Rise in Love

 

"The trouble with falling in love is that, unlike death, love kills you every moment, robbing you, at first, of reason, and then, slowly, consuming you bit by bit until you lose the sense of time, of the true nature of things, and of all other precious relationships."_Siddhartha Gigoo in Mehr: A love story.

No wonder they say one ‘falls’ in love!

Well, one falls when the offshoots overweigh the supporting roots. You definitely fall when you impose your desires, expectations, fears and insecurities over the object of your love, covering it like a parasitic vine.

Life, dear brothers and sisters, is a well-cooked love recipe. And no conjecture please about me ‘falling’...haa haa... My version of love is ‘rising’. There is abundance of love around, of family, nature, birds, animals, flowers, clouds, honeybees, insects, beetles, crowded bazaars, isolated vales, springs, summers, winters, autumn, everything in fact. If you have the eyes for it, everything is saturated with love like luscious honey oozing from fat honeycombs hanging over wild rose thickets and the nectar dripping. And the honeybees tasting their own fruits as they buzz around collecting pollen from the flowers! Isn’t it dreamy and wonderful?  

When hate vanishes, love blooms and you ‘soar high’ with such love instead of ‘falling’. You love all, simply because you don't hate anyone. You don’t have any enemies because you are friendly to all. If you have only love to offer, you just cannot have hate around you. The hatred that we see in our lives is just the multiplication of the traces of discontent in us. We simply project it over others, coming out clean chit after blaming them for being the cause of it. Mind it, we just make them the screens to project our inner disharmony. The moment we realize it, more than half the battle is already won.

So kill the agents of hate and anger inside you, and as a natural consequence their visible manifestations in your life get killed from around you. You see light around, simply because there is no darkness inside anymore. You smile more, simply because a smiling face still contributes to the struggles of even a stranger coming across the street.

Rumi: “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” 

No wonder, infinite possibilities to rise await you. Come on, take the first step!

Love for a man or woman is the first step in the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, and go all the way in pursuit of your passionate craving. Melt in it like butter in the frying pan. Lose your identity, break the walls and surrender your self-driven cart to the free wheels of airy jaunts. This is the fire that melts the outermost stony ramparts that hinder you from the freest flight. No wonder, to rise you have to fall first. It’s the rebound that shapes your destiny. All natural laws say so. Your rebound is just in proportion to your ‘fall’ for your man or woman.

Only after touching one summit, you feel like going for the other. So give all you can in your love for your man or woman. Touch your peak. There is no chance for half-bakes. Cook it full. Boil it well. Lukewarm things keep you in a vague haze. Bake it full. Boil it. Vaporize with the heat of your passion. Then you feel like soaring high, instead of crawling piteously in the cauldron.

But don't just stop at this point. It's just a beginning. It’s the path to a bigger destination: from particular to the universal. With your categorized love for your partner, or for your family, friends and siblings, you get a glimpse of the bigger possibilities. The limited love, the so called love defined by your relations, is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, the universal love.

Do you know, why do you feel like ‘falling’ in love again and again? It’s simply because you don’t ‘fall’ completely. You go with insecurities and fear. You love your man and woman with lots of apprehensions, fears and insecurities. You are partially into it. No wonder, the delicacy of your affair is always under-cooked. And you always feel dissatisfied, craving for more and more. Then you proceed to cook another half-cooked affair. We rarely complete the recipe. It’s my promise, if you cook one relationship well, you will not be left with any appetite to run for more along the avenue.

So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you as a human being. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all, when you use your full potential to be a loving being. And the path to hitting the full potential starts with your full love for your partner without any roadblocks of fear, insecurity and apprehensions. The destination of love is to be all inclusive. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

As you enjoy the ecstatic grip of the love chains of your partner, slowly learn to wipe away the names of the people you hate from your little black book. Take a sip of love from the petals of your partner and forget and forgive one name at a time. The honey of love should be sweet enough to make you forget all the bitter tastes driven in your memory at the mention of certain irritating names in your life.  If your life’s bitterness isn’t swiped away by the sweet cherry of your love bites, then you have to objectively assess your level of dive in the love pool. If you are sufficiently deep in the pool of love for your man and woman, you won’t have any reason to be hateful towards even the worst people who have hurt you.

So here I rise high and see all people good in their unique ways.

Love you all!

Love the Poet in You

 James E. Faust: “A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness. It is an expression of humility. It is a foundation for the development of such virtues as prayer, faith, courage, contentment, happiness, love, and well-being.”

Isn’t it romantic beyond words? Come out of the stiff-faced prose of life. It squeezes you too tightly. Delve into the open charms of poetry. There is freedom for exhilarating escapades.  

No guys no, I am not asking you to go out there and be a starving shayar. Expect money from other mundane occupations. Modern manmade system leaves you with countless opportunities to make mullah.  All I am asking you to do is to get in league with harmony, rhythm somewhere deep in you, which is just a replica of the cosmic harmony of stars and galaxies going cyclically as per the ultimate law.

