The Lamp Of Hope

You create the future basing yourself on what you think, feel and do in the present. If you act according to your values, it is easy for you to trust in your destiny. That strengthens your hope that all will go well, and, if it doesn’t, you know and trust your inner resources or treasures to be able to deal with things and change. That trust feeds the enthusiasm, the motor energy that, along with motivation and passion, helps us to advance.

When you lose courage and you feel weak, when you feel insecure and do not see with clarity where to go towards, hope lights the way for you to carry on going forward. If you fall, get up again and carry on looking ahead. Don't look back. Don't let your past be a burden that is too heavy and prevents you from advancing. Focus your vision on your objective and on all your potential to achieve it.

Whatever happens, keep the lamp of hope lit. You can. You will achieve it. Change will become reality. You will free yourself from the shadows of fears, blockages and the other limitations that weaken you.
Live each situation as an opportunity. Learn from criticism and failures. On living life as a constant opportunity for personal growth and learning, you keep hope always alive.

Give yourself moments of silence on beginning each day, during the day and on finishing the day, to connect with your inner self. That way your awareness stays awake, the lamp of your hope, your motivation and your values remains lit. 

Ashtavakra Gita - Chapter 2

Janak said As I alone give light to this body, so I do to the world, As a result the whole world is mine, or alternatively nothing is. So now that I have abandoned the body and everything else, by some good fortune or other my true self becomes apparent. Just as waves, foam and bubbles are not different from Water, so all this which has emanated from oneself, is no other than oneself. In the same way that when analysed cloth is found to be just thread, so when all this is analysed it is found to be no other than oneself. Just as a sugar produced from the juice of the sugarcane is permeated with the same taste, so all this, produced out of me, is completely permeated with myself.

From the ignorance of oneself, the world appears, and by knowledge of oneself it appears no longer. From ignorance of the rope a snake appears, and by knowledge of it it appears no longer. Shinning is my essential nature, and I am nothing over and beyond that. When the world shines forth, it is simply me that is shinning forth.

All this appears in me imagined due to ignorance, just as a snake appears in the rope, the mirage of water in the sunlight, and silver in mother of pearl. All this, which has originated out of me, is resolved back into me too, like  a jug back into clay, a wave into water and a bracelet into gold.

How wonderful I am ! Glory to me, for whom there is no destruction, remaining even beyond the destruction of the world from Bhrama down to the last clump of grass.
How wonderful I am ! Glory to me, solitary even through with a body, neither going nor coming anywhere, I who abide forever, filling all that is.
How wonderful I am ! Glory to me, I who possess nothing at all, or alternatively possess everything that speech and mind refer to.
Knowledge, what is to be known, and the knower - these three do not exist in reality. I am spotless reality in which they appear because of ignorance.
Truly dualism is the root of suffering. There is no other remedy for it than the realisation that all this that we see in unreal, and that I am the one stainless reality , consisting of consciousness. I am pure awareness though through ignorance I have imagined myself to have additional attributes. By continually reflecting like this, my dwelling place is in the Unimagined.

For me here neither bondage nor liberation. The illusion has list its basis and ceased. Truly all this exists in me,  though ultimately it does not even exist in me. I have recognized that all this and my body are nothing, while my true self is nothing but pure consciousness, so what is there for the imagination work on now ? The body, heaven and hell, bondage and liberation, and fear too, all this is pure imagination. What is there left to do for me whose very nature is consciousness? Truly I donot even see dualism in a crowd of people, so what would I gain by replacing it with a wilderness?

I am not the body, nor is the body mine. I am not living being. I am consciousness. It was my thirst for living that was my bondage. Truly it is in the limitless ocean of myself, that stimulated by the colourful waves of the worlds everything suddenly arises in the wind of consciousness.  It is in the limitless ocean of myself, that the wind of thought subsides, and the trader-like living being's world boat is wrecked by lack of goods.

How wonderful it is that in the limitless ocean of myself the waves of living beings arise, collide, play and disappear, according to their natures.

