The Secret to happiness

What do we all have in common? We all want to be happy, no matter what age, stage, cultural or economic background we come from. The pursuit of happiness in universal terms simply amounts to feeling loved. Is it surprising then that when someone compliments us it makes our day and criticism makes us feel hurt and wounded?

Where are you looking for happiness?

The pursuit of happiness is really the search for love, approval and appreciation from the outside. Deep down, most of us function from the belief that, “Unless people approve of me, I’m worthless”. Most of us grew up believing that the admiration and respect of others [society] will get us the happiness and success we want. We also believe that satisfaction will be attained by romance or marriage, wealth or fame. No wonder then that we all live in a fear of failing and thus the fear almost runs our lives.
As long as our safety depends on how others judge us, we’re doomed for a life of disappointment. One of my gurus said to me, “No appointments, no disappointments!” Think about it. Expectation and disappointments are two sides of the same coin.
A familiar fear we all experience is the feeling, “There’s something wrong with me, and I’m not OK. If I was OK, they would love me and think I’m important.” We hardly ever inquire within ourselves if this is really true, and we may spend our life living this lie.

Why does this feeling originate?

It all starts in our thinking process. Whenever our thoughts focus on what’s missing in our life, when we feed a feeling of ‘lack’, we germinate the seeds of discontent. Our mental chatter becomes, “If only I .. had a companion/ was rich/ was living in America and so on. I would be happy.”
The irony is that the more we concentrate on what’s missing the more we struggle to win love and appreciation from others and the more we move away from actually experiencing them. Like needy little children, we banish happiness every time we want to impress and win approval from them. Whenever we try to please or manipulate others, or try to influence their reactions, we are increasing fear in our life. No wonder then, that the result is pain. Control creates separation and separation is painful.

Want to know the secret?

The eternal paradox is that in order to feel loved and appreciated we first need to love ourselves. Until then, no act of God or mortal can make us feel valuable and appreciated. When we love and accept ourselves we can allow others to love us. Now how simple is that! As simple as you make it to be! Go on, be happy and spread the secret.
Courtesy: Complete Well-Being

Be Yourself

“Be Yourself” A beautiful example of flowers

The rose is beautiful, dancing in the wind, in the sun, in the rain, because it has not wasted itself in trying to be a lotus. The lotus is beautiful for the same reason. The marigold is beautiful; all the flowers are beautiful, for the simple reason that they are just themselves. Think of a rose trying to be a lotus. Sooner or later it will end up in a psychoanalyst’s office. It will drive itself crazy. In trying to be a lotus its whole energy will be wasted and it will not even be possible for it to be a rose. If it becomes possible at all, then it will be a very poor rose with no color, no perfume, no dance, and no song.

You can see it everywhere. People look sad, burdened, as if they are carrying a mountain on their shoulders. And they are all carrying a psychological weight; they have been burdened, and they have been knowingly burdened.’”"

Buddha’s Message to Humanity

Be yourself, has been the message of all enlightened ones. Buddha says, “Be a light unto yourself.” That was his last statement. Dying, on the deathbed, he opened his eyes and gave his last message to humanity—‘Be a light unto yourself… don’t imitate anybody.’

Imitation Makes you Weak

So on one hand imitation makes you weak; on the other hand it makes you miserable. Weak and miserable that’s what vested interests want you to be. And they have found such a beautiful trick that unless you are very intelligent you are bound to be trapped, because who would not like to be a Jesus? The idea fascinates. Who would not like to be a Buddha? It hypnotists. Buddha is beauty—pure beauty and grace.

Hence the child cannot say to the parents or to the teachers, “You are wrong.” It feels reasonable and sensible. But it causes tremendous harm, it makes you hate yourself. You cannot love yourself. And the more you fail in being the other, the more you hate yourself.

I have observed thousands of people, I have been working on thousands of people continuously, and my own observation is that rarely do I come across a person who loves himself.

Jesus’ Saying

Jesus says, “Love your enemies as you love yourself…” and you would think that it is a very difficult thing to love your enemies. No, it is not. The real difficulty is to love yourself. You can love your enemy which is not that difficult at all. The real difficulty is to love yourself, to respect yourself, to accept yourself as you are, unconditionally. That is the beginning of revolution, and the beginning of transformation.

