The essence of Paramahansa Yogananda

Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.

Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.

The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's own happiness, the happiness of others.

Truth is exact correspondence with reality.

The man form is higher than the angel form; of all forms it is the highest. Man is the highest being in creation, because he aspires to freedom.

Aloneness and £oneliness

"There are two sorts of aloneness; one is loneliness, another is aloneness. If you have not loved, and you move into solitariness, it will be loneliness, you will feel a deep hunger for the other. It will not be aloneness. The other will be there -- as absence. You will continuously feel the absence of the other, you will hanker. Maybe that's why people who have not loved well, they start talking to God, to an imaginary phenomenon -- to fill their loneliness,  to be occupied with someone.

It is a fantasy, it is a dream -- good, religious, but still a dream. One has to go beyond all dreaming. One has to go to the point when one is sure enough that the other is not needed. I am not saying that that type of person will not love. In fact only that type of person can love. But then he loves out of abundance. Then it is not a NEED. On the contrary he is so full, flooded, that he would like to share. Then he is in search of people who would like to unburden him, who would help him unburden his heart. The greatest lover is one whose need for love has disappeared.

Otherwise, there are small lovers, for whom love is a need just like food. They cannot be without food and they cannot be without a woman or without a man. But when you can be without, and you can be as beautiful without as you are with, then the greatest phenomenon happens: out of silence, if a dialogue starts, it is the greatest dialogue.

So these are the two things to remember. If you feel that there is a deep hankering for love, then prayer is the way for you. Let the other be there, talk to him, be with him."
~ OSHO~
Tao The Three Treasures,Vol 3

Ibn' Arabi ~ Alone with the Alone

Ibn' Arabi ~ Alone with the Alone

Hear, O My beloved!

You are the reason for the being of the world
You are the center-point of the sphere and its encompassing

You are its complexity and simplicity

You are the order brought down between heaven and earth

I did not create for you realizations
except that you realize Me in them

And when you realize Me, you realize yourself

Do not strive to realize Me in the realization of yourself

By My Eye you will see Me and yourself

You will not see Me by the eye of yourself

Beloved,
How often have I called you
and you do not hear

How often have I stood before you
and you do not witness Me

How often have I embodied Myself in sense
and you do not inhale
and in the flavors and you do not savor the taste
for My sake

What is the matter with you
that you do not feel Me when you touch?

Why do you not recognize Me in the fragrances of musk?

Why do you not see Me? Why do you not hear Me?

What is the matter with you!

What is the matter with you!

I Am your most heady rupture
beyond any delight

My craving for you is more intense
than any born for an object of desire 

I Am better for you
than any good thing

I Am the Beautiful
I Am the Elegant

Love Me, Love Me
Love Me alone

Desire Me ardently

Be consumed in Me,
not engrossed in other than Me

Take Me in,
Receive Me

You will not find an intimate like Me

Everything wants you for itself
but I want you for your sake

But you, you avoid Me

Beloved,
You can not meet Me half-way
in your drawing close to Me
My drawing close to you outweighs a hundredfold
of means by which you approach Me

I Am closer to you than your self
And your self, which performs these acts, 

is other than Me, created.

Beloved,
I am jealous of you, from you
I can not bear to see you
with otherness or with yourself
Be with Me in Me
With yourself just as you are with Me

Then My Beloved
you will not even feel the Union.
The Union!

Had we found a path towards separation
We would let the separation savor separation

Beloved,
Come, hand in hand,
enter reality that it may decide
between us with a judgment of eternity

Beloved antagonist,
pleasure can not be found
in dispute between lovers
pleasure is in the converse

O heart, 

O heart

~ Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi ~
(Translated by Abraham Abadi and Aaron Cass)

