Mira Prabhu's Blog, page 25
February 14, 2017
Short Films: Manipulation of Time, Space, and The Human Form
Sam Cannon’s work focuses on the manipulation of time, space, and the human form…. exploring the way we interact with never-ending moments in the age of the 15 second clip…watch! And thanks, Alk3r!
Sam Cannon is an artist and director based in NYC. Her personal work focuses on the manipulation of time, space, and the human form.
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February 12, 2017
Death and Self-Realization
I am so grateful that many gave me a strong foundation in eastern philosophy. The first thing I absorbed was that my life was precious and that I could die at any moment; and that when I died, it was my state of consciousness that would determine much. Many think they can control their thoughts when death is imminent – not so – how we have lived before will determine our thoughts at that critical time.
Ramana Maharshi tells us, “Even if you fail to do it during your lifetime, you must think of God at least at the time of death, since one becomes what he thinks of at the time of death”. Great post, Harsh, thanks!!!
It is the ancient teaching of sages and scriptures that our mental state at the time of death determines our next birth. If at the time of death, we fully surrender to the Lord, the Universal Being, then we merge in God and are freed from all sorrows.
We usually think of that at the time of death what we have loved and thought about during life. Hence the purest souls who have devoted their whole life to serving the God of Love merge in that Universal Love immediately at the time of death and achieve complete liberation.
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February 7, 2017
Sage of Arunachala
The hallmark of a sage – he or she is completely at ease, no need to impress, no need for adulation or anything else….just pure blazing presence! Thanks for this post, Harsh Luthar!
The greatest yogis of the day and Shankracharyas came and visited Bhagavan Ramana.
They saw an ordinary frail man, who had nothing, sitting there on the rocks.
Bhagavan Ramana did not try to impress anyone.
The highest yogic adepts and saints instantly saw that they were in the presence of the Eternal Presence ItSelf.
February 4, 2017
Sally Cronin, #Author
Sally Cronin speaks to Tina Frisco – both are deep and wonderful women who blog and write and support other indie authors generously and intelligently…read on for more. : “Sally Cronin is a prolific author and blogger, a nutritional therapist, and has worked on radio and Internet television as producer and presenter. She is originally from England but has lived and worked all over the World. Her books can be purchased through Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Moyhill Publishing. I’m thrilled to feature her as my guest today, as we celebrate the launch of her new book.” Congratulations Sally!
Sally Cronin
is a prolific author and blogger, a nutritional therapist, and has worked on radio and Internet television as producer and presenter. She is originally from England but has lived and worked all over the World. Her books can be purchased through Amazon US, Amazon UK, and
Moyhill Publishing
. I’m thrilled to feature her as my guest today, as we celebrate the launch of her new book. Welcome, Sally!*************
Thank you so much, Tina, for this lovely invitation to join you today. I am only sorry it is not in person, but perhaps that might happen this year.
I’m hoping we’ll meet up at the Bloggers Bash, Sally. Keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime . . .
Tell us a little about yourself. I am a 64-year-old explorer. I have
done the tough…
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February 2, 2017
The Nature of Humility
“The more we are humble, the better it is for us”. ~ Ramana Maharshi. But what is this humility advocated here? Acknowledging, perhaps, that we are an integral part of the cosmos and that our true nature is far more than the body-mind system we currently inhabit. Thanks for this simple and deep post, Harsh Luthar!
Sri Ramana’s teaching is that the ego/mind merges in the Heart in two ways.
First, we can investigate the nature of the ego and examine the sense of “I” that we naturally feel and see where it arises. To do this, one needs to still the mind and with a purified and subtle intellect trace the “I” back to its source, the Heart. This is the yogic path of Jnana.
The second approach is to simply surrender the ego/mind without reservation to the Lord and accept that it is never our will but the Lord’s will as to what happens. If this attitude of “not my will but thine my Lord” penetrates deeply into our being, then we become accepting of everything. We see that worries and anxieties associated with ego/mind do not belong to us as we have surrendered our individual identity to the Lord. This is the approach…
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HAITIAN HEALER DESTROYS MY STORY
[image error]I love stepping into a new year for one major reason—a fresh chunk of time yawns before me, encouraging me to drop destructive behaviors and to cultivate new habits that better serve my highest goals. I decided to make this an early post (in 2017) so I can share with you how I came to dump the garbage of the past in order to create the kind of life I sought.
