ARE YOU CLINGING TO THE OPINION OF OTHERS?

DO OTHER’S OPINIONS MATTER?

Seek approval from your inner being rather than from other people. Dwelling on others’ opinions about you is a waste of time, and it is not your business in the first place. It is not going to help you in anyway.

People need not be your source of approval. You are the best person who can approve of yourself. Approve of yourself before anyone else can approve of you for the good job you have done, for the love that you are, for your kind heart, for all of the things you do, and for existing on this planet at this time. You are a grand being, and you are a very important part of the planet. By appreciating and approving of yourself, you will no longer seek approval on the outside, and you will not be dependent or addicted to others’ opinions in anyway. You will be your own powerful guiding light.

The problem with depending on other people’s approval, is that you dance to their tunes which are never true for you. You become addicted to the outside report and push yourself into stress. What others think of you is certainly not your business; however, living your life from the place of joy within and awakening yourself into a responsible, capable, loving, harmonious, and happy human is absolutely your business.

Buddha’s Story

Once the Buddha was giving a spiritual discourse and there was an angry man who wanted to take out his anger on Buddha. He got up and started scolding and uttering all sorts of ugly words to the Buddha. The Buddha stood silently, with a smile on his face. After being spent of his anger, the man came up to the Buddha and asked:

"Don't you feel angry, are you not ashamed that I spoke like this to you in front of all these people?"

The Buddha in all his wisdom replied:

"Young man, you have an apple in your hand, and you are offering it to me, but I did not take it, so tell me where is the apple now?"

The man said that the apple is still with him, so the Buddha replied:

"Likewise your words are with you, I did not make them mine."

Reminder: Do not make the opinions of others’ as yours. Allow people to have their opinions, BUT DO NOT MAKE THEM YOURS.

Love, approve, and cherish yourself completely to remove yourself from getting addicted to people’s approval. It is always stressful and difficult to compete with others, compare your situation, or belittle your actions by considering what you should or should not have done. Freedom is giving the gift of KINDNESS to oneself. It means never allowing fear, anger, or sadness to cloud your life. It means to live life with total acceptance, flexibility, and without resistance. There is no success to be achieved, and there is no failure either. For whatever you are doing at any given moment with total love and acceptance, is the Ultimate Success.

This Prayer of Byron Katie is a powerful reminder:

“God spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation.”


~ An Excerpt from my book  "Twelve Steps to Inner Peace"
Copyright © 2012 P Rajkumar , S L Christian
All rights reserved.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSY853G
http://amzn.to/X0XIzM

HEAVEN AND HELL ARE WITHIN OUR POWER

HEAVEN AND HELL ARE WITHIN OUR POWER

We have the power to create heaven or hell right now, wherever we are.
As Humanity we are all interconnected, we are One Consciousness, and so what we do for others we are actually doing for ourselves.

This is the golden rule and it is found in all the ancient scriptures of our Planet.
The Golden rule is "TREAT OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM TREAT YOU "

"This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. (The Mahabharata)
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. (Udana-Varga 5:18)
Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness; do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you. (Analects 15:23)
Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss. (Tai Shang Kan Ying P'ien)
That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself. (Dadistan-I-dinik 94:5)
What is hateful to you do not to your fellowman. That is the entire law, the rest is commentary. (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)
All things whatsoever ye would that man should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. ( Matthew 7:12)
No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. ( Sunnah)

The teachings of the Golden rule reminded me of the PARABLE OF THE SPOONS. The Parable goes like this:

A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, "Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like. "The Lord led the holy man to two doors.
He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew which smelled delicious and made the holy man's mouth water.
The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths. The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. The Lord said, "You have seen Hell."
They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one. There was the large round table with the large pot of stew which made the holy man's mouth water. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.
The holy man said, "I don't understand." "It is simple" said the Lord, "it requires but one skill. You see, they have learned to feed each other."

The people who created the place called "heaven" understood the concept of Oneness and learnt to treat others as they would themselves like to be treated.
Let us choose to treat one another with respect and kindness and create 'Heaven on Earth.'
Blessings!
~Premlatha Rajkumar  

THE TRUTH OF OUR PRESENCE

THE TRUTH OF OUR PRESENCE

Bringing our Divine Presence consciously into every aspect of life is an act of bringing HEAVEN ON EARTH. We are the Presence – expressing itself as a human being. 

