There’s a story from many years ago of a primary school teacher. Her name was Mrs. Thompson and as she stood in front of her fifth grade class on the very first day of school, she told the children a lie. Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said she loved them all the same.

But that was impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard.

Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed he didn’t play well with the other children, his clothes were messy and he constantly needed a bath. Teddy could be quite unpleasant.

It got to the point where Mrs. Thompson would actually take delight in marking his papers with a broad red pen, making bold Xs and then putting a big “F” at the top of his papers. At the school where Mrs. Thompson taught, she was required to review each child’s past records and she put Teddy’s off until last.

However, when she reviewed his file, she was in for a surprise. Teddy’s first grade teacher wrote, “Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh. He does his work neatly and has good manners. He is a joy to be around.”

His second grade teacher wrote, “Teddy is an excellent student, well liked by his classmates, but he is troubled because his mother has a terminal illness and life at home must be a struggle.”

His third grade teacher wrote, “His mother’s death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best, but his father doesn’t show much interest and his home life will soon affect him if some steps aren’t taken.”

Teddy’s fourth grade teacher wrote, “Teddy is withdrawn and doesn’t show much interest in school. He doesn’t have many friends and sometimes sleeps in class.”

By now, Mrs.. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of herself. She felt even worse when her students brought her Christmas presents, wrapped in beautiful paper and tied with pretty ribbons, except for Teddy’s. His present was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper he got from a grocery bag.

Mrs. Thompson took pains to open it in the middle of the other presents. Some of the children started to laugh when she found a rhinestone bracelet with some of the stones missing, and a bottle that was one quarter full of perfume. But she stifled the children’s laughter when she exclaimed how pretty the bracelet was, putting it on, and dabbing some of the perfume on her wrist. Teddy Stoddard stayed after school that day just long enough to say, “Mrs. Thompson, today you smelled just like my mom used to.”

After the children left, she cried for at least an hour. On that very day, she quit teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead she began to teach children.

Mrs. Thompson paid particular attention to Teddy. As she worked with him, his mind seemed to come alive. The more she encouraged him, the faster he responded.. By the end of the year, Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class, and despite her lie that she would love all the children the same, Teddy became one of her “teacher’s pets.”

A year later, she found a note under her door, from Teddy, telling her she was still the best teacher he ever had in his whole life.

Six years went by before she got another note from Teddy. He then wrote that he had finished high school, third in his class, and she was still the best teacher he ever had in his whole life.

Four years after that, she got another letter, saying that while things had been tough at times, he’d stayed in school, had stuck with it, and would soon graduate from college with the highest of honors. He assured Mrs. Thompson that she was still the best and favorite teacher he ever had in his whole life.

Then four more years passed and yet another letter came. This time, he explained that after he got his Bachelor degree, he decided to go a little further. The letter explained that she was still the best and favorite teacher he ever had. But now, his name was a little longer. The letter was signed, Theodore F. Stoddard, MD.

The story doesn’t end there. You see, there was yet another letter that spring. Teddy said he’d met this girl and was going to be married. He explained that his father had died a couple of years ago and he was wondering if Mrs. Thompson might agree to sit in the place at the wedding that was usually reserved for the mother of the groom. Of course Mrs. Thompson did.

And guess what? She wore that bracelet, the one with several rhinestones missing. And she made sure she was wearing the perfume that Teddy remembered his mother wearing on their last Christmas together. They hugged each other, and Dr. Stoddard whispered in Mrs. Thompson’s ear, “Thank you, Mrs.. Thompson, for believing in me. Thank you so much for making me feel important and showing me I could make a difference.”

Mrs. Thompson, with tears in her eyes, whispered back. She said, “Teddy, you have it all wrong. You were the one who taught me I could make a difference.. I didn’t know how to teach until I met you.”

My soul counseled me and taught me to see beauty veiled by form and color.
My soul charged me to gaze steadfastly upon all that is deemed ugly until it appears lovely
Before my soul had thus charged and counseled me, I had seemed to see beauty like unto wavering torches between pillars of smoke;
But now the smoke has dispersed and vanished and I see naught but the burning.