Plato: “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

And as love caresses you, you are supposed to turn a poet. And your life a poem. A life lived poetically nourishes your soul. The prose approach to life is simply to earn the conveniences to support you materially.

Niels Bohr, lost in the endless evolution of atomic possibilities at the subatomic level, surrendered his hardcore matter of factuality and turned a dreamer: "When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images."

If life appears stale and boring, you have got to blame your own self. For you lack imagination in not seeing the endless colors and splendorous charms lying around.

A bit of poetic daydreaming detoxifies the crammed brain because with poetic imagination, a sense of beauty pervades your being, putting all other pinching realities of life at bay.

You have got to believe me, the Big Bang was a poetic moment. If not for the infinite possibility of rhyme and rhythm, me and all you out there won’t have been enjoying this beautiful unfolding of things and phenomena according to self-sustaining laws.  

Without the seed of poetry there won't be any prose. Just like without the tiny seed there won’t be a tree. The canopy, the full foliage of the tree, is just an extension of the dream lying with its realistic potential inside the small seed. The elaborate network of trunks, branches, twigs, flowers, fruits and leaves is nothing but a commentary on the small poetic seed. So all ye wannabe writers of a good life story, nurture the poet in you, who understands the value of pause in life, who moves slowly to watch everything, sight and smell everything. Whose senses are open to the inclusive interplay of wonderful harmonies of the supreme song, the universe, the one song.

The brushstrokes of poetry softly touch the soul without disrupting its restful muse and bring out the nuggets of love, compassion, harmony and peace. If you are poetic in nature, you have the potential to be anything because all these elaborate extensions of your life, your dreams, your professional and personal goals, your milestones, the world around you, all these and more are nothing but a reflection of that poetic pure seed.

Being poetic is being the master of all the best-ever possible emotions as a human being. No wonder love and poetry are almost synonymous. Poetry is the common soul of all the art forms. It’s a smiling and loving approach to life, not just rhymes on paper. It’s about being in tune with the soft chimes of your soul. It is impossible to visualize an unpoetic artist. It’s impossible to have an unpoetic visionary. It’s impossible to have an achiever who did not dream poetically.

Poetry is the womb that mothers all that has ever been loved and appreciated by the mankind and Mother Nature. To be poetic is to love. You taste godliness by being poetic. The mankind has pictured heaven just as a huge poetic dream. All the myths, gods and goddesses are marvelous poet philosophers and poet soldiers. So learn to be a poet.  Love yourself as a poet. You will find love shielding you with its soft power making you the best of a human being.

Irony is that our language is a poor carrier of the ultimate truth. But ultimate truth is best summarized by the word ‘love’. Within written styles, poetry lets loose its open invitation to invite truth. Even though it smiles hazily, yet it has its charms; some poetic outpour to reach out to the ultimate with your love.

The Elixir of Life

 

A look of hate snatches and steals a part of life; a look of love adds something good to life. A hateful thought kills; an idea of love saves life. Hate is the evil collaborator of death; love is the bright-smiled custodian of life and living. Nurture the good and the best in you, it will in turn make you more loving, the latter qualifying you for the real ‘living’.

Like most of the things, it can be practiced and learnt. Practice smile. It’s a small pill of wellness. Learn to look at things with love. Start with your food, water, whatever you drink, or whatever you eat. As you take a sip or chew a mouthful, keep smiling and feel the friendliness of the thing just beginning to be a part of you. Feel the bonhomie because it will soon become a part of your physical self. Your receptivity and acknowledgement will bestow nourishment beyond the mere calorific value of the food and drink.

Before you eat or drink, take a minute’s pause and look at the thing. It’s the instrument of life, the soldier of your survivability, the keeper of your physical self, resting before you on the table. It’s there for you, to help you get strong and survive and live another day. At this moment there is no better friend to you in the universe. Accept its friendship and brotherliness. Embrace its camaraderie. And it will become a part of your system with far more nourishment than you can imagine.

As you chew and swallow, it is ready to become a part of you. It’s something that will become you once you have it in your guts. During the moments before being eaten, it becomes a sacred part of your extended self. Accept it. Look with love. Take it as a blessing from your guardian angel to help you beat the negative forces hankering for your demise. The food taken with such love and affection becomes the elixir of life.

Practice smiling. It will pave the way for you rolling with real laughter later on in the journey. The tiny, feeble lines drawn by a delicate smile will lay the foundation for miles and miles of undisturbed peace and harmony in your persona. No wonder, I have a little smile glued to my face while I type this. And a surge of contentment and happiness overtakes the hitherto untouched, unlit and gloomy parts of my being. I feel happy and once you get the feel of real happiness, you simply cannot help distributing it. You want each and everyone out there to be happy and smiling. There is no bigger nourishment for your loving self than this.

