How to Escape your Suffering - The Blind Man vs. The Cripple

There is a famous Indian story about the great battle between the blind man and the cripple which I think you will all enjoy. I came across this story first is Osho’s book on Courage, The Joy of Living Dangerously. Here is how it goes. In a remote village in the outskirts of Punjab there lived 2 sworn enemies. One chap was blind and the other was a cripple. They just could not get along. No matter what one did, it would upset the other and visa versa. For years this battle raged on and the animosity between them grew fierce and caustic.

As fate would have it though, during one very hot and dry summer a terrible fire broke out in the village and began consuming everything in its path. The villagers began to flee in fear as there was no stopping the inferno. In the panic, the blind man and the cripple were forgotten about and left to fend for themselves. They now had a big problem. The blind man did not know which way to go in order to escape the fire, and the cripple, who could see the path to safety, could take no action regarding it. So both were stuck. Luckily for them, the desire to live was greater than their hatred for each other, so they decided to work together in order to save their lives. The blind man put the cripple on his shoulders, who then directed him on which way to go in order to escape. Thus, working as a team, they were successful and even ended up becoming friends. Who is the blind man and who is the cripple? The blind man is your mind and the cripple is your heart. What is the fire? The fire is your suffering.

The mind is the instrument through which you can move, act — but it is blind, in that it does not know which way to go. It endlessly debates, weighing pros and cons, wobbling between what will be gained and what will be lost if certain action was to be taken. It cannot see how to escape the suffering. The heart, on the other hand, can see clearly the way out, but does not have any means to act. In order to act, it needs the mind. So they need each other. But, more importantly the heart needs to sit on top of the mind, as the cripple sat on the shoulders of the blind man. With the heart leading the way, the mind becomes intelligent. Give the heart its precedence and wisdom will then emerge and guide you safely out of your suffering.

Reincarnation - Myths and Facts

I really do not know whether to believe in reincarnation or not. I have heard both sides. There are people who absolutely believe in rebirth and there are others who are skeptical about it. What is reincarnation? According to Wikipedia "literally "to be made flesh again", is a doctrine or metaphysical belief that some essential part of a living being (in some variations only human beings) survives death to be reborn in a new body. This essential part is often referred to as the spirit or soul, the "higher" or "true" self, "divine spark", or "I". According to such beliefs, a new personality is developed during each life in the physical world, but some part of the self remains constant throughout the successive lives."

Before the 1960s, it was called "Transmigration of the Soul". This belief is rooted in Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Many cultures have myths and legends telling about heroes or other characters who die and then come back to life. When they reappear, though, it is not as their former selves but as other people, as animals, or even as plants. The concept of reincarnation—a reappearance of a spirit or soul in earthly form—is based on the belief that a person's soul continues to exist after death and can transmigrate, or move, to another living thing.

However what does the Bible say? I have not read the bible fully, but when I browsed on the Internet, I came across few verses that state for and against reincarnation. For example, Hebrews 9:27 states "It is appointed unto man to die once, then judgment." Since the Bible is God's spoken word to man, then this verse should emphatically prove that reincarnation is a myth. What are some other Bible verses that plainly show "Reincarnation" to be a lie? How about Second Corinthians 5:8 which says 'We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.' What does this mean? That at death, believers in Christ are immediately in the presence of God..their bodies go to the grave but their spirit and soul go to God. Non-believers go to a place to await judgment.

Here is one which supports reincarnation. All the verses in which the Lord refers to John the Baptist as been Elijah. Also Bhagavat gita, the Hindu Bible strongly support reincarnation.

A Russian woman who claims to be able to speak 120 languages says many of them are from her previous lives.Linguists claim to have identified that she speaks 16th century English,Chinese, Persian, Egyptian, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Korean and Swahili, reports Komsomol'skaya Pravda.

There are many people who have claimed to have known their past lives and have reincarnated. But, it is upto us to believe or not. We can do many researches, read many books related to this topic and improve our knowledge. Unless we experience, we will still be skeptical.

I believe meditation is a means of realising oneself. Hoping that we can have even more clear picture when we realise ourselves, I strongly recommend all to practice some kind of meditation which might answer a lot of our unanswered queries.

If anyone had reincarnation experience/knowledge or who knows about their past lives please do leave a comment. I am very eager to learn more in this topic.