My soul counseled me and charged me to listen for voices that rise neither from the tongue nor the throat.
Before that day I heard but dully, and naught save clamor and loud cries came to my ears;
But now I have learned to listen to silence,
To hear its choirs singing the songs of ages,
Chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity.

My soul spoke to me and counseled me to quench my thirst with that wine which may not be poured into cups,
Nor lifted by hands, nor touched by lips.
Unto that day my thirst was like a dim spark laid in ashes
To be put out by a drought from any spring;
But now my strong yearning has become my cup,
Love has become my wine, and loneliness my joy.

My soul counseled me and charged me to seek that which is unseen;
And my soul revealed unto me that the thing we grasp is the thing we desire.
In other days I was content with warmth in winter, and with a cooling zephyr in the summer season;
But now my fingers are become as mist,
Letting fall all that they have held, to mingle with the unseen that I now desire.

My soul spoke to me and invited me to breathe the fragrance from a plant
That has neither root nor stalk nor blossom, and that no eye has seen.
Before my soul counseled me thus, I sought perfumes in the gardens,
In jars of sweet-smelling herbs and vessels of incense;
But now I am aware only of an incense that may not be burned,
I breathe an air more fragrant than all earth’s gardens and all the winds of space.

My soul counseled me and charged me to answer and say: “I follow,” when the unknown and the adventurous call unto me.
Hitherto I had answered naught but the voice of the crier in the market place,
Nor did I pursue aught save roads charted and well trodden;
But now the known has become a steed that I mount to seek the unknown,
And the road has become a ladder by which I may climb to the perilous summit.

My soul counseled me and admonished me to measure time with this saying:
“There was a yesterday and there shall be a tomorrow.”
Unto that hour I deemed the past an epoch that is lost and shall be forgotten,
And the future I deemed an era that I may not attain;
But now I have learned this:
That in the brief present all time, with all that is in time,
Is achieved and come true.

My soul spoke and revealed unto me that I am not bound in space by the words:
“Here, there, and over there.”
Hitherto I stood upon my hill, and every other hill seemed distant and far away;
But now I know that the hill whereon I dwell is indeed all hills,
And the valley whereunto I descend comprehends all valleys.

My soul counseled me and besought me to watch while others sleep
And to seek my pillow while they are wakeful,
For in all my years I had not perceived their dreams, nor they mine.
But now I am winged by day in my dreaming,
And when they sleep I behold them free upon the night,
And I rejoice in their freedom.

My soul counseled me and charged me lest I be exalted because of over praise
And lest I distressed for fear of blame.
Until that day I doubted the work of my own handiwork;
But now I have learned this:
That the trees blossom in spring, and bear fruit in summer,
And drop their leaves in autumn to become utterly naked in winter
Without exaltation and without fear or shame.

My soul counseled me and assured me
That I am neither higher than the pygmy nor lower than the giant.
Before that day I beheld mankind as two men,
The one a weakling whom I derided or pitied,
And the other a mighty man whom I would either follow, or oppose in rebellion.
But now I know that I was formed even from the same dust of which all men are created,
That my elements are their elements, and my inner self is their inner self.
My struggle is their struggle, and their pilgrimage is mine own.
If they transgress, I am also the transgressor,
And if they do well, then I have a share in their well-doing.
If they arise, I too arise with them; if they stay behind, I also, to company them.

My soul counseled me and instructed me to see that the light which I carry is not my light,
That my song was not created within me;
For though I travel with the light, I am not the light,
And though I am a lute fastened with strings,
I am not the lute-player.

My soul counseled me, my brother, and enlightened me.
And oftentimes has your soul counseled and enlightened you.
For you are like me, and there is no difference between us
Save that I speak of what is within me in words that I have heard in my silence,
And you guard what is within you, and your guardianship is as goodly as my much speaking.

