Khalil Gibran On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Of Birds, Boats and Being

Simple Formula for a Happy Life

Simple Formula for a Happy Life

Live beneath your means.
Return everything you borrow.
Stop blaming other people.
Admit it when you make a mistake.
Give clothes not worn to charity.
Do something nice and try not to get caught.
Listen more; talk less.
Take a 30 minute walk everyday.
Strive for excellence, not perfection.
Be on time. Don’t make excuses.
Don’t argue.
Get Organized.
Be kind to unkind people.
Let Someone cut ahead of you in line.
Take time to be alone.
Cultivate good manners.
Be humble.
Realize and accept that life isn’t fair.
Know when to keep your mouth shut.
Go on an entire day without criticizing anyone.
Learn from the past. Plan for the future.
Live in the present.
Don’t sweat the small stuff.
It’s all small stuff.

~ Author unknown

Staying Ahead While Being Present - Interview by a Director from Salesforce

Om.

I am.

Say it to yourself. “I am”  — the meaning of Om, a common meditation mantra. It’s not “I was,” or “I will.” It’s the present. The here. The now.

In meditation, and mindfulness in general, you hear it all the time — “stay present.”

Recently, I attended a three-night silent meditation retreat led by Jay Chodagam, meditation practitioner, teacher, and spiritual enthusiast. There were about 20 of us. Before we went into silence, Jay asked us to share a little about why we were there, and what we hoped to get out of the experience. For me, it was about the sense of peace, serenity, and presence that I get when I meditate, and how to maintain that state not only while I’m meditating, but throughout my day. And my life.

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Spiders are Not Your Biggest Fear

Exactly two years ago, my sister gave birth to twins in the middle of the night. They arrived a couple of weeks early. When I got to the ICU ward in the hospital, my sister’s vital signs were high and she asked me to lead a meditation to help her calm down. I stood in corner of the tiny space, partitioned by a curtain, and gave my brother-in-law the only chair while my sister lay in bed. Five minutes into the meditation, I suggested rising above the hospital and imagining looking down to give all the souls in the hospital  who are suffering the light of peace. That’s the last thing I remember standing. The next scene was a lot of doctors surrounding me, checking to see if my neck was broken. I was put on a stretcher and the cut eyelid was stitched up in the emergency room. I had a broken sternum, which the doctor could not much about expect recommending rest till it healed. Apparently I fainted and fell upright, like a tree chopped from the bottom, with the chest landing on the floor and my head on the bottom of the IV stand. My brother-in-law, bless his heart, was now running between the newborns in the nursery, the ICU and the emergency room.

The Power Of Appreciation Guided Meditation Commentary

 This 6-minute meditation on the power of appreciation is an essential habit to cultivating happiness in your life. It is not just for the Thanksgiving holiday but highly recommended to make it a daily practice.

Lessons from a Construction Crew on a Morbid Morning

It was 6am this morning. The sky was filled with the first light at the crack of dawn. I was standing outside on the upstairs balcony sipping my hot beverage. There was not a soul to be seen. Understandably, my community was reeling from the shock that was handed to us in the wee hours this morning. I assume most people were up, like me, until 1am to witness Reality TV turn to real life.

A construction truck fully loaded with street repair equipment drove up. It pulled up by another truck parked in front of my neighbors and the two drivers, seemingly Latino, started talking in Spanish. Why were these men up so early on a day like this? They had to have been on the road since 5am to get into San Francisco at this hour. A dozen reasons for why they were justified to show up late for work crossed my mind. I bet the boss is not going to show up for a few hours. They had a few more things to be concerned about the latest news than me.

The Three Things You Should Know About Karma

Several years ago, I bought a motorcycle to get around San Francisco. It was the best decision I made as I could zip through choked streets. One afternoon, I cut through the middle of two lanes of vehicles stopped at a traffic signal. When I was almost at the very front, my handle bar touched a car stopped on the left. I thought it was a mild touch and continued forward to the white line. Shortly thereafter that car started honking. As it was a mild contact, I thought the driver was looking to pick a fight for nothing. As soon as the light turned green, I sped away. A mile down the street, I noticed the driver was still following me and honking.

Lucid Planet Radio Podcast: Bringing Peace to the Park and Finding Calm in a Chaotic World with Jay Chodagam

Anchor for Highlights of 2nd Annual International Yoga Day in San Francisco, June 2016

Phenomenal Story of What Goes Around Comes Around

A friend sent me an amazing story of karma coming full circle. It sounded too good, so I did some due diligence. Turns out this amazing story is true.

In 1892 at Stanford University, an 18-year-old student was struggling to pay his fees. He was an orphan, and not knowing where to turn for money, he came up with a bright idea. He and a friend decided to host a musical concert on campus to raise money for their education.

