SOME NEW YEAR'S THOUGHTS TO HELP YOU BE THE GURU

Happy New Year! Here are some wonderful thoughts from Sri Swami Chidananda on how to begin the new year.

http://www.dlshq.org/discourse/jan2011.htm

Radiant immortal Atman! Beloved children of Light! My first request to you, is: Begin the New Year by lifting up your heart, mind, and your entire being to God and asking Him earnestly and sincerely that the New Year may be an ideal year filled with 365 ideal, golden days divinely lived, filled with truthfulness, compassion, kindness, purity, and nobility of thought, word and deed. May everyday that you live bring some benefit to all life around you! May everyday of this New Year that you live be the source of good and joy to others, and bring happiness to others! May it be helpful to all the living creatures, and even to inanimate and immobile things like trees and plants. Feel your oneness with all humanity. Be a world citizen. May the oneness of all life and the fraternity of mankind be always the guiding sentiment in the living of your life! Be large-hearted. Be forgiving, loving, expressing humaneness, friendliness and not allowing any negativity in your heart.
And when you wake up in the morning, wake up with the resolution that "I will make this New Year four times as valuable, beautiful, ideal and useful as the year that has just passed. Let the future be better than the past." Cast a bird’s-eye-view on the previous year—what have been its fine points, minus points and drawbacks. You may make up your mind, correct all the errors, and see that they are not repeated in the New Year.
Make the New Year a better one. The effort should be progress, progress and ascent. The overall law that prevails in all life upon this earth is the law of evolution, ascending from the lower to the higher, still higher until fullness and perfection is reached. You must never forget that the living of human life is a progression upon the path of evolution. Keep this in mind and see that everything that you think or speak, every action that you engage in takes you further and upward upon this path of evolution and perfection. You must utilise the God given intelligence in the highest measure. Human life means an ascent to perfection, because you are made in the likeness of God. And God is all-full, all-perfect. So the potential for that perfection, that Divinity is already there in you. That which is latent should be made dynamically patent.
Divine thou art, let divine be your life. Therefore, be divine hundred per cent in everything that you do, think and feel. Make your life sublime. Never forget your real nature that you are a wave in the Ocean of pure Divine Consciousness, you are a part of eternal Existence. May God and Gurudev shower their grace upon you all!

Do Unto Yourself

We find great fulfillment in helping others. We do it in a multitude of ways, with our time, with our money, anonymously, unselfishly, sending energies of love, health and joy. We try to live our lives as an example of how to live happier more fulfilling life, and those examples are just the tip of the iceberg. The rewards are priceless. Ironically, as we head down the path or our Spiritual Journey, helping others can become an obsession. If we do not stop and look around once in a while, we might not realize that we have created a different version of the rat race we previously chose to no longer participate in.

Sometimes we need to turn the Golden Rule around and remind ourselves to Do Unto Ourselves As We Do Unto Others. We can not help others and give them the best of ourselves, if we do not have our own house in order. It is often said that we need to love ourselves before we can love others. Likewise, we need to help and take care of ourselves before we can do the same for others. Essentially, we need to be healthy, physically, emotionally, and spirituality.

The first thing to do is to take a little time to step back and think about what you may have been neglecting. Have you been so busy that your positive habits that got you to where you were have been put on hold? Have you been sleeping enough? Have you been eating right? Have you been missing your regular periods previously set aside for meditation, yoga, reading, playing music, spending time with your family, or whatever is important to you on a personal level?

Once you have determined what you have been neglecting, come up with a plan to incorporate into your new life. Do not just say you are going to do it and do not approach it haphazardly, or it will never happen. Remember that as your Journey continues, you are constantly recreating your self. Change is a natural part of the process. And, along with that you may need to update your plan, your routine, and your perspective.

So, remember to take time for yourself. Don’t just say it, do it! Make an appointment on your own calendar like a doctor appointment, but in this case, be your own doctor. Right yourself a prescription for wellness. Remember that you do not have to sacrifice your life to help others. That notion runs completely counter to the underpinnings of spiritual growth. Do not play the noble starving artist. That role is a child of the ego. Now, go take a walk, get a massage, or make a great dinner. Your personal happiness will create an infectious energy that will rub of on everyone you think about or come in contact with.

Oneness - Part II

This is the Part II in my series of posts on Oneness. The symbol to the left is my symbol for Oneness and in Part I, I discussed the "o". To briefly recap, the symbol is "one" - specifically (little "o", the infinity sign, and little "e").

I also explained that in our physical universe, an illusion of God's creation and ours, we can start by thinking of the "o" as "We are all One." However, in our ultimate reality where we are our purest energy, our souls, we can broaden the idea of Oneness to mean that "All is One."

Now let us look at the second character the "n" or the "infinity" character. And yes, I am saying that "We are all infinite." Some religions, tell us that God is omnipresent, but the concept of Oneness implies that we are all omnipresent.

Let us look at the idea that "We are all infinite" from two perspectives. The first way to think of this is from the perspective of our physical illusion, the universe. In this perspective, the physical illusion implies form (grass, rocks, animals, people, molecules, etc...), and this implies distance (yards, miles, kilometers, light years, etc...). Form and distance can be summed up as our physical universe.

Since we are looking at this from the perspective of the physical illusion, I will start with our Oneness definition of "We are all one." If we are part of everyone, then part of us is where everyone else is at any moment. That means that we are everywhere, hence infinite.

This idea is the basis of many Buddhist teachings. You may have seen quotes that refer to somebody saying that they are "nowhere" or "everywhere and nowhere". That is because if you are everywhere then you can be "nowhere" - in particular.

The second way to think of "We are all infinite" is from the perspective of the ultimate reality where God is everything. In the ultimate reality we are our purest energy - our souls. God is us (our souls) and we are all part of God. We are all part of everything, or put another way, our energy extends to everything and vice versa. Hence, we are one and we are infinite.

You may think that I am over simplifying my explanation of this. Yes, it is true that a deeper discussion of this could and has filled many books, but at some point that is just fun thinking and pondering. I've found that as we move our perspective to the utlimate reatlity, everything does become amazingly simple. It is our physical illusion, our universe, and our individuality (driven by our egos), that causes things to become over complicated. It is the ultimate reality where we find God and ourselves/our-selves/our souls all distilled down to the essence of everything - energy. As Albert Einstein said, "When the solution is simple, God is answering."

So now we have combined "All is one" with "infinite". Hopefully, this is helping to deepen your understanding of Oneness. I will conclude this series of posts in Part III with an explanation of the third character "e". Perhaps you already know where I'm going to go with that. In the meantime, it might be helpful to go back to Part I and re-read how the Mayans, Hindus and The Beatles preceived Oneness.

Consider the possibility that what you do to others, society, or the planet are really things that you are also doing to yourself.

Oh, and I AM still the walrus. koo koo ka choo.