When we are young, we believe life would be so much easier when we grow up. Well, at least that’s what I imagined when I was a kid! I wouldn’t have to listen to preaching elders, I would do what I wanted. I would read my favorite authors instead of studying boring subjects. I would watch TV once I got back from work and not worry about completing tedious homework. I would be financially independent, earn my own money and spend it as I wanted without depending on parents for the money or permission. I would travel all over the world and never get tired, I would buy all the fashionable clothes, I would eat what I wanted - and so on!

Now, I look at my nieces and nephews and follow their train of thought - gosh! so similar to mine when I was their age! They can’t seem to wait to grow up into adults! And I envy them wishing secretly that I could go back to my childhood and be carefree and happy as children could be!

How does one tell these unsuspecting children that life’s not what it seems to be? That when you grow up, you’ll realize that life’s not as hunky dory as you thought it would be! At least in school, you had your lessons first, you studied and prepared, and then you wrote your exams. Real life is so different, you appear before the exams before you learn your lessons! And more often than not, it takes repeated exams for us to really get the lesson because unlike in school, there’s no set date for an exam, no prior notice, it just hits you BANG! In school, we had a syllabus and a time table that we followed, in life we don’t even know when our next exam is or what our next lesson’s gonna be like! Life and the universe love to spring a surprise on us hapless humans! No breaks and no vacation time either…aaaghhhh! 

So, it’s no surprise that many of us feel that life’s a constant struggle! Even before you have figured out what life is all about and how to go about it, you get into relationships, get married and have children… Once children arrive, you are learning more than you are teaching them, more exams and more lessons - tougher and tougher they seem to get! No escaping life’s school!

Now, honestly, how often do you feel life’s a struggle? That you never get what you ask for? That life’s one step ahead of you and taking you by surprise with unexpected twists and turns? That you deserve a break and wish fervently that life would go find someone else to test and teach? How about the “successful” and “lucky” who seem to have everything that you wished for? How about those “cheerful” and “happy go lucky” people who don’t seem to have a care or worry in the world while here you are carrying the entire world on your shoulders ?

More than a year ago, I was having this intense discussion about life with my sis-in-law (the gist of which somewhat ran along the above lines) and how wonderful life was when we were children. Her son (my little nephew) is quite a handful and his sole mission in life seems to be teaching his parents one tough lesson after another!  Talking about life, she suddenly remembered this poem she read in her son’s school diary and read it aloud for me. It goes like this … you can replace God with Life or the Universe or whatever that works for you!

I asked for strength.
God gave me difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for wisdom.
God gave me problems to solve.

I asked for prosperity.
God gave me brawn and brain to work.

I asked for courage.
God gave me dangers to overcome.

I asked for patience.
God placed me in situations where I was forced to wait.

I asked for love.
God gave me troubled people to help.

I asked for favors.
God gave me opportunities.

I received nothing I wanted.
I received everything I needed.

This poem is all over the web and the author is unknown! Whoever the author might have been, he/she has summarized life in a few wonderful sentences.

When I look back at my own life, I know how apt the above lines are. It’s not the easier parts of life that I remember and cherish but the moments and times when I had to stretch myself beyond what I believed I was capable of, when I tapped into an inner courage I never thought existed, when I had to wait and wait and every second was worth waiting for …

I have faced my own share of difficulties and overcoming them has given me confidence and strength. There’s nothing like confidence and strength that you have worked hard for.

Every problem I have solved has made me that much more wiser and kinder. It’s an amazing feeling when you get to the bottom of a problem and solve it, you have this incredible sense of achievement and nothing can beat that empowering feeling!

You receive love in life when you begin to give love. The more you give, the more you get back in return. The world is a circle of love. The more you help the troubled ones, the more life gives back to you. These are the times when I have realized how fortunate and blessed I was/am and what an enormous energy shift it is when you count your blessings and appreciate all that you have in life!

Life never bestows favors on anyone. People are “successful” and “lucky” by working on opportunities that life presents to them. Many a time I found my opportunities disguised as problems and difficulties - so beware! That has taught me never to underestimate what life has in store for you! Never!

