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wow, that was so beautiful. election results or news or cricket games ( to which i am hooked too) are such a drain on our attention and yet we dont realise this and follow our habits and external influences. if we could just pause and slowdown and weigh our choices of attention , life could become so meaningful.

Thankyou for sharing Anthony. Thankyou Jt for further sharing it here. The awareness that we may be resisting the flow of life is , I guess, a step towards accepting life " as it is." Will wait for your views on Hinduism. Have read a bit on it , so we can have some good conversations on it.

Thankyou for the sharing. It resonates with what I witness in my volunteering.

I volunteer as a Counselor in a Hospice/ and a Cancer support NGO , where we get to meet end of life cancer patients. The patients are in a strong Cancer pain . But what we have been taught and I have also found out is to treat the pain holistically. There is a lot of emotional pain apart from the physical pain. Apart from treating the physical pain which is done by the medical professionals , we sit down with the patients and try to ascertain the emotional stress and try to bring some relief through counselling. It is usually seen that when the emotional pain is addressed and sorted the physical pain also comes down. There is a great unity between the mind and body and exploring that along with the spiritual stress provides some relief in the total pain.

In my volunteering as an "end of life " counselor , I do come across people struck with serious illnesses ( Mostly Cancer) and see them grappling with its aftermath. The usual question is "Why Me " ? What we fail to understand is, there is no answer to this question. Only after all the answers and questions have been exhausted, do we realise and accept that there is no answer and the only thing in our hand is to accept the situation, wholeheartedly, and then move ahead with whatever is in our hand. These are the people , who even in their death, bring so much of joy to others. I guess the same is true of all our difficult life situations.

The naturalist was the true guru for the eagle as he could see that the Eagle was a victim of conditioning and simple words or nudge would not work. He pushed the Eagle and almost made her realise her true self. Same way we have been conditioned by the people/society that we are just ordinary chickens and are here to do the mundane tasks . I guess we do need a guru , or maybe a shove or a jolt, to see and realise our authentic self and also to send us on the journey we are here on this planet for.

Smile. How we smile and the other person smiles back to us. No articulation , just a silent acknowledgement of beingness. I remember whenever I am in the park , for a morning walk , and sometimes in a pensive mood, and suddenly we exchange smiles , and the entire pensive mood vanishes and life starts appearing wonderful and joyous again. Suddenly a flower , that was falling off the tree , falls near me or over me , and I feel divinely blessed. Oh , how beautiful everything is

The Serbian saying "Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars". So profound.

Learning to go with the flow of life, without resistance, is the key , I guess. Laotzu .s instructions are so meaningful. its about internalising what we see rather than discussing about we see.

Do remember a pilgrimage where all the pilgrims are usually saints . I had undertaken it just to experience the grace of God. I had seen saints and would try and be like them. What I realised was, the authenticity and the natural flow of love was not there. Then I stopped trying and In a simple way started being in love , in gratitude of everything received, in awe of the gifts nature was bestowing upon me, the realisation of what nature and my life was trying to teach , and then I could sense a natural change happening within me.

Thankyou for the poetic reply.

Am reminded of a quote " When your fear touches someone's pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone's pain, it become compassion. Stephen Levine Pity, sympathy and empathy are all touching on other's pain. Sometimes we do this for ourselves and the question of "Why me " . or " how life can be so cruel " , "what do I do wrong " arise and trouble us more than the actual pain /sorrow being felt. We suffer, other's suffer too. Seeing it with love and as a larger game plan , makes us more compassionate towards others as well as ourselves. So true , when the author says Compassion is not a response to sorrow or suffering but can be practiced as a way of life.

That reminds me why it is a good practice to sit and settle down for a while, before sitting in meditation. It is always good to ground ourselves , before we close our eyes for meditation. Mark Nepo mentions the journey of becoming who we were born to be. Its an endless journey and a life long practice and we do not reach anywhere, we just grow. What is required is just embracing life in its entiriety . The inner transformation which happens when we just " do good and be good" , live a life based on values. do not get carried away what others think of us, living a life base don love and service is all that sees us through in this journey.

Dear Chelsea, sending you love and positive energies. Wayne Dyer ,says in the last para, that we have to remember the divinity within us. By forgiving the wrong doings, from the inner part of us, we not only free ourselves of the memories, we also fill up hearts with love , for ourselves, as well as the other.

Forgiveness, although such an easy and good thing to do , is seldom done from the heart. We may choose to ignore the wrong act and move on, but forgiving someone from the heart , is rarely done. The pain and the feeling of hatred remains stored within. Its a challenge to throw out the feelings of hatred in even very simple wrongdoings. Have learnt that the outer reflects the inner, but if in the inner we have hatred stored, how will be able to emit love . We can only give out what we have , and for us to radiate love ,we must be full of this love and one of the ways of doing that is to adopt forgiveness for any small or major injustices we may have suffered.

I have recently been volunteering at a Hospice, Shanti Avedna. . I go there once a week and sit with them , play with them or just smile at them. During my last six months , many have passed away. I remember , I was very close to one Ramu Sharma , whom I had also gifted a phone . I got a message that he was not well and almost at the end of his life. Sat with him just holding his hand. The hands were almost lifeless and no reaction. Every five to ten minutes I could feel him squeezing my hand, Whether it was my imagination or he was really doing that I don't know. Would have loved to stay more but I was entrusted with the task of contacting his ' so called " family ( he had absolutely no one) . He died the next day. I don't know what would have made a difference in his life. Gifting him a phone. Almost being his best buddy. Sitting with him and talking with him during my visits. Holding his hand on the last day . But yes , as Deborah says in the passage, I was, and still am grateful for the experiences.

Finding bliss in a simple realisation of being aware of the twirling of hair and choosing not to do is amazing. Like the author says , it's about practicing. Thankyou for sharing. Finding joy in dancing with the spirit of your son sucha beautiful practice to. I also re-live many memories conversing with my wife who passed away almost ten years ago. There is a o much of joy in it.

Enlightenment or something a kin to that, is the absence of craving for pleasure and the absence of running away from pain. No seeking , no goals, just being our true selves. As Brother David puts it. " Ask nothing ,refuse nothing. What is , is. Nothing else I want, just what is ". One realisation. When I am typing this I realise or question how will I sound or appear. If someone appreciates I will feel good. If someone ignores or disagrees I will feel bad. This is what prevents us from living our true lives as per the author.

Sometimes life hurts us, causes us pain. Rather than accepting it as nature's way of doing things, we start blaming others or even ourselves. In this manner , apart from the physical pain or emotional pain that might have been caused, we add more pain by attributing the pain to someone else, even God , even ourselves , and attract much more suffering , which is much higher than the pain would have caused us. It is observed that even gold has to go undera lot of stress ( fire) to be purified. Can we just take any stressful event this way and treat it and even welcome it , as our own purification process.

We are generally unsatisfied with our lives. We are continuously seeking a satisfaction outside of us . We feel we need to become something to feel more satisfied. In the process we have a feeling of lacking something. Not understanding and realising that all the satisfaction is already within us. We have what is needed by us. We need to tap into our inner view . We have to find the contentment with our inner self. All the joy and happiness is contained there. Many times during our meditation there is this realization of complete contentment and an experience of being fully satisfied with our selves. When we are rooted in our inner view , that feeling of contentment stays with us.