Difficult Circumstances

When we encounter a difficult circumstance, what do we do? Get stressed, get fidgety, panic, sometimes make wrong decisions in a hurry. It is all about how we perceive the difficult circumstance. Whether we start blaming others for it or just shift the perspective a bit. Ask yourself - Is there a wiser, more enlightened way of looking at this seemingly negative situation?

Just dig a little deeper - Are the problems you have experienced or the challenges you may be facing really as serious as you have made them out to be?

Conflicts Everywhere

Conflicts have become a part of our lives - personal and professional. There are conflicts in personal relationships and more so we cannot imagine a workplace without conflicts.

Where do so many conflicts stem from, they trouble us, impact our well-being and success but why do they exist?

Conflict comes from rage, rage comes from fear and fear comes from lack of faith.

Conflict is a result of greed and outrage, both stem from insecurity. Insecurity is the result of lack of faith in one's true nature and true nature of the world around us. As long as we do not accept life for what it is, as long as we try to control and change things, there will always be conflict. Conflict ends when we realize that beyond tangible material reality, there is intangible spiritual reality.

Ecstasy..

Desires soaring high, as I reach for the sky...
Its a bright yellow day, and hopes making hay,
Heart leaping through, no this can't be true
I got to where I dreamed, however far it had seemed,
Life's at its best, but I do not wish to rest,
Carving my way to ecstasy, see who joins me on my freedom spree!

Blessings in Disguise

Opportunities often knock at our doors, but several times we happen to miss them, because they come in a guise least expected by us. We are not able to assess the signs and instead of thanking what came our way we get angry and start cursing our luck.

A very good anecdote I found online touched my heart. Whatever comes our way is the result of our own deeds and sometimes even though the fruit is not as expected, it may have some great good luck hidden beneath. The key is to keep the mind open, not let preconceptions block the view. Open the windows and let the sunshine flow in.

A young man was getting ready to graduate from college. For many months he had admired a beautiful sports car in a dealer's showroom, and knowing his father could well afford it, he told him that was all he wanted.

As Graduation Day approached, the young man awaited signs that his father had purchased the car.  Finally, on the morning of his graduation, his father called  him into his private study. His father told him how proud he was to have such a fine son, and told him how much he loved him. He handed his son a beautifully wrapped gift box.  Curious, but somewhat disappointed, the young man opened the box and found a lovely, leather-bound Bible, with the young man's name embossed in gold. Angry, he raised his voice to his father and said "With all your money, you give me a Bible?" and stormed out of the house, leaving the Bible.

Many years passed and the young man was very successful in business. He had a beautiful home and  wonderful family, but realized his father was very old, and thought perhaps he should go  to  him.  He had not seen him since that graduation day.  Before he could make arrangements, he received a telegram telling him his father had passed away, and willed all of his possessions to his son. He needed to come home immediately and take care of things.

When he arrived at his father's house, sudden sadness and regret filled his heart.  He began to search through his father's important papers and saw the still new Bible, just as he had left it  years ago.  With tears, he opened the Bible and began to turn the pages.  And as he did, a car key dropped from the back of the Bible.  It had a tag with the dealer's name, the same dealer who had the sports car he had desired. On the tag was the date of his graduation, and the words PAID IN FULL.

How many times do we miss Spirit's blessings and answers to our prayers  because they do not arrive exactly as we have expected?

"Today I look beyond the obvious and allow miracles to be created in my life."

I am dreaming again!

Work Hard
Achieve your dreams..
There is only one life
To make it BIG!

There is nothing that cannot be achieved if you strive hard towards it. There is one dream that I have seen and I will work towards fulfilling it. Please God give me the courage to keep the zing alive and focus my energies to achieving what I wish for. Amen!