Yes, life has never given me what I wanted always but it has given me more than that. It has helped me grow, evolve and be a better human being and that I consider the greatest favor life has bestowed upon me… and I can assure  you it will continue to do so because there’s no cap to growing, evolving and being a better human being and I know there’s plenty of scope for me in that direction:)

It’s true, life is not easy. It has it’s ups and downs and highs and lows. There are times we are frustrated and disappointed and disillusioned and there are those wonderful moments when we are elated, upbeat and totally happy! Every person on this planet has his/her share of fortunes and misfortunes. It’s only when we start looking at failures and misfortunes and problems for what they truly are instead of what they appear to be, that life starts making any sense at all…and we begin to start living.

And when you realize that the sole purpose of life is to help you grow, evolve and be a better human being, you will no longer regret a single moment of your life so far … in retrospect everything that happened happened for a reason!

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE?

You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Success & Self-Mastery Coach Prasanna Gunturi publishes the ‘The Energy Perpective’ weekly ezine. If you’re ready to live and lead your life energetically and successfully always and in all ways, get your free tips now at http://www.energysoulutionsallways.com/. 

How many times have you heard that the secret ingredient you must add to whatever you are cooking is Love? And the reason why mom’s cooking or homemade food tastes yummier than food in any restaurant is because of this secret ingredient that goes into it?

Cook with love … is my husband’s motto and he follows it religiously whenever he cooks. Whether it’s washing or chopping or stirring … he’s totally into it! He talks to the food, he blesses the food and he treats the ingredients with utmost love, respect and reverence. Divine inspiration is what he calls it and he enjoys every moment of it!

Well, not just food, how about you cooked your life with love? Add this secret ingredient to whoever you are and to whatever you do and notice how it transforms your life.

Now, you may ask, “how do I begin to cook my life with love”? Very simple. Love yourself:)

Love yourself. Begin by loving yourself. Loving yourself is not “all about you”, it is not about blowing your own trumpet or bragging about yourself at the slightest opportunity. It’s not about being arrogant or conceited or being full of yourself or being a bully or exploiting others. Neither is it being a doormat or being a people pleaser or a victim. It is about loving yourself for who you are.

Accept yourself. To love yourself for who you are, you must accept yourself. It is recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, talents and gifts, successes and failures, likes and dislikes, quirks and idiosyncrasies - it is accepting who you are, embracing the whole package, and loving yourself for who you are.

Many of us go through life avoiding this. We don’t take time to understand and accept who we are. I would say we are downright scared and petrified of doing that, afraid of uncovering unpleasant stuff. As a result, we depend excessively on others around us. We are constantly looking for approval and appreciation, we go out of our way to please others, we follow what the world expects out of us instead of following our own heart, we blow our own trumpet lest somebody not notice us, we put on conceited airs and look down upon others to prove our worth. When we don’t get the love, respect, appreciation or recognition that we crave for we are frustrated, disappointed, disillusioned. We become needy and insecure and desperate. Our self-esteem suffers a huge blow.

Respect yourself. Once you accept yourself, you start respecting yourself. No masks, no airs, no pretence. When you accept yourself, you know exactly where you stand. You wont be needy of approval, you wont be starving for appreciation, you wont  be doing things just to please others and the world. Self-respect inspires a healthy self-esteem and self-confidence. You know your boundaries - what you can, what you cannot. And you stop being afraid of failures - in fact, you start looking at ‘failure’ from a whole different angle!

Respect others. How you treat yourself is how you treat others. How you treat yourself determines your energetic makeup and subconsciously influences the expectations you have of/from others. If you beat yourself up constantly or hold yourself in low self-esteem, then you (subconsciously) expect to be treated in the same way by others. You end up attracting situations and people into your life that fulfill your expectations. Thus, the bullied attracts the bully, the victim attracts the victimizer.

When you accept yourself, and love yourself, you respect yourself for who you are. Your self-worth grows. When you are less frustrated and disappointed with yourself, you are less frustrated and disappointed with others. It encourages you to treat others in a similar way, respecting them for who they are and not for who you expect/want/wish them to be.  You are empathetic, you are more giving and loving, you are kinder and forgiving and you are less fearful. This changes the entire relationship dynamics. Others will respect you more for your honesty and for being your authentic self. They will be more comfortable around you, feel less threatened around you, and be more open to lower their masks and pretences and be their true selves.