~Gam zeh ya'avor~This too shall pass."Two versions of story

One day Solomon decided to humble Benaiah ben Yehoyada, his most trusted minister. He said to him, "Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me. I wish to wear it for the Sukkot festival, which gives you six months to find it."
"If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty," replied Benaiah, "I will find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special?"
"It has special powers," answered the king. "If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy." Solomon knew that no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister some added humility.
Spring passed and then summer, and still Benaiah had no idea where he could find the ring. On the day before Sukkot, he decided to take a walk in one of the poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun to set out the day's wares on a shabby carpet. "Have you by any chance heard of a special ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy and the broken-hearted wearer forget his sorrows?" asked Benaiah.
He watched the elderly man take a plain gold ring from his carpet and engrave something on it. When Benaiah read the words on the ring, his face broke out in a wide smile.
That night the entire city welcomed in the holiday of Sukkot with great festivity. "Well, my friend," said King Solomon, "have you found what I sent you after?" All the ministers laughed and Solomon himself smiled.
To everyone's surprise, Benaiah held up a small gold ring and declared, "Here it is, your majesty!" As soon as Solomon read the inscription, the smile vanished from his face. The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band: Gimel, Zayin, Yud, which begin the words "Gam zeh ya'avor - This too shall pass."
At that moment Solomon realized that all his wisdom and fabulous wealth and tremendous power were but fleeting things, for one day he would be nothing but dust.
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A dervish who had traveled long and hard through the desert finally came to civilization after a long journey.The village was called Sandy Hills, and it was dry and hot.The dervish politely asked, where he could find food and lodging for the night.“Well,” said the man, scratching his head, “we don’t have such a place in our village, but I am sure Shakir would be happy to provide for you tonight.” Then the man gave directions to the ranch owned by Shakir, whose name means “one who thanks the Lord constantly.”As it turned out, Shakir was a very hospitable and kind person.He insisted that the dervish stay a couple of days in his house.At the end of his stay, they even supplied him with plenty of food and water for the journey.On his way back to the desert, the dervish could not help puzzling over the meaning of Shakir’s last words at the time of farewell. The dervish had said, “Thank God that you are well off.”Shakir had replied, “Don’t be fooled by appearances, for this too shall pass.”During his years on the Sufi path the dervish had come to understand that anything he heard or saw during his journey offered a lesson to be learned and thus was worthy of contemplation. In fact, that was the reason he had undertaken the journey in the first place to learn more.And so he passed five more years of traveling to different lands, meeting new people, and learning from his experiences along the way. Every adventure offered a new lesson to be learned,One day, the dervish found himself returning to Sandy Hills, the same village at which he had stopped a few years before. He remembered his friend Shakir and asked after him.“He lives in the neighboring village, ten miles from here. He now works for Haddad,a villager answered  Happy at the prospect of seeing Shakir the dervish again rushed toward the neighboring village. At Haddad’s marvelous home, the dervish was greeted by Shakir, who looked much older now and was dressed in rags. “What happened to you?” the dervish wanted to know. Shakir replied that a flood … had left him with no cattle and no house. So he and his family had become servants of Haddad… . This turn of fortune, however, had not changed the kind and friendly manner of Shakir and his family. They graciously took care of the dervish … and gave him food and water before he left. As he was leaving, the dervish said, “I am so sorry for what has happened to you and your family. I know that God has a reason for what He does.” “Oh, but remember, this too shall pass.”Shakir’s voice kept echoing in the dervish’s ears. The man’s smiling face and calm spirit never left his mind…
The dervish traveled to India. Upon returning to his homeland, Persia, he decided to visit Shakir one more time,But instead of finding his friend Shakir there, he was shown a modest grave with the inscription,“This too shall pass.” “Riches come and go,” thought the dervish to himself, “but how can a tomb change?”From that time on, the dervish made it a point to visit the tomb of his friend every year.However, on one of his visits, he found the cemetery and the grave gone, washed away by the flood.He lifted his head to the sky and,as if discovering a greater meaning,said,“This too shall pass.”When the dervish had finally become too old to travel, he decided to settle down. People came from all over to have the benefit of his wisdom. Eventually his fame spread to the king’s great advisor, who happened to be looking for someone with great wisdom.
The fact was, the king desired a ring be made for him.The ring was to be a special one: it was to carry an inscription such that if the king was sad, he could look at the ring and it would make him happy,and if he was happy, it would make him sad, Many men and women came forward with suggestions for the ring, but the king liked none of them.So the advisor wrote to the dervish asking for help.A few days later, an emerald ring was made and presented to the king.The king, who had been depressed for days, reluctantly put the ring on his finger. Then he started to smile, and a few moments later, he was laughing loudly.On the ring were inscribed the words,“This too shall pass.”

Falling in love....are you ?

Infact a mature person does not fall in love, he rises in love.The word ’fall’ is not right.Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love.Somehow they were managing and standing. They cannot manage and they cannot stand – they find a woman and they are gone, they find a man and they are gone. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have that integrity to stand alone.
A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it~no,not at all, he does not even need your thanks.He thanks you for accepting his love.And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens,one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone; they are together so much so that they are almost one.But their oneness does not destroy their individuality, in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual.Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free.There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate.How can you dominate the person you love? Just think over it. Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity.How can you think of dominating a person you love?You would love to see the person totally free, independent;you will give him more individuality. That’s why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced~they have become more enhanced.The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison.Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages.And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.

~Osho~

The beauty and mysticism of the lotus flower

The lotus flower is held sacred, and one of the most revered spiritual symbols by many cultures and people throughout the world. Of the many things this beautifully fragrant flower represents, rebirth and purity are perhaps the two most powerful symbols of it. This is because the lotus rises from muddy waters and blooms as a brilliantly pure  flower. The lotus is also thought of as a symbol of human consciousness on the path to spiritual enlightenment.In Hinduism, the unfolding lotus flower petals is suggestive of the awakening of the soul, like the symbolism in Buddhist tradition, the lotus flower rising from the mud denotes spiritual expansion and personal growth.The seven major energy centers located within a person’s body are also represented by a lotus flower, each with a specific number of lotus petals for each individual chakra.Each lotus petal of the chakra can be thought of as opening and “blooming” along with a person’s energy,as each chakra becomes activated when we begin to raise our consciousness and touch upon our own divinity and strive to be pure,as we work through our own limitations until we discover...

Enlightenment ....

 🌟🕉🕉✡🕉🕉✡🕉🕉✡🕉🕉🌟

Whenever you should doubt your self-worth, remember the lotus flower. Even though it plunges to life from beneath the mud, it does not allow the dirt that surrounds it to affect its growth or beauty.

~Suzy Kassem~

I am blooming from the wound where I once bled.”....

“The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud — the obstacles of life and its suffering. … The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. … Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ” 
~ Goldie Hawn ~

Like the lotus flower that is born out of mud, we must honor the darkest parts of ourselves and the most painful of our life’s experiences, because they are what allow us to birth our most beautiful self.

               ~Debbie Ford~

The lotus is a reminder that in a word riddled with fear,we can stay loving inside and, one by one, open our petals to spread that peace into the worl

A person should live like the lotus, being in the world but not affected by it. You should always express your natural beauty, though you may grow in a dirty place. Nothing from outside should affect you

The lotus flower turns its head towards the sun always. That means it always turns towards the light; it receives the light constantly. So  let us strive to be like this

ever-enlightened flower.