246 - tears flow as I read

I was walking around in a Target store, when I saw the lady cashier, handing to this little boy some money back. The boy was around 8 or 9.

The Cashier said, 'I'm sorry, you don't have enough money to buy this doll.' Then the little boy turned to the old woman next to him: ''Nanny, are you sure I don't have enough money?''The old lady replied: ''You know that you don't have enough money to buy this doll, my dear.''Then she asked him to stay there for just 5 minutes while she went to look around for a cheaper one. She left quickly.

The little boy was still holding the doll in his hand.

Finally, I walked toward him and I asked him who he wished to give this doll to. 'It's the doll that my sister loved most and wanted so much for Christmas. She was sure that Santa Claus would bring it to her' I replied to him that maybe Santa Claus would bring it to her after all, and not to worry. But he replied to me sadly. 'No, Santa Claus can't bring it to her where she is now. I have to give the doll to my mummy so that she can give it to my sister when she goes there.'

His eyes were so sad while saying this. 'My Sister has gone to be with God. Daddy says that Mummy is going to see God very soon too, so I thought that she could take the doll with her to give it to my sister.' My heart nearly stopped. The little boy looked up at me and said: 'I told daddy to tell mummy not to go yet. I need her to wait until I come back from the shops.'

Then he showed me a very nice photo of himself. He was laughing. He then told me 'I want mummy to take my picture with her so she won't forget me.' 'I love my mummy and I wish she didn't have to leave me, but daddy says that she has to go to be with my little sister.'

Then he looked again at the doll with sad eyes, very quietly. I quickly reached for my wallet and said to the boy. 'Suppose we check again, just in case you do have enough money for the doll!'' 'OK' he said, 'I hope I do have enough.'

I added some of my money to his without him seeing and we started to count it. There was enough for the doll and even some spare money. The little boy said: 'Thank you God for giving me enough money!' Then he looked at me and added, 'I asked last night before I went to sleep for God to make sure I had enough money to buy this doll, so that mummy could give it to my sister. He heard me!' ''I also wanted to have enough money to buy a white rose for my mummy, but I didn't dare to ask God for too much.. But He gave me enough to buy the doll and a white rose..'' 'My mummy loves white roses.'

As I saw the old lady returning, I left with my basket as to not cause a scene.

I finished my shopping in a totally different state of mind from when I started. I couldn't get the little boy out of my mind. Then I remembered a local news paper article two days ago, which mentioned a drunk man in a truck, who hit a car occupied by a young woman and a little girl. The little girl died right away, and the mother was left in a critical state. The family had to decide whether to remove the life-sustaining machine, because the young woman would not be able to recover from the coma.

Was this the family of the little boy?Two days after this encounter with the little boy, I read in the news paper that the young woman had passed away. I couldn't stop myself as I bought a bunch of white roses and I went to the funeral home where the body of the young woman was for people to see and make last wishes before her burial. She was there, in her coffin, holding a beautiful white rose in her hand with the photo of the little boy and the doll placed over her chest.

I left the place, teary-eyed, feeling that my life had been changed for ever.. The love that the little boy had for his mother and his sister is still, to this day, hard to imagine. And in a fraction of a second, a drunk driver had taken all this away from him.

Now you have 2 choices:
1) Send this message to others, or
2) Ignore it as if it never touched your heart.

245 - wisdom words

* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust

* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends

* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness

* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment

* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective

* If you plant hard work, you will reap success

* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation

So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.
(author unknown)

Think about this for a minute....
What is the relationship between your two eyes?

They blink together, they move together, they cry together, they see things together, and they sleep together, but they never see each other
(author unknown)

244 - wisdom quotes

A Birth Certificate shows that we were born.
A Death Certificate shows that we died.
Pictures show that we lived!
Have a seat. Relax . . . And read this slowly

I Believe...
Just because two people argue,
it doesn't mean they don't love each other.
And just because they don't argue,
it doesn't mean they do love each other.

I Believe...
We don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

I Believe…
No matter how good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.

I Believe...
True friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance.
The same goes for true love.

I Believe…
You can do something in an instant that will give you heartache for a long time.

I Believe...
That it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.

I Believe...
You should always leave loved ones with loving words.
It may be the last time you see them.

I Believe...
You can keep going long after you think you can't.

I Believe...
We are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.

I Believe...
Either you control your attitude or it controls you.

I Believe...
Money is a lousy way of keeping score.

I Believe...
My best friend and I, can do anything, or nothing and have the best time.

I Believe...
Sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you're down, will be the ones to help you get back up.

I Believe...
Maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.

I Believe…
It isn't always enough, to be forgiven by others. Sometimes, you have to learn to forgive yourself.

I Believe...
No matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I Believe...
Our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, we are responsible for who we become.

I Believe...
Two people can look at the same thing and see something totally different.

