You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say,"I am proud of what I am and who I am,and I am going to be myself."

After a while you learn the subtle difference, between holding a hand and chaining a soul, and you learn that, love dosen't mean leaning. And company dosen't mean security, and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises.

And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of a man, not the grief of a child, and you learn to build all your roads on TODAY, because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans, and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you have too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers, and you learn that you really can endure........ That you really are strong and you really do have worth, And you learn and learn with every person you meet or employ. You learn with every friend or lover, you learn with every goodbye,you learn.   

 # The ink of a scholar is more sacred than blood of a martyr.

# The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give.

# You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

# You yourself, as much as anybody in the universe, deserve your love and affection.

# Whenever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.

# the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

# Happiness can't be travelled to, owned, earned or consumed. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

# In the end it all comes down to enthusiasm. Your creativity is basically your ex-pression of God - force.

Prayer for Monday - Wash Day

Lord, help me wash away all my selfishness and vanity, so I may serve you with perfect humility through the week ahead.

Prayer for Tuesday - Ironing Day

Dear Lord, help me iron out all the wrinkles of prejudice I have collected through the years so that I may see the beauty of others.

Prayer for Wednessday - Mending Day

O God, help me mend my ways so I will not set a bad example for others.

Prayer for Thursday - Cleaning Day

Lord Jesus, help me dust out all the many faults I have been hiding in the secret corner of my heart.

Prayer for Friday - Shopping Day

O God, give me the grace to shop wisely so I may purchase eternal happiness for myself, my family and all others in need of love.

Prayer for Saturday - Cooking Day

Help me, my Saviour, to brew a big kettle of brotherly love and serve it with clean, sweet bread of human kindness.

Prayer for Sunday - The Lord's Day

O God, I have prepared my house for you. I come into your prescence to worship so I may spend the day and the rest of my life in your prescence.

dedicated to CAROLENE  my friend Sam Thomas's daughter.

TRAVEL  LIGHT  TO ENJOY THE  JOURNEY  OF  LIFE

Again, received wisdom from my mother says things can never bring you happiness. Once you've bought something, its value diminishes. At first I used to think that was not true, but in time learnt that it is one of the few truths in life. I constantly try and make an effort to not get attached to 'things' now because at the end of the day they are things. This dosen't mean don't shop, don't want....  it means realise that actual happiness cannot be attained from anything external.

Enjoy all the things you have and be grateful for it, as that too is the grace of God , but do not expect it to give you anything. I find my peace every evening as I sit by myself and watch the sun set. That is when I feel real joy. The sun sets with such ease and that is how we should be.

I would get attached to songs and smells ! Some smells can take you back in time and songs too can transport you to old memories. It is nice to remember but if we dwell on the past we are missing out on the present ; we tend to miss out on new smells and songs as we're so preoccupied with the old. We have to let go, because holding on to something does not give us ownership rights. So much baggage ! To enjoy the journey of life, travel light. In other words, practise loving detachment. 

TRAVEL  LIGHT  TO  ENJOY  THE  JOURNEY  OF  LIFE

I often wonder : Is it possible to love without attachment ? We do have love to give, but is it the right kind of love ? We tend to feel a kind of ownership over all that we love though we don't own anything or anyone.

It is easier to utter the words, " I love you " than to actually mean it. Love is perceived in many different ways. My mother would say : "Love, but never be possessive of what you love. Once you are possessive, you might claim ' this is mine ' when in actuality nothing or no one is yours."

We are all here on a spiritual journey. Along the way we find several co-travellers who become part of our lives but they too have their own destination. There is a hierarchy of love. Right on top are parents, spouse, children, siblings, other family members and friends. Love stops here and further down the ladder it becomes 'like' Sri Satya Sai Baba says love all as if your own. He talks of universal love. This is not easy to follow but maybe we could try. For starters, we could do little things that make people smile. A kind word or tone would not take away from you but give a lot to the other person.

Sri Satya Sai Baba says : " if you want peace and if you want happiness you must live in love. Only through love will you find true happiness. Love flourishes through giving and Forgiving. Develop your love ! Immerse yourself in love ! "

".... Love is the basis of every thing. It is the single most important quality that has to be developed. All your thoughts must become immeresed in this quality of love....  then truth will naturally  establish itself in your heart. "

People who serve are God-like ; their service should be appreciated, whether they belong to your peer group or not. We need to learn to love without attachment. We love those who we feel are ours. What about the rest ? Why is an amazing emotion like love saved only for those few people who we percieve as ours ? For instance, how might one learn to love the person who has wronged us ? I guess I would say OK, don't love, but at least try not to hate. That is an improvement.

