When you require guidance for inquiry from outside you are not yet committed to spirituality.

When you feel sad or bad about anything in this world, your wisdom is not functioning The one who is studying philosophy and the one who is walking the spiritual path is the ego. Find out who or what is this ego. When we study philosophy the ego fattens when we practice spirituality the ego weakens to such an extent that the ego disappears. Yoga is not twisting the body. Yoga is straightening the mind If you have ticked no in the question while entering this anityam, asukham lokam, whether you want to be miserable, even God cannot make you miserable You dont have to become spiritual. You ARE spiritual, you have to unbecome being a samsari. Worry is trying to solve non existing problems. We ourselves project the problem, and we solve it mentally. Worry about god is atmachintan On the path from ignorance to knowledge, the atma bal which propels you is called shraddha Always remember bhagwan is the sadhya and samsar is the sadhan. Dont reverse this by asking things then god becomes the sadhan and samsar becomes the sadhya When you pray, remember that you are a small diya, daring to go in front of the sun Ashanti ka abhava is not shanti 2 types of people are very happy in this world. The completely ignorant and the one who knows all. All the rest of us, interested in adhayatma are like trishanku All spiritual sadhana is only to cleanse yourself. The goal is not god realization or some such abstract shit. He is ever realized. You need to empty yourself, so he can expand and shine through you. Gita mein hridayam partha. Gita is my heart parth A subtle thing starts happening when you begin training your mind in samatva. You dont even notice it, but slowly but surely your ego erodes away. Like a tree at the banks of a river does not even realize, the ground is eroding and the tree will fall. Do not give your mind food of unnecessary things and keep increasing its vikshepa Be in the utter present. When you laugh , you are mr nobody. When you are in the utter present you are mr nobody. You can only be happy when you are nobody. Dont do japa to get something from God. It is like somebody gave me an elephant, as a gift. And then he asks what will you do with the elephant, and I say I have a kitchen garden behind my house, and I was

thinking of ploughing it, so I will employ the elephant to plough the kitchen garden. He can lift the whole house! In the same manner, we go to god to ask for things! God should be the goal and life should be the means, but we make God the means and life the goal. Taking your mind from God and putting it into the world is going from the Sublime to the Ridiculous It is easier to sustain perpetual miseries in life, it is very difficult to digest perpetual successes in life. Those who are perpetually successful enlarge their ego and become arrogant. In devotion the I is surrendered right at the beginning and therefore a word comes in the Gita, yoga brashta. There is a possibility of fall in yoga, there is no bhakti brashta , because there is no possibility of falling in devotion, because the seeker has already fallen on the feet of the Lord, further where will he fall? In karma and dhyana yoga, the I is strengthened, if one is not careful. Surrender to the Lord is the only way to get rid of I . Hamesha aakde rehna, murdo ki pehchan hai Aadab se jhukna, zindadili ka naam hai karma, karma is baby class. You cannot remain in the KG class through out your life. You have to grow up. How long are we going to keep talking about paap, punya, dharma, adharma. We have no relationship with anybody in this world. We are not the body, we are the embodied. Our only relationship is with the divine. If you do not want to change, even the Lord cannot help us. Spiritual practice is the recognition that we HAVE to change. This is the first step. Read a chapter of Gita everyday. When you are fresh. Then verse by verse, read a verse everyday and a commentary on the verse. Then write down your understanding of that verse. As if you are giving the biggest exam of your life. Then keep going. When you finish 700 verses, come back to the start. You will think, was I such a fool. When you study the Gita sincerely, slowly you start falling in love with it. Then the Gita starts revealing itself to you. mudha is the one who is under the influence of mood maya tatam idam sarvam jagat avyakta murtinamna cha mat sthani bhutani bhagvan says, me the formless supports all the forms, so all the forms are in me,but Im not in them. But to be frank with you, neither they are in me , nor Im in them. I ALONE AM. As we dont understand arjuna also did not understand. But as we keep quiet, arjuna also kept quiet. In 11th chap, when arjuna asked Krishna to show his ultimate vision, if he thinks he is qualified to see it, Krishna was more eager than arjuna. Parigraha hi dukham- do not hold on to anybody or anything in this world, it is surely going to hurt you. Jo aasakti hai, who jaa bhi sakti hai.