All the problems out there, born of differences and misunderstandings, are born not of hate but lack of love. Turn more loving, smile more. Hate is the darkness that just vanishes the moment you light the tiny lamp of love. It vanishes like darkness from a pitch dark room once you light a candle.

Hate is the phantom. The only reality is the lack of love and smiles. By taking up a smile, you symbolically blossom a flower for mother existence. And believe me, you yourself will be the direct gainer once you decide to turn into a flower. Guys, let loose your alchemy of smiles and love. Believe me, humanity will need more of smiles than the mega-bombasting leaps of science and technology in future.

I tried a small experiment of love and smiles on a plant. I had planted some marigold flowers in my little garden at the start of winters. Yellow and orange marigolds sprinkled their unrestricted charms. All these turned out to be robust flowering plants except one. The poor plant appeared stunted, malnourished and didn’t grow. A few buds remained unopened and the odd one that tried to smile, just bore a famished one-quarter smile.

I tried the alchemy of love and smiles. I started to sit by this plant for a few minutes, giving it kind, sympathetic looks, caressed its leaves, and sprinkled water droplets on it. I just tried my level best to turn as much loving to it as I would to a little child. And no miracle is beyond the reach of love and smiles. The buds that hadn’t opened for a couple of months burst forth with unrestrained hilarity. It turned out to be the best flowery plant in my garden. This is what love and smiles are capable of!

So guys, go and capture your share of life’s real worth through the simple technique of love and smiles.

The Magic Pill of Love: Smile

 Mother Teresa says, “Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”

Burning in the agony of anger with your whole self ready to explode? Try to smile. Like a bolt of light sizzles across the blackest domes of clouds, a sinewy smile will cut across the hard façade and the castle of anger, a temporary madness, will come crashing down like a sand fort erected by kids playing on a beach.  

Thich Nhat Hanh: “So brothers and sisters let a smile kiss your lips. Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”

A smile is like the sun on a cold, frigid and gray day. Comforting. Warm. Healing. Soothing. It dispels the gloom. It absorbs the pain. Its nonjudgmental rays embrace you in your totality, the way you are. It touches you with sympathy. It becomes your lenient confidante. You can hardly realize a smile’s mammoth power.

Mother Teresa holds a clue for us: “We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.”

As Yoko Ono says: “Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.”

First of all you will like your smiling face more. A good beginning.

As Anthony J. D'Angelo sums it up so smartly: “Smile is the key that fits the lock of everybody's heart.” So guys hold your great key to unlock the biggest chest full of treasure.

You may not be enjoying a rollercoaster ride in life. There are pains and problems and of course you feel like crying. Agreed that you are not in a position to laugh. Well, if laughing seems too much, you can smile at least. Even a sad, resigned smile will do to begin with. Smile just to yourself, without any reason. Or at least try. A fake, feeble smile is better than no smile. It reshapes the lines of your tensions, your worries. You will instantly feel its warmth, its light. It cannot be the other way. A maneuvered smile at least cannot give you more pain, cannot aggravate your messiness, however hard is the situation.

 And then there is always something or someone around who can help you in building up a smile. There are more reasons to smile than cry. Just that we overlook them. So give yourself a reason to smile. It’s as simple as picking up one tiny bit of tension from the overloaded basket and throwing it away with a muse. So move away from the big garbage dump of worries and smile as you walk away.

Mind you, a smile is the best ornament that you can put on yourself. A tender smile is the universal language of love. So guys meet people with a smile, because it is the first step on the ladder of building lovable relationships. Aren't these colors in nature the replica of the eternal smile? Go, enjoy the therapy.

Your smile is just the hoarding out there telling people that here goes a happy, loving and caring person. Generally your happiness creates a smile, but if you learn to smile, it may even start your joyride. These few lines of curve on your lips oftentimes set puzzling chaos straight. So go around smiling, who knows someone is looking at you and since people love smiles, you may come across unexpected boon also.

This is the best face job. Even a fake smile is better than a morose, brooding and suffering look. Don't you think everybody looks at his/her best with a smile? And believe me, a warm smile makes you appear younger also. 

 Forget about the little world of your problems. This creation is not human centric, and within the human system the thoroughfare is not you-, me- or anyone-centric. In fact, it’s not bothered about anyone or anything at all. So why should we? One big reason to start smiling more often.

 The cosmos around you is too big. And you are just a tiny part of its endless bounty. But luckily the things of beauty are as good for you as they are for any other happy person around. Claim your share. Observe. Look around. Pick out from the unassuming treasures lying around in bits and pieces. A flower. A child’s pure smile. A bird chirping. A gust of breeze. Rustling of sun-baked pale dry leaves. Some green tree. A sparrow’s free dart in the sky, the sun, the stars, someone helping somebody, or anything for that matter, provided you have the loving eyes to see.