The Serenity Prayer

God, grant us the serenity

To accept things we cannot change,

Courage to change the things we can, and the

Wisdom to know the difference

Patience for the things that take time

Appreciation for all that we have, and

Tolerance for those with different struggles

Freedom to live beyond the limitations of our past ways, the

Ability to feel your love for us and our love for each other and the

Strength to get up and try again even when we feel it is hopeless.

Work is worship!

Getting back to work after a long hiatus, is truly getting back to my real self. I had been busy in household things for a while when I realized it is about time I should get back in action and get back to doing what gives me my real identity.

Yes my work, that I hold in high regard, that makes me what I am today, gives me the confidence to walk through the day and heart felt fulfillment at the end of the day.

Most people will agree with me that work is important not only because it helps us get home some money, but also because an idle mind is a devil's workshop. It is important to engage the mind in something fruitful and worthwhile. While it is also necessary to make ends meet by earning a living.

I see so many people around me whom I cannot help admiring for the efforts they put in achieving their day's task every single day. The housemaids in the morning, the car cleaners on my street, traffic police men on the way I drive to work, the staff members and caretakers who run the daycare I leave my son in, the guard who wishes 'Good morning' with a very warm smile as I enter my office (its worth appreciating his effort in holding the door for me every time I am carrying tea to my desk from the 1st floor cafeteria), the chai vaalah who helps me kick start the day, the person who cleans my desk and office every morning before I come, my colleagues who with their honed skills in different areas of technology meet stringent deadlines delivering technology products, the team leads and managers who try hard to get through the meetings with clients and shoulder responsibility of so many team members. The leaders who are running the company. The dabba vallahs who get lunch to the office, the snacks vendor, the entire support staff, every one working hard to get it right and trying to meet expectations.

Back home my cook who almost effortlessly puts together a hearty meal for the family. The TV artists who entertain me every evening when I am unwinding after a long day. And finally myself who is extremely happy to have achieved something worthwhile even if not anything big.

Happiness comes from putting our time to good use and doing what we like to do, be it a fancy job or a seemingly menial job but done right, or just managing a household and taking care of kids. Any work done with conviction takes us a step closer to our true destiny culminating in a happy and worthy life.

Doing a job right is as good as worshiping God. After all work is worship!

My random thoughts this morning..

Sometimes its just important to dream and silently move in the direction of whatever path looks right. Sometimes the future is uncertain but desires are big. And sometimes just the road we take makes all the difference.

Times and again in life we are faced with changes and challenges that make life unstable. We think why again, again this time when everything was so right, the sudden turn of events. Again left at the hands of destiny, what will happen next. Which road we will have to take next. Will I ever achieve my desires. Will I ever realize my dreams. And the answer thankfully is yes. Each one of us lands in soup one time or other, and given the grit that is so inherent of us, each one of us emerges shining each time. The key is to believe, dream again and not lose hope.
Its not about decisions every time, sometimes we have to leave things on the higher power and just move ahead. However awry things go, everything gets set back in order. Only time is the factor. So is patience and hope.

This post is inspired by a beautiful message sent by a caring friend this morning that goes like this:
'God when I lose hope, help me to remember that your love is greater than my disappointments and your plans for my life are better than my dreams'. -Amen.

Man and Woman.

The Ramayana very beautifully explains the divine relationship between man and woman and how the two complementing each other give meaning to life.

Rama and Sita, or man and woman are the two eternal entities involved in creation. Rama is Purusha, or the man, the masculine entity. He represents the conscious being, the soul and upholder of the universe.

Sita, or the woman is Prakriti or nature, that embodies the manifest reality of birth and death and is responsible for earthly existence. She is what gives form and identity to all. She is the cradle of time and space that nurtures and holds all things together.
He is the spirit while She is the nature. Together they constitute the universe. They validate each other's existence and delight in each other's company.

Rama is said to be the soul of the universe, while Sita is the soul of the individual. Ravana who separated them was the ego. Hanuman who united them was devotion. All things put together give life fullness and completeness.

He had the Attitude!

