There is a path to happiness...

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There is a path to happiness...

There is nothing called tomorrow as far as life is concerned , it  is only today. Our friend brought to me a sheet of paper in which he wrote (not scribbled) about his fears, hopes , aspirations and also his strength and weaknesses . I was surprised and was pleased with the sincerity with which he did it in one day.

When I looked at the paper I found that he was very serious in writing those words and I was sure that much thought must have gone into every word of it. He had actually done a 360 degrees analysis , that is , he made an assessment of all conceivable aspects surrounding him .

But when I went through it and found that he had dealt with both his external and internal states. I was really surprised at the inherent ability of man to make an attempt to discover himself ,his realities .The paper was a  concise critical spiritual autobiography of my friend ( Our friend ) with his own perceptions of his actions.

He had used three different colours on the paper. On close scrutiny I found to my amusement that he used blue colours for all the things he did which he thought was right ,the red colour was used for all the things he should not have done or said, according to him and the  feeling of guilt attached to it .Green colour was used for writing what he wants to be and what he aspired for now and in future – He wrote only one sentencethere.. “I feel relieved now and I want to be happy, but how ? I am not sure . but I may get an answer ,from within or without” ... he had written at the end of the second page ...there is a path ,he must have thought, for the first time ,towards real  happiness which he was yet to experience ... 

Did he find an answer or did somebody gave him an answer? 

Let us  see... what happened to him next .......

TOTAL EMPTINESS

Total Emptiness happens when you have nothing to hold on to. When you become  a sort of puppet controlled by somebody else you will have a sort of  internal vacuum which will affect your total personality. It is all a matter of choice which is under your control

It is this moment that counts and that is the only reality. As one saying goes “yesterday is a cancelled cheque ,tomorrow us a promissory note , today is CASH “ Hence extracting maximum of today’s possibilities is the only way to be happy. My friend ,who fell from the pedestal he created for himself, was really living in the past and thinking about the unknown future. What will happen to him ? But the truth is that what will happen to him tomorrow could be the result of what he does today .. may or may not be.. it is uncertain but everything is uncertain in life. 

You have to live your life and you have to make your choices at every step and you are responsible for your actions. I f you live and act according to the plans made for you by others you lose out on everything and you will feel that you have accomplished anything lie And at last you will think about the uselessness of the life that you had been living .This exactly was the case of our friend who went on living looking outside without looked within himself as to what he really wants .Tolstoy makes this point clear through one of his characters, IVAN ILYCH as he awaits his moment of truth .Ivan contemplates on his past thoroughly dominated by others opinions which he thought his own and gave up control of himself and thus living a “false life “.Our friend was also making an attempt to fit into a system which was not his but which others made for him and hence falling down into a chaotic situation. Freedom to choose has been a tragedy for him because he did not exercise his choice well, and hence ends up in regret . Now read what TOLSTOY says :

“

What if my whole life has been wrong ?”It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before ,namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done ,might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely noticeable impulses ,which he had immediately suppressed ,might have been the real thing the rest false .And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interest, might all have been false . He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend...

Happiness is our right and you alone can deny it to yourself. Hence you cannot blame anybody else for your unhappiness. I told our friend to write down on a sheet of paper whatever comes to his mind about what he really wants after careful thought .This is to effect a sort of catharsis ( Because he will definitely think about some significant things in his past before he thinks about the future)..

Then what happened ?.... continues

You are the sum total of your CHOICES

       

You are the sum total of your CHOICES

The greatest gift and the greatest tragedy of human beings is that every one of us has been vested with the power to choose between any number of choices.

The gift is a real one and great one is because we can consciously accept or reject things ,ideas ,people, and what not! But the greatest tragedy is that we find it extremely difficult tot exercise this power to choose when occasion arises .Our dilemma is always Hmalet-ian one TO BE OR NOT TO BE ... TO DO OR NOT TO DO.. TO ACCEPT OR NOT AND IT CONTINUES as long as life continues. We regret our decisions too often ,and engage in blame games often trying to find out a scapegoat when things go wrong. But the fact is that we ourselves are the culprits for our own suffering.

Everybody wants to be happy but have you ever thought how you can become happy. Happiness is relative and the cause of happiness changes every moment .Just reflect a while to find out when was the last time you were happy. You may vaguely recollect some incidents in the past which made you happy ( and this can happen only if you know what is happiness , which I doubt many of us may not know ).

