Enjoying the now and here ...

The most important lessons i learnt from the book 'dancing with siva' :-

Remember one thing, we have to get our joy out of the doing, not the result. That is the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. The Oriental receives his joy in the doing, not the result. The Occidental rushes through his doing, thinking he will get his joy from the result, so is in a state of tension all the time. Life is a constant state of joy in doing. We will have mixed results if we look for joy in results, and our subconscious mind will be frustrated. Receive joy in everything you do.

Man is in a perfect state of being right now. The great sages and rishis found this truth. They were not more perfect than their contemporaries, just more aware. You are perfect this very moment. You are all that you will ever be. If you don't see it that way, then you live in a difficult state of affairs, striving toward perfection and being imperfect along the way.

Remain quiet and do not allow your emotional mind to talk to you. You are lost if it does, from reactionary habit patterns of the past, if you listen. As you pray each day, learn to concentrate, meditate and demonstrate your will over your mind. Demonstrate to yourself, and everybody else will see the result. Subdue ancient habit patterns latent in the subconscious mind. Then you will react not from anticipated reaction but from an action born of your intuitive nature. That is how to accomplish understanding.

Return to the source. Merge with Siva. At the source there is always peace. The key to this entire practice is to become consciously aware of energy. In this constant remembering we have the feeling of being the center of the universe, with the whole world functioning around us. To be fully anchored in the knowledge of the source of our being, the eternal now can and must be a constant experience. It's easy to live in the now if you work with yourself a little every day and concentrate on what you are doing each moment. To begin to work toward establishing yourself in the eternal now, first limit time and space by not thinking about or discussing events that happened more than four days past or will happen more than four days in the future. This keeps awareness reined in, focused. Be aware. Ask yourself, "Am I fully aware of myself and what I'm doing right now?"
Once you have gained a little control of awareness in this way, try to sit quietly each day and just be. Don't think. Don't plan. Don't remember. Just sit and be in the now. That's not as simple as it sounds, for we are accustomed to novelty and constant activity in the mind and not to the simplicity of being. Just sit and be the energy in your spine and head. Feel the simplicity of this energy in every atom of yourself. Think energy. Don't think body. Don't think about yesterday or tomorrow. They don't exist, except in your ability to reconstruct the yesterdays and to create the tomorrows. Now is the only time. This simple exercise of sitting and being is a wonderful way to wash away the past, but it requires a little discipline. You have to discipline every fiber of your nerve system, work with yourself to keep the power of awareness expanded. Regular practice of meditation will bring you intensely into the eternity of the moment. Practice supersedes philosophy, advice, psychology and all pacifiers of the intellect. We have to practice to keep awareness here and now. If you find yourself disturbed, sit down and consciously quiet the forces in yourself. Don't get up until you have completely quieted your mind and emotions through regulating the breath, through looking out at a peaceful landscape, through seeking and finding understanding of the situation. This is the real work of meditation that is not written much about in books. If you can live in the eternity of now, your life will be one of peace and fulfillment.

What is true love?

True love is samatva - equality for all beings starting from an ant to a human being. The same life force or brahman flows in every being manifested in the material world. So when your friend or a relative is suffering, and if u notice it – its actually u who is in trouble. Similarly the favor or help that you do to others is - not to others in reality, its something which u are doing for yourself while u spend time living in a materially encaged body.

The feeling of love that starts getting strengthened between lovers, all the respect and adoration eventually resulting in many more things and eventually ending up in contempt, quarrel and hatred is not true love. Life teaches an experience, which has to be, understood the hard way at times if you are less careful. Similarly the feeling of love that appears to be true between parent and kid, friends, brother and sister, grandparents, grandchildren, boss and subordinate, employee and employer – all of them are anointed with some level of personal interest or gain. This is as told by chanakya the sad reality of the world. There is always some kind of self-interest in any kind of relationship – this is true because everyone loves himself or herself first.

Two lovers love each other madly in the beginning, Person A makes person B feel good, because of which Person B loves Person A and vice-versa. As long as this mutual give and take continues, people in the world say that they are in love with each other. Once the mutual give and take stops, there is no more love, but only pain which levels out the amount of happiness that appeared to be so true at one point of time.


An excerpt, which identifies between conditional and unconditional love:-

The person you married was at one time (we assume) your best friend, your lover and your confidant. How can such professed love change almost overnight? The answer may not be easy to accept. That "love" was to a large degree based the other person meeting personal needs and expectations.

You may ask, "What's wrong with that?"

Would you be willing to have the following put in your wedding vows: "I will stay married to you only as long as you continue to meet my needs and expectations, don't change, and as long as you don't disappoint or hurt me in any way."

Although this is far from what we see in wedding vows, to some degree these expectations may actually govern our marriages.

This is conditional love, although "love" is probably not a valid term.

Unconditional love is quite simply "love without conditions." The degree to which we don't achieve unconditional love is the degree to which we encounter problems in relationships, not to mention the problems that we will face if this relationship ends.