What  Equals 100 percent ? What does it mean to give MORE than 100 percent ? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100 per cent ?

We have all been in situations where someone wants you to  GIVE OVER 100 per cent. How about ACHIEVING 101 per cent ?

What equals 100 per cent in life ?

Here's a little mathematical formula that might help answer these questions :

If ..       A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z    are  represented  as :  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26.

Then..  H - A - R - D - W - O - R - K   is   8 + 1 + 18 + 4 + 23 + 15 + 18 + 11  =  98 per cent.

And for..  K - N - O - W - L - E - D - G - E  is  11 + 14 + 15 + 23 + 12 + 5 + 4 + 7 + 5  =  96 per cent.

But for..   A - T -T - I - T - U - D - E   is   1 + 20 + 20 + 9 + 20 + 21 + 4 + 5   =   100 per cent.

Then, look how far the Love of God  will take you :      

for..  L - O -V - E - O - F - G - O - D    is   12 + 15 + 22 + 5 + 15 + 6 + 7 + 15 + 4  =  101 per cent.

Therefore, one can conclude with mathematical certainity that : While Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the Love of God that will put you over the top !

How do we purify and soften our mind ?  A pure, soft mind is a gateway to divine living. Thinking positive isn't enough. It is essential to think divine. Only raising ourselves from the level of human thinking to divine thinking can soften and purify the mind. This can be done as the seer's suggest by reviewing the working of our mind at least three times a day,-- was my mind assertive or calm ? Did my words and actions hurt or bring joy to people ? Because, remember an object that slips out of our hand can be recovered, but an inappropriate word that slips out of our tongue cannot be undone. Self-review will cleanse our mind of all the mental dirt. Ideas and inspiration flash freely in a pure mind to transform information to knowledge. Knowledge can be defined simply as the idea of how to put information to use for the welfare of many in the form of an action.

For this the wise have prescribed three basic steps : (1) Allow others the freedom to be as they are, without imposing your mindset of thoughts and ideas. (2) Have faith and belief that GOD is in you. (3) Spend some time quietly, alone, everyday thinking about your Inner Self and chanting the name of God. This way the mind that seeks information can be changed into a mind meant for the transformation of our very life from human to Divine.

(friends, is the priscription hard & tough to follow ? what do you think ? )

My Dear  Friends.....  In order to bring in a sense of purpose and quality into our lives, we need to look at the nature and working of our very mind.

The mind is meant to absorb information, transform it into knowledge and lead it into action. Action and speech determine the quality of our life and these come from the mind.

How can we understand the nature of absorption of the mind ? Wise men who have dwelt on the truth of this, have said that most people's minds are as hard as rock. Just as the rock is impervious to water, information that falls on a hard mind bounces off without a trace.

A hard mind offers immense resistance ; it is full of previously absorbed information that prevents the flow of new knowledge and action. Our mind must be soft as sponge for maximum absorption. Just as water can be easily absorbed by a sponge and squeezed out, a soft mind easily absorbs information and allows free flow of knowledge to enable suitable action. The two processes are reversible --- a soft or open mind can be easily hardened and a hard or closed mind can be easily softened. We only need to be aware and exercise caution.

What makes our mind hard and closed ? Sages have said that this is an automatic, front-line defence mechanism for the protection of our belief systems based on our state of ego. If we encounter an idea or a situation that is not in line with our thinking, we immediately close our mind ; we put up a block against it ; this is what we call mindset. Ego creates mindset. Mindset is a protective mechanism of self-defence because we are scared of what others think about our notions and beliefs. Mindset is self-destructive and we have quite often experienced this. For example, a simple discussion develops into an argument and leads to a verbal fight, and can get more intense because of mindset.

Therefore, mere gathering of information by our mind is useless. We must transform this to knowledge. Our mind must be pure to be able to perform this conversion efficiently. The work of an impure mind will rebound while the work of a pure mind will reach out to the world for its welfare.