I know a person( who owned a two-wheeler for a long time )  thought that  buying any car ( a four-wheeler ) will make him happy. He worked hard and entered into real estate business ( he was an employee in  a small finance company).there was a boom and he entered the business on a full time business and money flowed in as he bought and sold lands .And fro his first car ( Maruti 800) he reached a BMW in less that five years . I used to meet him frequently during his Maruti days but I do not meet him in his BMW days as before . But when I met him once he casually told me that he would like to buy a ROLLS ROYCE car !! My jaws dropped not because he wanted to buy a RR but because the kind of dynamic desire a man can have .But the anticlimax is that he retraced swiftly back to a  Maruti Swift D Zire and I heard that he lost somewhere in his journey stumbled and fell.

After one year I happened to meet him in a marriage function and he tried to move away from me but could not. I asked him how he was and he drew me to corner , we sat on plastic chairs and he told me his tragic story  of losing everything due to his indulgence in luxury .I asked him whether he was happy .. he reflected for a moment and asked me back .. what do mean by happiness ? I think I was never neither I am now “ But I am not sure what happened to me and what is happening to me. Nobody asked this question to me till now” "To be frank with you I do not know". He was about to break down when somebody came up and addressed him .

I left him and walked away.

Then what happened..   read on... to be continued ....

Live a Better Life

Live a Better Life 

Photo. Varma

“ Do not blame people so much as the environments into which they are born .Their surroundings and circumstances force them to become worse than they  really are .That is true of both EAST and WEST. Society must be brought into tune with a higher note. Materialism must be balanced by idealism ; there is no other real cure for the world’s difficulties. The troubles into which countries are everywhere being plunged are really agonies which will force this change ,just as failure is frequently a sign-post pointing to another road”

PAUL BRUNTON… A Search In Secret India  

Brunton was one of the twentieth century’s greatest explorers of the spiritual traditions of the East. He was also a journalist with a healthy regard for critical impartiality and for commonsense. These characteristics ,together with a rich inner life ,made him a superb writer on spirituality of the ORIENT .

A Search In secret INDIA is one of the great classics of spiritual travel writing.

“ Paul Brunton was surely one of the finest mystical flowers to grow on the wasteland of our civilization. what he has to say is important to us all”

..George Feuerstein

THE STATEMENT and MY understanding

Brunton is a fine writer( WITH SPIRITUAL LEANINGS ) who wrote convincingly about abstract things in a very clear, understandable language Though he was initially confused about the contradictions he found in Hinduism , he pursued the subject passionately and discovered very satisfying answers. This passage deals with two important aspects which haunt us even now. We are not able to decide what is more important : Materialism or Spiritualism in the modern situation. but the thing is that materialism has tremendous limitation  whereas spiritualism has no limits .

Materialism is nothing but pursuing material things and pleasures which becomes and end in itself. this usually ends up in frustration and disappointment But the problem that arise out of our material pursuit could be solved by spirituality which has the power to pierce to the root the problem and solve it permanently. Many think that idealism is madness but it is not. Idealism  is “the cherishing or pursuit of high or noble principles, purposes, or goals” . This means that we have to aim high to achieve something in life.

” Hitch one’s wagon to a star To aim high, to have high ideals, to be idealistic. Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently coined this metaphor which appeared in his Society and Solitude (1870):

Now that is the wisdom of a man
… to hitch his wagon to a star.

  

Just read  the following words by SAINT GURU NANAK

Self -willed fools crave for peace,but 

find it not.

The God-oriented are exceptionally

joyful ever

the worldly folk are engrossed in

false pursuit

But in the hereafter,the account of

one's actions is taken

Says  Nanak,never forget the 

True lord

remember His name with Love

And He shall bless you with the

mark of His grace

Photo. Varma

HAPPINESS ...harmaony of mind ,body and spirit

 Who does  not want to be HAPPY?  

Happiness is not finite it is infinite .It is so because you cannot have any boundaries for it. You cannot define it .The normal definition "it a state of mind " is too general and true but not perhaps a definition. This is again because it has many dimensions and often too elusive and most often very temporal. 

But one thing is certain in the midst of the uncertainty of life. The positive thing about happiness is that we can experience it if we really wish to have it .This is very true and there are many people people around you who will be experiencing happiness in the same context you find yourself unhappy

To live a happy life is not   a rocket science or nuclear science ,instead it is very simple. It does not need great spiritual education to practice this art of making yourself happy. Happiness is nothing but a feeling a sort of well being on a minute by minute basis( if one takes a minute as the smallest unit ; a second also can be taken....).

The simple test to see whether you are a happy or not is to watch for 5 to 10 minutes whether you are happy when yon do some work or whether you are happy while you are talking to somebody really happiness is the normal state and unhappiness is an aberration. Normally our mind and the thousands of thoughts they ply through it is nothing but the product of the mind which absorbs these through the senses. 

