~Quotes~By~Swami Yogananda ~

Unrealistic expectations are poison for relationships. Remember, it is only you, not others, who can make you happy or sad. Problems arise when someone can see no further than their own needs and desires. That’s why meditation, and the expanded understanding it gives us, can be so helpful.
The fewer demands you make, the better. Always respect another person’s right to be himself, and to think and feel a certain way. There is a subtle law of magnetism between people. If you want a person to change, don’t criticize what is wrong. Instead try to create a “magnetic opening”
In fact, don’t try so much to change another as to bring out the best in him or her. Think first of how you can help strengthen a person and only then, of how you can improve a situation. True intimacy develops only in an atmosphere of trust. It is only when people feel secure that they are able to change.
Share uplifting experiences: Your bonds with others will be greatly strengthened if you share experiences that are uplifting and expansive

 He who is wise does his best to overcome difficulties, but he smiles, first, last, and all the time. There is no better panacea for sorrow, no better revivifying tonic, than smiles . There is no greater power with which to overcome failure than a real smile. There is no more beautiful ornament one can wear than a genuine smile of peace and wisdom glowing on the face.

The mind, by constant worries, grows old quickly and makes the body appear old and unhealthy. A smile that cannot be extinguished by any adverse financial, social, or physical condition helps to keep the body looking young, with firm flesh, even if it becomes aged. You are the Infinite, which has become the body. The body, as a manifestation of Spirit, is the ever-youthful Spirit.

 When two souls come together and bring out the wholeness in each other and ultimately unite with Spirit, that union is a true marriage between soul mates. Soul companions, being primarily united in Spirit and love, find the ever-new joy of God as the breath of their existence. The more strongly they become united in Spirit the less they concentrate on sex life. Soul companions in perfect marriage—even if they have sexual union for the propagation of spiritual children to bring good souls to earth—have their minds primarily engaged and engrossed in the perfect love of God. 

When a man and wife are united as true soul mates they will be one flesh, they will act in harmony and unison in body, mind, and soul; their souls will not act with different ideals, but as two bodies, two minds, two souls, with one ideal.

The culmination of marriage between soul mates is distinguished by the fact that the husband and wife no longer live on the sexual plane—not by forced abstinence, but in transcendence. Being together in perfect love, they become united with God. Any so-called soul mates who have not yet extinguished their sexual appetites are not truly united as soul mates. A marriage that is very harmonious but without God-realization may be a moral marriage, an ideal socioreligious relationship on the human level, but falls short of being an actual spiritual marriage between soul mates, the end of which is liberation in God. 

The concept of soul mates is entirely misleading without knowledge of the basic truth that it is only on the plane of creation, where the law of relativity prevails, that a soul identified with a form (jivatman) may be considered as being a male or female "half-soul." The true nature of the Self (the pure

atman) as a reflection of Transcendent Spirit beyond the delusive requisites of the created worlds is free from sex and duality. 

Sometimes even a chance meeting between soul mates fills one with a sense of completeness and pure love that wholly vanquishes all sense of need for physical union. This is true of relationships that have evolved through past lives as soul helpmates. 

Soul mates living on different parts of the earth, or even if one is on earth and the other in the astral world, may come together in a liberating union of God's love. The ideal man or woman who does not live on the sexual plane develops a spiritual magnetism by which he or she can attract the right soul mate on the earth plane or the dream plane or astral plane or the plane of conscious visions experienced in deep meditation. In the meeting of one's soul mate by whatever means, there will be no further desire to live according to worldly norms on the material plane. The reunion of masculine-feminine, positive-negative, reason and feeling, brings forth the immutable image of God in the soul. There is no necessity for physical marriage at all. It will be consummated right within one's heart. 

There is an even higher way of fulfillment than spiritual union of soul companions on the physical plane: union with God by divine communion in meditation and ecstasy. Seeking soul liberation through union with a soul mate is a spiritually dangerous course for those who are not already advanced in wisdom, for temptation may cause them to sink into the delusion of wrong living that will take them away from God into the karmic bondage of further reincarnations. But once the soul of man or woman is united with God, the Consummate Soul Mate, that soul never can fall from liberation. This is why Jesus, Swami Shankara, and other saviors have shown this highest path of liberation by uniting their souls directly with God alone. 

