Struggle between good and bad habits

Life is a continuos struggle between good and bad habits.

You know exactly what is good for you and yet you allow yourself to be dictated by what is not good for you. This is not a weakness but a struggle that you must overcome

You also know that you will become what you are because time does not wait for you to change.

What you are today will be you in many years to come if you do not change what is within.

It's really your choice.

Peace !

Why Do You Remain in the State of Unhappiness and Misery? – Part 2

Life is a balance.

It is the balance that gives tranquility, serenity and peace. When the balance is tampered, there is no tranquility, serenity nor peace. It is that simple.

The balance in life is natural and eternal. The opposite is transient. You must allow the natural forces to maintain that balance. You must understand and know what the natural forces are. You must swim and flow WITH it, not AGAINST it. Nature left to itself behaves like water – finds and returns to its own balance always. It always returns to a state of tranquility, serenity and peace.

But you are different. You are human. You are a part of nature but have been given the power to choose to be WITH or AGAINST the forces of nature. Either decision will determine whether you will be happy and not miserable or otherwise.

Choice is not necessarily a good or bad thing.

It can either lead you down the garden path or down the path of fire. The power of choice without wisdom is devastating. Choice in the hands of the foolish is destructive. You need wisdom to make the right choices.

Wisdom is not knowledge alone.

There are many knowledgeable fools roaming the earth causing further untold unhappiness and misery. There are many more who are confused between the accumulation of information and knowledge. Can we call a computer knowledgeable despite the vast information it may have?

Understanding and knowing is the essence that differentiates the fool from the wise.

Wisdom comes from being one with nature. Wisdom comes when we learn to understand nature NOT as we want to but as how nature itself wants to be understood. You simply let the cards fall where they may and learn from the natural design.

The true understanding of nature leads to acceptance of nature and hence ourselves. It is like the rain that falls onto a mountain and flows all the way to the sea. You may call it a waterfall at one stage, a stream at another, or a river, or the sea at the end.

Water knows that it is water at all of these stages. It does not confuse the stages with its true nature. It does confuse the process with itself. It accepts the natural process without rebellion nor hesitation while not losing sense of its own nature.

But you are different. Being a human living this life based on beliefs which you do not know, you confuse the stages in your life with your true nature. In the process, you forget who you really are. You forget your nature. You cause a conflict between your beliefs and your true nature upsetting the balance within you.

Thus, you end up being unhappy and miserable and keep repeating this cycle all your life.

While nature will find its own balance naturally, you, the human, have been given choices. So, you have to choose to find the balance again – if you want to.

To find this balance, you have to return to its source – you.

You have to get to know yourself putting aside what you believe about yourself. Belief without knowing is mostly futile.

Are you ready to know yourself?

Will you allow yourself to be known to you?

Do you want to know why you are reading this in the first place?

The key to breaking the cycle of unhappiness and misery to know your self, your nature.

END.

NEXT: Why Do You Remain in the State of Unhappiness and Misery? – Part 3 (IF it is meant to be written)

Do I have to explain everything to you?

You came to me uninvited.

I was just traveling on the path and you came. You could come since the space is much yours to use as much as it is mine. You could stay for the same reason but you asked me to stay for a while. I did for I am of that nature. You made a request that I could fulfill and I fulfilled it. A while. That could have been all.

But you asked and you asked me many questions. I answered them because you asked. I answered what I knew, what I thought and what I could. I did not ask you to ask or need to be asked. I am fine being silent, and alone traveling through this transient path. You broke my silence and encroached on my loneliness and yet I did not complain.

When you asked, I answered. You did not like my answer. I did not ask you to like my answer or have a need for you to like it. I answered because you asked. I did not answer to make you like it or to like me. I do not think of you less or more based on how you reacted to my answer. I was only thinking of your question and of my answer. That should have been that. Simple. Questions and answers.

When I answered you, I do not cling on to your question – or to your reaction to my answer. I have no power over whether you like it or not. I do not wish to have that power for I do not need more burden than the burden of passing through this transient life. I get no pleasure from wanting to influence you for that too is transient. I have no interest in transience.

Having asked the question, you clinged on to my answer. You did not like it. You were upset that I had given you the answer that I know. How can I give you any other answer than the answer that I know? How can I lie to myself? I did not intend to appease you or to upset you with my answer. When you asked I intended to only answer your question and continue walking.

