Love Divine gives - does not demand

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis divides love into four categories based on the four Greek words for love: affection, friendship, eros (romance), and charity. The last one stands for unconditional love and the author views this as the greatest love. Though he correlates it to Love of God, an Unconditional Love as the name suggests, is something without boundaries--Infinite. It cannot be measured nor can be limited. The best paradigm for unconditional love is “mother’s love”. Where the love is given freely no matter what. It is of a higher nature. Its giving only for the sake of “giving” and not for “earning” anything out of it. 

An unknown author beautifully portrays the possibilities of unconditional love in this heartfelt story titled "The Rock" as narrated by Steve Goodier in http://stevegoodier.blogspot.com/

"As she grew older her teenage daughter became increasingly rebellious. It culminated late one night when the police arrested her daughter for drunk driving. Mom had to go to the police station to pick her up.

They didn't speak until the next afternoon.

Mom broke the tension by giving her a small gift- wrapped box.

Her daughter nonchalantly opened it and found a little rock inside.

She rolled her eyes and said, 'Cute, Mom, what's this for?'

'Read the card,' Mom instructed.

Her daughter took the card out of the envelope and read it. Tears started to trickle down her cheeks. She got up and lovingly hugged her mom as the card fell to the floor.

On the card were these words: 'This rock is more than 200,000,000 years old. That is how long it will take before I give up on you.'"

This mother is not saying, "I will love you IF….." Instead she says that she will love her daughter forever and nothing can change that. 

Classic example to show how unconditional love separates the person from his / her behavior. The mother realized that it is the behavior of the daughter that has to be handled and not the daughter herself.

This Unconditional Love is the need of the day. We all need this as bad as we need food and air to survive. We seek it in our relationships, families, work place…. in short wherever we go. Why? Because all our actions have a direct impact on ourselves and the planet in which we live. It is the lack of this love which is causing the prevailing unrest, violence, increasing incidences of alcohol and drug addictions, over flowing jails……..

How do we practice this unconditional love? Life has filled us all with abundant opportunities to show unconditional love by way of kindness, forgiveness, respectfulness, etc. We human beings are endowed with endless powers to recreate the world we live in. We have the amazing choice to create a world of joy and happiness around us. We have the power to transform ourselves and the planet in which we live. We are endowed with tools like compassion, letting go, etc to encounter any negative influences that we come across every day.

The law of attraction operates here in an overwhelming magnitude. When we give love, the world around will give that love back to us in multitudes. 

"Love expects no reward. Love knows no fear. Love Divine gives - does not demand. Love thinks no evil; imputes no motive. To Love is to share and serve.” Says Swami Sivananda

Life has hidden this love deep down in the hearts of all of us without any discrimination of caste and creed. Its upto us to go deeper, dig it and bring it to the surface to make this a better planet to live in and love in.

Bold and Beautiful

Long ago the Kingdom of Chandrapuri was ruled by a king named Raja Ananda Chandra. He was very generous and was liked by his subjects. 

One day the king was worried because he was losing his hair. 

He noticed that every day the bald patch on his head was growing larger and larger. 

Finally he summoned his physician and told him that unless he did something to restore his hair he would cut off his (the physician’s) head. 

The poor man did his best, but he knew that there was no cure for baldness, and one day the last of the King’s hair fell off and he became completely bald. 

The physician was arrested and taken to the place of execution.

As he put his head on the execution block, his turban fell off. When the turban of the physician fell down, the king noticed that like him, the physician was also bald. The king now realised that baldness was a natural process. Everybody and anybody could suffer, it could not be stopped. He realized that when the physician could not grow hair for himself then how he could grow it for him.

This seemed to have a strange effect on the king. 

The king immediately stopped the execution and pardoned the man.  

The main point to ponder here is why did the king want to restore his hair in the first place at all? What would've happened if he became bald?

Mainly because we live in an age where most of us increasingly lay too much stress on physical beauty. We want face lifts, hair transplants and cosmetic surgery. Why? For no other reason than to sport a different look bent more towards so called ‘beauty’! It’s a pity that no one recognizes that beauty is a quality that shines from inner depths. It’s a pity that we have narrowed down the meaning of the word ‘beauty’. Poet Khalil Gibran said, "Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart." No, its not only women. Men too place great emphasis on their bodies. Studies show that in 1972, 17% of men didn't like their appearance. Today, almost 50% of men are reported being unhappy with their looks.