The Presence is the Sacred Observer – the Sacred Witness to every aspect of life. The Presence can be known by being alert, awake, and connected in the Present moment.

We are a timeless, infinite being of immense magnificence and beauty. We love our infinite expansion, we love to go and experience the farthest, and the deepest. In our quest, we chose to enter into this experience called human form, ..space, ..time, and all limitations that are involved with it.

We are the ocean, and sometimes we like to experience ourselves as the wave. The wave rises, but falls back to become the magnificent ocean. Yes, being a human is a dream to experience limitation in order to more deeply and know our magnificence. The mind is the tool that holds us in this dream called human form, ...time, ...space, and we think that we are trapped and that we are hostage. But it is possible to wake up from this dream of humanity.

The powerful truth is that we are the Pure Awareness of the Divine Presence; we do not need to make awareness happen. We walk, we eat, we breathe with the body. Yet when we start listening with alertness to our walk, to our eating, to our breathing, it becomes the meditation that wakes us up from the dream of separation. Awareness makes us realize that the watcher, the infinite, the timeless Presence, is who we are. Let the Presence of the Silent Watcher be in everything we do. Every human is responsible to wake up from this dream. And the awakening can happen only by awareness.

When the mind is full of thoughts about complications and suffering, pull yourself out of it by practicing listening, feeling, and noticing. In silence, see the beauty of nature, feel the breeze touching you, listen to the voice of the birds, and the sounds of children playing. Do not think about it, allow awareness to happen, just be there, and just be aware. And in that moment, walks in the wisdom of the timeless part of YOU. When you get to know the timeless part of you, the experience of the You in time and space flows with ease and grace.

An Excerpt from "Twelve Steps to Inner Peace"
Copyright © 2012 P Rajkumar , S L Christian
All rights reserved.
Available as Kindle, Audio, Text only, black and white and color versions.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1481148087/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSY853G
http://amzn.to/X0XIzM

I SEEK MY OWN ENLIGHTENMENT FOR THE SAKE OF ALL BEINGS

I SEEK MY OWN ENLIGHTENMENT FOR THE SAKE OF ALL BEINGS


As humanity our collective consciousness is soaking in pain, we have so many things that we think is a bother in life, people are unpleasant, the government is rotten, the education system is no good, the weather is horrible, annoyed and offended with everything, it is either too hot, or too cold, too fat or too tall, or allergic to everything out there, or outraged by the actions done by someone, the pain we hold within is constantly trying to find our what is wrong with the world.  And most of the time the mind comes up with the idea of getting rid of whatever is causing the unpleasantness, right from mosquitoes to the government. The mind thinks that once it gets rid of all that it thinks as unpleasant, there will come a happy contented future.  This is the logic of the mind but it does not make any sense because we are born into the planet and we cannot run away from it.  If we choose to work with our mind instead of struggling to change everything on the outside, we are sure to find happiness, peace, and contentment.

If the world seems to be an unpleasant place then we are 100% responsible for it, because this world around us is our hall of mirrors and the consciousness we choose to hold about people and things is what is reflected on the outside. We are responsible for the energy we bring into the Planet through us.  If we choose to feel frustrated, sad, or angry about the situations around us, we take part in aggravating the situation even more. If we choose to believe our mind stories then we continue to see ourselves and others as victims and try to heal the pain by interfering, pitying, and trying to "Save" the world, we continue to scare ourselves with greater mind stories of imperfection and we suffer by losing our joy, and creating that which we do not want again and again. We forget the Creator's eternal goodness, and see the Planet and everything in it as being broken, and take up on us the stress of healing a broken planet by getting into the business of our spouse, our children, our neighbors, strangers and the world at large. Things in the world cannot frighten us, only we have the power to terrorize ourselves with our mind stories. We do not know the bigger picture, we can only see what is in front of us, we do not even know if being alive or being dead is good for us at this moment, we have an extremely limited perception.

 If we choose to rise about our mind stories then it is very important to be in the Present Moment with full awareness.  The way to get out of our pain is to practice awareness and be in conscious connection with the Divine Presence within. This brings us to the place of non-judgment. I am reminded of Ho'oponopono, the Shamanic practice of forgiveness, native to Hawaii.  It explicitly encourages verbally forgiving ones own inner thoughts and mind stories.  This amazing technique is portrayed in Dr.Hew Len's work, as a therapist he cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients without seeing any of them.  He took each of the patient's charts and looked within himself to see how he created that person's illness.  As he continued to work on himself, his patients got healed.  The work he did was to say these words again and again to his Higher Self/God within,  "I am sorry"  for harboring such kind of data in the mind stories, and "I love you" for forgiving and erasing these data from my mind.