What other intention can there be when a question is asked? A question is asked to elicit an answer. If you had any other motives than just to get an answer from me, then that is from you. That must be your nature or you may have made it your nature. I do not fault you for what you are or chose to be. Day does not begrudge night nor vice versa. They simply exist. Should we not?

You were upset with my answer and I recognize that. I want to continue my walking. Idleness will delay my entry onto the next path. But you hold me back even when I recognize that you were upset with my answer. There is nothing more I can give from myself but you still try to hold me back. You think you are holding me back but that is an illusion. You cannot hold back what you do not have.

When I continue the path I was on when you came with the question, you think I am walking away from you. I cannot move away from you for I was never near. Like day and night, we were just there. Neither near nor far but just there when it was meant to be.

But you did not want to let me go until I give you the answer that you want. But how can I give an answer that I do not have? I can only give you from myself, not from without. You want something that I do not have and you fault me for that.

If it pleases you that the entire miseries of the transient world should be placed on my shoulders, so be it. I will neither accept nor reject it but I will let it be.

You seek the illusion. I seek the reality. Transience is an illusion to me but a reality to you. So be it, I say, for I have no control over your perception. Neither do I want to control it for that is impossible.

I have seen this in my mind many times before.

And I see it again and again.

Do I have to explain everything to you? I have no explanations but only answers from within.

My answers, not yours.

END.

Where did my Life go? When?

Image thank to here

We are so used to ourselves – in so many ways. Our face, our smell, our mannerisms, our this and our that. Everyday we look at ourselves in the mirror and get so used to it. We might even forget that we are beautiful or ugly in the eyes of others. In our eyes, we are we.

Being mortals, we go though a process – of being weak, to being strong and then returning to the state of weakness we began from. Some describe this as the journey from “cradle to grave”.

As a child, we are curious, full of energy, full of hope and full of faith. We only see ourselves growing from strength to strength. With no knowledge to increasing knowledge. Slowly, slowly we get into the world. From our “safe world” we now have to come face to face with the world of others – our first challenge of acceptance, understanding and self adjustment. Some manage fast, some take a lifetime. Each their own journeys.

Then, we reach the age of teen. The age of attention, The boys and girls - each with their own sense of what is important. Their own attractiveness – the hair style, the macho body, the show of skin and flesh, the lingo, the clothes, etc, etc – each out to express each one’s sense of uniqueness. Each trying very hard to be a different. Mostly at the superficial level because many, many just takes years before wisdom visits them.

Many die before attainting wisdom.

Then the age of apparent control. The world invites you into the system. Makes you part of the system. If before you were the recipient, you now are made to think you are the shaper and decider of events. You become anointed as an “adult”, whatever that word really means. Power. And with power breeds arrogance, loss of thankfulness, greed and most importantly , self delusion.

Then, the age of stabilizing as if there is such a thing as a “stable life”. But of course, mortals have an easy but misleading criteria of stabilizing – material successes and the applause of the ignorant majority. The car that you drive, the house that you live in, the clothes that adorn your body, the circle of friends whom you are seen with and such. And yet, many a “stabilized individuals” experience intense unhappiness when alone and by themselves deep, deep within their hearts. While the audience and their “friends” are applauding their “success, they feel a void in their life.

Have I been cheated by life?, they ask. Where did my life go- and when?

Then you enter the old age, period of sickness and real loneliness. Where has all the attractiveness, the energy, vitality, need for other people’s approvals all gone? If once upon a time, it was very important that you can run a 100 metres in 10 seconds, all you want now is to be able to get off your bed without help from someone else. Definition of success relatively changes.

If, once upon a time, it was so important that you looked pretty or sexy or macho, now all you wish for is for your body not to get more unhealthy. While all your life, you had focused on the FORM, life now has brought your focus back to the SUBSTANCE…but a trifle too late!

If once you were busy fighting against others for all sorts of dubious causes, now you can hardly move your finger to feed yourself. If you had stood tall and arrogant, now you could hardly …………..

If once upon a time, it was important how people see you and you take all efforts to spruce up your persona, now you can hardly see anything due to falling sight.

Try, just try to enjoy life. After all, if you can read this, that means you are “comfortable in life” and hence no amount of urging you to introspect is going to succeed! Only life can be the best teacher. And that includes to me.

Peace !

IF WE JUST HEAR AND NEVER LISTEN……IT MAY LEAD TO OPPRESSION AND MISERY

Image thanks to this site.