This works like a charm for any kind of relationship - be it personal or business, be it with a parent or a child, be it with a spouse or a friend, … just about any kind of human relationship …

Take responsibility for your actions. Respect for yourself and respect for others helps you take responsibility for your actions instead of blaming others (people, circumstances, fate) or indulging in guilt trips. You are no longer afraid of failures and you are no longer carried away by successes. You save a lot of time and energy! You take life in your stride, enjoying the experiences and treasuring the lessons, channeling your energy in the right direction. You look at life as a series of stepping stones, an opportunity to learn something bigger and greater each time … you keep unfolding like a beautiful flower ( a thousand petalled lotus?),  your consciousness keeps expanding to the next level and next and the next, you start living in the moment. Life unfolds its magic around you!

This week,

1. “Love yourself” - what objections does your mind raise when you read this?

2. Observe people around you. How do they treat others? This’ll give you an insight into what they think of themselves and how they treat themselves.

3. Observe how you treat others - spouse, kids, friends, family, colleagues, strangers, etc. Anything that catches your interest? What does it tell you about you and how you treat yourself?

4. Is there something you would like to change? What is it? How would you like to go about it? What results are you looking for? And how committed are you to make this change?

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE?

You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Success & Self-Mastery Coach Prasanna Gunturi publishes the ‘The Energy Perpective’ weekly ezine. If you’re ready to live and lead your life energetically and successfully always and in all ways, get your free tips now at http://www.energysoulutionsallways.com/.

We are sitting at lunch when my friend casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of “starting a family”.

“We’re taking a survey,” she says, half-joking. “Do you think I should have a baby?”

“It will change your life,” I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral.

“I know,” she says, “no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous vacations.”

But that is not what I meant at all. I look at my friend, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but that becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will forever be vulnerable. I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without asking “What if that had been MY child?”; that every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her; that when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.

I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub; that an urgent call of “MOM!” will cause her to drop a soufflé or her best crystal without a moment’s hesitation.

I feel I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for childcare, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think of her baby’s sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of her discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is all right.

I want my friend to know that everyday decisions will no longer be routine-that a five-year-old boy’s desire to go to the men’s room rather than the women’s at McDonald’s will become a major dilemma; that right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in that restroom.

However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother. Looking at my attractive friend, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she would give it up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years - not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs.

I want her to know that a caesarian scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honor. My friend’s relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks. I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she will fall in love with him again…for reasons she would now find very unromantic.

I wish my friend could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving. I hope she will understand why I can think rationally about most issues, but become temporarily insane when I discuss the threat of nuclear war to my children’s future.

I want to describe to my friend the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or a cat for the first time. I want her to taste a joy so real that it actually hurts.

My friend’s quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. “You’ll never regret it,” I finally say. Then I reach across the table, squeeze my friend’s hand and offer a silent prayer for her, and for me, and for all of the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this most wonderful of callings. The blessed gift of God …that of being a Mother.

Source: A Time to Laugh

“Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them to what is deepest within themselves” ~ Teilhard de Chardin

It is, as Longfellow said, “the thread of all sustaining beauty that runs through all and doth all unite”.

After a long, long time…many years of soul searching’, study and self-discovery I’ve finally ‘got it’ and now understand the difference between the deepest agony and misery of the human condition… and the greatest joy!

I ‘know’, from my own experience, that the difference is simply between feeling separate, isolated, lonely, lost, and feeling ‘at-one’, whole, home. I think most people, if not all, live with a kind of homesickness; a sweet nostalgia which they can’t quite put their finger on as if they were once in a place that they can’t quite remember but desperately, somehow, want to get back to.

The Mystics have said for millennia that in existence there is a fundamental oneness; there isn’t and never has been any division or separation at all. Now science is beginning to agree, they call it a “Unified Field” or “Theory of Everything”.