Random quotes-----

If we can see it, there is greater joy in sorrow than in all the pleasures of this alluring world.
In the endless adventure of existence, God and man are comrades. God is our one unfailing companion. He will never leave us. We may try to run away from him. But he will continue to follow us as our own shadow. In the words of Thompson, he is the Heavenly Hound. If a person has moved in the wrong direction, he can always take a U-turn. The angels of God will be with him. The past does not cannot bind us! When all around us the storms blow and the tempests roar, let us close our eyes, think of God and repeat the words God is with me-and He is in control. Those are words of power and can quell the fiercest storm.

When God gives us problems, it is to humble us and not to tumble us. Can you dwell a little more on the inner world, the mind? Generally, we are present physically in a place while being psychologically elsewhere. Outer seeing makes you see physically where you are. Inner seeing makes you see psychologically where you are.

21. When your suffering is due to Karma, your past deeds, you have to understand that you are only repaying your debt.

Ishta devata- the formed ambassador for the formless

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. ~Victor Hugo I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds. ~Quentin Crisp How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827 There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way." ~C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 1943

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe in the God idea, not God himself. ~Miguel de Unamuno Those who never rebelled against God or at some point in their lives shaken their fists in the face of heaven, have never encountered God at all. ~Catherine Marshall, Christy, 1967 If you are not as close to God as you used to be, who moved? ~Author Unknown
God has editing rights over our prayers. He will... edit them, correct them, bring them in line with His will and then hand them back to us to be resubmitted. The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal. No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive. What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering. When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it. He seemed to be talking about my fears, my insecurity, and my unwillingness to see what was wonderful because tomorrow it might disappear and I might suffer. The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not. They d

God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars

The will of God will never take you to where the grace of God will not protect you

Of course I prayed--and did God care? He cared as much as on the air A bird had stamped her foot And cried "Give me!" God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in it

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else. Nothing external to you has any power over you. A sad Texan once prayed, "Lord, I wish you would make it rain - not so much for me, I've seen it - but for my 7-yearold The universe is wider than our views of it. Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them. If my resolution to be a great man was half so strong as it is to despise the shame of being a little one . . . . Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because actually deserve them? So now I take comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the Universe

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players, (ie everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this. t is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called liv ing. In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

God, grant me the Senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference

When the tides of life turn against you and the current upsets your boat, don't waste those tears on what might have been, just lie on your back and float.

If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone. One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt

What one profoundly expects to happen, will happen! (Not what one wishes or hopes or calculates, but subconsciously deeply expects.
"The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering." ~~ Ram Dass

Rahu folk, whether they are strong Rahu at birth or only temporarily insane from Rahu sub-period, often receive some negative social reinforcement while they are adventuring, having intense (often taboo) romances, or breaking other social codes in order to realize their deepest dreams. It depends on the overall tenor of the chart whether the person is spiritually conscious enough to turn Rahu's extremes to conscious profit. The usual voice-in-the-head effect under Rahu is "I must possess X in order to be happy." Unable to remember that one's goal is "happiness itself" rather than a specific representation of happiness, the person becomes extremely unhappy when the object of their desire escapes them
Sometimes there is a noticed spiritual symptom also, which is a loss of faith, a spiritualdoubt in divine providence; made worse by the pain and the sneaking suspicion that one is not really being cared for, it's all a scam and there is no proof of God.

90% of human daily communication is completely scripted. Repetitive, scripted communicative interactions within the group are consoling, bonding, confirming, unifying, and validating. I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble The Dalai Lama nodded sadly. "How did you deal with that feeling of regret? How did you eventually get rid of it?" The Dalai Lama silently considered for quite a while before replying, "I didn't get rid of it. It's still there. But even though that feeling of regret is still there, it isn't associated with a feeling of heaviness or a quality of pulling me back.

It would not be helpful to anyone if I let that feeling of regret weigh me down, be simply a source of discouragement and depression with no purpose, or interfere with going on with my life to the best of my ability."

At that moment, in a very visceral way, I was struck once again by the very real possibility of a human being's fully facing life's tragedies and responding emotionally, even with deep regret, but without indulging in excessive guilt or self-contempt.

The possibility of a human being's wholly accepting herself or himself, complete with limitations, foibles, and lapses of judgment. The possibility of recognizing a bad situation for what it is and responding emotionally, but without over-responding.

The Dalai Lama sincerely felt regret over the incident he described but carried his regret with dignity and grace. And while carrying this regret, he has not allowed it to weigh him down, choosing instead to move ahead and focus on helping others to the best of his ability.