"Open your heart to me slightly, and I will open the world to you."

   - The Zohar

Bharangi invites you to come and study Kabbalah with her.

"We can learn not to keep situations or events alive in our minds, but to return our attention continuously to the prisitine, timeless present moment rather than be caught up in mental movie-making. Our very Presence then becomes our identity, rather than our thoughts and emotions."

"Whatever you accept completely will take you to peace, including the acceptance that you cannot accept, that you are in resistance."

   - Eckhart Tolle

Why People Suffer
The Impact of the Imagination

"Most people suffer. I witness this suffering regularly in my work as a psychotherapist. What may surprise you is the source of their suffering. Most people think the source of their suffering is someone or something out there in the world - the behaviour of family or colleagues, or the unfortunate events of life. Yet the cause of suffering is from within. Suffering is a result of the stories people tell themselves.

Research reveals that the average person thinks nine times as many negative thoughts as positive thoughts; tells themselves nine times as many negative stories as positive stories. Research also tells us the human body does not distinguish between a real event and an imagined event. Therefore, when we tell ourselves a negative story or think a negative thought, our bodies respond as if these imaginings are real. Medical researchers have discovered that many of us think ourselves sick.

"I've had a very difficult life.
Fortunately, most of it didn't happen."
Mark Twain

What does this mean for us? It means we need to be careful with the kind of stories we tell ourselves. We need to be vigilant in monitoring the kind of thoughts we imagine and the images we expose ourselves to. Television, radio, and newspapers have a profound impact on us. We should treat them with the same degree of caution we would any powerful or toxic substance.

When confronted with life's challenges, it is important to consider the various possibilities in order to develop appropriate responses. However, if one becomes immersed in their negative imaginings, they will suffer greatly because of these imaginings. I've learned we can manage life. What we can't manage is our imagination about what might happen because our imaginations don't actually exist.

To experience peace and joy at home and at work it is important to understand the impact of our imagination on our day-to-day experience. If we want to be happy and healthy we need to take responsibility for the stories we tell ourselves and allow to be told to us.

Use your imagination constructively and creatively. Imagine the kind of outcomes you would like to occur. See in your mind's eye what success looks and feels like. One of the core messages contained in 'The Secret' was the tremendous power of the imagination. Einstein understood the importance of imagination. He declared, "Imagination is more important than knowledge". We can move from fear and anger to peace and joy simply by using our imagination positively. Our imagination is a powerful tool. Use it with care."

   - Ted Kuntz
   Author: Peace Begins With Me

"The very idea that you are ever apart from it and have to find it, or that it has limits of any kind, is the illusion. The Absolute has no opposite. Nothing is outside of it or inside of it. It is One without a second. It only pretends to be divided up or lost. When seeking ends, everything is enlightened, even delusion. Everything is flooded with gratitude. Life is no longer about searching for a personal attainment; it is play, exploration, celebration, uncaused joy. Nothing needs to be different from how it is. You are choosing absolutely all of it."

   - Joan Tollifson

"I have simply stopped arguing with reality. How do I know the wind should blow? It's blowing. How do I know this is the highest order? It's happening. Arguing with 'what is' is like teaching a cat to bark. It's not very fulfilling.

I am my friend and no longer confused. The way I know that reality is good is that when I argue the point I experience tension, fear and frustration. I lose - not sometimes, but 100% of the time. It just doesn't feel natural inside: no balance, no connection. I want reality to change? Hopeless. Let me change my thinking.

Some of us mentally argue with 'what is.' Others of us attempt to control and change 'what is,' and then tell ourselves and others that we actually had something to do with any apparent change that took place. This leaves no connection or room for God in my life. In the peaceful experience of no opposition to God, I remain aware of my nature: clear, vibrant, a friend, a listener."

   - Byron Katie
     from Loving What Is

"Let food be your medicine
and medicine be your food."

   - Hippocrates, 400 BC

“THINKING for most people is involuntary and compulsive, even addictive. Many people are tortured on a daily basis by their minds, by the voice in their head that never stops speaking. Most negative emotional states are caused by dysfunctional thinking, and EMOTIONS are the REACTIONS of your body to your thoughts. For example, grievances, resentments, guilt etc. disappear when the voice in your head stops telling its old stories. FEAR disappears when your mind no longer creates future scenarios to which your BODY REACTS as if they were present reality.”

   - Eckhart Tolle
     from The Power of Now

“Love is not an emotion,
it is your very existence.”

   - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

“Stillness ~ that which we already are ~ is the only true healer, the only true lover, the only true friend.  Why go elsewhere when it’s already here? When the Stillness is known, then it becomes as if we are the cake and everything else is the icing!”

   - Moni Vangolen

Rumi

- The Guest House -

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

   - Jalaluddin Rumi

"The Self alone exists, and the self alone is real. Verily the self alone is the world the "I" and God. All that exists is but the manifestation of Supreme Being".

"Self is only Being - not being this or that. It is Simple Being. Be, and there is the end of ignorance".

   - Ramana Maharshi