Our brain works continuously in processing these inputs through these and the brain works through the millions of firing of neurons  that happen  continuously which are wired and rewired in a very complex way.The mind goes on swinging in all directions when the firing fails to stick to a pattern. This is  only a very crude way of putting it,

But the point is our brain is part of our body rather the most important which controls all our thoughts and actions .Fortunately all parts of the body ,including our brain is subject to our control in one way or the other through various methods. 

We do exercises to give sufficient strength to our muscles and there are many systems that have been developed all over the world across all cultures to accomplish this In India it is YOGA that has provided a very comprehensive system . the specialty of YOGA is that it deals both with body and mind very effectively. 

The real we are our mind  and soul which inhabits the body and which is the TOOL to realize the SPIRIT within us .our mind and body should be made to work in harmony to achieve a better balance of our thought process."You are not this body and this body too is not yours .You are the spirit that enlivens this body."

The functioning of the great tool gifted to us by GOD can be qualitatively enhanced and it can be rewired for better performance and if needed can be corrected ( if the wiring has undergone some changes for the worse) by simple methods : EXERCISES ,YOGA,MEDITATION,AND MINDFUL MEDITATION: THE LAST IS VERY IMPORTANT 

Just read ahead  on....to get into the subject

Life-energy Your body is a temple

“You are all Buddhas

There is nothing you need to achieve

Just open your eyes”

Siddhartha Gauthama

I hope my last article gave you a new insight and a new understanding, which can be interpreted as the ‘awakening’. Did it set your thought process going? With that we have just completed step one. That means you have started stirring your mind a bit. Good! How do we get our thoughts shaken a bit?

One thing you should remember all the while is that your mind, body, soul and spirit has to be integrated, has to be one entity. When you achieve a perfect balance of this, you achieve absolute bliss. One cannot exist without the other, as it forms a symmetry. Each has to be dealt with differently and separately. Mind and body are inseparable and they contribute to our overall wellness.

Let’s start with our body. It’s the universal truth that our body is a temple. It has to be worshipped with utmost reverence and care. It has to be energised regularly. There cannot be any change internally without your body being energised. How do we do that?

Recharge

Can you use a mobile phone without recharging it? Drive a car without fuel? Our body needs energy. Who creates this energy? We do. God has given us an internal mechanism to create limitless energy to keep us going. How do we do that? By a regular physical activity and a balanced diet to energise our body which will in turn energise our mind, our moods and feelings and keep it going!

Exercise

What kind of a physical activity do you think you can do and enjoy on a daily basis? The choices are plenty. You can take a brisk walk, jog, play tennis, join some dancing classes, karate, aerobics, join a gym and more. Let me take a wild guess what is your mind saying? God…I have no time! As it is after a days work I am ‘soooooo’ tired! I am too old for this! I am too sick! Endless excuses! Doesn’t matter. This too will pass.

Now the answers- it’s not the question of having no time, it’s the question of making time. You can only combat physical fatigue with physical activity, you are never too old or sick! You just have to do it. Come what may. So what are you waiting for? Choose any one and start now. NO PROCRASTINATION!

Yoga

Practicing Yoga maintains the state of equanimity at all times, calms the mind and integrates the body and mind leaving you with a feeling of peace and happiness. It increases self awareness both physically and mentally. If you haven’t trained in yoga, sign up for a course. Make yoga a way of your life and experience the difference.

Consult your doctor if you have existing medical condition before starting any activity.

Healthy eating

Have a proper eating plan. A healthy balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, cereals, pulse, dairy, poultry, fish and meat products will ensure essential vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre. Make sure you drink 9- 12 glasses of water in a day. Restrict your intake of oil and sweets. Never binge or indulge in comfort eating.

You will see the change in yourself in three days time. You will feel refreshed, alert, charged and disciplined. If you look within, you will see your mind, soul and spirit are charged.

Make this a part of your life. Watch the change in you- shaping you up in more ways than one. But stay committed to yourself, be disciplined and don’t lose focus. Remember if you cheat, you cheat yourself and no one else.

When we meet next, you will have a great physical activity regime going combined with healthy eating.   BABITA NARAYAN

       

Why GOD permits Evil and How to Rise Above It

Good and Evil must ever be complements on this earth. Everything created must bear some guise of imperfection.How else could GOD the SOLE PERFECTION,fragment HIS one consciousness into forms of creation distinguishable form HIMSELF? 

There can be no images  of light without contrasting shadows.Unless evil had been created,man would not know the opposite, good.

Night brings out the bright contrast of day,sorrow teaches us the desirability of joy.Though evil must come,woe to him by whom it comes'he who is enticed by delusion to play the villain's part must suffer the sad karmic fate,while the hero receives the hallowed reward of his virtue.

 Knowing this truth,we must shun evil; becoming good,we ultimately rise to God's high estate...beyond both good and evil....

                                                  ..Sri Sri Paramahamsa Yogananda