Eternal Youth

Eternal youth is a natural phenomenon,
It is each person’s destiny — as a mature, realized individual;
It ensues spontaneously, as an authentic experience,
An energy without support, bound by nothing.

Physically, youth depends on the number of our years,
On the body’s progress towards maturity.
There are no contradictions. People consider themselves
As old as their physical age, according to their life expectancy.

Whereas psychologically it is a-different matter,
Youth is directly connected with Life’s constant newness;
Life itself demands that we encounter it,
The same way She is, as absolute newness in each movement.

Without this eternal, ever-renewing youth,
We will not understand the newness of the Universal movement.
We need to have a fresh, lucid and clear mind,
Completely detached from time, from the wandering memory.

Such a state is attained naturally,
When we understand the “ego” and its powerless nature,
Unable to embrace and really comprehend
The innocence of the naked moment.

The moment makes us young, if we encounter it constantly,
Without the old “self” — based on old residues;
Youth is unrelated to time, years do not define it,
In eternal youth, everyone and everything becomes integrated.

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By Ilie Cioara, a Romanian philosopher and spiritual teacher.

Between the Lines

A professional genealogist had accepted a very handsome fee from a wealthy client to research his family tree.

In writing up his report, the genealogist was dismayed to learn that one of the client’s ancestors had been executed in the electric chair.

Wanting to be tactful, he wrote up the relative as follows:
“Your Uncle Henry occupied the chair of Applied Electricity at a leading government institution. He was attached to his chair by the strongest of ties, and his sudden passing came as a great shock.”

~ Nigel Rees

The Duck with the Human Mind

This story illustrates the uniquely human ability to cling to the past by holding on to our stories.

When two ducks get into a fight, it never lasts long — they soon separate and fly off in opposite directions. Each duck then flaps its wings vigorously several times. This releases the surplus energy that built up in him during the fight. After they flap their wings, they fly on peacefully as if nothing had ever happened.

Now, if the duck had a human mind, this scene would go very differently. The duck may fly away peacefully, for a moment, but he would not put the fight behind him. He would keep the fight alive in his mind, by thinking and story-making.

The duck’s story would probably go something like this: “I can’t believe what he just did. He came within five inches of me. He has no consideration for my private space. He thinks he owns this pond. I’ll never trust him again. I know he’s already plotting something else to annoy me with. But I’m not going to stand for it. I’m going to teach him a lesson he will never forget.”

And in this way the duck’s mind spins its tale, still thinking and talking about it, days, months, or even years later. He man never see his adversary again, but that doesn’t matter. The single incident has left its impression and now has a life of its own deep within the duck’s mind.

As far as his body is concerned, the fight is still continuing, and the energy his body generates in response to the imaginary fight is emotion, which in turn generates more thinking. This becomes the emotional thinking of the ego. The emotions feed the story and the story feeds the emotions. Endlessly. Unless the duck chooses to recognize that the fight is over, unless he drops the story, he will suffer from the endless cycle of his mind’s creation.

You can see how painful and troublesome the duck’s life would become if he had a human mind. But this is how most of us live all the time. For the average person, no situation or event is ever really over and done with. The mind and the mind-made story keep it going.

Unlike the duck, we are a species that has the power to remember, which is both wonderful and problematic.

Our duck has an important lesson to teach us and his message is this: Flap your wings, which means “let go of the story,” and live your real life — here and now, in the present moment.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

The Escapist - Song by The Streets

All these walls were never really there,
Nor the ceiling or the chair.
I’m eking weeks of peace at the beach
I see the breezes weave the trees,
These walls, you’ll find, are yours and mine
Defined not by them, I
I’m in times that lie behind my eyelids,
The sunset still the rising silence,

(Chorus)
I’ll not feel no fear
Cos' I‘m not really here
I’m nowhere near here

There’s no rain on roof that grates and beats me
My favourite tree breaking light to pieces
Sprinkling, sharded light on me
Throw a stone as hard as you can
And hearing with hand not here at land
Nothing taxi, dusting sand
My window world spins and twirls,
The walls then fall, I recall the sort
White clouds white wash faded spotless
The weighty shadows, ranges of rocks
The cold is all illusion thought up
Stroll on the shore, snooze and explore
All possibilities in each new morning,
‘til satisfied reaching out, yawning
Fish in a big dish, some rice and spice,
Salt over shoulder, never salted so tight
The truth I have told was silence sometimes
But who’s soul does not hide any crimes
Wrapped in walls, encircled by work
The walls fall - the story occurs
No barrier, no boundary or ‘low us ID’s
The freedom to stay off straight
Be fiend or friend, cause no harm but charm - the peaceful end

(Chorus x2)

Pale, ancient woods, strew white sandy bays
This ugly room pales away today
I’m swimming in the ocean
I sink slow motion
Fingers, toes, floating
Every year ‘til yesterday
I see the eternal setting sea
I compare all this to me,
It’s all fleeting momentary me
I blink my eyes, this is reminding me
Life flies in the blink of an eye
The old die for reasons, new tides for seasons
New life born is like teasing
All these walls were really never there
Nor the ceiling or the chair
I’m eking weeks of peace at the beach
I see the breezes weave the trees
I am not here at all,
You are dearly fooled,
I see bristling trees, the shush at the sea
Mischievous
Fluttering seagulls
No.
I’m not trapped in a box, so I am glancing at rocks
I’m dancing off docks
Since this stance began
That’s where I am

(Chorus x2)

So done.