Everything is just drenched with beauty; it’s we who throw the jibes of ugliness born of our biases, greed, hate, jealousy and anger. Remove these blots from the screen and you clearly see the perfect beauty around. And once you see the beauty, love oozes out of your spirit in copious amounts. It’s as natural as you have light once the sun shines in the morning.

 There are infinite reasons to let a smile kiss your lips, to help you, to sympathize, to emphasize the cool hold of goodness inherently holding the system together. Just open up the door for a smile. It will open up a huge gate of comfort for the inner self. Light will enter the dungeon of real and imaginary problems. There is no logic for this. It just happens. Just like you feel the healing warmth of sunrays on a cold day! So try to smile without any reason. Immediately you will get a feeling of so many things to be smiled at, to be felt euphoric about, or even laugh about.

Do you know there is brain-brewed whiskey: Anandamide? It’s the chemical of happiness, ease, comfort and contentment produced in the brain. By learning to smile more often, you start the brain brewery in motion. It’s a simple practice, just like you get habituated to go for invigorating early-morning brisk walks. So let your brewery of joy become operational at full capacity. Believe me, it can be done by simply starting with the belief that it’s possible.

The world is full of those who need narcotics, drugs and alcohol to enter a pleasant, forgetting and easy-going state. These definitely give you some temporary solace but come with huge physical and social side effects later on when you crash-land on the rock hard surface of reality. Count upon your own self-made, brain-brewed chemical of bliss and happiness, Anandamide. It's available free to all of us. Just that we need to look within for the joys that we seek outside! So seekers, happy days and nights! Brew your own Anandamide and stay blessed permanently. Happy spiritual boozing! Booze makers, beware!

I have started to smile more and brew mine quite copiously...

The Lamp called Love

 

You need light to dispel darkness. Similarly, to remove thousand and one individual and collective ailments, you need the single pill, the dose of love. It's the most effective healing therapy for mind, body and soul. Hate is the parasite afflicting the self, eating away the blossoming prospects of your growth and evolution. Love is the nutrient that is meant to blossom your potential, to fulfill the mission, to shake hands with your destiny.

Love is the magic wand that turns you grateful for the small-small things coming your way. It turns you forgiving, enabling you to avoid many a peril, keeping the chances of remedy and correction still alive for someone. And with gratefulness and forgiveness, there gets ripened the fruit of kindness, the best strength in a human being. With just kindness you have so much to offer. Your empathy triggers huge constructive waves in the cosmic womb.

A loving emotion is all pervading. It leaps over your fears. It jumps over your insecurities. It penetrates the shell of your inhibitions. It punctures the balloon of distress, setting the stale air free. And once all this happens, you feel liberated. This freedom enlarges your perspective. You come out of the self-created dead-ends. You feel like standing on a mountain top and smile at the small gullies where you felt lost and cribbed and poured anger and hate. Now you realize that all those were simply the means for you to reach here.

The most profound memories are sepia-toned love moments. Even at your worst, even if you stand justified in your fury, you won't become nostalgic about the chaotic moments when you lost it and the storms blew. It proves the innate nature of human beings, the loving nature. It's love without reason.  

Compassion and love are the absolute necessities. This world can survive without hate and fury, but not without love. Love is soul's gravity, keeping it relevant. It has to have this force. Everything floats off into oblivion without it and the whole lot turns meaningless in one stroke.

Hate is the stone that drags you down. Love is the airy cloud, taking you to panoramic flights to give you the glimpses of the eternal muse. Heart is a dark place without love. So come and light up your little lamp as we try to put it in words.  

Self-love is the seed of the all-loving tree to sprout. So love yourself. Kindly don't commit the mistake of clubbing your overblown passions, ambitions and hot pursuits in life with self-love. These are the tricky illusions that dupe the self in taking them as self-love. Self-love is totally free from nagging externalities. It’s the prelude to your all-loving journey. It’s the launch pad that hurtles you into the orbit of bliss. Well, no wonder the journey starts with self-love not self-negation.

Human beings are mentally and physically wired to love. Love is the master key that unlocks the chest of phantoms and the evil progenies scamper away. They don't want to stay with you. Just that you cling to them, in a sort of self-injurious addiction. Love is the sunshine that sustains the garden called life. Without it, you have the gloomy, frigid silhouette, no life, no living.

Friedrich Nietzsche says: "We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving."

Kindness, compassion, laughter, joy, freedom, happiness, all these and more are simply different recipes made of the same grains, love. There is an element of magical beauty to the things done with love. You hardly work if you love your job. No relationship is a burden if love is at its core. No goal is tiresome and devoid of compassion if you have a loving approach.

And if you still need to be told what love looks like, kindly listen to Saint Augustine: "What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like."

Michelangelo says, “Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.”

Death surely will be one of the wings. Question is: Do we have the other wing to carry us onto the destination?

