Spirituality
Have a complete break with the past and see what happens…..
I think it is essential sometimes to go into retreat, to stop everything that you have been doing, to stop your beliefs and experiences completely and look at them anew, not keep on repeating like machines whether you believe or don’t believe. You would let fresh air into your minds. Wouldn’t you? That means you must be insecure, must you not? If you can do so, you would be open to the mysteries of nature and to things that are whispering about us, which you would not otherwise reach; you would reach the god that is waiting to come, the truth that cannot be invited but comes itself. But we are not open to love, and other finer processes that are taking place within us, because we are all too enclosed by our own desires. Surely, it is good to retreat from all that. Stop being a member of some society. Stop being a Brahmin, a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim. Stop your worship, rituals, take a complete retreat from all those and see what happens. In a retreat, do not plunge into something else, do not take some book and be absorbed in new knowledge and new acquisitions. Have a complete break with the past and see what happens. Sirs, do it, and you will see delight. You will see vast expanses. When your heart is open, then reality can come. Then the whisperings of your own prejudices, your own noises are not heard. That is why it is good to take a retreat, to go away and to stop the routine, not only the routine of outward existence but the routine which the mind establishes for its own safety and convenience. Try it sirs, those who have the opportunity.
Madras Jan. 5th, 1952, The Collected Works, Vol. VI
a humble heart draws the heaven to itself….
Have you ever seen a pigeon’s nest? Broken, messy and sometimes it’s not even there, have you wondered why it is so?
There was a time when pigeons used to lay eggs in the bushes; fox would come and eat the eggs. When pigeons couldn’t find a way to guard the eggs they went to the sparrows for help.
Sparrows said, ‘There is no other option but to build a nest on the tree.’
Pigeons made a nest, but it wasn’t done properly. Finally, they decided to take help from the sparrows to build the nest.
The birds were happy to teach the pigeons to make a good nest. When they had just begun to build the nest, pigeons said.. ‘Even we know how to build it like this, we will make it on our own.’
Thought of the Week – 21st February 2022
Be Like Cat
– What is Tao?, Alan Watts
If you can understand that everyone has come to learn….
You’re actually above the other only in your own idealization of your own behavior. You are not above them, they are not below you. They are having a different encounter with themselves, and perhaps learning through it, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to learn as well. If you assume that someone is not where they are supposed to be, you have decided for them based upon what you think they should be, or perhaps where or how they should behave based upon your idealisation of behaviour…..
This does not make them wrong. Do you understand this? It doesn’t make you wrong, either, but it certainly doesn’t make you right……
If you can understand that everyone has come to learn—how they learn their lessons is in some ways decided by them at a higher level—you learn not to judge.
You don’t have to enable, you don’t have to agree….
Do you understand this, yes?
– Paul Selig
Enlightenment
David Hawkins from Letting Go
The Flow of Abundance
The flow of abundance can get blocked at any one of six steps:
- Clarify your purpose. Have a clear sense of what your life is about and what you value most.
- Look for lessons in your areas of shortage. The aspects of your life where there is a lack exist to teach you something.
- Learn to be grateful for what you do have. Move beyond distorted perceptions and see clearly the parts of your life where you are greatly blessed.
- Give what you can. By joyfully and freely giving, you redefine yourself as someone whose life is abundant.
- Expect and accept the good that comes to you. Be alert to the necessary resources in whatever form they may come—expected or unexpected.
- Giving and receiving – build community. Be open to building or reinforcing interpersonal relations based on mutual care.
Look over the list of six points. Which one of them seems weakest in your life? That is, which one is most in need of further application?
The Edgar Cayce Handbook for Creating Your Future
The real ‘You’ Comes and Goes…..
“You cannot catch hold of it, nor can you get rid of it. In not being able to get it, you get it. When you speak it is silent. When you are silent it speaks.”
Zen Poem
Book of the Month – September 2021 : Essays on the Gita by Sri Aurobindo
“The peculiarity of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mohammed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to its inexorable completion…. The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life.” – Sri Aurobindo (Essays on the Gita pp.9)
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