Well, a few years after my return to south India from New York at the cusp of the millennium, a Haitian woman I met at an Ashram asked if she could stay at my home for a couple of weeks. I agreed, albeit reluctantly, for at the time I was in a state of profound confusion and really didn’t want company. You see, I had returned to India to find a sure way to inner peace, but every one of my plans had gone awry; now, many crises later, I did not know which way to turn. Returning to the USA was tempting for various reasons—in general, a circle of good friends and a much more liberal way of life—but then I had no desire to get back into the 9-5 boogie in order to keep body and soul together. As for India, after enjoying the exuberant frenzy of life in Manhattan, I was finding it difficult to re-adapt, especially since my beautiful new home was located in the suburbs and it was a real chore to drive all the way to the city on a regular basis where I could engage in new activities. I had reached a mental and emotional stalemate and panic about the future was driving me pretty crazy.
I guess this woman she felt sorry for me. One sunny morning she led me to the terrace and handed me an empty notebook. “I want you to write down all that is bothering you, and please don’t ask why,” she ordered peremptorily. I obeyed her and quickly scribbled down all that was weighing me down. But when I offered her my sob story to read, she shook her head firmly. “Write it again,” she said. Her expression was so stern that once again I obeyed. This happened several more times, believe it or not, until I realized my tale of woe was getting shorter and shorter and I was getting thoroughly sick of it! Finally she gave me a brilliant smile and said: “All right, now you can see it’s just another boring story. Time to drop it and get on with your life—you are far more than your stories—you are LIFE itself!
Now I am a writer and I love stories. Stories are rich and fascinating and can inspire us enormously. But, as many of us figure out over time, to concoct a story about our lives that keeps us trapped in dysfunction is a dangerous thing. (Here’s another technique I later learned that helped me enormously to pull myself out of the quicksand of yet another seductive story: https://miraprabhu.wordpress.com/…/quiche-coffee-the-morni…/)
[image error] Many of us are terrified of letting go of our stories for the simple reason that we fear who we will be without them. We like our roles, or we would not play them with such gusto: the martyr, the victim, the do-gooder, the critic, the angry one, the deceived and betrayed one, etc etc ad nauseam. But if we seek to reach our highest potential, it is critical that we do so and I’ll tell you why.
Here are the stories of two women I met in recent years whose clinging to old and negative stories seem to have ruined their lives. One was born in the West, came to India in her middle years with a guru and decided to stay on. This is her story as she told it to me: She was born to a paranoid schizophrenic mother; unable to cope, her father dumped her in an orphanage when she was only three. When her mother passed away four years later, this 7-year old was adopted by relatives who abused her in many ways (not sexually, thank god) even as they lavished love on their own two kids. One disaster followed another until this girl turned toxic with rage. As an adult, she managed to make a good living and saved up her money—so, when she finally came to India, she was able to live very well on her income. And yet she was never grateful for her myriad blessings and made it a point to trash the locals who served her, not to mention every friend who came her way. One guy confessed he stopped visiting her because, for every excellent cup of coffee she brewed for him, she would pour ten cups of poison into him! Of course her rage came from never properly dealing with her childhood traumas; had she burned her old stories in the fire of wisdom, given her natural intelligence and many talents, I am quite sure she would have been a delightful woman with much light to offer our world.
Another woman I met recently spoke only of her evil mother and joint family who she claimed had ruined her life by preventing her from going to medical school. “Why don’t you study healing now?” I asked. “Oh, it’s too late, my family totally screwed me up,” she said. As I got to know her, I realized she really needed to cling to this story so she could continue to hate and blame—yes, it served as the perfect excuse to never take responsibility for her own happiness. This woman was so bitter when I met her that I feared she would take her own life. But nothing I said or did to help had any effect—the poison had seeped into her marrow and finally I cut loose.
[image error]We all know folks who turn into their own worst enemies simply by clinging to stale old stuff that should have long since been jettisoned. It’s tough to change and my belief is that it does not serve us to dismiss our past—what works better is to sort out our relative history with as analytical an eye as possible, be courageous enough to feel the emotions that come up, then allow them to pass through us once and for all. It also helps to constantly keep in mind that we live in a world where everyone suffers without exception. If we commit to this cleansing, it is possible to burn all relative garbage in the fire of new wisdom and then to move forward freely into a friendly future.
Many years after my encounter with the Haitian healer, I re-encountered the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, the great south Indian sage who taught the Direct Path of Self-Investigation. Volumes have been written about this path to oneness, but in essence it involves destroying the egoic self, mini-me, so that one merges into the luminous and blissful Self that sages assure us is our true nature. It is the invisible but extremely seductive mind that runs our relative show and keeps us spinning our destructive stories—but the mind, as Ramana says, is nothing but a bundle of thoughts. These thoughts stem from vasanas, karmic trace impressions of past lives, and they form predilections that push in certain directions. It is only by learning to rest in pure awareness that we can dissolve these vasanas; then the mind, deprived of its base, sinks back into the ocean of Self. End of all stories!!!
Greetings from Arunachala, Shiva the Destroyer in the form of a hill, who vows to aid us in this awesome task of returning to the blissful peace of our true nature!