The Art of Love

 The great mystic poet Rumi says, “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”

Long before love sprouts through your actions, emotions and thoughts, you have to accept your essentially compassionate nature. Accept it and own the feeling. From this point, it becomes easier to scale the ladder to reach the cusp of happiness and joy, which is nothing but realization of your true loving self.

Love is our fundamental nature. Its soft power lies in all of us. Just that it needs to be pampered out of the cocoon. Like you build-up your muscles slowly, dedicating many hours over months and years in a gym, you can sharpen the instincts of love. Love at the emotional level is as good as some goodness in action. These are two sides of the same coin.

There are always parallels between the self inside and the socially convenient identity we have build up for ourselves to survive. Believe me, however hard is the mask outside, it still survives on the intrinsic foundation of what you are in the privacy of your real self at the centre of your being. And that is unconditional love. Our illusions in this regard are simply in proportion to the virtual walls we have allowed to be built between what we appear and what we really are.

Practicing goodness and love in behavior, thoughts and emotions is like any other task we accomplish on a daily basis. Just that our continuous obsession on staying at the periphery of our being has tricked us into believing that it’s an angry world out there. We have to fight or perish. No man, it isn’t so. Most of our fears are the phantoms of our mind. Come out of the virtual world and see the world as it is through clear eyes.

Happiness and joy are simply the warmth of the sun of love. They share reciprocal cause and effect relation.

Denis Waitley sums it so beautifully: “Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”

The showers of care and consideration from others nourish you, and your own love-blossoms define the purpose of life.

Lao Tzu: “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

The art of love is basically the art of living. Love is the overarching emotion covering your work, relationships and modes of self-expression. It pulls you into a sphere of all-inclusiveness. This is the top-most art. All other means of self-expression are just byproducts of this supreme alchemy.

Just have a closer look. The things and activities where you feel yourself to excel, they appear so because you primarily love and like them. So love basically is a prelude to liking, which in turn makes you capable of cozy relationships, well paid careers and other creative outpours in the arena of life.

Love: The Ultimate Alchemy

 

Ravindranath Tagore says, “Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment.” The great mystic and poet very suitably sees it as “the ultimate truth that lies at the core of creation”.

Love defines the countless pathways to the cause of creation as Lord Byron points out with poetic precision: “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.”

Do you think fear, anger, hate, envy, jealousy, ego, lust and greed have their own standing? No. Just like darkness is simply an absence of light, all these tortuous tools that lynch our self are nothing but phantoms doing painful rounds in the absence of love. Like a tiny lamp puts out darkness simply by casting light, without fighting the dark, a simple ray of love, a symbol of our true self, chucks out the flimsy appendages of the unreal self.

There is definitely limit to everything in cosmos. But there is one exception: Love, prem as we say it in Hindi. Yoko Ono feels the mankind’s regret in not fully absorbing their self in the sea of love when he says: “The regret of my life is that I have not said 'I love you' often enough.”

One need not fight fear, fury, hatred, jealousy, distrust, ego, lust and greed at various fronts to defeat them. They have a common root: burial of your loving self, your essential nature, under the peripheral dust of illusions and ignorance, making you identify with what is essentially not your real self. Remove the grime, allow the light of love to emanate from your soul, enter your behavioral self, and all around you see peace, harmony and balance. The vices, which you yourself condemn against yourself after being judgmental on your own self, just dry up, like fresh rays of sun dispel the last traces of dark clinging to the morning twilight.

A house—an assemblage of concrete, mortar, bricks and steel—turns a home only with love and care. Without affection decorating it from inside, it’s merely a soulless structure. Billy Graham says it very aptly: “Nothing can bring a real sense of security into the home except true love.”

The mankind’s fears driven by greed have already resulted in nukes and super-nukes having the capacity to destroy not just earth but many planets and stars around. Does it serve any purpose? The modern civilization sitting on the stockpiles of death and destruction is always one button push away from annihilation. No man, we don’t need hate anymore. We need more loving people around. The moisture of love will dampen the explosives of death and destruction.

Love for your man, your woman, your family, friends and near and dear ones is the seed that holds the potential to blossom into universal love for all and everything making you a loving person. So guys start your journey on the love path as a lover, as a caring husband, wife, parent or friend and proceed onto nurture the seed to help it grow into a robust tree of loving kindness for all. This basically is supposed to be the natural evolution course for your consciousness attached to this mater, this mix of materials called body comprising water and few kilograms of matter found in earth. The consciousness, the blueprint, the carrier of your previous journeys, is on the path of evolution, to merge into the all pervading super-consciousness, like a drop of water is moving to mix with the seas.

Do you think you can fight darkness by flailing your arms and fists in the dark? No man, that’s not the way. Darkness cannot be dispelled. It stays irrespective of your fusillade. All you need is a small lamp. It simply leaves darkness redundant by itself.