I believe that at our deepest level (our core, Being, essence, soul, DNA) we inherently know that we are one with each other and with all things. The trouble is in our mental-minds. We have a deeply rooted idea that we are separate, a deeply engrained belief. This causes a split between what we think and what we intuitively know; a distance between our heads and our hearts.

From day to day we live from our heads, our thoughts… and this causes all our problems, all our misery. We’re going against our deepest instincts! It is said that while in the womb (and also as very young children) we are in a natural state of one-ness, love, union, innocence…bliss. Then after a while, gradually as we grow up in the world, we begin to realise that “I am this and you are that”, “I am here and you are there”, “I am me and you are…you”. We start to feel separate, we become ’self-conscious’, we become afraid.

In some ancient Eastern languages, the word for ‘Separation’ and the word for ‘Fear’ is actually the same. We go on and on accumulating knowledge, identity, conditioning and this sense of ‘Me’ gets re-enforced over and over again. We develop an “Ego”.

Psychologists reckon that this is essential for survival at this stage of our lives. However, although necessary, too much “ego” can eventually become a heavy burden. As adults, we feel isolated, lonely, small, restricted and incomplete.

Trapped in this prison of a mind-made-ME, we long to expand, to grow, to melt, to merge with someone, something…anything. We ache to be back in that place that we once knew. This has all happened because we have forgotten Who We Truly Are. Our light has become hidden under the bushel of fear, a false self, a mask, a defense, and/or an idea.

The cure is Love.

Love is the essence of who we are and it is our way out of this mess. Love and fear are opposites. Fear was the problem, love is the solution. Fear means separation, love means union. Luckily, only love is really real.

I heard a Sufi story once:

A lover went to visit his beloved. He knocked on her door and his beloved called out “Who is there?”

“It is I, Rumi, your lover,” he replied.

“Go away,” she said, “There is no room in here for two of us!”

He was baffled, but went away and studied, meditated, learned, burned, unlearned and eventually surrendered and let loads of inner ego baggage go.

A few months later he came back to see his beloved. Again he knocked on her door and again she called out “Who’s there?”

But this time his reply was different. “It is you,” he said.

The door opened and he was welcomed in. He had learned the secret; he had remembered.

The word ’sin’ originally means ‘to forget’ or ‘forgetfulness’ and so to be forgiven, to be redeemed, to be atoned, we have to remember something. We have to remember the truth that is at the core of who and what we really are, the truth that’s in the marrow of our very bones!!

Truth is a word for anything that is indivisible: Love, the Now, God, Dharma, Logos, Tao, Energy, Nature, Life, Reality, Existence. To remember ourselves as a part of the divine plan is to be set free yet deep down, we are already free, love is freedom.

Love heals us, makes us whole again. (Interestingly, the root word for ‘heal’ and ‘whole’ is the same.) Our Ego NEVER feels complete, or fulfilled or whole. All our restriction, all our resistance, all our struggle, all our fight is basically against nature, against ourselves, against love. It’s a fight we can never win! The part can never ‘win’ against the whole and eventually, one way or another, we will have to surrender, to yield, to let go.

“Love conquers all things; let us too give in to Love.” ~-Virgil

Love is the bottom line of every religion and spiritual pathway, to surrender ourselves to a higher, deeper, greater power. The word ‘Islam’ even translates as ’surrender’.

So it seems that our lives are a journey from knowing, through forgetting, to (hopefully) remembering again. We start out open and free and end up open and free. Somewhere in the middle we pass through a narrow tunnel. This tunnel is our identification with our small-self, “ME”, a conditioned-ego, our cocoon.

The Buddhists say, “No self, No problem.”

To me, that means no small, false, separate, scared self; no problems.

When they talk about ‘dying before you die’ I think they really just mean dropping the baggage; getting rid of all our un-natural ways and being natural again, returning to innocence, like a child, living ‘in tune’ with our own true nature, just as God intended, living love. Living like this you never fear death!

Jesus said that whoever is prepared to lose (their old life, their ego-shell) will gain (a new life, freedom, joy) He also said that the Golden Rule was to “Love your neighbor as your self”, because he knew, he’d remembered, at the deepest level your ‘neighbor’ is yourself.