END GAME - Stanford Scientist Estimates 35 years. What are YOU doing about it?

You know life on earth is precarious, but I bet you have no idea how serious it is. 

Earlier this week, I heard a talk by Dr Elizabeth Hadly, Stanford professor, White House Advisor, a regular speaker at COP summits and advisor to Governor Jerry Brown. Based on her research on history of human behavior, she predicts that human life on earth as we know it, could end by 2050. If anyone makes it past that, they will have the unsought privilege of witnessing 85% of all mammal life on earth disappear by 2100. This is not new information, she says, her research has spanned over 30 years. But it is only in recent years that governments, organizations and individuals are noticing her team "shout from the rooftop" of the dangerous signs. In the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth 10 years ago, Al Gore gave us a wake up call to the gravity of the situation. This talk was an update on the State-of-the-World. 

'Five Questions to Soul Consciousness' Meditation Commentary

This short meditation is one of the most effective ways to disconnect from the mundane and reach a state of soul consciousness. It is a very methodical way to engage the mind and intellect to turn within. In a matter of 5 minutes, you will come away calmer, clearer and reset.

What is Your Genius?

I’ve been closely watching the twins, my niece and nephew, grow. They are 10 months now. While one is mobile, exploring and stern, the other is laid-back, content and smiling. The divergence in their personalities is quite visible within their first year. It begs the question, what shapes our personality as humans - nature or nurture? Therein lie nested several sets of questions. Today, I’d like to explore the concept of “intelligence”.

The twins were born to the same set of parents, at the same time, ate the same food and exposed to similar “conditions”. But there seems to be a something fundamentally different emerging in their personalities. While some say one is more "intelligent" than the other, I feel each of them is displays a different form of intelligence. I’d argue that all humans are gifted with some form of intelligence. It may not be the type that the school system, the corporate world or society rears, recognizes or rewards.

Peace in the Park 2016 - Bridging Wisdom, Wellbeing & Peace - 1-min Video

Highlights of Youth Workshop in Bali - Life is Beautiful

Spirits of Ancestors in Bali - A Peek into the Paranormal Rituals and the After-life

I've heard of stories about the after-life and have seen films on interfacing with the invisible parallel realm of spirits. But I've never seen an entire culture tap into that realm on a regular basis for guidance, even to this day. During my recent trip to Bali, I spent meal after meal hearing accounts from locals about channeling departed spirits and their messages, an invaluable incentive for staying with locals rather than at a resort. For many nights, these hair-raising stories kept me awake wondering about the world of intelligence that exists all around us that we are blind to.

Inner Peace to World Peace documentary

Can we really create peace in the world? Made for World Peace Day, I was interviewed by UPLIFT to take us on a journey into peace in this inspiring film featuring Dr Dan Siegel, Dr Dean Radin, Dr Bruce Lipton and many other deep thinkers from around the world.

Eight Forms of Yoga and the Science of Enlightenment Simplified

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from workshop participants on the relationship between the different forms of yoga. With increased coverage by popular media in recent years, most have heard of at least a half a dozen different forms of yoga. Does chanting have anything to do with meditation? How do breathing techniques contribute towards transcendence? Can I pick any yoga form and will it do the same thing?

Yoga literally means a connection. People often tend to identify the term with bodily postures, which is actually hatha yoga abbreviated. In this discussion, we will look at the yoga with oneself, the life-force and the cosmic forces. The goal of the ancient yoga practice is spiritual enlightenment and link with the Supreme consciousness.

When we ingest food, it transforms into energy in the liver. From the region near the navel, this freshly created energy has three options. Depending on which way it travels, this energy will determine your motivation - sensual, material or spiritual. We have choice of this energy either moving up to enhance spiritual consciousness, down for sensual pleasure or staying in the abdomen for materialistic pursuits.

The eight main yoga forms contribute towards moving upwards to the energy centers in the body, also referred to as chakras.

There are eight forms of yoga:

It's Tough to Get Depressed

It's tough to get depressed when you're helping someone. This was the key take away from the talk I attended by Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist at Stanford, on ‘How Compassion Creates Resilience’ at UC Berkeley campus. The buoyant presentation linked cutting edge scientific benefits to the basic human virtues of compassion and altruism. A refreshingly different scientist, Kelly started the talk with a meditation exercise to allow everyone in the room to become present.

Stress is an aspect of life that we notice is on a steady rise across the globe, but we don’t seem to know how to cope with it. Kelly argues that stress is in fact good for you, and you can get good at it in ‘Upside of Stress', the title of her latest book. She rolled off a series of studies that demonstrated that stress could be a good thing if you know how to channel that to motivate you to doing something good.