Janak Questions

Janaka asked his Guru "How is knowledge to be acquired ? How is liberation to be attained ? And how is dispassion to be reached? Tell me this Sir"


Ashtavakra: If you are seeking liberation, my son, shun the objects of the senses like poison. Practice tolerance, sincerity, compassion, contentment and truthfulness like nectar. You donot consider of the elements - earth, water, fire, air or even ether. To be liberated, know yourself as consisting of consciousness, the witness of these. If only you will remain resting in consciousness, seeing yourself as distinct from the body, then even now you will become happy, peaceful and free from bonds. You donot belong to the brahmin or any other caste, you are not at any stage, nor are you anything that the eye can see. You are unattached and formless, the witness of everything - so to be happy. Righteousness and unrighteousness, pleasure and pain are purely of the mind and are no concern of yours. You are neither the doer nor the reaper of the consequences, so you are always free. You are the one witness of everything, and are always completely free. The cause of your bondage is that you see the witness as something other than this. Since you have been bitten by the black snake, the opinion about yourself that "I am the doer", drink the antidote of faith in the fact that "I am not the doer", and be happy. Burn down the forest of ignorance with the fire of the understanding that "I am the pure awareness", and be happy and free from the distress. If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound. Here this saying is true, "Thinking makes it so."

Your real nature is as the one perfect, free, and action less consciousness, the all-pervading witness - unattached to anything, desire less and at peace. It is from illusion that seem to be involved in samsara. Meditate on yourself as motionless awareness, free from any dualism, giving up the mistaken idea that you are just a derivative consciousness, or anything external or internal.You have long been trapped in the snare of identification with the body. Server it with the knife of knowledge that "I am awareness", and be happy, my son. You are really unbound and action less, self-illuminating and spotless already. The cause of your bondage is that you are still restoring to stilling the mind.All of this is really filled by you and strung out in you, for what you consist of is pure awareness - so don't be small minded. You are unconditioned and changeless, formless and immovable, unfathomable awareness and unpreturbable, so hold to nothing but consciousness.

Recognize that the apparent is unreal, while the unmanifest is abiding. Through this initiation into truth you will escape falling into unreality again.Just as mirror exists everywhere both within and apart from its reflected images, so the supreme Lord exists everywhere within and apart from this body. Just as one and the same all-prevading space exists within and without a jar, so the eternal, everlasting God exists in the totality of things.

Special Birthday

This birthday (01/11/11) was special. On this birthday I got the birthday wishes from all those people to whom I have not talked more than 2 years. I got around 30 wishes in facebook and with all 30 people I have not talked to them more than years.
People remembers you even if they do not talk. I am happy to see all these wishes and god bless them who all remember me.

Maintaining Your Self-Esteem In Relationships

When a person is in love with another human, the marvelous thing about being in love is that it is a totally positive projection. There is a person who projects on to you all that is positive: you are marvelous, you are unique, you are indispensable, you are a treasure. That positive projection generates a euphoric state, of bliss, of wellbeing, whereby you are flying. You feel loved, cared for, needed and valued. That positive projection lasts for a time until, with the dependencies and expectations, the negative projection begins. "You should have called me, you should have told me, you should have come at this time, you should be more like this, you should be less like that, you should have done this or that."

With these expectations, demands and dependencies, that positive projection and flying state disappear. The other has started interfering in your personal space and the harmony that was there previously is lost. One needs to learn to have a positive vision of oneself. You are marvelous, you are unique; don't depend on them telling you so. This does not mean you need to feed your ego, but that you need to make the most positive emerge from within you. Resort to all your creative, positive, spiritual capacity, so that you do not depend on others having to project positive things onto you in order to feel good. On feeling good in an independent and autonomous way, you will be able to share with others peace, love and positivism. You won't be in the state of a victim but will be true rulers and controllers of your own life with solid self-esteem

Poems of Gulzar

चांद के साथ कई दर्द पुराने निकले

चांद के साथ कई दर्द पुराने निकले,
कितने गम थे जो तेरे गम के बहाने निकले,

फ़सल-ए-गुल आई फ़िर एक बार असीनाने-वफ़ा,
अपने ही खून के दरिया में नहाने निकले,

दिल ने एक ईंट से तामीर किया हसीं ताजमहल,
तुने एक बात कही लाख फसाने निकले,

तामीर = plan

दश्त-ए-तन्हाई ये हिजरा में खडा सोचता हुँ,
हाय क्या लोग मेरा साथ निभाने निकले,

Lyrics: Amjad Islam Amjad

Ustad Shujaat Hussain Khan - Solo Ghazal

It yours belief, which hurts you.

Sometimes in relationships, you believe that the other person is hurting you because they do not meet your desires, but in such cases how can you know if it is really true? Let.s go a step ahead; does the belief that they are going to hurt you influence the situation until in the end it happens? Perhaps they won't hurt you. Your belief that the other is going to hurt you is not so powerful that it will necessarily affect the other person. But it affects you yourself. They may not hurt you at all finally, but you will end up hurt, you will become emotionally ill, even psychically ill sometimes. The symptoms will begin to show themselves and you will say: "Did you see? I feel hurt, I keep telling you so." So your belief caused you to get hurt and not the other.