My whole teaching can be condensed into these two words: be yourself.

Source: Complete Well-Being

Change Vs Growth

Change is a six-letter word with a meaning that will never hold true. Growth, on the other hand, is the fuel that will move mountains. All of the negatives and positives life has thrown at you are the building blocks of growth. Change can be forced for any number of reasons. Growth, on the other hand, is self-motivated. Growth is real. Growth is everlasting.

 

Life is a puzzle, and there is no right or wrong way to solve it, but rather, your own way. We all have journeys that we travel, and along the way, we will encounter people and experiences we never imagined. These experiences will shape us and guide us moving forward. You can choose to learn from them and reflect upon them with the people closest to you, in order to interpret what they mean, or you can chock them up to mean nothing more than any other random event in your life.

Personally, I will always choose the first option. The ability to reflect upon what you have experienced, along with how and why you experienced it is the catalyst of growth. Growth will always come when you least expect it. To wait around for personal growth is futile.

You need to get out there and simply live. Make mistakes. Fall on your face more than once and learn from what you experience. Just like the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Insanity should be the definition of a failed attempt at change. Growth is repeating an action, looking your self in the mirror and recognizing that it didn’t work out with the first attempt.

Let’s switch our approach up. The ability to do this is by growth. As I write this passage and pass along all that I have experienced and learned, I reflect back on the moments when friends and family saw my failed attempts at change disguised as growth and immediately called me out.

Those that are closest to you and love you for who you are will always be the first to recognize the real you from the fake. The pressure to get to a certain point in your life and be a certain person can be daunting. You must always try your best to ignore those pressures.

There are no re-dos in life, just the next moment to correct your mistake. You can’t change the past, but the future is yours to shape anyway you choose. Get out there and live everyday. Love with every ounce of your soul. For in the end, life will flash you by in a blink of an eye. Live and love everyday. When the game is over, and all is said and done, the opinion you have of yourself and the life you live is what will flood your mind. Make it a worth recalling. Make it a life others wish they experienced. Live. Life. Progress.

Source: Elite Daily 

Love is a Ladder to God

Love is a Ladder to God

When you are trying to be somebody else, naturally you start acting. And when you start imitating you will imitate everything. You will imitate love, and that is the most dangerous thing. Jesus loved so you will start loving. But how can you love unless you attain the consciousness that Jesus attained? Love is a fragrance. When the one-thousand-petaled lotus of consciousness opens in you, the fragrance is released. If you start feigning it, that will be just artificial.

You can bring perfume from the marketplace and you can start throwing the perfume all over yourself, and of course, it will stink because it will not be your own flowering. It will be artificial and ugly.
And once a person starts feigning love, his whole life becomes false, because love is the center of life. Love is the very purpose of life, the destiny of life.

Doubting love is unhealthy

Love is something natural. You can doubt God, there is no problem in it. In fact, one should doubt God because unless you doubt, the inquiry cannot begin. One should begin one’s inquiry into God as an atheist; to begin as a theist is to begin in a wrong way. You have already believed, now how can you inquirer? I am not saying disbelieve in God, because that again is a belief, a negative belief. Begin with doubt—doubt is natural.

Love and doubt are both God-given gifts, but you should not doubt love because to doubt love is dangerous. One natural gift will start destroying another natural gift. You will be in a conflict. And if you start doubting love you will start repressing it. If you start doubting love you will become incapable of loving, you will become closed.

And the moment your loving becomes encapsulated you are lost, because you lose the very bridge between you and existence.

Love is forever

Love is as perennial as the grass. Love is the only experience, which transcends death. All that is God-given to you, which includes many things—intelligence is there, compassion is there, sympathy is there, creativity is there, sensitivity is there, and so on and so forth—but love is the only experience in which time disappears. Love is the only experience in which naturally you enter into meditation. Love is the only experience in which you are not afraid of death at all.
It is love experienced that one day becomes prayer, and it is prayer that one day becomes the experience of godliness.

Money cannot buy fulfillment

You desire money and you hope that when the money is there you will be happy. The moment money is there, suddenly you realize you are not happy. Money is there, but the happiness has not followed it. Money cannot purchase happiness; it can purchase comfort.