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend,” Martin Luther King, Jr. Love definitely is the panacea for thousands of ailments afflicting human society. The Modern Gandhi of the West further says, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Haven’t you felt almost fully alive when in love with your man or woman? Well, that sums it up. This feeling is just a glimpse of the eternal bliss available on the higher rungs on the same ladder. Move up. There are no alternatives. This is the sole destiny.  

Mind you, there are no sinners. We just have loving and less loving people. Come, join me in tilting the scale in favor of love. That is your destiny. Later or sooner, in this avatar or in the ones coming up next, you have to get along. Just like a river’s natural destination is the sea, your soul’s journey is to merge into all-encompassing love of the eternal entity. The so called sinners, who we scorn at, are nothing but strayed selves, like the river exploring its final path to the sea gets into a lake somewhere but finds it unviable to stay there and takes on the journey again. All of us have to explore and find the fallacy of many a thing that our disillusioned self makes us believe and come face to face with the ultimate meaning of life.

Max Muller says: “A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.”

Come, let’s explore the path of love, the alchemy, which remedies the suffering self, making it a beautiful, loving entity.     

Love is the seed of spirituality. Holy people of all religions and faith reached one single point, all-encompassing love.

Saint Basil: “A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

Love, compassion and kindness are the biggest commonality across various faiths and belief systems. Love is basically the essential nature of soul. Kindness, compassion, gratitude, generosity, truth, beauty, and all other virtues we hold in high esteem are simply the manifestations of love. Love is the light that shows everything as it is. It dispels the dark corners surrounding our selves. It is the guiding light that takes us on the path of our individual and collective destinies.

Though no words are sufficient to cover the fathomless power of love, let's try to know a bit more about our loving self and its miraculous powers in shaping our lives. 

This book is meant to set up an instructional manual to help one rise higher on the scale of evolution by changing one's limited love, defined by family and relations, to universal love for a compassionate and all-loving being.

The work is meant to help one hone the art and craft of building a loving character, which in turn sets up the base for a happy and joyful life. All the chapters in the book are full of commonest of the common day-to-day techniques, which can build up our compassionate self, like we work in the gym to strengthen our muscles.

Things are rapidly aggravating. It's an angrier world than ever. Material progression has proved counterproductive. Mother Nature is ailing due to our greedy onslaught, which borders on raping mother earth. Now an ailing nature is handing over its pain and miseries to the human society in the form of wars, diseases and strife. Irony is that we are materially the most advanced society in history with the USP of being the most miserable one at the same time. Isn’t it the right time to go into a pause and rethink our collective priorities? Through my work, I am simply trying to ask individuals and organizations to reconsider their values because there has been a basic flaw, otherwise why would there be so many problems.

My work involves simple tools and techniques of going into self-discovery to see things in a larger perspective. It’s a semi-spiritual journey looking within and out to be aware of the bigger plights written everywhere, to inculcate a basic loving nature almost at the instinctive level, to be more observant of the self as much as we observe things outside. It breeds self responsibility, leading to a considerate nature. These are the basic building blocks of a compassionate self.

For decades I have been into spirituality and meditation. All the simple instructions, guidance tools and observations are born of my own experiences. Spirituality is not something about mysteries in the farthest corners of the universe. It’s simply about being a more aware person. It’s about realizing the basic loving nature in each and everyone around. It’s about harnessing joy out of the mundane incidences of life.

Working on this book itself has been really rewarding. I cannot ask for much other than writing it. It has given me so much of unconditional love and peace while working on it. I am not looking much on the material front from this treatise on love. All I need is one more partner in spreading the message of unconditional love, peace and harmony. 

I firmly believe that ordinary beings possess extraordinary potential to win against odds, to jump over hurdles, to smile over tears, and, most importantly, to be happy when there aren’t enough reasons to be. People like you and me are the faceless constituents of a massive commonality. We are surrounded by a swiping generality. We are coloured in the monochromes of mundane reality. Still we are special. And that speciality is love at the core of our being.

Through my work, I acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary people. I see heroes and heroines on the common stage of life chugging around. And most importantly, we have the very same essentially loving nature at the core. Just that the flimsy clouds of ego and apparent sufferings keep it buried inside. I try to help people unearth the basic seeds of goodness inside to help them grow into luxuriant trees of compassionate beings.

We fight, and oftentimes fail, but write a little passage in the infinite book of life: an ordinary life that was lived substantially. On the small stage of life, we live very intensely. Somehow, the world would not be the world that is still beautiful without our contribution. We heave humanity onwards in its march to some better destination. Just that all this gets overshadowed by the shifting clouds of ego, stress, frustration and jealousy. We simply need to look beyond the clouds to spot the glorious sun.

