Nobody makes it alone

A Mentor is a trusted friend, an encouraging guide, a good listener and a reliable person.

"A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself. A mentor is someone who allows you to know that no matter how dark the night, in the morning joy will come. A mentor is someone who allows you to see the higher part of yourself when sometimes it becomes hidden to your own view. I think mentors are important and I don't think anybody makes it in the world without some form of mentorship. Nobody makes it alone. Nobody has made it alone. And we are all mentors to people even when we don't know it." - Oprah Winfrey

The Natural Cure for Spiritual Disease

We are terrified by the physical diseases that threaten our lives but ignore the worst disease of all, the one that makes us suffer even when we are health, happy, and comfortable. What is this disease? What causes it? What can we do about it?
Consider this.
http://www.suanmokkh.org/archive/arts/ret/natcure1a.htm

Prison of Life

Are we free?
http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Books/Bhikkhu_Buddhadasa_Prison_of_Life.htm

We are in a Prison of Our Own Making

Every one of us is pre-programmed, in accordance with the culture, family, society or religion we are born into and grow up with. Most of us are indifferent to the fact that we operate with little awareness. So we end up living in a self-made prison.

Once a philosopher asked a cobbler — who was himself a Sufi saint — to repair his shoe. The cobbler expressed his inability to do so as he was about to close his shop for the day. If his shoe were not repaired immediately, he would have only one shoe to wear, explained the philosopher to the cobbler. “Please, this is urgent,” he pleaded.

“You may please borrow my shoe for the other foot’’, said the cobbler. ‘‘But I don’t wear another’s shoes,’’ said the philosopher. ‘‘If you can borrow someone’s ideas why not a shoe?’’ asked the cobbler. Truly, our ideas are largely borrowed ones. Borrowed ideas have become a part of our inner programming. Myths and disempowering words and thoughts have invaded our inner engineering.

Learn to observe life deeply. If you observe yourself deeply you will find that you are not one ‘I’ but multiple ‘I’s. There is an ‘I’ that supports you and another ‘I’ that pulls you down. You should learn to de-identify from the negative ‘I’ and invite the positive ‘I’. Can we observe how we touch the outer world with our inner thoughts and attitudes? If our thoughts and attitudes are negative, a negative system gets created. Then the negative system takes control of our life, develops its own survival mechanism and we become slaves of that system. The art of wise living is to dismantle the negative system from our lives.

We have to learn the art of inner separation and not allow inner thoughts and attitudes of negativity to eat into our lives. Negative, ignorant, addictive, narrow, foolish ‘I’s eat our life forces just as rats eat crops. Some ‘I’s in us are our friends and some, our enemies. To recognise and de-identify ourselves with the negative ‘I’s is ‘inner separation’.

If we identify with negative thoughts and emotions coming from multiple ‘I’s and feel them to be our true self, it will lead to chaos and conflict. Any thought or emotion that passes through us is not ours. The traffic on the pavement does not belong to us... neither does the traffic of thoughts. We should learn to select and reject, only then we will not find ourselves in prison.

Don’t allow moods that emerge from the negative ‘I’ to overtake your life. Allow wise influences to impact your life. Don’t allow the influences of darkness impact your life. Allow the influences of the Sun to energise you. Learn to be in association with the conscious humanity and not the sleeping humanity. This will make you look at ordinary things in a new way. A new “will” will be created. A new meaning will emerge. A new understanding will guide you and give you wings to fly.

Be like the bee which goes from one flower to another, savouring the nectar from each of them. A fly, on the other hand, sits on garbage, and then flies to a sweetmeat shop and again to the gutter and back to the rose garden. The fly is alternating between goodness and toxin. But the bee picks and chooses from what is available and is attracted to the good alone and hence flies from one flower to another. Being like a bee in life, will enable us to move from one form of goodness to another, and we will be attracted to all the sacredness of existence. To be like a fly is to indulge in negati- vities like anger, hatred and jealousies and then visiting the temples and shrines for prayer.

Swami Sukhabodhananda

Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere

None are free until all are free

The quiet receptive mind

Few of us encounter the reality around and within us with a quiet, receptive, patient mind. We don’t listen to what is in that Taoistic, fully listening, non-interfering way. To correct this problem we need a very different kind of mental development — not intellectual, but intuitive — the kind of development facilitated by quiet-minded Eastern practices such as meditation. The exploration of one’s own psyche in this way leads not only to a quiet, receptive mind, but also to an appreciation of the laws by which our inner, subjective lives operate; ethical understanding; moral behavior; and even insights into the nature of primal reality.

The quote above piqued my interest in the concept of a quiet receptive mind. Need to find out more about this...

Listen for deep understanding instead of just to formulate our comeback answer

Maslow tells us three important things about listening and understanding with the aim of acting:
1.) When we understand the present reality with great clarity and depth, we will also sense the kind of action that is needed.
2.) In order to understand reality in that deep way, we need relevant, totally convincing facts.
3.) To receive the subtle value messages inherent in those facts, we must approach them with a quiet, receptive, patient mind.

Altruism

Unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others or behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species.

With nothing to gain and having lost so much Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish continues to dedicate his life, his actions and his words to peace and an end to negative feelings and hatred that are so often passed on from generation to generation.

Conflict inflicts unbearable loss to him but this Dr. still has so much to give

Freedom

My freedom to swing my fist stops where the tip of your nose starts