Love versus sexuality

" When you are in sexuality you don’t bother much to whom you are making love — any body will do. You just need a woman or a man, any body will do. You just need the other’s body. In love, any body won’t do, anybody’s body won’t do. You need a person who is in deep love with you, who has a certain affinity and harmony with you, in whose presence your heart starts singing, a deep bell starts ringing… in whose presence you feel a blessing. Then only is it possible for you to make love to the other person. To make love is possible only if the meeting — the inner meeting — has happened. Otherwise it is simply impossible to think, even to imagine that you are making love to a person you don’t love. " Osho

अमर प्रेम【 "ओशो" से गहन प्रेम की एक अमर प्रेम कथा 】

आइये आज आपको भगवान "ओशो" से गहन प्रेम की एक अमर
प्रेम कथा बताते हैं ।
सू एपलटन जिसे बाद में सन्यास का नाम मिला "विवेक" । वे जर्मनी में
पैदा हुई थी,
पेसे से वकील थी, अमीर थी,
सफल थी, प्रतिष्ठित थी, पर सब
कुछ होते हुये भी जीवन में कुछ अधूरापन लगता था ।
जर्मनी के उसके घर में एक बार एक भारतीय अनायास
ही उसके घर के अन्दर चला आया । नाम था रवि ।
सू ने पूछा : कहिए कैसे आना हुआ ।
तो उसने बोले : "बस मन किया तो अंदर चला आया"
उसने गले में एक माला पहन रखी थी ।
उस के लॉकेट में ओशो की एक सुंदर सी
तस्वीर थी ।
जो सन्यास के समय ओशो अपने सन्यासियों को देते थे ।
जैसे ही सू ने उस तस्वीर को देख, देखती
ही रेह गयी..!
उसे लगा जैसे उसके अन्दर का सूना पन भर गया हो ।
सू ने पूछा ये किसकी तस्वीर है ?
रवि ने बताया - ये रजनीश हैं उसके गुरु ।
सू ने पूछा : ये कहाँ मिलेंगे..?
रवि ने बताया "पूना, इंडिया में "
सु को मंजिल का पता मिल गया था । अगले ही दिन सू
भारत जा रही थी ।
परिवार के लोगों ने पूछा कहाँ जा रही हो ? क्यों जा रही
हो ? कब आओगी ?
सू बोली : कुछ पता नहीं । गुमसुम पैकिंग
करती रही ।
सू पूना पंहुचती हैं ।
सू ने ओशो को बहुत दूर से देखा, वो प्रवचन कर रहे हैं,
सू को हिंदी समझ नहीं आती...पर वो
मनमोहक आवाज़ जैसे कई जन्मो से जानी-पहचानी
है ।
प्रवचन समाप्त होने के बाद ओशो मुस्कुराते हुए सभी का अभिवादन
करते हुए कार की तरफ बढ़ रहे हैं, भीड़ ने उन्हें
घेर रखा है, जैसे जैसे सू ओशो के नजदीक बढ़ रही
थी उनकी धड़कने तेज होती जा
रहीं थी । सू जैसे अलग ही दुनिया में
पहुँच गई थी । ये दिव्यता, ये ऐहसास, क्या है ये..?
उन्हें लाग रहा था की कहीं वह बेहोश न हो जाए...
उफ़ ये रोशनी..!
वह बिजली की तरह भीड़ को
चीरती हुई ओशो के
सामने पँहुच जातीं हैं और उनसे लिपट जाती है ।
सभी आवाक रेह जाते हैं !!!
जैसे वक़्त ठहर गया हो ।
ओशो सू से केहेते हैं : " कब से बुला रहा हूँ...अब आई हो,
इतनी देर कर दी"
किसी को कुछ भी समझ नहीं आता है ।
सू उन कालजयी आँखों में डूब गयी...वक़्त जैसे २३
साल पीछे चला जाता है ।
बात उन दिनों की है जब ओशो को घर के लोग प्यार से
राजा नाम से पुकारते थे ।और सू है गाडरवार शहर में ओशो के घर के पास
ही रहने वाली "शशी" जिसे
सभी प्यार से "गुडिया" केहेते हैं । वह राजा को बहुत प्यार
करती है ।
राजा 12 साल के हैं और "गुडिया" 8 साल की हैं ।
राजा जब खेलकर थक जाते हैं तो गुडिया उन्हें अपने घर से लाई खीर
खिलाती है । लेकिन होनी को न जाने क्या मंजूर था गुडिया
जब सिर्फ 9 साल की थी, एक दिन उसे तेज बुखार आया
। उसे टायफाइड हुआ था । गुड़िया की तबियत बिगडती
ही जा रही थी । जब गुड़िया को लगा
की वो अब नहीं बचेगी तो उसने ओशो से 2
वचन लिए 1- किसी और से शादी नहीं
करोगे, 2- अगले जन्म में मै जहां कही भी
होऊगी..मुझे अपने पास बुला लोगे ।
सू को 1 पल में सब याद आ गया था । वह भीगे नेत्रों से
अपने राजा को देखती रेहती है, ओशो मुस्कुराते हुए सू
से
विदा लेकर कार में बैठ जाते हैं. कार चल पड़ती है
कुछ दिनों बाद सू का सन्यास होता है उसे सन्यास का नाम मिलता है "विवेक"
प्रेम जिसे मृत्यु भी धुंधला न कर पायी थी ।
ओशो के शरीर त्यागने से ठीक 6 माह पूर्व इस
मीरा (विवेक) ने
स्वेक्षा से शरीर छोड़ दिया था..!
(अमृता प्रीतम  )