I Believe...
Your life can be changed in a matter of seconds by people who don't even know you.

I Believe...
Even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you - you will find the strength to help.

I Believe...
Credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.

I Believe...
The happiest people don't necessarily have the best of everything;they just make the most of everything.

243 - email to Alice Seah (21.9.2011)

Thank you Alice.

I must say this to you even if you may not like it.
Alice, you are still deep in slumber, deeply sink in the dream world.

You must now try to wake up a bit at a time to remember who you truly are! You are actually whole, complete, holy and divine. You don't need someone else to fill up your life when you begin to understand and awaken to remember your True Self.

Whenever you feel you need someone so badly in your life, it is merely because you have mistaken your true identity and forgotten your True Self!

The trouble here is you always expect and want people to change to suit your desires and needs. You have ignored about your own self. I have been telling you times and again that you must change and transform yourself first. Only when you have achieved that everything else will definitely fall in place, unfold automatically, peace, joy, bliss.. will come and flow in naturally!

This also applies to your husband! He is your mirror and you are his mirror!

Both of you repeatedly quarrel, fight.. torturing each other, causing great pain and affliction emotionally. Not only that, you two abuse each other, condemn each other, judge each other, blame each other, control each other, manipulate each other, disrespect each other by shouting at each other!..

You choose everything in your life Alice. You feel miserable because you wanted it that way as you have personally created it. Don't point your finger somewhere, point it to yourself..

The question is why do you choose to create pain instead of peace and joy for your life? Only you alone can answer it because you are your own life's Creator! You are fully and totally responsible for your life and you cannot blame anyone else for it!

You enjoy the pain and misery because you have created them to enjoy them! If you say you don't enjoy them, then ask your heart why is it that you are so willing to persistently create the drama for so many years!

Alice, try to recognize your birth energy. It is born with you. Your main energy is victim mode, wanting to control and manipulate people! You persistently regard yourself as victim. Ask yourself this 'do you have self-love?..'

The healing path is that you must be willing to release and let-go that energy from your mind and you will be surely on the right direction of healing!

Just a thought away, everything will be alright.

Open your heart and your mind Alice, thus allowing pure love and light to flow in. Through love and light, true forgiveness will come to purify your heart and mind.

You can do it Alice, only if you are willing! Pure love and self-love can bring fantastic miracles to your life! Your life will then be totally changed!

Trust and have faith in yourself Alice!

Much love always,
George

242 - I Am That (Awakening Consciouness)

Wow.. Sudha, this is really the most amazing wisdom, so touching, blissful and purifying. I am thankful Su for your great love and compassion in this wonderful sharing.

The writer's state of mind is beyond my present reach and comprehension, so marvelous and distill purity! You may ask, how to get there!..hahaha..

Have a glorious week ahead.

With much love always,
George

I AM THAT (excerpts)
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Somehow it was very simple and easy in my case. My guru, before he died, told me: "Believe me, you are the Supreme Reality. Do not doubt my words, do not disbelieve me. I am telling you the truth, act on it". I could not forget his words and by not forgetting, I have realized. Once the guru told me: "You are the Supreme Reality", I ceased having visions and trances and became very quiet and simple. I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: "I know nothing, I want nothing."

I was undeceived, that is all. I used to create a world and populate it. Now I don't do it any more. Now I live in the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness. This void is also fullness; do not pity me.

The mind ceased producing events. The ancient and ceaseless search stopped—I wanted nothing, expected nothing, accepted nothing as my own. There was no "me" left to strive for. Even the bare "I am" faded away. The other thing I noticed was I lost all my habitual certainties. Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all knowledge is ignorance, that "I do not know" is the only true statement the mind can make.

By looking tirelessly, I became quite empty, and with that emptiness all came back to me except the mind. I find I have lost the mind irretrievably. I am neither conscious nor unconscious, I am beyond the mind and its various states and conditions. Distinctions are created by the mind and apply to the mind only. I am pure Consciousness itself, unbroken awareness of all that is.

I am in a more real state than yours. I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person. As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other, but my mental process has come to an end. My thinking, like my digestion, is unconscious and purposeful.

I am not a person in your sense of the word, though I may appear a person to you. I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being. There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all. No thing is me, so I am nothing. Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least. Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence.

Having realized that I am with, and yet beyond the world, I became free from all desire and fear. I did not reason out that I should be free, I found myself free, unexpectedly, without the least effort. This freedom from desire and fear remained with me since then. Another thing I noticed was that I do not need to make an effort; the deed follows the thought, without delay and friction. I have also found that thoughts become self-fulfilling; things would fall in place smoothly and rightly. The main change was in the mind; it became motionless and silent, responding quickly, but not perpetuating the response. Spontaneity became a way of life, the real became natural and the natural became real. And above all, infinite affection, love, dark and quiet, radiating in all directions, embracing all, making all interesting and beautiful, significant and auspicious.