There was a puddle of water on the ground. I was moved to peek into it and suddenly I found myself pulled deep into it. I was falling weightlessly and perceived Hime floating along whispering the following thoughts into my mind:

“You can have all the discussions that you want. After all, while there is a mouth, there is always the inclination to want to talk. If you observe carefully at people in public places, they are always talking. The lips never seem to stop. It keeps moving and keeps making sounds. It leaves you wondering that people have so much to say about so many things.

One often overlooks that compared to one mouth; nature had decided to give human beings two ears. But how many do actually listen. They may hear what you say, but do they listen? Do you listen to what you hear?

To listen is to understand what is being said. To hear is to hear the sounds, the words - not the meaning.

Listening is one of the major activities of human beings that have been grossly overlooked. You mortals have never made the time and effort to cultivate this skill. Hence, you have many problems.

People listen to what they like to hear. It does not matter if it is simply a myth or an untruth or a deep seated prejudice born of ignorance.

They simply hear what they do not want to listen; even if it is the truth that can save them.

If you insist only on hearing and never listening, how then can you ever “progress to higher levels”? How then can you ever, ever live as one? Refusing to listen, mortals can never live as one in true harmony on this transient planet called earth.

For expediency sake, you live a life of mutual tolerance until you reach the brink of it. Without acceptance born of understanding and knowledge, there can never be lasting, genuine relationships. You simply move on from one relationship crisis to another, with short spans of occasional truce.

What is the point of discussions when each partakes with preconceived ideas cast in stone? While the other is expounding his views, you hear what he says but in fact you are listening to what is in your mind that you want to say when the other has finished.

You do not allow at all for what is in your mind to be tested, to be challenged or to be verified by facts and alternative perceptions. Hence, your ignorance and your standards remain with you and your clan. Completely incestuous level of thinking.

Your refusal to listen enables your views to be fortified over time until it becomes not only the truth but the absolute truth to you. Over centuries of faithful repetition and rote learning by your descendants, even the lie becomes the ultimate truth.

Any other alternative viewpoints hurts you and you are willing to hurt back harder. Centuries of repetition has made even the lie your true culture and value. An invitation to reevaluation is seen as an affront on your “sacred’ way of life and culture.

Each clan with its insistence of its own ways, buttressed by the support of its very own experts in its midst. Clan struggle and futile aggressive proselytisation of the others to your ways without inviting thinking has become a norm among you.

Hence, you should never be surprised that mortals will orphan another, make another a widow, kill a son or a mother, or father or the beloved one of another simply in the name of maintaining one’s own ways.

Your refusal to listen to each other solidifies the bridge that is between you. The bridge will forever be there, without which your relationships will cease to exist. With the bridge, the relationship will never grow into one unity, especially if the bridge is merely a convenient tool.

Humans have become such fools they keep repeating the phrase “to bridge relationships” when a bridge is nothing more than an intermediary between two terrain and two things. As long as the intermediary is there, the two can never be one. AT each end of the bridge, each crawls back into its accepted cocoons. Shouldn’t you be forging relationships instead? Shouldn’t you be accepting each other as unique creations without the need to be uniform like a factory product?

Of course you can never allow your diverse nature’s to come alive as each of you do not listen to what nature has been telling you for ages. ‘Since each of you wants the other to be like you, the strongest tribe among you will succeed in dominating the others’. Domination invariably equals oppression. Anything oppressed, over time naturally springs back. The natural law of the coil.

Any and every type of domination is bound to create strife, discord and tension within the community of humankind. Call it culture, call it religion, call it laws, call it norms or call it by any fancy name or jargon but domination is never the same as structured living. Hypocrisy for a while, and rebellion or revolution at the end. Your refusal to listen to each other creates miseries for you all.

If not listening is already dangerous, consider the indoctrinating techniques that are systematically used to make you not listen to each other. My dear mortals, ironical though it may seem, humans are being trained and indoctrinated in the art of NOT listening to each other for centuries. Mortals are not aware of this because it has become common place like breathing. That is how successful the techniques are.

The techniques are given various labels – religion, race, class, family honour, country, love, culture, belief, language, etc, etc. Labels meant for convenience of understanding have become monstrous tools of division and hate and misery.

Even a snake occasionally sheds its old skin. But each of you not only want to continue wearing the old skin but want others to follow suit. Other wise, you deem others as negatively different and that is bad. Human beings – even in death they insist on differences. Alas for this species and its preservers!”