Lyrics by: Michael Geoffrey

Singing from the Soul...

'

“In the deepest within — the most infinite beyond — in ever present awareness, your soul expands to embrace the entire Kosmos, so that Spirit alone remains, as the simple world of what is. The rain no longer falls on you, but within you; the sun shines from inside your heart and radiates into the world, blessing it with grace; supernovas swirl in your consciousness, the thunder is the sound of your own exhilarated heart; the oceans and rivers are nothing but your blood pulsing to the rhythm of your soul.

Infinitely ascended worlds of light dance in the interior of your brain; infinitely descended worlds of night cascade around your feet; the clouds crawl across the sky of your own unfettered mind, while the wind blows through the empty space where your self once used to be.

The sound of the rain falling on the roof is the only self you can find, here in the obvious world of crystalline one taste, where inner and outer are silly fictions and self and other are obscene lies, and ever-present simplicity is the sound of one hand clapping madly for all eternity. In the greatest depth, the simplest what is, the journey ends, as it always does, exactly where it began.”

by Ken Wilber

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Wake Up

`

From time immemorial, I am trying to wake you up but you don’t.

Not complaining, for such is not my nature; mine is to wake you up.
Not frustrated for I can’t be, just know that I have to wake you up.

I put melody in bird’s chirping, coolness in the summer breeze,
Burning heat in midday sun and deafening noise in monsoon thunder
To just do one thing, wake you up.

Spark in your first kiss, comfort in mother’s embrace,
Rush in your home run and the musky flavor in lobster bisque,
I did it all to do just one thing, wake you up.

Desire to own, taste, destroy, love and hate,
I placed so you’d WANT to wake up.
Also put the fear in you
So you’d keep on desiring all and to wake up.

I made life beautiful,
So you can love the beauty and wake up.
I made it miserable
So you will hate the misery and wake up.

Now I think it is time you woke up.
Don’t argue about genetics, Darwin, evolution and creation.
I made them so, don’t ask me how and when,
All I know is why, and that is to wake you up.

You say, you can’t or you don’t know how?
For millions of years, in thousands of ways
As guru’s, gods, priests, friends and lovers,
I have been telling you how.

As Krishna, I told you to see me, see you
Not yours who you kill, to rid the world of evil.
As Buddha, I told you to pay attention
Be mindful of sufferings (good, great and bad).
As Shiva, the Tantric, I asked you to find me
In all ecstasies, from sex to breath of fresh air.
As Nisargdatta Maharaj, I told you,
You are That whom you look for.

Do ask me why I want to wake you up?
That is simple; you are asleep.

Do ask me, who am I?
That too is simple; I am you, asleep.

~ by Sunil K. Vidyarthi

_

What are you complaining about..?

Two senior members of Rabbi Goldberg’s synagogue came to visit him and while they were waiting to be ushered into his presence, Mrs Goldberg brought them two cups of lemon tea and a plate with two cakes on it, one small, the other big.

“After you,” said one disciple to the other, offering him the plate.

“No, after you.”

“No, no, I insist, after you.”

“No, you take first.”

Eventually one of the two helped himself first — to the bigger cake.

The other was incensed: “What! You helped yourself first and took the bigger cake!”

“So?” said the other. “And if you’d chosen first, which cake would you have taken?”

“Why, the smaller one of course!”

“Well, what are you complaining about? You’ve got the smaller one!”

Our contradictoriness

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We are in such a hurry to grow up, and then we long for our lost childhood. We make ourselves ill earning money, and then spend all our money on getting well again. We think so much about the future that we neglect the present, and thus experience neither the present nor the futures. We live as if we were never going to die, and die as if we had never lived.

Paulo Coelho, from the book 'Like the Flowing River'

The Moment

...

Yet no sort of magic can kindle anew
a past that is over for ever,
nor summon the future before it is due:
our moment is now – or it’s never.


Piet Hein

Freedom

Economically, you can, perhaps, arrange the world so that man can be more comfortable, have more food, clothing, and shelter, and you may think that is freedom. Those are necessary and essential things, but that is not the totality of freedom. Freedom is a state and quality of mind.

J. Krishnamurti

Waste Not Want Not

A tour bus driver is driving with a bus load of seniors down a highway when he is tapped on his shoulder by a little old lady. She offers him a bag of peanuts,which he gratefully accepts and eats the peanuts as he drives.

After about 20 minutes, she taps him on the shoulder again and she hands him another bag of peanuts. She repeats this gesture several more times on the tour. When she is about to hand the driver another bag … he asks the little old lady, ‘Why don’t you eat the peanuts yourself?’.

‘We can’t chew them because we’ve got no teeth’, she replied.

The puzzled driver asks, ‘Why do you buy them then?’

The old lady replied, ‘We just love the chocolate around them.’