"Where the dance of Meera and the silence of Buddha meet, blossoms the true philosophy of Osho"
Amrita Pritam

Foot reflexology

Foot reflexology or foot massage is commonly used for the indulgence and relaxation of feet. Self-care is must for getting attractive feet. Foot reflexology is regularly used in several cultures. Reflexology can help in improving entire health. Certain acupressure points are present on feet. Massaging or pressing these points can help in improving overall health, maintaining proper functioning of body organs and curing the existing illnesses. Some common benefits of reflexology and foot massage are:
Stimulates nerves and muscles
Reduces stiffness
Improves circulation of blood
Removes fatigue and stress
Improves immunity
Better sleep
Clears energy flow
Boosts metabolism
Assists to decrease blood pressure
Stimulates lymphatic system
Regularizes body functions
Relieves pain, migraines and headaches
It is quite easy to do foot massage. Just follow these basic steps:
1. First wash your feet as it will help in cleaning and warming them.
2. Lubricant is often used in best massages for making it easier. Adding necessary oils gives advantages of that particular oil. You can add 2-3 drops of peppermint, lavender, tea tree, or eucalyptus essential oils in your skin lotion. You can also add coconut oil or almond oil.
3. Begin with toes. Press, pull and twist every toe individually, moving from largest to smallest toe and from joint to tip.

4. Use both of your thumbs for doing foot massage by moving from top to bottom. Apply strong pressure on each spot for few seconds. Focus on your pains and aches.
5. Massage achilles areas, heels and ankles.
6. Also do massage on tops of feet.
7. Repeat the same steps for other foot.
Foot Reflexology Chart
As per the recommendation of experts, give foot massage on daily basis at night time to get best results. Start doing this simple foot massage from today.
(Content and picture share courtsey google)

Why is love so painful?

Love is painful,because it creates the way for bliss. Love is painful because it transforms; love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new. The old is familiar, secure, safe, the new is absolutely unknown. You will be moving in an uncharted ocean. You cannot use your mind with the new; with the old, the mind is skillful. The mind can function only with the old; with the new, the mind is utterly useless. Hence, fear arises, and leaving the old, comfortable, safe world, the world of convenience, pain arises. It is the same pain that the child feels when he comes out of the womb of the mother. It is the same pain that the bird feels when he comes out of the egg. It is the same pain that the bird will feel when he will try for the first time to be on the wing. The fear of the unknown, and the security of the known, the insecurity of the unknown, the unpredictability of the unknown, makes one very much frightened. And because the transformation is going to be from the self towards a state of no-self, agony is very deep. But you Cannot have ecstasy without going through agony. If the gold wants to be purified, it has to pass through fire.

Love is fire,
It is because of the pain of love, millions of people live a loveless life. They too suffer, and their suffering is futile. To suffer in love is not to suffer in vain. To suffer in love is creative; it takes you to higher levels of consciousness. To suffer without love is utterly a waste; it leads you nowhere, it keeps you moving in the same vicious circle. The man who is without love is narcissistic, he is closed. He knows only himself. And how much can he know himself if he has not known the other, because only the other can function as a mirror? You will never know yourself without knowing the other. Love is very fundamental for self-knowledge too. The person who has not known the other in deep love, in intense passion, in utter ecstasy, will not be able to know who he is, because he will not have the mirror to see his own reflection.