I am not against money and I am not against comfort either, but comfort is comfort; happiness is a totally different phenomenon. Comfort is good, but it is not happiness, it is not blissfulness, it is not fulfillment. You can live comfortably and die comfortably, but that will not make you contented.

Money can purchase many things, but there are a few things it cannot purchase and those are the few things, which are really valuable. The really valuable has no price, it is priceless, you have to deserve it.

Life is bound to be arid, desert-like, if you don’t have any love in you. It is going to be a continuous disillusionment, from one disillusionment to another. By the time you reach the very end, you are nothing but a sad, sad story.

Source: Complete Well-being

Where does the fear come from?

All your fears are by-products of identification. You love a woman and with the love, in the same parcel, comes fear: she may leave you—she has already left somebody and come with you. There is a precedent; perhaps she will do the same to you. There is fear; you feel knots in the stomach. You are too attached.

You cannot get a simple fact: you have come alone in the world; you have been here yesterday also, without this woman, perfectly well, without any knots in the stomach. And tomorrow if this woman goes…what is the need of the knots? You know how to be without her, and you will be able to be without her.

The fear that things may change tomorrow… Somebody may die, you may go bankrupt, your job may be taken away. There are a thousand and one things, which may change. You are burdened with fears and fears, and none of them are valid—because yesterday also you were full of all these fears, unnecessarily. Things may have changed, but you are still alive. And man has an immense capacity to adjust himself in any situation.

They say that only man and cockroaches have this immense capacity of adjustment. That’s why wherever you find man you will find cockroaches, and wherever you find cockroaches you will find man. They go together, they have a similarity. Even in faraway places like the North Pole or the South Pole… When man travelled to those places, he suddenly found that he had brought cockroaches with him, and they were perfectly healthy and living and reproducing.

If you just look around the earth you can see—man lives in thousands of different climates, geographical situations, political situations, sociological situations, religious situations, but he manages to live. And he has lived for centuries… things go on changing, he goes on adjusting.

There is nothing to fear. Even if the world ends, so what? You will be ending with it. Do you think you will be standing on an island and the whole world will end, leaving you alone? Don’t be worried. At least you will have a few cockroaches with you!

What is the problem if the world ends? It has been asked to me many times. But what is the problem?—if it ends, it ends. It does not create any problem because we will not be here; we will be ending with it, and there will be no one to worry about. It will be really the greatest freedom from fear.

The world ending means every problem ending, every disturbance ending, every knot in your stomach ending. I don’t see the problem. But I know that everybody is full of fear.

But the question is the same: the fear is part of the mind. The mind is a coward, and has to be a coward because it doesn’t have substance—it is empty and hollow, and it is afraid of everything. And basically, it is afraid that one day you may become aware. That will be really the end of the world!

Not the end of the world but your becoming aware, your coming to a state of meditation where mind has to disappear—that is its basic fear. Because of that fear it keeps people away from meditation, makes them enemies of people like me who are trying to spread something of meditation, some way of awareness and witnessing. They become antagonistic to me—not without any reason; their fear is well-founded.

They may not be aware of it, but their mind is really afraid to come close to anything that can create more awareness. That will be the beginning of the end of the mind. That will be the death of the mind.

But for you there is no fear. The death of the mind will be your rebirth, your beginning to really live. You should be happy, you should rejoice in the death of the mind, because nothing can be a greater freedom. Nothing else can give you wings to fly into the sky; nothing else can make the whole sky yours.

Mind is a prison

Awareness is getting out of the prison—or realising it has never been in the prison; it was just thinking that it was in the prison. All fears disappear.

I am also living in the same world, but I have never felt for a single moment any fear because nothing can be taken away from me. I can be killed—but I will be seeing it happening, so what is being killed is not me, is not my awareness.

The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears. And you will go on creating new fears—there is no end to it. You will live in fear, you will die in fear, and you will never be able to taste something of freedom. And it was all the time your potential; any moment you could have claimed it, but you never claimed it.

A total human being has not been born yet

It is true that all great qualities are feminine—love, compassion, sympathy, kindness. All these qualities have a flavour of the feminine. Male qualities are those of a warrior, like courage. They are hard qualities; one has to be like steel. Because man’s qualities have developed through war, and female qualities have developed at home, in the garden of love, with the husband and children—she has lived in a totally different world. Man has lived continuously fighting. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars on the earth—as if killing is man’s only profession.

