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‘The aroma of this house was beautiful. Smell of the earth, smell of the wood, smell of the smoke … I felt life, a very healthy life, being led in that space.’ – Japanese architect Yoshihiro Takishita, describing his experience of first entering what would become his home for more than 50 years.

Click here to watch the short film on psyche.co.

To listen well is not only a kindness to others but also, as the psychologist Carl Rogers made clear, a gift to ourselves.

Click here to read the essay by M.M. Owen on Aeon.com.

Interoception can help explain the interconnectedness of physical and mental health – why, when you feel worse mentally, your physical pain might worsen; and why inflammation in your body can make you depressed.

Click here to read the article by Camilla Nord from Psyche.co.

New Year’s Greetings! Thousands of people across the globe are celebrating with wisdom, silence, and meditation. 

This New Year, make your mind like a non-stick pan, and enjoy your pancakes, fresh and new. And don’t even think back that you never washed your pan in the past; that too is gone. In this sense, every day is a New Year’s Day for you—every day is a celebration. Today is today. Calendars and calculations don’t exist then.

When you are happy, you don’t feel that you are growing old. You don’t feel that time is dragging. You don’t feel time at all—it could be millions of years; nothing has touched you or shaken you, and you have no plans. And even if you have a plan, time runs so fast. When time runs so fast, it also stands still.

In the morning, when you wake up, just sit and feel how time stands so still. When time stands still, it is meditation.

When time runs fast, you don’t feel it; that is karma yoga. And when Time stands still, that is dhyan yoga, meditation. See, if you are not used to the stillness of Time, if you are only on the run all the time, you will get depressed. We have this tremendous ability to enjoy both—running and being still.

As you grow older, the body has its limitations. If you have no ability to be still and don’t enjoy being still even for a short time, you will feel bored, confused, and depressed. That is what happens to all the so-called very active people when their bodies don’t allow them to be active anymore, and they cannot be still either.

This is where your mind is not with time. So, your mind should be with time. When the mind is with the time, it can be still.

May this year be a wisdom-filled year!

Love and Blessings 
Gurudev

Your consciousness really does have deep, rich roots in your bodily feelings. It is about time to reclaim the full depth of your ‘self’, to let it flourish far and wide.

Click here to read the article by Alessandro Monti from Psyche.co.

I am optimistic that we will one day have a science of consciousness, but it won’t be science as we know it today. Nothing less than a revolution is called for, and it’s already on its way.

Click here to read the article from The Conversation.

The need to meditate is present in every human being because it is a natural tendency of human life to look for a joy that doesn’t diminish, a love that doesn’t distort or turn into negative emotions.

Click here to read the article from The Art of Living.

“We are all broken. And now we are mended…”

– Source Unknown

“The Japanese have something called Kintsugi where they take a broken glass and repair it with gold to highlight the imperfections. It’s about embracing the flaws and not allowing a broken item to end its role. Also it’s “waste not, want not.”

For me, when the item is whole you pay little attention to it, you take it for granted most the time, but when you are repairing it, you spend time on it and connect more with it, and create love and special relationship with it. Sometimes many of our relationships that we take for granted need to be broken before we realize their values and spend the time to reflect and repair the damage. They will never go back to what they used to be, but they also could become in their new form pieces of art that enrich our lives in different ways.”

Photo credit: Medium

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, — act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

“In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything.”

~ Unknown

A Guide for the journey from Victimhood to True Empowerment

Click here to read the article by Chip Richards.

How to manage anxiety poop? Gut-brain connection.

Click here to read the article by Abby Moore, and Marvin Singh.

Since nothing is permanent, we must learn to face transience, i.e., the most universal law of all phenomena.

Click here to read the article by Ilchi Lee.

I suspect there is something in the attached article for each one of us.

Click here to read the article by Heather Havrilesky.

Yesterday, I finally took the step for a new smartphone after seven years of using my last one. So, I stepped into the store, was told someone would be with me shortly. Soon a staff member in his early thirties showed up, shook my hand with an eye-catching yet humble smile. He introduced himself to me but I wasn’t able to hear his name. I felt like his soft voice somehow was drowned in the vast amount of store noise. With a slight hesitation I leaned towards him and confessed I hadn’t caught his name. That is when he gestured his ears. He was deaf on both ears, couldn’t speak loudly himself but he could read lips. I was stunned as I wasn’t expecting this and somewhat selfishly it crossed my mind if the difficulty in communication would eventually impact the quality of my decision making, as to which model to buy. 

Pete then proceeded to inquire what I was looking for and how he could help. The ensuing minutes were nothing short of magical. I realized within the next minute or so, I was communicating with someone who could read my lips flawlessly. He was making me talk in order to narrow things down. In our dance, he gave me enough confidence I wouldn’t be hurting his feelings if I had to ask to repeat what he had just tried saying. After I made my choice and bought my phone, it was time to reinstall everything I had on cloud onto my new phone. At the store. With Pete. I was excited. 

At some point during the transfer, the cloud process got interrupted. Pete was trying to press this or that button. Nothing seemed to get it going. The transfer was stuck. I noticed inside of me that I was becoming impatient and worse yet, worried. At some point I must have looked away without realizing. Probably I was simply gazing other customers in the store to sooth my anxiety, attempting to separate myself from the problem in front of me. The, as I turned my head back towards Pete, I found him holding his phone to my face as if to say: “- Read it!”. I noticed he had written something on it with big and bold fonts while I had made myself mentally absent from the scene a minute or two ago. On his phone he wrote: “- I don’t want you worried. There is always a solution to an obstacle in this world. This is especially true for a problem with iPhone. We can always resolve any issue with Apple. Because it was coded by humans”.

A chill went up my spine, and I’ve learned a very impactful lesson at age 56, for which I am grateful in this holiday season. A day later, I am enjoying my phone, it is working great, and noticing the Earth today is not off its axis. 

Thank you, Pete, for who you are, how you carry yourself and showing us impaired like me, the way.

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

~ Plato

Click here to read the article by Darius Foroux.

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”

~ Saint Augustine