn to laugh.

In one apartment house, people were puzzled about one thing. Every couple was fighting, throwing pillows, throwing things, breaking cups and saucers, shouting at each other, husbands beating wives, wives screaming. The only problem was with one gentleman.

From his flat, they never heard any one fighting; on the contrary, they always heard laughter.

So they caught hold of the fellow as he was coming from the market and said, “First you have to tell us that what the secret is — why do you laugh when everybody fights?” The fellow said, “What happens is, she throws things at me. If she misses, then I laugh; if she hits me then she laughs.” Seriousness is a sin.

Lightness Of Being

Laughter has tremendous beauty, a lightness. It will bring lightness to you, and it will give you wings to fly. And life is full of opportunities. You just need to be sensitive and create chances for other people to laugh. Laughter should be one of the most valued, cherished qualities of human beings — because only man can laugh, no animal is capable of it.

Because it is human, it must be of the highest order. To repress it is to destroy a human quality.

Beyond Enlightenment, courtesy: Osho International Meditation Resort, www.osho.com

There Is Someone Always Praying For You ...

Dear Friend,

As you know, I have now been sending reading material to you for a period of time. The reading material consists of a variety of topics, primarily focusing on topics covering values of life.

I have always sent the material to you without any edits and most often without any personal comments, as I want you to have an unbiased view of the material. I have only added comments, when I believed there was something I could add as value beyond what is being conveyed in a particular piece of article. Those instances have been very rare.

However, there were certain events which happened today, which prompted me from within to pen some thoughts and share it with you. I think am probably doing it for the first time, so please do pardon my writing skills. :)

I want you to remember that irrespective of the 'state' you are in life, there is someone always praying for you. (Paresh P Madani - 25 Nov 2014)

We live in times where one, more often than not, faces challenges and difficult situations at regular intervals. Coupled with that, the environment encourages expectations and desires of various types. All this fosters constant 'competition and comparison', which could become the biggest causes of misery in life. Many a times, this can lead to isolation and a feeling of 'relative' failure; the reason I mention 'relative' is that the yardstick of measurement of our own situation is always someone 'else' ... sometimes almost akin to a 'fish' being measured for its capability to 'climb a tree'.

However, please do remember that during your most difficult times, no matter how alone and lonely you are, there is someone always praying for you. This is in the form of someone to whom you have done a good deed in the past, even if it was a simple thing like bringing a smile to that person. The happiness and peace resulting within the recipient of your 'selfless' good deed, would always result in a soulful, thank you and a prayer by that someone. These 'thanks' and 'prayers' are firmly cast as imprints on the canvas of celestial eternity, which we can constantly reach out to whenever we need to re-charge ourselves back through those prayers, leading us to peace and calm, even at that later time. It is important to note such thanks and prayers are 'eternal' and not 'transient' for that moment alone. Trust me, it works! :)

You may yourself have experienced it before, when at times you would have remembered a good deed done to someone in the past, and how pleased you would have felt about it at the time when you once again remembered it. This is nothing but the prayer of that someone from that time, now re-charging your soul! If it was not eternal, you would not have got peace and happiness in the future. Someone you help could be a person or non-person being, does not matter, every being has a soul.

However, such a deed needs to be 'selfless' and not 'shallow', as otherwise it would be 'laced' with your own 'expectation' of getting something in return. Recalling such 'shallow' deeds at a later time will only lead to frustration, as you would likely measure it in the form in which the 'favour' was returned. It can lead to further aggravation.

Hence, in all your difficult times please remember all your acts of 'selfless' deeds and pray to God to help you remember them when you need it most. Hence it is very important to do as many 'selfless' good deeds as possible, so these are useful to you in your own difficult times. As I mentioned, even if it means a simplest thing like bringing a smile to a person. A quote from Dada Vaswani comes to my mind "If you see a friend without a smile, give him one of yours!". The more good deeds you do, the more number of souls are then eternally praying for you.

In your difficult times, you can also go back to someone who would have made you soulfully happy and brought a smile to you, because your own returned soulful thanks and prayers would also exist as imprints on the canvas of celestial eternity. Also there is no better gift in life than to 'pray' for someone. You can then then access your own thanks and prayers to re-charge yourself in your own difficult times. Not to mention, it is always nice to get your smile back by remembering that event from the past.

Hence, it is important to help and befriend as many as you can. Another quote from Dada Vaswani comes to my mind "Life is an adventure in friendship. Every person we meet let us make him a friend. There are no strangers: there are only friends-in-the-making.".