I struggled and finally pulled myself out of the puddle, scarcely drowning. Puffing for breath, I realized Hime was gone and I was left accompanied by myself again.

Busy with Living or just busy?

Image thanks to Jonathan.

And there I was walking through the forest of life in my half-wake moments when I chanced upon Hime.

Hime said, “have you seen the one who busies himself in life?”

I did not understand the real question. I thought it was good to be busy in life. Busy means living life is it not?

“No, “said Hime, reading my thoughts. “Being busy is certainly being active. But being active does not necessarily mean one is living. Look at life. Life is never static. It develops, it improvises, it enhances, it overcomes. It is active but never busy”.

“There is a difference between being active and being busy. Difference between being busy and living”, he continued.

My mind did not understand what sounded to me like some mumbo-jumbo that is so irrelevant to this modern fast phased life.

Again reading my thoughts Hime responded, “ Modern fast phased life. What is that? We often forget that there is no hurry to meet death as it will be on time. The question is: have we been living or have we been busy before it arrives. Many mortals often ask when they reach old age: ‘where has my life gone? They would not have asked it if they had lived. But nay, they had been too busy to live”.

I looked at Hime and concluded that Hime could read thoughts. Hime was a cloudy appearance in my eyes or maybe in my mind. Hime seemed both concerned and unconcerned with the dialogue that was occurring between us.

“That is because, once you learn to live, you just live and no longer are concerned as to whether you are concerned or not. You are no longer inclined to thinking in boxes ad life as a whole cannot be boxed into specific categories except for mere understanding by mortals who have yet to attain understanding”. Hime did it again with my thoughts.

“Being busy is yet another manifestation of mortal’s strong sense of selfishness. Everyone is trapped in this evil culture of busy-ness so that mortal relationships are strained at all levels. Busy-ness assists in relegating relationships to the level of superficialities, expediency and convenience. Long lasting and sincere relationships became as extinct as the dinosaurs. Busy-ness makes one a stranger to oneself because being so busy one has never had the quality time to seek who oneself is. This is the evil of the culture of busy-ness that has crept on to you mortals”.

I was trying hard to understand what Hime was saying but I let Hime ramble on while I tried thinking. Could this be the reason why we have so many miseries in life, I asked myself.


“The world of mortals is made up by the mortals themselves, collectively and individually. Everything that you experience and see around you is the collective manifestation of the inner experience and what you see from within collectively”.

I do not understand.

“Of course you do not – yet. You have allowed yourself to be blinded by what is not as what is. You have collectively gone against the laws o nature and not live by its rules. Alas, the laws of nature will overcome you mortals”.

I do not understand the external-internal thingy, I thought.

Hime explains: “In this forest, what I see is the tree, for example. I see a tree as a tree being part of a whole process called the natural life. You mortals see a tree as potential tissues, a potential house, as timber, as a hindrance to progress and so on. What is destruction, you see internally as progress and construction. You all collectively busy yourself with this process of destruction of all that is natural and go about it the most evil way possible calling it efficiency, etc, etc. You create positive sounding labels to hide your guilt and give awards to each to other for the damage that you unleash. You are busy but never living”.

“If you never had cared to know who you really are, how real can your caring be for others? To avoid meeting yourself in private, you keep yourself busy”.

“Do you know that the system has made you busy so that you can be slaves?”

Now, this was really getting a bit too heavy for me. Me a slave? Nahh, I am always in control of my choices.

“Really? That is a mass delusionary syndrome that has infected all of your mortals. The busy culture has succeeded in taking away your time for self reflection and for deep evaluation of what is occurring around you. All of you mortals have been reduced to workers and have been frightened to become acquisitioners. The more you acquire, the more enslaved you become and the further you move from yourself…you only wait to die”

“The busy culture is intended to deflect your attention from the grand plan of controlling you, to keep you dependant on the system, to lay out the choices that you are allowed to make, to reduce you from a being human being to becoming just a small tool of the system, “ He paused and then said, “ to prevent you from living”.

Before I could think any more thoughts, Hime just disappeared living me alone in the silence of the forest. For the first time in my life, I realised that I was accompanied by someone I had ignored all my life – myself. Who is he???

Senses and Sensations

Are you not glad?
You have two eyes that see
A mouth that speaks
Ears that hear and feet that walks
Hands that grasps.