With our essentially loving nature fully acknowledged in our daily lives, all of us can be the heroes and heroines of our stories. The seed in us, the seed of love, carries the potential to be the tallest, luxuriant-most tree. The powerful force of creation propels the potential for maximization. Nature doesn’t want it to be a world of half-smiles, half-growths, half-blossoms and half-potential. There is a tendency for fullness. It pulls the process of evolution for the maximum, for completion, for what we call greatness. And the driving force for all this is love. It exists in each and every atom in the cosmos. All we need is to be aware of it. And this awareness needs practice. I have put an effort to nurture this habit of always reminding ourselves of our basic loving nature.

O my mind, my seat of potentiality, take my journey further,

Be the seat of my strength, not weakness,

Be the seat of kindness, not cruelty,

Be the source of light, not darkness.

You, me and all of us are born for the stories of greatness. Let’s acknowledge our loving nature to see through the journey. Please be my partner in sharing this message of universal love.

 

Snippets of a Life Better than the Common

 

The sun playing hide and seek behind the clouds. The humid air wispily telling a smart secret. The land lying languidly; its pining thirst quenched by the sky's countless kisses and love-drops. A dove pair mating lost in the silent majesty of innocent and peaceful nature! Life can be far-far better provided we have the eyes to spot such marvellous ecstasies adoring the stage set around us. All we have to learn is to be at ease with the universal harmony. The ultimate melody will certainly reach our ears. She was at ease now. The girl from A Half House. Visiting Kolkata to be with her parents for some time, she had further gone to the village where her grandparents stayed with her uncle. To be at her roots, to strengthen, to solidify, to wage the battle of life after the temporary sojourn! The cool countryside air soothing and solacing, and wispily cooing a secret in her ears, the secret of happiness. She was taking big lessons from this small world.

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Always there are easiest of routes to the toughest of destinations. Every hard situation has the softest of a solution. So there is no unconquerable problem in the real sense. Our solutions make them so. When in the face of a tough situation blame your solution, not the situation. Isn’t life all about taking smart short-cuts to beat the puzzling array of problems randomly cropping around us? So be the solution provider. Behind most complex of a phenomenon there is amazing simplicity. Read that. Those cute fundamentals will tell you that every situation is a living being. It has a soft and sympathetic message for you only. Listen to these delicate murmurs and it will help you in breaking the hardest of superficial, outer cores. He had started to read those simple fundamentals. He the tortured young man from The Broken Dream.

The only thing you can be sure about life is that there are going to be problems. So just accept it as any other law in nature which you accept without any grudges. In fact when in the face of problems, we as humans ought to think from the solutions perspective. Still there are times when the wrong dice cast by fate just puts you in most difficult of a situation. These are the times when it’s even futile to think of a solution. During such times, all you need is just to be there for the sake of future. Just do not back out. It’s no routine preaching to put up a valiant superhuman fight. Just maintain the routine. It requires a little effort to do the barest minimum to see through the turbulent waters. Be guarded, be defensive, but do not leave the field. He realised it and put himself on the autopilot. When you find that your being serious about the issues is not going to help you in any way, just try to live life according to the tide. A plain assumption here! Always assume with 100 percent belief that things are going to be normal. Equipped with this belief, just slog it out at the lowest morsels of your mental and physical levels. There are solutions, rewards, opportunities and suitable circumstances. Just be patient enough to be there to receive them. As you assume the inevitability of better things awaiting you, most of the presumptions about the futility of things will be cut down to their real size by the natural forces always there to help you survive and prosper. Call it belief in God or the superior cosmic forces. All it needs is your trust and belief. Just invest this much. It will just shower you with rewards. He was slowly coming to this realisation. He had worked very hard in life. Of course the rewards had not been as per his expectations, but he decided to stand there and then walk slowly in case there might be something in store, just a few miles away, across some turn in the path. One cannot afford to be totally pessimistic. It means being dead altogether 

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The retired history professor had incisive thoughts that many times bruised the feelings of his fellow early morning visitors in the park where they meant to enjoy life and do Yoga to extend their stay on the earth. The professor’s unconventional logic rubbed against their conventional skin and the great time would end up being any other time of the day, just argumentative. The professor’s health needed attention. He realised it at the appropriate time. It was the time to feel, relax, not brainstorming. It was better spared for just special occasions.

 

If you can’t respect others’ thoughts, not a big problem with that. Just slog it out—even egoistically—to prove your point. But never do the same in case of feelings. Respect others feelings. There is a big difference between thoughts and feelings. You can trample your fellow human beings’ thoughts. But please spare their feelings. Feelings are sanctimonious. Leave them unstigmatised and pure on the altar of heart. The old professor knew that there might not be many such mornings left to enjoy, so it was prudent to enjoy every moment, sharing people’s feelings and respecting their opinions.