Forgive To Forget

A key principle to remain light and stable in relationships is . .forgive and forget. - it.s a well-known principle . one that we sometimes find difficult to practice. It can be modified to .forgive to forget.. Sometimes we spend many years with so much bitterness inside us for a particular person, with an inner violence of wanting to make the other .pay. (emotions of revenge), the one who has supposedly hurt you. If you don.t strike back immediately, you at least want to keep this .guilt card. in your pocket, to be pulled out at a later date: .Oh yes, well what about the time when you... We keep this bitterness inside us because we haven't forgiven. It does not resolve the situation; the only thing it does is increase our pain, makes us heavy and does not let us remain in peace. So the key is that if we do not forgive, we cannot forget.When someone has offended or insulted us, the last thing we want to do is to let it go. And yet, if our desire is to have a healthy, lasting relationship, that is exactly what we.ve got to do.

Sometimes, when it is a question of a broken relationship, it is not only a matter of forgiving the other, but of forgiving yourself for having allowed yourself to enter that experience. It was you that took the step to allow that experience to be entered into. If you hadn't taken that step, you wouldn't have had that experience. You accepted that challenge, that relationship, and what might happen in it . you were aware of the possibilities when you entered in the relationship. So not only do you have to learn to forgive the other, but also to forgive yourself in such situations. Only then will you be able to forget. 

Meeting with old friend is a bliss

Meeting with the old friend is bliss in life. When you meet with your old friend, you analyze your life. You tried to  visualize the direction in which life is moving. You make alive your past thought . You tries to define your path in life. You learn the mistakes that you have done in the past.

I met, my one of  the old friend in Birmingham [Ajit Singh Boley] after 7 years, and it was stirring.

"Dil Hi To Hai Na Sang-o-Khist
Dard Se Bhar Na Aaye Kyon?
Royenge Hum Hazaar BaarKoyee Hamein Sataye Kyon?

Ghalib-e-Khast Ke Bagair
Kaunse Kaam Band Hain?
Roeeye Zar-Zar Kaya?Keejiye Haye-Haye Kyon?"

It was an inspiring meeting. I suggest everybody to keep meeting with the old past close friends.
Sometime it takes you on right path.

What I want to do in life ?

Every time I think about this question, I feel, I have an answer. I think that I have a clarity  But whenever I got the opportunity to execute, I always failed to execute it properly. Why that so, is that whatever answer I was thinking was not correct or I have not ability to execute that.

I think while thinking about what to do in life, you need to think also how will you do that.

Whatever you are going to think, is it sure that will happen ? How much we need to attach with that ?

The important things in life

A philosophy professor stood before his class with some items on the table in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, about 2 inches in diameter.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.
He then asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “Yes.”

“Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children – things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter – like your job, your house, your car.

The sand is everything else. The small stuff.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued “there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal.

Take care of the rocks first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

Self Empowerment

Our internal strengths create the foundation on which we make our decisions in life, how we relate to others and how we understand ourselves. For most people their strengths are understood but never made very conscious. They lie below the surface and are not openly talked about. Bringing them into our conscious understanding improves our process of self-empowerment.

To realize and review your strengths, sit comfortably in a pleasant atmosphere and answer silently the following questions:
A. Look back into the past and remember the times when you experienced your greatest successes. List the unique talents or strengths, which you made use of at those times.
B. List the specific features, which you admire in yourself.
C. If you were to take the opinion of your family, friends and colleagues, what strengths would they say that you have?
D. List your most valuable assets.
E. Now examine your answers and summarize. What are your main strengths?

Total Freedom - 1

By J. Krishnamurti

I think most people have lost the art of listening. They come with their particular problems, and think that by listening to my talk their problems will be solved. I am afraid this will not happen; but if you know how to listen, then you will begin to understand the whole, and your mind will not be entangled by the particular.

So, if I may suggest it, don't try to seek from this talk a solution for your particular problem, or an alleviation of your suffering. I can help you or rather you will help yourself only if you think anew, creatively. Regard life not as several isolated problems, but comprehensively, as a whole, with a mind that is not suffocated by the search of solutions. If you will listen without the burden of problems and take a comprehensive outlook, then you will see that your particular problem has a different significance, and although it may not solved at once, you will begin to see the true cause of it. In thinking anew, in relearning how to think, there will come the dissolution of the problems and conflicts with which one's mind and heart are burdened, and from which arise all disharmony, pain and suffering.