Solitude

One could find solitude from all the activities and distractions of the world by going away from the once familiar grounds. In that solitude one may find meaning of life that was left behind. In that solitude one may discover oneself.

Off to India

People engage in various activities to break their everyday cycle of life. Traveling perhaps is my thing.

What if we do not return to the cycle we have once left behind? How can one do that?

Of cause running away from the cycle is not the answer. Because if one engages in certain activity in order to stay away from the cycle, eventually that becomes his/her cycle.

What is it that we are trying to break free from? Work, relationships, everyday routine, troubles, problems, etc.

But what is the deeper personal relationship to all these that we are trying to break free from? We relate to all things we engage in at a deeper emotional level - and that is what we are really trying to break free from (in fact longing for something is also a mean of breaking free from a certain emotional state). We try to break free from our everyday stress, sorrow, boredom, unsatisfactoriness, fear, anger, pain, etc. By doing so, we look for the answers outside.

We think a certain change to our everyday life will make a difference. It will for a short time, only to fall back in to the same emotional state - because the changes you have made eventually become your everyday life.

Therefore, something inside oneself must be maintaining this emotional body regardless of the outer changes. Basically, the emotional body does not go away no matter how much we run away from our "everyday life". And as long as the emotional body exist, the distress of everyday life exist.

What is the root cause of all these emotions? It is how we relate to everyday life? How we relate is determined by how we think and how we think is conditioned by everything we have learned and experienced since our birth.

But is it really true, the things we "think" to be the right. wrong, good, bad, etc.? If so, why would you find another one million people with opposing views to you. Why are humans divided through language, country, race, beliefs, etc.? Are we born with all that or have we not been conditioned with all this?

Like that, have our thoughts not been conditioned by all the different ways we think to generate distress of our everyday life? In fact the so called "everyday life" not a pigment of our own conditioned thoughts?

Break free from your conditioning and you will find freedom from and within your everyday life.

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.

---

By Ilie Cioara, a Romanian philosopher and spiritual teacher.

Where does the journey ends? or Does it end at all?

The travelling had begun for me a bit over two years now, and when I look back have I really stopped travelling? Or where does/did the stopping take place? or in fact have I travelled at all? 

I guess the definition of travelling most likely be talking about a change in location, etc. From that prospective I have left my home in New Zealand and had moved through various destination, countries and cultures. Now, I could say I am in Sri Lanka, but when I think deeply to see if I have stopped my travelling in Sri Lanka, the answer is not very apparent to me.

During my earlier travels I have spent more than a few weeks at a place. Now, I have spent about a year and a half at one place, in the house I grew up in Sri Lanka.

BUT THE JOURNEY HAS NOT ENDED !! it seems...

It has always been experiences, and in fact an experience alone. One experience since the day we were born, and if it is personnel, the experience lapses when our human life expires.

Travelling is in a way looking at moment to moment experiences in a different light (through a travellers perspective). Rather, it is almost humorous to see how we missed the experience of moment-to-moment in our lives as a whole.

All creations of activity is in fact a moment-to-moment experience of our lives.

If one could view the world through the impersonal, one could see that the experiences had neither a beginning nor ending, but it is continuing moment-to-moment. Travelling or journey had never taken place. Rather, I had been, still am and will be... unmoved - it had always been a play of experiences...

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Share the beauty

"Share the beauty of this world
It's our one and only
There's so much you can be
When you're part of the magic of this blue-green pearl
you've yet to see
The sliver stars
Dancing in the night
Hear the song of birds at dawn
Taste the ocean spray
Smell the jungle after rain"

Extracted from the song: "share the beauty"
Music/Artist by: Antares
Lyrics by: Lida Geh

( in order to promote the reissue of his album, 2nd Comming (1986)  - well done mate )

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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 Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and people don't see it"

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