This is a great Sufi parable:

A king wanted to appoint a prime minister. Four great thinkers of the country were called. They were put into a room and told that the door was going to be locked and that the lock was not an ordinary lock, but a mathematical puzzle. "Unless you solve the puzzle, you will not be able to open the door. If you solve the puzzle, you will be able to open the lock and come out."

The king went out and closed the door. Three of the four thinkers got down to work, immediately. They had brought paper and some guide books, and they started working really seriously. There were a few numbers written on the lock. They observed the numbers and noted them down. Then, they started working out the problem.

The fourth thinker simply sat in a corner. The three others thought he was mad. "What is he doing?" He was sitting there with his eyes shut. After a few minutes, he stood up, went to the door, pushed the door and it opened! And he went out...
The other scholars were still busy scratching their heads to solve the problem. They didn't even realize what had just happened. They were too preoccupied to see that the fourth person was already out.

Finally, the king came in with the fourth man. Addressing the three thinkers, he said, "Stop! The examination is over. I have chosen my prime minister. This is the man." They were jolted out of their stupor. They couldn't believe their eyes. They said, "How could this happen? He wasn't doing anything. He just sat in the corner. How could he solve it?"

And the man replied calmly, "There was no problem. I sat there, and the first thing, the basic thing, was to know whether the door was locked or not. I simply meditated silently. I just gathered my consciousness together. I became completely quiet and pondered over where to begin. The first thing an intelligent person always asks is whether there is really a problem or not. If there is a problem, it can be solved; if there is no problem there's nothing to be solved! And if you start solving, you will go into infinite regress. So I went just to check whether the door was really closed, and found that it wasn't."

The king said: "Yes, that was the trick. There was no lock at all. The door was left open. I was waiting for the man who would ask the first real question. You accepted the puzzle and you started solving it; that was where you missed the point. You could not have solved it even if you had worked on it for your entire life. This man knows how to be aware in a situation. He asked the right first question."

Moral of the story:

A lot of life's little troubles that bother you can be resolved by a change in your attitude.

Travel.com

Some very interesting quotes for those who are passionate about traveling. May inspire others who are not.

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
- Miriam Beard

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Traveling there was really boring so I headed for the ditch. It was a rough ride but I met more interesting people there.
- Neil Young

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
- Henry David Thoreau

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
- Emerson

The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.
- Louis L'Amour

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
-George Moore

And this my best:

I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down.
- Mitch Hedberg

Sudoku and the game of life!

The game of Sudoku has many similarities to the game of life. The game has a grid and boxes in which a few numbers are already in place. In life too, we start with a given set of situations and then work them up.

In Sudoku we need to follow a set of rules to build up the grid, filling each row, column and box with numbers ranging from one to nine. Similarly we need to follow rules to build up the grid of life filling each moment, utilizing the resources at hand and maintaining harmony with the different aspects of the world around without hurting anyone. Things will work up the best only if we respect every relationship and every situation, as we respect every number in Sudoku.

Like eliminating the numbers that do not fit in a box, we need to eliminate our faults and work up sometimes through trial and error.

Solving a few puzzles inflates the ego and we crave for more. Similarly in life our ego motivates us to face new challenges and we keep striving for more. Some puzzles are extremely difficult and may take hours. Achieving desired results in life may take years.

We cannot get attached to a particular number and make it fit somehow, we need to let go of the attachments and work according to the suitability of the circumstances.

Like in Sudoku, life presents complexities. Patience, faith and continuous efforts is the key to both. We can excel in the game of life through practice and experience, learning from mistakes and developing new skills.

Waiting on God

Why God answers some prayers while denies others? Sometimes God answers before we call, but then there are also occasions when God seems to stand afar and delays calls. Sometimes we have to wait on God.

There are times when we have to go through a lot of struggle, nothing seems to be going the way we want, all plans going astray. These are the times I like to call 'Bad times' and I believe everyone has a share of those. We are sad and lonely, success is beyond the reach and faith is dwindling. These are the times we need to wait on God.

