Monthly Archives: March 2011

TOYS

Toys! Toys! It’s totally mind-boggling.
What will I buy? Ummm….. let me see.
Here’s the section for 3 year olds. My God!
These people are unbelievable. They have studied everything.
They know exactly what a 3 year old needs.

Toys for language development, fine motor skill development….
Wow! This one’s really great. It’s for preschoolers.
It teaches language, arts , mathematics and science.
I can see what he is learning and monitor his progress.
It’ll help me identify his interests and weaknesses.
Right now his biggest interest is throwing things around and his weakness…
I don’t know . Isn’t he perfect?
My God! I haven’t identified his weakness yet.
I hope it is not too late for that.

I should buy this.
How much does it cost? $69.99.

Wow! It must be really good.

So, what all things will I buy?
What will I not buy?
This is so confusing.
I want to develop him. I want to stimulate him.
He deserves the best, I’m sure.

It doesn’t matter he likes sweeping the floor, doing the laundry
and washing the dishes better than playing with his toys. He’s just staring out the window, watching a a squirrel and a bird and a leaf and a tree because I am not stimulating him enough.

I didn’t have any of these toys growing up.May be I am lacking in “Cognitive Development”.

The Beauty of Words

I have given a lot of thought to the POWER of words.
Words, if used properly, yields immense power to its user.

But I can’t deny the beauty of words UNEXPRESSED.
A loving gesture, a kind look, an understanding nod, a knowing smile
can take you to worlds unseen. Words can’t convey every feeling.
Some things are better left unsaid. Some feelings are so pure
and delicate that mere utterance would spoil them.

Teachings of Swami Vivekananda

1. Love Is The Law Of Life: All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore, love for love’s sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.
2. It’s Your Outlook That Matters: It is our own mental attitude, which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.
3. Life is Beautiful: First, believe in this world – that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!
4. It’s The Way You Feel: Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.
5. Set Yourself Free: The moment I have realised God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him – that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
6. Don’t Play The Blame Game: Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
7. Help Others: If money helps a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
8. Uphold Your Ideals: Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
9. Listen To Your Soul: You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
10. Be Yourself: The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
11. Nothing Is Impossible: Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin – to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
12. You Have The Power: All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
13. Learn Everyday: The goal of mankind is knowledge… now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man ‘knows’, should, in strict psychological language, be what he ‘discovers’ or ‘unveils’; what man ‘learns’ is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
14. Be Truthful: Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
15. Think Different: All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
16. You are bound to be beaten by waves if you stay on surface, go deeper and you would know the difference.

Life

Life unravels in spirals.
Each and every experience prepares you for the next stage.
Nothing happens in vain.
Even the silliest thing, if done sincerely will prove to
have special significance in your life.
It is an ongoing search for truth.
Always within your grasp, but always eluding you.