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Rivers and we share a great symmetry in our life-flows. During the youthful stage, a river full of energy cuts through the mountainous rocks. It is vigorous, torrential, fast, furious and adamant about its path. Aren't we like that as well in our youth? Then the middle age sets in. During this phase the pace gets mellowed down. Through flood plains it takes gentle curves, meanders, building its reputation on the sediments cut in youth from the hardest rocks. The flow is at ease with itself. There is comfort and peace. Then the final drowning of its existence into the sea. So in youth gurgle with enthusiasm. Tear apart as much sediments as you can. It will be after all the material for your middle life flood plains when other types of responsibilities set in on this fertile ground. The aged social worker, retired and spending a major portion of his pension funds in feeding cows and dogs, realised the importance of cooling down and just allowing himself to be drawn into the sea completing a well meant life where he did more for others than anybody else in the town. The media publicity did not matter much now. With languorous acceptance of the natural flow of life he was slowly-slowly moving to the sea of his destination. 

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We can fly and rise higher only if we are tied to certain responsibilities and commitments; our freedom-lorn spirit tamed to an extent by social conventions, individual values, family setup, the sweet-sour tides in our offices, etc. But most of the time we find it as a drag on our real enjoyment of life. We just feel how great life would be without all such traditional stuff. But guys tell me, can a stringless kite fly? The kite flies because there is a string pulling it and thus enabling it to rise into the higher skies. It also tries to negate the limitations set up by the string. It shakes its head in negation. OK! What happens when its dream to be string-free comes true? It just takes a few ecstatic circles in air and falls onto the ground. Those free dives of its dreams prove to be its death dives. We are the stringed kites fella. We fly and rise high only because our destructive passions and traits are tamed and tied to a string. So love your commitments, your responsibilities, and your struggles for small-small things in life. He had also given a good string to his life. Stringless kites cannot fly. The guy whose time had slipped out of his pocket in Friends and Foes was anchored to small domestic responsibilities with his time safely secure in his pocket. 

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For the lovers of freedom, responsibilities sound as prison chains. Responsible people on the other hand find themselves squeezed in a tight corner by the commitments which do not allow them to enjoy freedom. The question is: Are freedom and responsibility inherently contradictory in nature? Is it really possible to make them complementary to each other by melting the contradictory edges? Across the dark into the stormy sea she had a saltier sea in her soul on that fateful night on the beach. She the lady in Legitimate Tears knew the most important responsibility in her life. Her daughter. The corporate career was for the daughter, not the vice versa. A smile on her daughter’s face was more precious than applauds in auditoriums. 

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For good people it’s very difficult to enter a relationship and still more difficult to come out of it! For bad people it’s very easy to get into a relationship and still easier to come out of it! On this account her husband had been luckier than her in their marriage. She survived, the woman from Life doesn’t Smile Back, and regained her front office executive charm. Her husband was lucky in that she was a good human being on the basis of the above principle. The daughter was doing exceedingly well in studies to do them proud in future. 

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I think it always (without exception) helps not to lose your temper. When you lose your temper, you not only deprive somebody’s chances for more happiness; you in fact deprive yourself of the same. So why fall in the trap of such a bad bargain. If nobody gains anything out of it (except perhaps that hypothetical and flimsy enemy of ours, called ‘ego’) why invest in such a loser scheme?  The retired Brigadier was forced into this realisation by near fatal upshot of blood pressure. The war was long over. It was the time to spend days as a peaceful ageing man who brought more purpose into the lives of those around. Time with his grandson and teaching him mathematics was more important than losing tempers over China.

 

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Thank God life is not just a smooth road, taking us uninterestingly to a plain destination! Guys be thankful that it is pot-holed and bumpy. The vehicle of our life gets jolts and jerks which are in fact the lifelines for our material being. It tests the vehicle of our being. The latter responds and this see-saw battle releases energy for the engine of our survival. So guys if your road appears bumpier than others, just feel the sea-storm of energy your system is creating not just for your own survival but for the common cause of creation and survival at the universal level as well. As a struggler you contribute far more to a great unseen cause than it appears on the common plain of your material existence. The social worker with the overworked broom in the political streets realised the value and utility of his efforts. He could feel the value of his work, even though he had failed to become an MLA. The political potholes had jolted his calm journey to rob his soul’s peace once. He now decided to struggle with the aged Anna. The great man needed supporters after him.

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There are times when our long-held beliefs sound untrue. It is however just a smoke-screen. If we just project our hands over our eyes and try to look into the haze with a bit of more focused look, we will see the faded glow of the sun of reality. It not only consolidates the beliefs very close to our soul, but allows more perspectives to our struggle to see through the cloud. Long-held beliefs are generally true. Their mere survival around the epicentre of our being authenticates their validity. Temporary ones just glow for a short time and fade out in jerks. So do not allow your long-held beliefs to die or fade out during the periods of crisis. Believe it or not, they are like life-belts tied to our endangered selves during the sea-storm. Sukh Ram’s jolting pivot of faith caught in the trap of ‘my faith’ and ‘his faith’ came free of the entrapment. After all the storms always get finished. His dilemmas had gone. He realised the value of the only religion, the religion of being human.