Waiting on God means living a life of desire towards Him, depending on Him and keeping our faith alive. It is such times that bring us a step closer to our own being and to God. We wait on Him more on such rainy days when we are seeking shelter and the waiting prevents dampening of our spirit. It is amazing how in spite of all the troubles we face we still are able to keep the head high and are not ready to give up. We keep going and do not realize when the darkness gives way to light and there comes what I call the 'Good times'. The prayers are finally answered.

This is an eternal cycle that keeps us motivated and helps us remember the small but important things, like being humble and being good to our fellow beings. It is the bad times that make us happier and humbler during the good times. When our affairs prosper and we are possessed of success and plenty, looking back makes us thank God and thank all those who helped us in our struggle. This circle of time makes us feel at home with Him and our own never say die spirit. This is the true victory.

All prayers are answered, but in a way and in a time when they need to be answered!

Lesson from the Gita

The great scripture Bhagvada Gita very beautifully explains the essence of life and spirit.

The battlefield of the legendary war Mahabharatha embodies the world which is truly a battleground for a moral struggle. In our hearts every day and hour we fight battles. Like Arjuna, the great warrior we face decisive issues in everyday life. In this great battle, Lord Krishna is Arjuna's charioteer. While Arjuna is fighting the battle, Lord Krishna is guiding him. The chariot stands for the psychophysical vehicle that embodies our own mental and physical being. The steeds are the senses, the reins their controls, and the charioteer, the guide, is the spirit or the real self. Krishna, the charioteer is the spirit in us. When the spirit takes control of the senses, it shows the correct path and helps us identify right from wrong. It helps us take the right decisions and motivates our actions towards achieving what we desire.

If we believe in the spirit, we can overcome all challenges and emerge winner in the battle of life. Victory is certain if the spirit guides us. This is the significance of the Gita in our life today.

A Birthday Prayer

This is a Birthday Prayer that dates back to my childhood days. Dedicating this to a very special friend whose birthday happens to be today....

Thank you, God, for giving me another year of life.
Thank you for all the people who remembered me today
by sending cards, and letters, gifts and good wishes.
Thank you for all the experience of this past year;
for times of success which will always be happy memories,
for times of failure which reminded me of my own weakness
and of my need for you,
for times of joy when the sun was shining,
for times of sadness which drove me to you.
Forgive me for the hours I wasted,
for the chances I failed to take,
for the opportunities I missed this past year.
Help me in the days ahead to make this the best year yet,
and through it to bring good credit to myself,
happiness and pride to my loved ones,
and joy to you.

Amen.

Fear of the unknown

When we are born, we cradle comfortably in the trusting arms of our mother. Then mother induces us to walk. We walk a few steps, then are afraid, lose the balance, and fall. Mother holds our little fingers in her own magical hands, endures our so many falls, helps us rise again as she drives us into the unknown world.

The unknown world out there is fearsome. As mother gently pushes us to walk on our own, she protects us till we right ourselves and then leaves us free. This is very similar to our relationship with God and the way we live life.

Throughout our life we are thrust into the unknown as we face new challenges, wake up to new horizons and constantly endure the circle of change. We tend to cling to the familiar but most of the times change becomes inevitable and we have to believe in the larger scheme of life and the universe. As we are pushed into the unknown world, we feel threatened, alone and fearful, but God like the mother protects us from all sides. When we feel we will have a free fall, God, whether through family, friends or kind strangers, covers us and protects us till we are able to right ourselves again.

We may flounder but God's protective hand bears us and enables us to walk. Thus although we may feel we can no longer handle the uncertainty, we need to have the trust that we will be able to overcome what we need to and with this trust we will be able to walk into the uncharted with a confident gait.

Welcoming Spring!

