Spiritual Pathways

Many wonderful things and some sad happened through my life as indeed it does for all humans. Observation and reflection revealed that these things happened with very little of my own doing. There were times I tried very hard for certain goals and did not succeed while there were other things that happened automatically, even great ones, with minimal effort that was easy and pleasant. My conclusion is that it all unfolded because of the force of Karma. We arrive in this life with a storehouse of karma from previous lives even as we add to it in this one. This governs our lives from where we are born to events that unfold in our journey. It is true that effort too brings results but such results are set against what is destined. If the event is a significant one, force of karma attached to it is such that our own effort may be unable to change it much. It is only in little thing, like what to have for dinner today, that our own effort is more fruitful. There is a common...

Picture of a window from the author's home Dear friends, you would have noted that each human has his or her own unique journey through life. Some face great difficulties in this journey whereas others have a lovely and comfortable time. There are even some that have a combination of huge good fortunes and terrible misfortunes through life.   All of this is the unfolding of our own unique karma designed by the Universe for education of our souls. The soul does not perish when life perishes. Our good deeds through life bring good times whereas bad times are a result of our misdeeds or evil. Those who face mixtures of great good fortune and huge misfortunes through life do so because they have a past full of great worthy deeds as well as some terrible ones. At the end of the day, whatever we lose or accumulate in life that has to be left behind is of little relevance compared to what the soul shall carry forth when this life comes to an end. Whatever we do or acq...

All of us would have noted that our life changes over weeks, months and years so that things now are quite different from how they were before. Different experiences of life provide us different types of learning and we tend to learn most in times we characterize as bad. However, every period of life has something good to appreciate and something bad to feel sorry about. Even in the worst of times in our lives, there is something good that is happening. We must appreciate and be grateful for that good while being patient with the bad to pass. It surely will and all shall be well. If we organize our life in a disciplined manner rather than an ad-hoc and random sort of life some lead, work towards improving our life as well as of those we encounter in our journey through life, then any present difficulties shall pass away sooner rather than later and times ahead shall be brighter. If we harm anyone in our journey through life, even plants, animals and the ...

Many persons will tell you that it is good to have dreams in life and to pursue them. However, there is an age to dream and an age not to. When one is still an infant or just a child, it is not a time to dream but to enjoy each day as it unfolds in watchful care of parents and elders. Similarly when one is past fifty, human physical energies begin to reduce rapidly and with that dreams must come to an end. Old age is time to reflect on one’s past, resolve any emotional conflicts and traumas of life, guide and help younger persons with one’s experience, meditate so as to come close to God or universal consciousness, aside from looking after one’s immediate needs. One may at the most do a little part time work besides to keep busy and earn a little extra income if one needs to. One may still be as young as a child at heart but physical abilities reduce rapidly as one ages. Any dreams at this stage must be for the Lord to give a life lovelier than the present one. This woul...

N ot even the godly are perfect. It is too much to expect a human to be so. All of us have different strengths and weaknesses of different kinds, to different degrees that cause us to do good or bad things in our journey through life and lifetimes. Our good deeds bring us good result - peace and joy while bad ones bring sorrow and misery for all things have consequences. A lie can please one for moments but sustainable peace is found only in truth and how can there be happiness without peace? Human love can cause us brief suffering at times yet hate produces much misery when it returns for whatever we put into the world and universe around us comes back to us, good or bad, in due course, when it is time for harvest, the fruit or the thorns. When blinded by pride, desire or ignorance we do poor things that produce bad results later, they make our journey through life difficult. Yet when we place our love and trust in God, the journey through life becomes easier than...

http://www.clipartpanda.com/clipart_images/clip-art-cartoon-of-old-man-23106528 If one considered human life divided in five stages of twenty years each, the first stage of life ends at twenty with the last and fifth beginning from eighty.  While each human is unique with different life paths, roughly the first stage of life, the most joyous one for many involves childhood when the human body grows rapidly from an infant into full adult. This stage involves education and training to prepare one for a career that sustains one through life. A careful balance and discipline guided by parents between learning and play helps a child make most of this phase of life. The second phase of life from twenty to forty is the time humans begin their career as well as raise a family and that must remain the prime focus and duty for most humans at this stage. It is a busy stage of life but one also has a lot of energy in this period. As in the first stage, each stage of l...

P ersons with even a basic knowledge of the spiritual side of life realize that it is our thoughts that create our world including the places we live in. Human condition is diverse, varying from the most beautiful to the most miserable, indicating the diverse personalities and thoughts, choices and actions of humans. However, there are at least some good humans, if not the majority with beautiful souls that find that they are presently trapped in miserable or harsh surroundings and vice versa. This anomaly arises from the past of soul. Our present moments are made up by our past thoughts and actions. The past cannot be changed but the future is in our hands. It stands to reason that every wise human must do things to improve it if it can be done with reasonable and pleasant effort. It is a defeatist attitude to think that such a thing need not be done in old age. The human body has a limited life but the soul does not. It will go on to acquire other new bodies in new lives ...

  What ever is our condition at this moment is due to our choices, thoughts and actions from our past. Mystics stretch this past not just into this life but previous lives also in order to explain our varying conditions at birth. We cannot change our past but the present and future is in our hands. Our choices, thoughts and actions at the present time shall contribute to the kind of future that is to follow. All of our choices, thoughts and actions are a result of our personality and it is worth working on it in a way that takes us towards a life that is more wonderful than ever before. When we try to increase love, truth and simplicity in our lives than our personality improves; our thoughts as well as choices improve, taking us towards a wonderful life.

There are those who say they love God but how can one know if they do? There are those who say they do not believe in God, but in fact they do; how can one know if it is so? God is the entire universe and whatever else there is beyond and within it that can not be perceived by the senses. Everything is a part of God. There is nothing else besides Him. Everything is His creation and all the life within it his children. There is nothing but God or as the Arabs say - La Illaha il Allha If one seems to love gods, angels and saints too, it is because they are the means through which a godly soul may communicate with the infinite Lord besides directly from within the heart, for the Infinite Lord does not communicate with words, His language is silence. If the physical universe dissolves and emerges repeatedly as mystics proclaim, it is because the physical universe is the physical body of the Imperishable Lord just as your physical body is that for your imperish...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Children_playing_outdoors.jpg  Few disagree that Life must by full of happiness Life must be joy Life must be a celebration But then we have these thinkers and spiritualists who seem to come and throw a spanner in the works (that includes this blog) with a whole lot of other prescriptions such as, do the right thing; inculcate discipline, order and beauty; spend some time in service of others - humans, animals or nature, organize your time wisely, enhance love, truth and simplicity, trust in God and be grateful for what he provides and so on and on. Life is a school, a 24 X 7 boarding school. There are children at school who divide their time wisely between work and play. They take study hours seriously and even seem to enjoy those. Then there are others who would rather shirk that work and have fun. They get miserable when they fail in tests and when school years are over they have a miserable time later too. T...