The person is what I appear to be to other persons. To myself, I am the infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear in endless succession.

The person, the "I am this body, this mind, this chain of memories, this bundle of desires and fears" disappears, but something you may call identity remains. It enables me to become a person when required.

Nothing troubles me. I offer no resistance to trouble—therefore it does not stay with me. On your side there is so much trouble. On mine there is no trouble at all. Come to my side.

What is added to memory cannot be erased easily. But it can surely be done, and in fact I am doing it all the time. Like a bird on its wings, I leave no footprints.

The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind—the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.

Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect, changeless. You can tell me what you like about your world—I shall listen carefully, even with interest, yet not for a moment shall I forget that your world is not, that you are dreaming. In mine, the words and their contents have no being. In your world nothing stays, in mine nothing changes. My world is real, while yours is made of dreams. My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified. You can say nothing about it. My silence sings, my emptiness is full, I lack nothing. In your world I appear to have a name and shape, displaying consciousness and activity. In mine I have being only. Nothing else. I am my world. My world is myself. It is complete and perfect. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose. In your world I would be most miserable. To wake up, to eat, to talk, to sleep again—what a bother!

To me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-like, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never out of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity.

My condition is absolutely steady. Whatever I may do, it stays like a rock—motionless. Once you have awakened into reality, you stay in it. It is self-evident and yet beyond description.

All the three states (waking, sleeping, dreaming) are sleep to me. My waking state is beyond them. As I look at you, you all seem asleep, dreaming up worlds of your own. I am aware, for I imagine nothing. It is not samadhi, which is but a kind of sleep. It is just a state unaffected by the mind, free from the past and future. In your case it is distorted by desire and fear, by memories and hopes; in mine it is as it is—normal. To be a person is to be asleep.

The world of mind and matter, of names and shapes, continues, but it does not matter to me at all. It is like having a shadow. It is there, following me wherever I go, but not hindering me in any way. It remains a world of experiences, but not of names and forms related to me by desires and fears. The experiences are quality-less, pure experiences, if I may say so. I call them experiences for the lack of a better word. They are like the waves on the surface of the ocean, the ever-present, but not affecting its peaceful power.

I can see with the utmost clarity that you have never been, nor are, nor will be estranged from reality, that you are the fullness of perfection here and now, and that nothing can deprive you of your heritage, of what you are. You are in no way different from me, only you do not know it. Be fully aware of your own being, and you will be in bliss consciously. Because you take your mind off yourself and make it dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being, of being well.

You people do not know how much you miss by not knowing your own true self.

The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. To be free in the world, you must die to the world. Then the universe is your own, it becomes your body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

The ordinary man is personally concerned, he counts his risks and chances, while the gnani remains aloof, sure that all will happen as it must; and it does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to balance and harmony is inevitable. The heart of things is at peace.

The particular is born and reborn, changing name and shape, the gnani is the Changeless Reality, which makes the changeful possible. The entire universe is his body, all life is his life. As in a city of lights, when one bulb burns out, it does not affect the network, so the death of a body does not affect the whole. With me, all is one, all is equal.

The Guru is basically without desire. He sees what happens, but feels no urge to interfere. He makes no choices, takes no decisions. As pure witness, he watches what is going on and remains unaffected. Victory is always his, in the end. He knows that if the disciples do not learn from his words, they will learn from their own mistakes. Inwardly he remains quiet and silent. He has no sense of being a separate person. The entire universe is his own, including his disciples with their petty plans.

Nothing in particular affects him, or, which comes to the same, the entire universe affects him in equal measure. In reality, the disciple is not different from the Guru. He is the same dimensionless centre of perception and love in action. It is only his imagination that encloses him and converts him into a person.

He is alone, but he is all. He is not even a being. He is the being-ness of beings. Not even that. No words apply. He is what he is, the ground from which all grows.

A gnani commands a mode of spontaneous, non-sensory perception, which makes him know things directly, without intermediary of the senses.

He is beyond the perceptual and the conceptual, beyond the categories of time and space, name and shape. He is neither the perceived nor the perceiver, but the simple and the universal factor that makes perceiving possible.

His state tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. He is happy and fully aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything, nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him, more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself. To me, dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery. Pleasure and pain have causes, while my state is my own, totally uncaused, independent, unassailable.

As he gets older, he grows more and more happy and peaceful. After all, he is going home. Like a traveler nearing his destination and collecting his luggage, he leaves the train without regret. The reel of destiny is coming to its end—the mind is happy. The mist of bodily existence is lifting—the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.

241- Steve Jobs departs Apple - An article I recommend for your reading !

Now that Steve Jobs, the Master and Chief Designer, is no longer running Apple, I find it inspirational to re-read the Commencement Speech Steve delivered at Stanford University in 2005

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

Tt wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.

Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.

And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.

My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Thank you all very much.