The advent of a new season is always so exciting. Whether it is our constant desire for change or the freshness that a new season brings we are always happy to bid adieu to the winter and welcome spring, swim happily into the summer as spring leaves us, say goodbye to summer as autumn approaches and are ready for the quietness of the winter as nature comes a full circle yet again.

The arrival of the spring brings a new freshness to everything around. New leaves fluttering on the tips of longing branches, flowers blooming into a romantic orgy of beauty and desire and the whole atmosphere is filled with fragrance and colors. We cherish the sunlight and the lengthening of the days. It is the season of the cherry blossom and the beginning of a new harvest.
Early morning chirping of the birds, the warmth in the weather and the evening breeze is what makes spring so special. The streams and rivers swell as the snow melts and the trees gush with their new wealth.

While summer brings along with it the excitement of water sports and beach picnics, autumn gives a treat to the eyes with the colors of the fall, and winters mark a quieter and relaxed end of the year when snow sports give a boost to adrenalin levels.
But of all the wonders that nature presents, I like the spring the most and basking in the spring sun fills me with new energy. I feel a step closer to the nature and I feel bright and cheerful. It is also the time for some new exploration as we make plans for the coming summer months.

Extending a warm welcome to spring...

Friends are forever!

There's a miracle called Friendship.
It heals all the sorrows and brings all the joys.
It dwells in the heart.
We don't know how it did start
But we know the cheer it always brings
Like a sweet melody in the ears it rings
Friends are precious indeed
They make us smile and are there when we need
They listen, give advice, even chide
In their hearts all our secrets they can hide.
They give, they take
but never count the things they did for our sake.
They make us laugh
But also make us cry when they leave
But however far they go, they are close
They are the most precious gift
For us that God chose!

What's your boggart?

There is an old saying: What you most wish for and what you most fear will both come true!

I have observed very so often and most people would have that when we want something desperately sooner or later we achieve it. Same holds true the other way round. Sometimes we do not want something equally desperately. This desperation gives those things a lot of energy that helps them manifest in our lives.

Sometimes the things we most dread are the ones we will have to face eventually. There is a very interesting story in Harry Potter that introduces something called a 'Boggart'. A boggart is a magical creature and a mischievous one. It hides in small, dark, enclosed places, such as closets, under beds, its natural size being quite small. The intriguing twist is that when anyone looks at it, it changes shape to become whatever that person fears most. It reads a person's greatest fear and manifests itself as the fear. So otherwise small it seems to become huge when given any importance.

Now how to make the boggart disappear. Transform the image of your greatest fear into something else, something funny and amusing pointing a wand at the boggart and saying "Riddikulus". Boggarts are weakened by laughter.

Moral of the story: If we face our fears with dread they become even greater. But if we face them with confidence and spirit eventually we can get rid of them.

So what is your boggart and how will you use your spell?

Nostalgia

I really like this song from album Kandisa by Indian Ocean about 'Leaving home'.

We all leave home one day either for higher studies or for job or looking out for a life of our own. We leave the comfort of the home and move out. And then, one day we wish to return. But we can never go back to the same. Because home has changed and in many ways so have we. Siblings are married, the favorite tree we used to climb on for plucking guavas has been cut, sunlight is less now with new buildings coming up in the neighborhood. The old scooter has been sold. Many favorite neighborhood friends have moved out. The crazy posters in our room no longer stand smiling at us and the walls reflect the forbearance of time.

But in many other ways home still remains the same, it is still the good old home where you find all the peace after traveling the mad world around. The snugness of the home welcomes us and gives the well needed comfort after a long tiring journey. We can still talk nonsense with our siblings and shower them with sweet nothings or have more serious family discussions around the coffee table. The freshness of the air surrounds us and relieves us of all stress. Everything starts looking new from this point onwards. Such is the longing of the home. We need to come back again and again how many times ever we may leave it. We have changed but are still the same, needy of affection and seeking the golden past. We are nostalgic!