Relationship is a mirror, and the purer the love is, the higher the love is, the better the mirror, the cleaner the mirror. But the higher love needs that you should be open. The higher love needs you to be vulnerable. You have to drop your armor; that is painful. You have not to be constantly on guard. You have to drop the calculating mind. You have to risk. You have to live dangerously. The other can hurt you; that is the fear in being vulnerable. The other can reject you; that is the fear in being in love. The reflection that you will find in the other of your own self may be ugly; that is the anxiety. Avoid the mirror. But by avoiding the mirror you are not going to become beautiful. By avoiding the situation you are not going to grow either. The challenge has to be taken. One has to go into love. That is the first step towards God, and it cannot be bypassed. Those who try to bypass the step of love will never reach God. That is absolutely necessary because you become aware of your totality only when you are provoked by the presence of the other, when your presence is enhanced by the presence of the other, when you are brought out of your narcissistic, closed world under the open sky.

Love is an open sky,
To be in love is to be on the wing. But certainly, the unbounded sky creates fear. And to drop the ego is very painful because we have been taught to cultivate the ego. We think the ego is our only treasure. We have been protecting it, we have been decorating it, we have been continuously polishing it, and when love knocks on the door, all that is needed to fall in love is to put aside the ego; certainly it is painful. It is your whole life's work, it is all that you have created -- this ugly ego, this idea that "I am separate from existence." This idea is ugly because it is untrue. This idea is illusory, but our society exists, is based on this idea that each person is a person, not a presence. The truth is that there is no person at all in the world; there is only presence. You are not -- not as an ego, separate from the whole. You are part of the whole. The whole penetrates you, the whole breathes in you, pulsates in you, the whole is your life. Love gives you the first experience of being in tune with something that is not your ego. Love gives you the first lesson that you can fall into harmony with someone who has never been part of your ego. If you can be in harmony with a woman, if you can be in harmony with a friend, with a man, if you can be in harmony with your child or with your mother, why can't you be in harmony with all human beings? And if to be in harmony with a single person gives such joy, what will be the outcome if you are in harmony with all human beings? And if you can be in harmony with all human beings, why can't you be in harmony with animals and birds and trees? Then one step leads to another.

Love is a ladder,
It starts with one person, it ends with the totality. Love is the beginning, God is the end. To be afraid of love, to be afraid of the growing pains of love, is to remain enclosed in a dark cell. Modern man is living in a dark cell; it is narcissistic. Narcissism is the greatest obsession of the modern mind. And then there are problems, problems which are meaningless. There are problems which are creative because they lead you to higher awareness. There are problems which lead you nowhere; they simply keep you tethered, they simply keep you in your old mess. Love creates problems. You can avoid those problems by avoiding love. But those are very essential problems! They have to be faced, encountered; they have to be lived and gone through and gone beyond. And to go beyond, the way is through.

Love is the only real thing worth doing. All else is secondary. If it helps love, it is good. All else is just a means, love is the end. So whatsoever the pain, go into love. If you don't go into love, as many people have decided, then you are stuck with yourself. Then your life is not a pilgrimage, then your life is not a river going to the ocean; your life is a stagnant pool, dirty, and soon there will be nothing but dirt and mud. To keep clean, one needs to keep flowing. A river remains clean because it goes on flowing. Flow is the process of remaining continuously virgin. A lover remains a virgin. All lovers are virgin. The people who don't love cannot remain virgin; they become dormant, stagnant; they start stinking sooner or later -- and sooner than later -- because they have nowhere to go. Their life is dead. That's where modern man finds himself, and because of this, all kinds of neuroses, all kinds of madnesses, have become rampant.

Psychological illness has taken epidemic proportions. It is no more that a few individuals are psychologically ill; the reality is the whole earth has become a madhouse. The whole of humanity is suffering from a kind of neurosis. And that neurosis is coming from your narcissistic stagnancy. Everyone is stuck with one's own illusion of having a separate self; then people go mad. And this madness is meaningless, unproductive, uncreative. Or people start committing suicide. Those suicides are also unproductive, uncreative. You may not commit suicide by taking poison or jumping from a cliff or by shooting yourself, but you can commit a suicide which is a very slow process, and that's what happens. Very few people commit suicide suddenly. Others have decided for a slow suicide; gradually, slowly, slowly they die. But almost, the tendency to be suicidal has become universal. This is no way to live, and the reason, the fundamental reason, is we have forgotten the language of love. We are no more courageous enough to go into that adventure called love. Hence people are interested in sex, because sex is not risky. It is momentary, you don't get involved.

