Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Continue reading
Pause and Reflect
Seeking vs Understanding
Seeking is based on some reason, Understanding is without any! Seeking is with an effort and purpose, Understanding is spontaneous and effortless! Understanding is absent in Seeking, While the ‘seeker’ is absent in the Understanding! Seeking consists of seeker, seeking and the sought, While this trinity is utterly absent in the Understanding! Search consists of search, searcher and the searched, Understanding denies the very ‘searcher’! Continue reading
Humility, unlike humiliation, is liberating
When you feel humble, you don’t mind acknowledging your flaws and getting creative with your limitations. Narcissists resist humility, confusing it with humiliation….
….Where pride closes the heart and defends us from others, humility opens the heart and allows others in…
Unconventional Surrender – keeping it simple
Man has become addicted to the drug named ‘intellect’ and under its influence, compulsively analyzes everything, cogitating, speculating and making all simple things complicated.
This addiction, can only be gotten rid of, by unconventional surrender, to the process of pure receptivity.
– Ramesh Balsekar.
( contributed by Mr.Balasunder)
The mythic mind ( Mythos) ponders metaphysical questions while the logical mind (Logos) counts the beans and weighs the odds.
Logos refers to our ordinary way of seeing the world with deductive, logical thinking that helps us balance our checkbook, make decisions, and plan for the future. But as scholar Karen Armstrong describes, the ancients saw that logos cannot “assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life’s struggle. For that people turned to mythos, stories that made no pretensions to historical accuracy but should rather be seen as an early form of psychology.”
Please don’t be fooled by me
Please don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off and none of them are me. Pretending is an art that is second nature to me, but don’t be fooled, for God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give you the impression I’m secure and that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name, coolness my game, that water is calm and I’m in command and that I need no one, but don’t believe me, please don’t believe me.
My surface may be smooth, but my surface is a mask–my every varying and ever concealing mask. Beneath it dwells the real confusion, fear and aloneness. Beneath lies my smugness, my complacency but I hide this–I don’t want anyone to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. That’s why I frantically created a mask to hide behind– nonchalant sophisticated facades to help me pretend– to shield me from the glance that knows– but such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation and I know it. That is if it’s followed by acceptance. If it’s followed by love, it’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self built prison walls and from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect. It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I cannot assure myself, that I’m really worth while, but I don’t tell you this, I don’t dare–I’m afraid to.
I’m afraid that your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love. I’m afraid you’ll think less of me and you’ll laugh and your laugh will kill me. I’m afraid that deep down, I’m nothing and that I’m just no good and that you’ll see this and reject me.
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Love, Belief and Taking a chance on Someone Else
At the prodding of my friends, I am writing this story. My name is Mildred Hondorf. I am a former elementary school music teacher from DeMoines, Iowa.
I’ve always supplemented my income by teaching piano lessons — something I’ve done for over 30 years. Over the years I found that children have many levels of musical ability. I’ve never had the pleasure of having a protégé though I have taught some talented students.
However I’ve also had my share of what I call “musically challenged” pupils. One such student was Robby. Robby was 11 years old when his mother (a single mom) dropped him off for his first piano lesson. I prefer that students (especially boys!) begin at an earlier age, which I explained to Robby. But Robby said that it had always been his mother’s dream to hear him play the piano. So I took him as a student.
Well, Robby began with his piano lessons and from the beginning I thought it was a hopeless endeavor. As much as Robby tried, he lacked the sense of tone and basic rhythm needed to excel. But he dutifully reviewed his scales and some elementary pieces that I require all my students to learn.
Over the months he tried and tried while I listened and cringed and tried to encourage him. At the end of each weekly lesson he’d always say, “My mom’s going to hear me play some day.” But it seemed hopeless.
Mental Attitudes Towards Engaging in Action
The ignorant and the wise are both engaged in action. But their mental attitudes towards action differ greatly. The ignorant person has an obsession for action. He becomes involved in and attached to what he does. He binds himself emotionally to his field of activity. He acts merely to fulfil his egocentric desires. His motive is only personal profit or benefit. He sweats and toils all his life for procuring more comforts and pleasures for himself and perhaps his family. He entertains no other ideal or goal in life. The purpose of his existence does not extend beyond his personal acquisition and indulgence in this world.
