Am I Love?

Do I feel deeply a sincere love for all beings around me,
or am I making some kind of drama of love to confuse others? 
Do I live the life of actual love or do I make a show of love
and use the word love like a professional, an expert, to win the                      friendship and favor of others?
Do I have love or am I love?
Am I alive or am I life?
Am I conscious or am I consciousness?
Am I blissful or am I bliss?
Am I searching for ultimate reality or am I ultimate reality?

Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati


I was listening to a podcast this morning from Manorama, who teaches Sanskrit and Yoga Studies and she spoke these words from her Guruji and it struck me with great force. I wrote them down and read them over and over again. I actually felt overwhelmed by tears. Frankly, these are questions I had not directly thought of and applied to my life. I have decided to make these words my motto for the 2013 year and will place them where I can see them  and will ask myself these questions every day of this year. These are questions that we should all ponder and reflect upon as we meditate each day. It is not enough to speak of love, we must be love....I know very few human beings in my life who actually live as if they are love itself, including myself. This is my New Year's resolution, to strive everyday to become Love, what I am.

Jai Maa,
Nirvani

Prayer is Timeless....

(Photograph: Steve McCurry, Kuchi Nomads, Evening Prayer, Kandahar, Afghanistan, 1992)

In prayer, we come nearest to making a real clearance in the thicket of thought. Prayer takes thought to a place of stillness. Prayer slows the flow of the mind until we can begin to see with a new tranquility. In this kind of thought, we become conscious of our divine belonging. We begin to sense the serenity of this clearing. We learn that regardless of the fragmentation and turbulence in so many regions of our lives, there is a place in the soul where the voices and prodding of the world never reach. It is almost like the image of the tree. The branches can sway and quiver in the wind, the center of the tree, there pertains the stillness of its anchorage. In prayer, thought returns to its origin in the infinite. Attuned to its origin, thought reaches below its own netting. In this way prayer liberates thought from the small rooms where fear and need confine it. Despite all the negative talk about God, the Divine still remains the one space where thought can become free. There we will be liberated from the repetitive echoes of our own smallness and blindness… Prayer is the path to the secret belonging at the heart of our other lives.

—John O’Donohue from Eternal Echoes

(Source: http://parabola-magazine.tumblr.com)

    This is one of the most beautiful representations on prayer I have ever read. Prayer is not so common a word used among modern western spiritual thinkers. My perspective is that many people in our day have become disenchanted with orthodox religion  and tend to associate prayer with dogma. This could not be further from the truth in my opinion. For me, prayer is as essential as meditation to connecting and merging with the Divine. Prayer is talking to God/Goddess/Universe to convey some desire hoped for or expressing gratification for desires met. Spoken affirmations can also be considered a kind of prayer. Meditation, on the other hand, involves no action other than listening and just being. Unfortunately due to narrow-minded thinking prayer has been branded as religious and meditation as irreligious yet spiritual. In truth, prayer and meditation when used together, create a harmonious song of Oneness in the soul.

Jai Mata Di,

Nirvani

Soulful Sunday...

~If we were not so single-minded 

about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the world can teach us as when everything seems dead but later proves to be alive~

Pablo Neruda

Wisdom of Lao Tzu....

~Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.

When you realize there is nothing lacking,  the whole world belongs to you.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small.

The journey of a thousand miles must begin with  a single step.

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.

Kindness in giving creates love.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.~

Lao Tzu

Namaste,

Jennifer Renee