Love is involvement; it is commitment. It is not momentary. Once it takes roots, it can be forever. It can be a lifelong involvement. Love needs intimacy, and only when you are intimate does the other become a mirror. When you meet sexually with a woman or a man, you have not met at all; in fact, you avoided the soul of the other person. You just used the body and escaped, and the other used your body and escaped. You never became intimate enough to reveal each other's original faces.

Love is the greatest Zen known. It is painful, but don't avoid it. If you avoid it you have avoided the greatest opportunity to grow. Go into it, suffer love, because through the suffering comes great ecstasy. Yes, there is agony, but out of the agony, ecstasy is born. Yes, you will have to die as an ego, but if you can die as an ego, you will be born as God, as a Buddha. And love will give you the first tongue-tip-taste of Tao, of Sufism, of Zen. Love will give you the first proof that God is, that life is not meaningless. The people who say life is meaningless are the people who have not known love. All that they are saying is that their life has missed love.

Let there be pain, let there be suffering. Go through the dark night, and you will reach to a beautiful sunrise. It is only in the womb of the dark night that the sun evolves. It is only through the dark night that the morning comes. My whole approach here is that of love. I teach only love and only love and nothing else. You can forget about God; that is just an empty word. You can forget about prayers because they are only rituals imposed by others on you. Love is the natural prayer, not imposed by anybody. You are born with it. Love is the true God -- not the God of theologians, but the God of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, the God of the Sufis.

Love is a tariqa, a method, to kill you as a separate individual and to help you become the infinite. Disappear as a dewdrop and become the ocean, but you will have to pass through the door of love. And certainly when one starts disappearing like a dewdrop, and one has lived long as a dewdrop, it hurts, because one has been thinking, "I am this, and now this is going. I am dying. " You are not dying, but only an illusion is dying. You have become identified with the illusion, true, but the illusion is still an illusion. And only when the illusion is gone will you be able to see who you are. And that revelation brings you to the ultimate peak of joy, bliss, celebration.

~Osho~

Prison of making

"I was reading in the Facebook, somebody wrote:

‘One of the biggest prisons human-beings suffer is what others think about themselves.’ 

I tell you, No! 

There is a bigger prison – WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT YOU! 

What you think about you is the bigger prison than what others think about you. 

What others think about you is able to give you suffering because what you think about you gets altered based on what others think about you. 

If what you think about you stays stably, what others think about you will never be a prison for you.  Because, what you think about you is so lucid, and lose it, what others think about you becomes a prominent prison. 

Be very clear, if what others think about you is a prison in which you are stuck, what you think about you is the cell inside the prison where you are stuck!  It is much more suffocating!  Much more suffocating! 

What others think about you, if you think that is a prison, what you think about you is a cell inside the prison where you are locked! 

Please understand, what others think about you impacts only your external life.  What you think about you impacts directly your body, your mind."

~Sri Nithyananda Swamiji.

Turning filth into fragnance

🌻Turning Filth into Fragrance🌻

Sadhguru:
          "The first thing is you arrange yourself in such a way that you are a beautiful human being. How someone else sees it is their business."
Right now, you have to be there. So many times, not just you – every one of us is trapped with people and situations we definitely do not want to be in.
Where we are is never entirely our choice. But what we make out of it is entirely our choice.
Exercise it.
If you exercise it, the outside will also slowly become a choice.
Over a period of time, you will see that naturally, situations will arrange around yourself in a most beautiful way.
My experience of the world is too fantastic. Wherever I go, people are in tears of love and joy.
What more do I want?
I know that is not the reality for the whole world, but the world arranges itself like that around me.
This is because I have taken time to arrange myself in such a way that no matter where I am, I am like this only.
Slowly, the world is imitating what I am. You also do this.
Do not worry whether the world arranges itself in a certain way or not – it will invariably happen over a period of time.
The first thing is you arrange yourself in such a way that you are a beautiful human being. How someone else sees it is their business.
Right now, they want to walk in the gutter – let them walk for some time,
till they get tired of it.
Live in such a way that when they look at you, even the gutter people see at some point that it is worth being the way you are. It will not elude them.
They are bitter because their experience of life is bitter and unfulfilled, and this bitterness comes out in the form of conflict.
Set an example for them that there is a way to live differently.
In yoga, one of the most enduring symbols has always been that of a lotus flower, because a lotus flower grows best wherever the slush is thick – the filthier, the better.
Such filth transforms into such ethereal beauty and fragrance.
This is spiritual process.
Getting allergic to slush is not spiritual process.
Becoming a part of the slush is not spiritual process.
Transforming the slush into fragrance is spiritual process.