Are you not glad?
Your eyes see the richness and good life around you
You mouth speaks of wealth and luxury
Your ears hear the best of music and pleasantries
Your hands grasp the healthy hands of those you love

I too have
Eyes – that see despair and suffering around me
Mouth –that can express only sympathy
Ears- that hear cries of hunger from the young that have yet to learn restraint
Hands that hold the dying and the sick around me.

I am from Ethiopia, Palestine,
Bangladesh, India,
Mozambique and such
Why do we have the same senses
But different sensations?

I praise the Lord that you
do not have to experience what I do
I am grateful that
your eyes do not see the daily destruction and death around me
your ears do not hear the cries of children and frightened men and women
your mouth do not tell lies of a hopeful future
your hands do not hold your head in states of despair.

My friend,
I apologise
For sharing with you
this morbid sensations that my senses feel
Forgive me for disturbing your peace
For I succumbed to my weakness to share.

I beseech you,
Forget what I said
Continue with your happy lives
For you deserve it.
We do not.

Just me.

WHY NOT JUST KILL ME?

Let me go down on my knees
Let me humble myself at your feet
Let me say I am sorry

I am sorry for the color of my skin
I am for my language
I am sorry that my parents are poor
I am that their color is not the same as your parents
I am sorry that my children follow my color
I am sorry I was born this way.

I am not excusing myself
But it is the truth:
I had no say the way I am to be born.
If I know my color will offend you so much
And if I could
I would have asked not to be born
So that you may be happy.
So that you may have it all.

I offer this from the bottom of my heart
To appease you
For the fault of my skin color
Please take my life
Just kill me
BUT one thing I ask:

Please let my parents and my children live
As human beings
As you
with dignity and love.

just me.

I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO HATE YOU.

What do you want me to do?
I cannot, how hard I try hate you just because your heart is filled with hate.
No, I am not indifferent to your state. I care. I do cry sometimes and ask that may the Power restore you to your goodness.
I hope that you will see the damage that is unleashed by your hate on others and yourself.
Sure, I hate the effects of your hate on people, on you and on everything that comes your way.
But I cannot hate you.
How could I when I am not sure why you hate so much.
Where did you learn this evil power?

Yes, I understand the reasons that others give to explain your hate
They say you are selfish
They say you want to survive and protect your position
They say you are an evil person.
But that is what mortals say in mortal language

My eyes see differently
My eyes see you hurting yourself
Deceiving yourself
Your hate is burning you every minute
And you mistakenly think that is strength.

I do not know. I am not sure.
Maybe you have come into my path to remind me what goodness and evil is?
In that sense you are sent to teach me
You were sent to make sure I am steadfast on my path
You were sent to remind me to forever love

So, what do you want me to do?
I simply cannot hate you.
Hate me all you want
I only hope my love can consume your hate
Let them call me a fool
For I do not know what else to do
But to love.

Just me.

RECALLING WHO I AM.

I looked around the room
too many tools and things
a bed, a sofa, a chair, tv, etc,etc
too many distractions
too many things
that are not of me.

I looked around the room
found a corner
I lied down
trying to get as much of me
as possible
into the corner
curling myself into the fetal position.

I tried to recall
the purpose of my being
of my presence
of my transience
of the memory
of who I am
not what I have become.

In the fetal position
tears flowed down my cheeks
at the illusion
called life
in my sadness, I felt a tinge of joy
a joy that worldly words
cannot comprehend.

I now recall what I wish
I wont forget
of who I am
and what I have become
and how I can become
who I am.

just me.

The Balancer: You will bow

And you thought that I will never catch up with you?
How could that ever be?
When I was there before time than you?

I was there at the point of creation
and I was there with those of you before you
call me by any name
call me natural law
call me reality
call me sufferings
call me liberation
call me anything
I was there before you

And how could you ever think you can elude me?
I am your balancer
your whip or your soother
depending on how you perceive me
but I am me irregardless of your perception.

I can come in many experiences
I am your sickness
I am your worries and fears
I am your sufferings
I am your old age
I am there
till death takes you away from my clutches.

And you
arrogant mortal
think you own the earth?

Be warned I am there
forever there
to temper your arrogance
and to make you bow humbly like the shadows
of the forenoon.

just me.

Anger

Like a fire it consumes you
all you can see is just the flames
and the smoke fills your lungs
and you just want to cough
out the phlegm at the target of your
intense hatred

and then
the little devil appears
with horns and a smirk
inciting you further
and you burn and you burn
your anger ever increasing

you want to burn your target
but alas
it
is
you
that
becomes
ashes.

just me.