LIFE MUDRAS

A long long time ago, my husband, our two sons and I had gone out for an ice-cream treat. It was sometime when I was always thinking of curbing unnecessary expenditure. As a selfless person, who was too much in love with her family to deny them of any pleasure, I always chose to sacrifice my own excesses. And it didn’t even feel like a sacrifice ever, because I was a woman of very few needs/ wants/ desires... So, when my husband asked each one of us to choose our favorite flavor of ice-cream, I responded as usual, “I won’t have any.” The boys enjoyed one round and ordered another; my response remained the same, “I don’t want any.” I was happy in my family’s happiness. I was happy that my not indulging in pleasure was perhaps ensuring some more goodies in the future for my dear ones. . But my husband looked at me and said, “Please don’t do this to yourself and to us. I want a happy wife; not a sacrificial lamb. I have seen that too much sacrifice eventually leads to bitterne...

Love - the tingling sensation and the jittery feeling when someone special comes in person or in your thoughts. I am talking about that deep down, life changing, earth shaking, always-and-forever kind of love—the stuff of poetry and legend. Many people are skeptical, and for good reason. Today’s culture isn’t very fertile ground for romance.  With social media, text messaging and online dating, we’ve revolutionized communication but we’ve lost the art of relationships. There are very few success stories. Most of the time it seems like there are very few people having real, face-to-face conversations anymore. But I believe and I know that - True love is Real, Deep, Unconditional & Everlasting. The reason it is so rare is because it is so misunderstood. Most people’s idea of TRUE LOVE looks something like this: Mr. or Mrs. Right is waiting out there somewhere, THE ONE they are destined to be with. And that special someone is looking for them too, and it’s only a matter of...

I am not saying that relationships are bad and that you should avoid getting in them.  In fact, getting into meaningful relationships is one of the most important and significant things that can happen to a person throughout their lifetime. Finding a person that genuinely connects with you and the entirety of who you are can be unmatched by anything else that happens to you throughout your lifetime. But sadly most of the times in life this does not happen. Fairy tales are not always real. Even in the most beautiful relationships there are discords, misjudgements, fights etc. but how soon we get out of these and how much efforts we apply to resolve the differences makes all the difference. Life itself is not beautiful it is all about how beautiful we want it to be. Don't get me wrong.......

You are special, and there is no need to want to be special. You are special, you are unique—existence never creates anything less than that.  Everyone is unique, utterly unique. There has been no person like you before, and there will never be a person like you again. Consciousness has taken this form for the first time and the last time, so there is no need to try to become special: you already are. If you are trying to be special, you will become ordinary. Your very effort is rooted in misunderstanding. It will create confusion because when you try to become special, you have taken one thing for grated—that you are not special.  You have become ordinary already. You have missed the point

We all have a higher Self within; we were born with it. Sometimes we get a fleeting glimpse of the Self when we spontaneously act out of unconditional love. Recall a sudden wave of empathy engulfing you at the sight of a man shivering in the cold that prompted you to give him clothes; picking up a wounded animal on the road; the deep sense of fulfilment on rescuing someone in trouble. These arouse an incredible flow of energy and feelings within. Momentarily, you rise from an ordinary state of being to an extraordinary one. The shift is spontaneous, unintentional and instinctive. You forget who you are: your status, position, your miseries; you act without assigning reason and logic. Neither do you expect reward or recognition in return. These are moments when your higher Self takes over. The Self is a vast storehouse of positive energy that propels us to extend ourselves unconditionally. We drop our masks: our ego-self, the finite, entrenched in inhibitions, doubts...

*A SPLITTING HEADACHE*...  The proprietor of a coffee shop had been busy all day. Being Saturday, it was very crowded & the customers were just unending. He had been on his toes since morning. Towards the evening he felt a splitting headache surfacing. As the clock ticked away, his headache worsened. Unable to bear it, he stepped out of the shop leaving his staff to look after the sales. He walked across the street to the Chemist, to buy himself a painkiller to relieve his headache. He swallowed the pill & felt relieved. He knew that in a few minutes he would feel better. As he strolled out of the shop, he casually asked the salesgirl, "Where is Mr Savarkar (the Chemist)? He's not at the cash counter today!" The girl replied, "Sir, Mr Savarkar had a splitting headache & said he was going across to the coffee shop. He said a cup of hot coffee would relieve him of his headache."  The man's mouth went dry & he mumbled, "Oh!...

The idea that we can fix perceived flaws in our partners, friends, parents, and grown children remains a promise of something that is unobtainable. A healthy dose of ego often convinces us that our way of looking at things is right, but if we try to correct someone else it usually backfires. Most of the times it implies that we are more enlightened and that we have a deeper knowledge of what’s best. The other person may get the message that he or she isn’t good enough and will in every probability become resentful. A safer approach would be to look inward to fix the problem. This involves the recognition that you will never be in sync about some matters. We have to accept the fact ‘We have this permanent difference, but we need to learn to live with each other’.