So you can re-charge your soul by doing good deeds yourself, and even by accepting someone else's good deeds or praying for them. You win in either scenario. Do not believe there would be many such 'true' win-win scenarios that would exist even in the contemporary materialistic world. A final quote from Dada Vaswani "He lives well who laughs often and loves much and sacrifices his own happiness for the sake of others.".  Even if there are no sacrifices to be made, imagine the 'fun' that you would have in the process of doing good deeds and accepting good deeds in return ... :)

So to re-iterate, please always remember that irrespective of the 'state' you are in life, there is someone always praying for you. God bless you with the very best that life has to offer!

Dalai Lama : Why I Laugh?

The Dalai Lama, in an excerpt from his book "My Spiritual Journey"

I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh often, and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher.

The life of exile is an unfortunate life, but I have always tried to cultivate a happy state of mind, appreciating the opportunities this existence without a settled home, far from all protocol, has offered me. This way I have been able to preserve my inner peace.

If we are content just to think that compassion, rationality, and patience are good, that is not actually enough to develop these qualities. Difficulties provide the occasion to put them into practice. Who can make such occasions arise? Certainly not our friends, but rather our enemies, for they are the ones who pose the most problems. So that we truly want to progress on the path, we must regard our enemies as our best teachers.

For whoever holds love and compassion in high esteem, the practice of tolerance is essential, and it requires an enemy. We must be grateful to our enemies, then, because they help us best engender a serene mind! Anger and hatred are the real enemies that we must confront and defeat, not the “enemies” who appear from time to time in our lives.

Of course it is natural and right that we all want to have friends. I often say jokingly that a truly selfish person must be altruistic! You have to take care of others, of their well-being, by helping them and serving them, to have even more friends and make more smiles blossom. The result? When you yourself need help, you will find all you need! On the other hand, if you neglect others’ happiness, you will be the loser in the long run. Is friendship born of arguments, anger, jealousy, and unbridled competition? I don’t think so. Only affection produces authentic friends.

As for me, I always want more friends. I love smiles, and my wish is to see more smiles, real smiles, for there are many kinds—sarcastic, artificial, or diplomatic. Some smiles don’t arouse any satisfaction, and some even engender suspicion or fear. An authentic smile, though, arouses an authentic feeling of freshness, and I think the smile belongs only to human beings. If we want those smiles, we must create the reasons that make them appear.

Smiles For Remaining Days

I have this very sweet neighbour who was just diagnosed with cancer.

She has chosen not to receive any treatment and I try to visit her daily.  When I received my Smile Cards I was wondering how I could use them to make a difference in someone's life. Imaginary light bulbs flashed as I thought about my neighbour and friend. Mary, I realized, would love some happiness in her life.

She loves flowers so I bought a small violet and a "Thinking of You" card, then tucked a Smile Card down inside the leaves of the flower.

That evening I got a call from her asking about the Smile Card. She felt so special. It made her day. It sits in her living room where she can smile at the card every day.

I am just thankful that I can bring some happiness to such a special and kind lady as Mary. I ask God to comfort her every day that she is here.

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. -- Winston Churchill

How Much Is A Kind Word Worth?

How much is a kind word worth? How deeply can a touch heal? How important are your little interactions with your family, friends, and clients, asks ALAN COHEN

Hairdresser David Wagner learnt these answers from a regular customer. One day, she phoned Wagner in-between her regular visits and asked if he would style her hair for an important event that evening. Wagner fit her into his schedule and gave her his usual loving attention. He talked amiably with her, laughed, touched her kindly, and told her how beautiful she looked. After her session, she smiled and thanked him.

You can imagine Wagner’s shock when a few days later he received a handwritten letter from the woman explaining that the important event she wanted to look good for that evening was her own funeral. She had planned to commit suicide later that day. When she spent time with Wagner, however, the kindness he showed her influenced her to change her mind. She decided that life was worth living, and she could go on.

This extraordinary feedback inspired Wagner to reconsider what he was doing with his work and his life. He realised that his purpose with customers went far beyond cutting hair. Within his own sphere of influence, he had the power to make people’s days — and even lives. So he adopted the vocation of ‘Daymaker’.

Now, as owner of 10 successful spas that treat thousands of people each day, Wagner teaches his employees to see themselves as daymakers. His inspiring book Life As A Daymaker chronicles his adventures and techniques.