The world has lived in two parts. Man has made his own world while the woman has lived in a shadow—she has created her own world in this shadow. It is very unfortunate because a man or a woman, to be complete, to be whole, must have all the qualities together. Both men and women should be as soft as a rose petal and as hard as a sword—both together. So whatever the opportunity and whenever the situation demands it… if the situation needs you to be a sword, you are ready; if the situation needs you to be just a rose petal, you are ready. This flexibility—between the rose petal and the sword—will make your life richer. And it is not only between two qualities, it is between all the qualities.

Man and woman are two parts of one whole; their world should also be one whole, and they should share all the qualities without any distinction—no quality should be stamped as feminine or masculine. When you make somebody masculine that person loses great things in his life. He becomes juiceless, he becomes stale, and he becomes hard, almost dead. And the woman who completely forgets how to be hard, how to be a rebel is bound to become a slave, because she has only soft qualities. Now roses cannot fight with swords, they will be crushed and killed and destroyed.

A total human being has not been born yet. There have been men and there have been women, but there have not been human beings. My whole approach is to bring the whole man to the earth — with all the beautiful qualities of woman and with all the courageous, rebellious, adventurous qualities of man. And they should all be part of one whole. But from the very beginning we start telling children… a small boy, if he wants to play with toys like girls, we immediately stop him and say, “Be ashamed of yourself; you are a boy, you are a man, don’t be girlish. And if a girl tries to climb a tree we stop her immediately: “This is not ladylike, climbing a tree; this is for the boys, it is rough. You just come down!”

From the very beginning we start dividing man and woman into parts. Both suffer—because climbing a tree has a joy of its own, no woman should miss it. To be on top of a tree when the wind is strong, in the sun, with the birds singing… if you have not been to that point, you have missed something. And just because you are a woman? Strange…

To be adventurous, to climb the mountains, to swim the oceans—should not be prevented just because you are a woman, because that thrill is something spiritual. A man should not be prevented when he wants to cry. He is prevented, he cannot bring tears—tears are only for women: “You are a man; behave like a man!” And tears are such a beautiful experience. In deep sadness or in great joy, whenever something is overflowing, tears give expression to it. And if tears are repressed, at the same time what they were going to express—the deep sadness or the great joy—is also repressed.

And remember perfectly well that nature has not made any difference. It has given every man and woman the same tear glands, of equal size. But if you are a man and you are crying, then everybody condemns you, as if, “You are behaving like a woman.”

You should say, “What can I do? Nature itself has given me tear glands. Nature is behaving like a woman. It is not my responsibility; I am simply enjoying my nature. Tears are my right.”

All qualities should be available to everybody.

There are men who become incapable of love because they are trained for certain qualities: “You have to be hard. You have to be competitive. You are not to show emotions. You must not be sentimental.”

Now how do you expect a man who is not emotional, not sentimental, who is not allowed to feel… how can you expect him to love? And when he misses love, his life becomes miserable. And the same is happening on both sides.

I would like all distinctions to disappear. Everybody should be allowed everything that is naturally possible to the person whether he is a man or a woman.

And we would have a richer world consisting of richer people.

One, with the Pios Companion, is never Deprived

Rasulullah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam has said: “One who sits in the company of the accepted servants of Allah, can never remain wretched. Allah changes his wretchedness into auspiciousness.” There is a lengthy hadith, a part of which is, that a person was passing by the gathering of Allah’s people – he had not come specially for the gathering, but just decided to sit down. Although Allah knows everything, He asked the malaikah what those people were engaged in. At the end of this hadith it is mentioned that Allah calls the malaikah to bear witness and says: “I have forgiven all of them, even the one who sat in the gathering just as he was passing by, because I do not deprive even those who sit near My accepted servants. ” Look! Here in Dera Ghazi Khan, whatever is being prepared for Hadhrat Wala Hardoi Damat Barakatuhu, the same things are being served to everyone else, even his attendants. If this is the condition of worldly bounties, then Insha Allah the same will be the condition in Jannat. If the result of the companionship with the friends of Allah is such that wretchedness changes into piety, and one develops a powerful strength to do good deeds, then what must be the condition of one’s Iman after the companionship of prophethood?