Note: All the details regarding the characters in my posts have been changed to protect anonymity.
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January 30, 2017
Thirty Years a Junkie
“That’s it, gentle folks. I became a junkie. I loved it. For the next thirty years, I did not miss one day getting high. Except that time I shot up some bad shit and lay comatose in my boat for three days. When I came out of it, I saw that I had soiled the sheets (if you know what I mean) and vomited all over myself. The first thing I did was go out and cop some more, but from a different source——hoping it would not kill me.
“Twelve years later, I woke up one morning and decided I didn’t want to get high anymore. That surprised the shit outta me. I figured I’d be a junkie forever. I knew that after thirty years I couldn’t just go cold turkey. I needed a plan. But before I go into that, I’d like to tell you about two people who were a big help to me: Jamie Lee Curtis and Herman Goering.” Read on…what a story! Thank you for sharing, Andrew Joyce, and to Tina Frisco, for pointing me here…
Compared to some, I’ve lived an exciting life. At least parts of it were. However, compared to others, my life has been humdrum. The only thing I’m satisfied about is that all the drama took place when I was young and able to handle it. That would not be the reality today for I have grown old.
It’s confession time. I’m not looking for absolution. My only intent is to show some of you out there that there is hope. Nothing is forever. Perhaps my story might help you get to the next stage of your life. Maybe not, but I had help getting there, and I’ll tell you about it in a minute. First, a little background. And please, feel free to judge me. You cannot condemn me any more than I have already condemned myself.
When I was kid, I always had a wanderlust. I would see a…
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January 27, 2017
Song of Mahamudra:Tilopa
Brilliant Tilopa:
“Whoever clings to mind sees not
The truth of what’s
Beyond the mind.”
Thanks for a great post, Harsh Luthar!
Cut the root of a tree
And the leaves will wither;
Cut the root of your mind
And Samsara falls.
The light of any lamp
Dispels in a moment
The darkness of long kalpas;
The strong light of the mind
In but a flash will burn
The veil of ignorance.
Whoever clings to mind sees not
The truth of what’s
Beyond the mind.
Whoever strives to practice Dharma
Finds not the truth of
Beyond-practice.
To know what is Beyond both mind and practice,
One should cut cleanly through the root of mind
And stare naked.
One should thus break away
From all distinctions and remain at ease.
-From Tilopa’s ‘The Song of Mahamudra’ (translated by Garma C.C. Chang).
January 26, 2017
Smorgasbord Health – The Dynamics of Change – Our Mental Being
Sally Cronin wears many hats (and helps promote Indie writers as well); one thing she is expert at is how to stay healthy – as she says here: Our brain is one of the most important assets we have.. if you don’t use it you lose it.” Read on more more…thanks for a great post, Sally!!!
Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life
In the previous post I looked at the voluntary and involuntary changes to our body during our lifetime and where we can influence those changes for better health and longevity. This time it is our mental being that is the focus.
In this post I am taking a look at the enforced hardware changes in the brain that affect us all. Also the voluntary choices we make during that process that also impact software function, particularly when we do not upgrade certain programmes.
All of us as we get into our 60s notice physical changes that are obvious when we look in the mirror and also when we exert ourselves physically. We are also aware of changes to the facility with which our major organs deal with their own aging process and the effects of a lifetime of dietary and lifestyle choices, imposed or voluntarily applied.
In all my discussions…
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January 24, 2017
The Aesthetic of a Full Figured Woman
Sharing this because I too see stereotyping beauty as a big step in the wrong direction…Leonard Nimoy’s (Spock on Star Trek) photography celebrates women Hollywood has passed by. In his book the Full Body Project (2007) he showcases ladies of all ages, shapes, and sizes. Rebecca Ruiz’s article on Mash.com, outlines why our beloved Mr. Spock chose to feature larger women. “It really disturbed him that women who considered themselves overweight had this terrible feeling about themselves,” Angier said. “He wanted to show the world that there’s beauty to be found in different body types.” Read the whole post here…
By: E. R. Smith
Reflecting on aesthetics, I couldn’t get Alessia Cara’s song out of my head. Really, I am still humming it as I write. She sings “Scars to You’re Beautiful”. She tells the tale of a girl, like me, that you don’t see in magazines. A girl craving the adoration reserved only for the beautiful, or so she assumes. Alessia’s observation is that, “She don’t understand she’s worth it.”
I decided to take a look at full figured aesthetics in the arts; and how artists reflect on what is striking, sensual, lovely. Artist Peter Paul Rubens offers vast examples of women considered full figured at the time; but like the plus sized models of today they rarely measure past size 14. Yet, still there is no Twiggy here. Venus at the Mirror (1615) and Ermit and Sleeping Angelica (1628) are two of…
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