So what is required to accept baldness? Boldness. One needs to be bold enough to accept one’s own physical appearance. Be it dark, fat, thin, plump, bald……… One of the meanings that the dictionary gives for the word ‘bold” is being ‘self-assured’. When a person is self assured, he / she doesn’t feel insecure any more about his / her physical appearance. A self assured person knows fully well that the physical appearance inevitably changes with age. The more we accept the fact that the beauty lies within, the easier for us to let go of attachment to physical beauty and age gracefully

Sadly, the other day I was aghast to find in the book stall a bunch of books on “How to feel and look younger.” It left me wondering why should one “look younger”? Does it mean that as we age we start looking worse? How untrue! In my opinion, age brings in more maturity and inner beauty that has been gathered by life’s experiences. The physical beauty of youth will fade. But the beauty of the inner spirit, when nurtured, will grow forever. 

True it is said that body is like a temple. We should take care of it. But life advices us here to remember to be Bold and Beautiful. Says Steve Goodier, “Let's care for our bodies; we'll keep them for the rest of our lives. Let's be thankful for them and treat them well. But remember, the real you, the essence of you, cannot be improved by a bottle or a pill or a salon. It is a beautiful and glorious light shining from your heart to the heart of the world. Cherish the real you - it's pretty terrific. And let it shine.” 

Would you rather be happy or right?

While at sail a Captain of a steamship hears a distress call. 

“Captain, Captain you must alter your course by 10 degrees, you are in danger of collision.” 

To which the Captain replies, “I am a mighty steamship sound and sturdy, I say to you, if my path in dangers you, you should alter your course, I will not.” 

The voice once again cries out, “Captain! Captain! You must take heed and change your course by twenty degrees; you are in danger of collision.” 

The captain replies, “I am at sail and will not change. I am a mighty and fierce steam ship.” 

The voice replies, “Yes you are a steamship, but I am a lighthouse.” 

We do not know what happened to the ship but what we can certainly make out from this is the EGO of the captain. The Ego which might’ve led to his fall. 

Now look at this famous story from Panchatantra 

A turtle who was very talkative once overheard the plan of two hunters who schemed to catch turtles the very next day. The turtle turned to two cranes for help to elude the conspiracy of the hunters. It weaved a plan where in the cranes were to hold a long stick at their ends between their beaks.

The turtle was to close its mouth tightly in the middle of the stick so that it would be carried away to a safe distance when the birds make their flight.

The cranes agreed to the idea and asked the turtle to hold the stick firmly. The cranes took off with their flight with the turtle dangling in the middle of the stick. When the birds were up high in the air with the turtle, people from below were awe struck about the strange sight. 

They exclaimed "What clever birds! A brilliant idea to carry a turtle!" The proud turtle who could not contain himself shouted out "The idea is mine!", only to tumble from above to land on the earth. 

It was the PRIDE of the turtle which caused its fall. 

Both stories talk about fall. But can you notice the subtle difference between the attitudes of the characters? 

In the case of the former it was arrogance which led to the fall. Whereas, the turtle was genuinely proud of his plan and he wanted the world to know about his achievements. But the basic and important difference here is the turtle was not arrogant. Ego is an obsession with just having to be right and is often rather selfish while pride is based on the facts of a person's achievements and feelings of these qualities and so is less selfish. In short Ego is “false-pride”. Being proud about some quality which does not exist. The captain of the ship acted on ego while the Turtle acted on pride. Ofcourse both had to become Humpty Dumpty to have had a great fall ultimately. 

Pride as such is a positive and healthy feeling if practiced in the right sense. One can be proud of his country, his nation, his parents, his off-springs, his family………… He becomes more confident in such cases. But when these feelings turn to the extreme to say that all the rest is nothing in front of these—the ego creeps in. This is the thin wall that separates both. The more one feeds the ego, the more it grows. Ego is very fragile and so gets hurt very fast but pride is more steadfast. 

But it is evident that both need an antidote and that antidote is humility. When the ego and pride are dropped and the outlook embraces humility, a new light is thrown on the perception. The Truth is revealed under new perspective. Humility paves the way to move forward with confidence and self respect. 

Life is telling us here to stop for a moment and look at it in a new perspective with humility, not to allow ego and pride to control us so that we become more successful in leading a peaceful and happy life. 