Just by Rasulullah’s Sallallahu alaihi wasallam sight falling on a person, that person becomes a Sahabi, and the world’s greatest wali can never reach the status of any Sahabi. It was thus through the blessing of the company of Rasulullah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam that Hadhrat Abu Mas’ood Radiallahu anhu realized this and said: “O Rasulullah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam, I free this slave for the sake of Allah in lieu of beating him.” Rasulullah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam replied: “If you would not have shown mercy to the slave, the fire of Jahannum would have burnt you to ashes.” Who is this? None other than a Sahabi who has seen Rasululllah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam.

Which oppressor can then say that he performs tahajjud, makes zikr and is a saint, so he will not be punished for his anger? Think and ponder over this fact. We think that just because we perform worship, we have all the right to trouble and oppress our fellow Muslims, our brothers, sisters, wives etc. We think there is no law and order for us. Look! A companion of Allah’s Rasul Sallallahu alaihi wasallam, Abu Mas’ûd Radiallahu Anhu is being warned that had he not shown mercy to his slave, the fire of Jahannum would have been wrapped around him on the day of Qiyamah. Can we be greater than the Sahabi, Abu Mas’ood? If we say that our anger is not harming us, then we are actually trying to claim that our stage is higher than the Sahabi (Na ûzûbillah). My friends! Many people say, “We do not need spiritual guides,” yet, imagine, even a Sahabi like Hadhrat Abu Mas’ood Radiallahu Anhu needs a trainer and guide! When Hadhrat Abu Bakr (RA) who is the most virtuous amongst mankind after the Ambiya (AS), was in need of a guide, he needed a guardian, then who are we to say that we do not need to be guided and reformed

Pride Leads One To Anger

Another important point is that an angry person thinks himself to be very great. Pride is hidden in the folds of his anger. When he is angry at someone, his intention is to degrade that person and prove his own greatness. When anger arises in him, look at his face or put a mirror in front of him and tell him to see for himself, or record his angered voice on a tape and let him listen to it. A human being never realizes his own illnesses, he may say that his anger is for the sake of Allah, but this assumption of his can never be reliable. He should have it tested by a spiritual guide who has far sightedness, and will tell him if his anger is right, but the one who says he is always right, is in fact the wrong one.

One who tells his spiritual guide that he does not know anything and that the one who is the target of his anger is such and such, then know that he thinks his spiritual guide to be a fool. Chase such a disciple out of the khanqah (institution of spiritual guidance and reformation) holding him by his ear. In anger, if you have oppressed someone, never be ashamed to ask forgiveness of him. Please him in this world, otherwise you will be sorry on the day of Qiyamah! Now, listen to what status that person will get who makes amends and has his anger treated. Once Hadhrat Phulpoori (RA) got extremely angry at a person, for though he was a great friend of Allah, he was after all human and it is only human to make mistakes. The person with whom Hadhrat got angry was a villager who was a little backward. His village was about one and a half miles away from Phulpoor to which he returned. After the villager had left, Hadhrat regretted having become so angry at him. He therefore set out for that village after Asr, to ask forgiveness from the villager.

Hadhrat relates that he was so upset over what he had done that he could not think straight and even lost his way. Somehow he searched for the way through the fields and finally reached the village quite late. Hadhrat asked the man to forgive him for the sake of Allah, as he had wronged him. The villager would not agree saying: “You are a great Moulana, and I am an ignorant one. You are like my father and a father has rights upon his son.” Hadhrat said to him: “I don’t know what will happen on the day of Qiyamah, only then will it be known who is small and who is great. Until you do not tell me that you have forgiven me, I will not move from here.” The person then said: “All right, only because you are commanding me, in order to please you, I will say that I have forgiven you, but otherwise you have great rights over me.” Then only did Hadhrat return. On the same night, Hadhrat saw in his dream that Rasulullah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam and Hadhrat Ali (RA) were sitting in a boat, and at a little distance from them, he was sitting alone in another boat. Rasulullah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam commanded Hadhrat Ali (RA) to join Hadhrat’s boat to his Sallallahu alaihi wasallam’s own boat.

When Hadhrat Ali (RA) joined them, it made such a beautiful sound, the enjoyment of which Hadhrat was still feeling right upto the time he narrated the dream. Look! What an immense reward was given for humbling oneself and being regretful!