(How to purify and soften our mind?...  continued... (part -2)

When everything is taken away from us, we become grounded in reality very quickly. A sage was once asked why he was so happy, he responded,"I have nothing left to lose !". Being grounded in reality happens in that split second when we know all is lost ; a moment before the car crash, a moment after the diagnosis.

The reality we then face is quite different from the day dreams of our everyday illusions. There is something we can learn here, because many times, the result of a traumatic experience is that we come out of it a changed person, and the changes are usually for the better. New vistas open up for us and we findourselves and our interests somehow strangely altered. We actually become happier. There are times in our lives when we do things and don't know why, and although these things may appear foolish to our friends, we feel compelled to do them nonetheless. Sometimes these things involve letting go of something very dear to us, and we can hardly believe what we are doing. This can be a crushing experience, yet we do it. Just when things are going swimmingly, there is sometimes an underlying urge to cancel everything out.

In the East, a tradition exists where people pile all their belongings into a boat, sail out to sea, and dump them every seven years. If one followed this tradition, think of how careful one might be in what one purchased !

In addition, how aggressive would we be in making money ? Maybe we would forget about money and do what we love for a change. That would certainly produce some happiness. If our karma is good,howver, so good that we are protected from disasters, we might need to become proactive in causing our own disasters --- to help things along.

Great men in the past have done just that; Christ lived as a homeless wanderer ; the Buddha left royalty behind to live in rags in the forest for six years, seeking and finding enlightenment. Foolishness ? Perhaps, but who has affected the history of the world more than these two men have?

In essence, what the Buddha and Christ were saying is that until the bottom drops out of your life, you will continue to love your life.

True happiness is that Reality we touch when all is lost. Money, love, family; these are all caught within the web of existence ; and existence is nothing but stress compared to this Reality.

Existence has three characteristics, three laws of universe, and they are that  1) everything changes. 2) life is stress. 3) no "self" stands behind life.  Reality, on the other hand, has never been born, will never die, does not come from a previous condition, and has the characteristics of eternity and unchangingness. The three characteristics of existence are unassailable, and while we remain caught in them, we can never be truly happy although we try to convince ourselves otherwise.

Everything that we think will make us happy, all that they tell us to acomplish, to be ambitious about, and to compete for, never does so for long. If none of this makes any sense to you, then you must continue seeking happiness in the things of the world.

If for some reason seeking happiness in the world does not work for you, in the long run, then there are things that you can do to ease yourself into a Reality where happiness is assured.

By easing yourself into this Reality, you are not required to give things up in a violent fashion ; they fall away by themselves. If you ever become serious about real happiness, weary of temporary happiness slipping through your fingers time and again, then go after the missing element.

The missing element is emptiness, and there is a good way, a gradual way, and a certain way to bring this element into your life. Emptiness is the doorway to a new life, and the doorway to emptiness is MEDITATION.

                    Looking  for  Brahmn  In a Haystack

The effect of maya is powerful. With so many versions of spirituality, however, looking for Brahmn, the Supreme Consciousness, is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The present age, kaliyug, was predicted to witness the downfall of dharma. To some, spirituality is a means to attract maya instead of a way to remove bondage. Then there are others who consider art superior to penance and bhakti.

Yoga does not distinguish between different paths to achieve the Divine. So there is no question od debating over which path is superior. Patanjali has given forms, all culminating in yoga or union with the real self, none superior to the other. However, thevarious limbs or asoects are being picked up in isolation by some practitioners and propagated as the only means to achieve the Divine. We need to be aware of this and take care.

All Gods or devas are forms of energies. They each go through a phase of transition and play their role in governing some aspect of Creation. They operate beyond our senses : hence the question of pleasing them with dance or drama or any physical exercise does not arise. For a Yogi, entire Creation unfolds as drama.

The ultimate purpose is to realise the drama and not get affected by scences and acts. The need is to rise above karma. That's what Krishna emphasised through his leela, not getting affected or attached with the play. This is called nishkama karma or karma free of attachment, that is, free of pain and pleasure. This is the underlying message of Gita.

Evolution in human being is a process of constant ascent through various chakras or aspects of life, from basic needs and desires of the physical body to the highest aspect of physical cration, the arts, and finally over the self. Yoga describes chakras clairvoyantly seen as energy centres strung along the sushumna nadi which runs along the spine, in the energy body. There are seven major chakras in the body, governing all aspects of  Creation for that being.