Information: Statistics world-wide are difficult to obtain, but in the US the Gallup Organization made a survey in October 2001 of Americans' belief in psychic and paranormal phenomena. For this survey, they asked adults 18 and over amongst other things if they believed in "Reincarnation, that is, the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death". In the results, 25% said they did believe in reincarnation, 20% didn't know, 54% didn't believe in it and 1% had no opinion. Belief was only slightly higher among males than females, while it varied significantly between age groups: belief amongst 28-29 year-olds was at 25%, 30-49 year-olds were at 22%, while people 50 and over were at 28%

References:

http://www.enotes.com/myths-legends/reincarnation http://www.anunseenworld.com/reincarnation.html http://science.krishna.org/Articles/2003/12/001.html http://www.144000.net/reincarn.htm

Teen depression - Facts and Tips to handle

Teen depression has become very common now a days. Most of the parents are thrown to jeopardy due to Teen depression. We need to create more awareness in this topic so that we can save more innocent kids/teens from spoiling their like. Though it is very difficult to find if a teen is in depression, we have more proven methods to find them these days. Though parents take responsibly for most of their child's actions, teens must also try to co-operate and discuss about their problems to their parents or guide, so that we can reduce most of the problem from going out of control. 'Medicinenet.com' is a very good site creating awareness in this topic. Below is an article from their site and I thought it will be good to share it with you. Please Click here to read the article.

Why do we get Disturbing and Violent Dreams?

Everyone loves to dream. Sometimes we do get upset when we dream of something we do not want to see. Few dreams haunt us. I have many times woken up by a same dream. Dreams are ways through which your subconscious mind try to communicate with you. If you understand what subconscious mind try to say, you can rule! It is not very easy. You need to master the art of dream interpretation. As it is always believed by me 'Nothing is impossible. You just need to try!'. So here is an article about disturbing dreams which I came across in www.psychic-aus.com . It is a good start to read our dreams which surely helps in solving our emotional problems.

Here is the link to the article

Do you feel depressed?

"Depression is extremely complex," explains London-based psychoanalyst Jean Allen, "And can be very hard to diagnose and evaluate". Who on earth would have thought that a video game can help doctors to find your depression level. According to a team at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, however, a video-game could provide crucial clues not only in diagnosing depression, but also in gauging the severity of that depression. Interesting huh? Technology has improved so much that you can do wonders with it.

The game in question is Duke Nukem, a hugely popular virtual reality adventure in which the eponymous Duke -- a muscular, crop-haired, womanizing macho-man in the Arnold Schwarzenegger mold -- defends the earth, and in particular its female inhabitants, against an unpleasant array of aliens, mutants and other physically malformed aggressors.

Battle is joined in a variety of virtual environments, ranging from urban cityscapes to military bases and space stations, with the Duke navigating his way around these environments shooting, bombing, incinerating, stabbing, shrinking, freezing and otherwise terminating (with extreme prejudice) his hapless opponents.

This is an article from CNN.com. An interesting and informative article must be shared and here it is. Many people suffer from depression and few of them still struggle to find out the cause. Depression is very critical. It can lead you to heights of stupidity.

The use of such virtual games to assess mental condition is not in itself new. A team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has used navigation through a virtual reality maze to help in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, while another study from the U.S. National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, has employed a similar system to quantify the mental deterioration caused by old age.

The NIMH experiment, however, is the first of its kind to apply such technology to the problems of depression.

The study combined 30 male and female volunteers from the in-patient and out-patient psychiatric units at NIMH, ages ranging of 21-65, with 19 healthy "control" volunteers. People displaying a "high expertise" in video games were excluded.

The volunteers were allowed to familiarize themselves with a virtual reality town such as that used in Duke Nukem, before being given 20 minutes to navigate their way around that town locating various landmarks.

The results proved extremely instructive. The healthy control group were able to find their way to significantly more locations (an average of 3.8) than those suffering from depression (an average of 2.4).

Within the latter group there emerged a clear correlation between severity of depression and navigational ability, with those suffering from the most acute depression displaying the least ability to find their way around the virtual town.

I have quoted few findings from the article and to read the entire article do CLICK HERE!

Mood Swings during Pregnancy - Why do we have them?

I couldn't stop thinking about this topic. Not because I am pregnant, it is because I am surrounded by my pregnant friends. It is pregnancy time in our neighbourhood. Almost all of my friends are pregnant and each one acts differently. The one and only topic that we discuss when we all meet is about pregnancy. I have been observing most of them from their day one of pregnancy and to my surprise I see the fun one becoming dull and the shy one becoming overwhelmed.

Suddenly everyone reads about pregnancy symptoms, baby growth and want to be the expert in this field. Each one talks as though they have a PhD in this department and they are not to be blamed. Their mood swings. There are people who does things deliberately during their pregnancy and puts the blame on their mood swings. But, 99% of the mood swings are real and genuine. Why is there a mood swing all of a sudden? What is its cause? Most of us know it is hormonal imbalance. For those who are new to this, Click Here