“The ego spends a lot of time practicing always being right. When someone says something that you'd normally disagree with just for the purpose of making them wrong, try saying "You're right about that." While the ego will loudly protest, this strategy can bring you peace and happiness. And would you rather be right or happy?” says Dr Wayne Dyer. 

Dr Wayne Dyer has posed a brain storming question. “Would you rather be happy or right?” ………

Let’s decide for ourselves.

I am the way I am

When Albert Einstein was making the rounds of the speaker's circuit, he usually found himself eagerly longing to get back to his laboratory work. One night as they were driving to yet another rubber-chicken dinner, Einstein mentioned to his chauffeur (a man who somewhat resembled Einstein in looks & manner) that he was tired of speechmaking.

"I have an idea, boss," his chauffeur said. "I've heard you give this speech so many times. I'll bet I could give it for you." Einstein laughed loudly and said, "Why not? Let's do it!" When they arrive at the dinner, Einstein donned the chauffeur's cap and jacket and sat in the back of the room. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein's speech and even answered a few questions expertly.

Then a supremely pompous professor asked an extremely esoteric question about anti-matter formation, digressing here and there to let everyone in the audience know that he was nobody's fool. Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, "Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me."

This is what I call “presence of Mind”. The ability to think and act calmly and efficiently, especially in an emergency. This happens when the mind is under our full control. It’s a natural gift. Its instinctive. It’s the ability to think out of the box. So, do I mean to say that those who do not have this gift are at a loss? No, certainly not. It can undeniably be developed. Because the mind is affectionately called ‘monkey mind’. And because the monkeys can be trained to do what you want.

Blessed are those who are gifted with this ability. But for those who are not, here’s some tips. The brain needs some exercise to be alert and fragile to execute presence of mind. Practicing brain stimulating vocabulary activities like solving crosswords & jumbles, numerical activities like Sudoku & Kakuro, solving brain teasers, riddles, puzzles……….. anything that stretches the mind a little more. Watching good, clean standup comedies helps a lot. These comedians have a great presence of mind. But the key word here is GOOD and CLEAN! One more good news is that some of the video games that our kids play help them to think faster and respond quickly. So try playing these games with the kids. Double gain here. We can have a control on what kids play in the computer.

If you are game for more deeper mind and soul exercises--yogasanas and breathing exercises which teach our mind to concentrate more and be alert are for you. The pinnacle of all these is meditation. The best way to train the mind to be calm.

But the question here is consistency. Remember it takes time to develop a sharp mind. Giving up half way does not help. We have already learnt that patience and hard work always pays.

All said and done there is one key factor in which the mind has to be trained........
To remind us TO BE OURSELVES. Tall or short, fat or thin, sharp wit or dumb, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE and we have to be proud of our own selves. If we do not have presence of mind, so what? Shrug it off and be cool. Remember? AYE, LYE and FLY ……is the key. Isn’t that what life teaches us?

Do you quit easily?

It saddened me unendingly last week to read a news about an entrepreneur in Mumbai ending his life due to personal problems. One thing baffled me greatly though. If one has the Courage to end one’s life, where did that same courage go when it came to facing the challenges in life? In my opinion the former requires more courage.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, it is acting inspite of it” said Mark Twain. He adds, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." 

What is courage? Is courage the only act faced by the soldiers fighting the odds at the border? "Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount" says Branden Francis Behan. How true! 

Everyone of us faces a real test for courage in our everyday lives. 
The courage to say “NO” when warranted, 
the courage to stand up for our beliefs, 
the courage to resist when we are tempted to perform an unlawful act, 
the courage to insist on others to perform their duties lawfully, 
the courage to voice your opinions………… 
our daily life itself is a test for courage. Its way of our life. 

“We must have the courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.” Maxwell Maltz

Here’s a beautiful poem "Don't Quit," by Author Unknown that I loved which speaks volumes in a nutshell

When things go wrong as they sometimes will;
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill;
When the funds are low, and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but have to sigh;
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but do not quit.
Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you can never tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-
It's when things go wrong that you must not quit.

Life keeps reminding us that some times we have to make painful decisions in life in order to embark on a journey. It may be painful to let go. But the alternative is even more painful. Watch this wonderful video which speaks for itself.  http://www.inspirationjunction.com/skyquestcom/community/ij/asp/ijDetail.asp?txtIJID=26/07/2006-11:58:58-26306913061710596681&langid=2&root=