Hence we are completely responsible for the energy we hold within, and bring into this Planet.  We are 100% responsible for everything we see, hear, touch, just because it is in our life, everything on the outside is a projection from our inside world.  If there is a problem on the outside it is imperative that we fix it by working on the concepts and beliefs we hold on the inside.

We each and everyone of us are a powerful gift to this Planet, we influence the situations in the world around us by what we choose to believe at any given moment. Choosing to be in the Present Moment in awareness is our grand gift for this Planet.

Responsibility is the ability to respond from the heart and not from the mind stories.  The heart is where we connect with our Divine Presence within.
 Let us choose our own enlightenment for the sake of all beings.
Blessings!
~Premlatha Rajkumar     

THIS GAME OF 'SEPARATION' FROM OUR DIVINE PRESENCE

THIS GAME OF 'SEPARATION' FROM OUR DIVINE PRESENCE

All is energy/consciousness, every man, animal, tree, cloud, air, water, etc, is a home for consciousness to reside in. There is only consciousness every where. Separation is an illusion, a game that we chose to play at this time. Realizing the unlimited beauty of our beings is the goal of the game. To play this game in a better way it is important to realize that this world truly is our hall of mirrors. Hence, there is no other here. There is no one out there to please or to prove. Every thing around us is our own reflection. All limitations are self-imposed, there is absolutely no one to rescue, nothing to achieve, nowhere to be. All learning is truly only a remembering, we are unlimited beings with our awakening in our own hands.
Being/consciousness is more powerful than doing. We can fight for peace and justice as much as we want but if we do not hold peace and non-judgment in our consciousness, all our efforts will not be of use to anyone. The world does not begin from outside us, the world begins from within us. There is no built-in meaning here, the meaning for everything is the meaning we give it. We are the master of our creations, it is in our power to see things the way we want them to be. Nothing outside has the power to hurt, damage, or destroy us in anyway. If we perceive something as not good, then we go inside and create it better by choosing to hold peace and non-judgment in our consciousness. In order to change the picture outside, we go within and change our perception on the inside.
The world outside is truly our own reflection, in reality we are standing in front of another version of ourselves. So, in healing ourselves, we are actually healing others. Fear is an illusion, and fear happens when we take this game of separation seriously, fear plagues us, it becomes a common sickness in the human collective, we fear failure, we fear success, we fear speaking our truth, we fear to commit, we fear to trust, we fear controversy, and we fear to love. Noticing our reactions to life situations consciously is a way of identifying our fear. The next step is to question our fear if it is truly ours or are we projecting someone else's fear. Just noticing and being with the fear helps us to process the fear, we can also go another step ahead by choosing to see the turnarounds for the fears . When we question our fear and process it without judgment, we are open to our truth and healing happens. We gather wisdom through every experience in this body, we expand our consciousness, and we continuously recreate ourselves.
This game of separation is only a brief moment in time, we are never born and we never die. Aligning with the Presence of our unlimited being is the key to awakening from this sleep of separation. Awakening from this sleep we come to realize that our true purpose is to celebrate life, to bring love, joy, laughter, peace within so that we can reflect it without.
Let us choose to play this game called, "life on Planet Earth" with conscious connection to our Divine Presence. Let us play well together!
Blessings!
Premlatha Rajkumar

A Zen Story

A STORY OF WISDOM FROM ZEN

~THE MUDDY ROAD ~
Tanzan and Ekido were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

Let us contemplate on this: "The longer you hold on to mental chatter the farther away you are from inner peace.
~Premlatha Rajkumar

"IS THAT SO?" - A ZEN STORY OF WISDOM

"IS THAT SO?" ~ A ZEN STORY OF WISDOM

Are we willing to go beyond the ego and its blame games and accept and allow the process of life to flow through us? 

The following is an interesting Zen story about the Zen Master Hakuin. Imagine how you would react if this was your story.

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. "Is that so?" was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth - that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: "Is that so?"

This beautiful story brings the grand reminder that when we align with our Divine Presence within, we get out of the need to prove or please others. Our actions are empowered with the wisdom of life, life flows through us freely and creates grand transformations to the world around us effortlessly.

Blessings!
Premlatha Rajkumar