There is only One Self. Call it Love, call it Life, call it God or Truth or “The Ground of Being”. It doesn’t really make much difference. We are all truly, madly, deeply One!!!

Remember, re-member, be a member again of the whole of existence, of everything that is, was and ever will be.

In Hinduism, it’s called “Lila”, which means play. To be yourself is to be happy. To be whole is to be healthy (to be out of tune with yourself or the whole leads to “dis-ease”).

We are each a vital part of something real, magic and infinite. We’re each like different instruments in a divine cosmic orchestra. You don’t need a reason to be happy and there is no reason to be afraid. Live, love, laugh, and learn.

“…and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” ~ T.S. Eliot

“Namaste”, which (I think) means I honor that place in you, where you and I are one.

When I bought the land where I now live, there was nothing on it but trees, cows, and fescue. The first question the builder asked me was, “Where’s your well?” I tried to hide my surprise. I had temporarily forgotten that water comes from the earth, not the sink. Of course there would have to be a well.

So I called Davidson Well Drilling, whose huge red truck appeared the next day with an enormous drill bit on it. After clanking his way across some groundhog burrows, the driver killed the engine, climbed out of the cab, and began to squint at the land. I had hoped to meet a real live water witch, but this man was more of a geologist. He guessed where water was by the lay of the land, preferring valleys to hills. By the next afternoon, I wondered if he should learn to use a dowsing rod. He had drilled three large holes and struck nothing but rock.

As I watched him position his drill over spot number four, I suddenly saw him as a lab technician trying to find a vein. The body of the land lay still beneath his probing. Under its surface ran rivers of life, which I was trying to tap into. My own life depended on the transfusion. Without it, I could not drink, cook, bathe, water plants and animals, or wash clothes. With it, I could make a home. When I heard a yell go up, I knew that the fourth “stick” had worked. The earth had granted me a lifeline by letting me siphon off some of the water that was on its way somewhere else. Because of me, there would be less water flowing into the Chattahoochee River: less for the speckled trout, less for the wood ducks, less for the mountain laurel that drop their white petals into the river. There would be more water flowing into my septic tank, laced with laundry detergent, dish soap, and human waste.

At that moment of high awareness, I promised the land that I would go easy on the water. I would remember where it came from. I would do as little harm to it as possible. I would remain grateful for the sacrifice.

Since my well is a shallow one with just 30 feet of water, it has been pretty easy to keep my promise. I wait at least an hour between loads of laundry, and another hour before I take a bath. I fill the horse trough no more than a third full at a time. If I forget to mention the well to friends from the city, they take long hot showers and wind up with hair full of soap bubbles. When they lean over blindly to twist the faucets, all they hear is the long, slow gasp of an empty pipe.

I have never been so conscious of my connection to the earth, and to my neighbors. As more and more people move nearby and dig wells, the water table drops lower and lower. If the farmer next door fertilizes his field, his chemicals end up in my water. If I wash my clothes with Clorox, I kill every benevolent bacterium around. Even the phrase “my water” makes no sense to me anymore. It is “our water,” one common underground lake to which we are all attached by the intravenous tubes we call plumbing.

Several years ago, I spent a week working on a Navajo reservation in Arizona with a youth group from Atlanta. We were assigned to a family who lived way out in the middle of nowhere, who hauled their water from town in 30-gallon containers. During my first day on the job, the mother of the family washed the lunch dishes in a big plastic tub while I rinsed and dried in another. I will never forget the look on her face when I flung the used rinse water into the yard. She was too polite to say anything, but her face said it all. I could have given that water to the chickens. I could have poured that water on the tomato plants. She knew where water came from, and at what price. I still thought it came cheap from sinks.

Now that those of us in northeast Georgia are three years into a bad drought, I am beginning to see the wisdom of the village well–not a dozen different holes sunk in a dozen different backyards, but one central place where a dozen neighbors meet to draw water. If we had something like that on Echota Road, then we might hold each other more accountable. No one could get away with pouring paint thinner down the drain, or washing the car twice a week when there is barely enough water for the vegetables. We could talk about what we are going to do to conserve our water, so that both it and we are around for the long haul. We might even understand how wells come to be called sacred, and why water is the most fundamental sacrament of all.

My well runs dry pretty regularly now. A simple drip from a bathroom faucet is enough to empty the reservoir overnight. Some of my friends are drilling deeper wells so that they can capture the water before anyone else gets to it. Others are buying generators at the hardware store and sucking up what is left in the streams, until the catfish flap their fins in three inches of muddy sludge. For now, I am thinking that I will learn to live with what I have. If I do, then I may also learn that I do not “have” any of the things that give me life. They are all on loan from the Creator, who is counting on me and my kind to share them with all creation.

Barbara Brown Taylor is the author of ‘Luminous Web: Essays on Science’ (Cowley). Source: beliefnet.com

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association 

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.  Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.  These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.  I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” ~ Albert Einstein

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.  I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day.  Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience.  Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.  Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.  At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain , without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.  That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.  I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.  I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case, you fail by default. 

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London .

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries.  I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government.  Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.  And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well- being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.  Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.  And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.  What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.  That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” ~Albert Einstein

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.  I wish you all very good lives.

So we were lying on our backs on the grass in the park next to our hamburger wrappers, my 14-year-old son and I, watching the clouds loiter overhead, when he asked me, “Dad, why are we here?”

And this is what I said:

“I’ve thought a lot about it, son, and I don’t think it’s all that complicated. I think maybe we’re here just to teach a kid how to bunt or eat sunflower seeds without using his hands.

“We’re here to pound the steering wheel and scream as we listen to the game on the radio, 20 minutes after we pulled into the garage. We’re here to look all over, give up, and then find the ball in the hole.

“We’re here to wear our favorite sweat-soaked Boston Red Sox cap, torn Slippery Rock sweatshirt, and the Converse sneakers we lettered in on a Saturday morning with nowhere we have to go and no one special we have to be.

“We’re here to tie the perfect fly, make the perfect cast, catch absolutely nothing, and still call it a perfect morning.

“We’re here to nail a yield sign with an apple core from half a block away. We’re here to win the stuffed bear or go broke trying.

“I don’t think the meaning of life is gnashing our bicuspids over what comes after death but tasting all the tiny moments that come before it. We’re here to be there when our kid has three goals and an assist. And especially when he doesn’t.

“I don’t think we’re here to make SportsCenter. The really good stuff never does. Like finding ourselves with a free afternoon, a little red 327 fuel-injected 1962 Corvette convertible, and an unopened map of Vermont’s backroads.

“None of us will find ourselves on our deathbeds saying, ‘I wish I’d spent more time on the Hibbings account.’ We’re going to say, ‘That scar? I got that scar stealing a home run from Consolidated Plumbers!’

“See, grown-ups spend so much time doggedly slaving toward the better car, the perfect house, the big day that will finally make them happy, when happy just walked by wearing a bicycle helmet two sizes too big for him. We’re not here to find a way to heaven. The way is heaven.

“Does that answer your question, son?”

And he said, “Not really, Dad.”

And I said, “No?”

And he said, “No, what I meant is, why are we here when Mom said to pick her up 40 minutes ago?” .

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag’s side door! He slammed on the brakes and drove the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown.

The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car, shouting, “What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing?
That’s a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money.
Why did you do it?”

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life.  But there was always some obstacle in the way.  Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid.  Then life would begin.  At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”  ~Fr. Alfred D’Souza

The young boy was apologetic. “Please mister … please, I’m sorry… I didn’t know what else to do,” he pleaded.
“I threw the brick because no one else would stop…”

With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car.

“It’s my brother,” he said.
“He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can’t lift him up.”

Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, “Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He’s hurt and he’s too heavy for me.”

Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out his fancy handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay.

“Thank you and may God bless you,” the grateful child told the stranger.

Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the little boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home. It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message: Don’t go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!

God whispers in our souls and speaks to our hearts. Sometimes when we don’t have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at us.

It’s our choice: Listen to the whisper … or wait for the brick!