Well, a part of an another timeline in life has started where all in all spaces of differences and emotions have started to fall into experience of mine. It has been an ideal time to actualize this expedition of a different journey. I have been out of blogging lately but i would really like to get back with this interesting aspect. 

 An aspect i call - TENDENCIES ! 

So, to start off with this , i ask myself what are tendencies. what are they based on ? , what are the effects and side effects of tendencies and all the other synonymous questions related.

 What is it that makes me think in a particular way ? 
IT is not my family, not my friends, not the place where i live at. Even though all these things affect an individual's perspective, It comes to clear cut dilemma on how actually it can make a difference on a personal aspect of an individual. I believe that a persons inner journey of life would be the basic identity of that particular individual. 

 The understanding of life and its diversities tends to project an image of that persons characteristics and personal attributes which he/she amends to project/show to the external world. This understanding of life creates a sense of clarity, maturity and understanding of the life situations wherein the narrow minded world comes into a total extrinsic scenario of empowering ones self. 

 Overall, Tendencies dont match with any of the natural habitations and social situations but As per my expeience, i believe its a personal inner self and his thought process
(Apart from his external affected thoughts).

Smile - The Forgotten Solution

                                                                                                                 :)

Starting back my blog after a couple of years is like a task uphill for me, but yet i am writing this blog down here on the moment of happiness. That which is never gone and that which is hysterical for many. I seldom thought that off all the ideas phrasing inside my head, the moment i put it into action and get it done.. the phenomenon that grows up in me which senses a sight of pure satisfaction and a feeling of being the one who has it all. Days and Nights, i have sat down on my terrace, gazing at the stars trying to figure out answers for questions which i have mentioned in my earlier blogs but to my utter amazement, more than the answers i always looked at myself with a smile on my face and a thought  in my eyes - "Is this Happiness ?" 

So, i am writing down what I have experienced out of my life till date, Who knows ? You might be happy as well. 

                                'I'll be happy when I... ' , does it sound like you?

The Cambridge dictionary defines happy as: feeling, showing or causing pleasure or satisfaction. So many times we wait for something or someone to make us happy. We believe we'll be happy when we get the promotion, meet that special person, buy the house, and maybe win the lottery.

Happiness is a decision. Make that decision every day. Irrespective of what life throws your way, you can choose your state. You and not your situations should determine whether you stay happy or not. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you won't have bad days, neither am I saying you shouldn't express your pain. Am saying irrespective of the pain and anger, choose to be happy. 

Acknowledge the situation (don't be in denial), express your pain (and you should) whatever way you want to, but after it's said, don't let it get the better of you. Don't let your disposition and attitude towards life become one of despair or rejection. I'm asking you to be like a thermostat which sets the temperature of a room. Whether it's hot or cold, the thermostat stays at a set temperature. It acknowledges the change in the environment; nonetheless it remains at the set temperature. The thermometer on the other hand is different; it fluctuates with different environmental conditions.

So the question is how? How do you stay happy when everything that could possibly go wrong happens? The following are some steps that have helped me stay happy in spite of:

Remember that regardless of what you are going through, someone else will gladly switch places with you. I remember listening to a song when I was younger in India where the singer complained of having Basmati for food. I thought to myself, oh my gosh!! I want to live in your life; where it's a sad thing to have Basmati Rice for food. 

See the opportunity in the situation. If you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness, see the opportunity life still presents by giving you time to make the most of your relationship with your loved ones. See it as a second chance to make the rest of your life great.

Decide that you are the boss of your life. Nobody and nothing (especially not pain) will take you captive without your permission. If you've acknowledged the situation and expressed your pain, then move on. Refuse to be constantly harassed by the pain or upsetting feeling. Refuse to be held captive by the pain or situation. Instead exercise your freedom by choosing a positive state.

Find the lesson: There's always a lesson hidden inside every negative situation. Finding the lesson enhances your life and makes you stronger. Don't forget life is not just about the destination, it's also about the process and who you become as a result. Finding the lesson puts the situation in perspective and makes it more manageable.

Imagine what your life would look like if you are a thermometer. You will be highly unpredictable and unreliable because one minute you are happy, then the next you are grumpy or sad; fluctuating with the different situations life throws your way. Imagine on the other hand what your life will be like if you are a thermostat, where you take control of negative experiences and decide that in spite of them you'll be happy anyway.

In the words of Martha Washington, "I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances."

As you start your week, remember that happiness is a decision. And with every negative experience you encounter, determine that you and not the situation will decide your outcome. 

Making use out of my words may be of no use. But, trust me making use of these very precious moments of your life is of very high use. Use it , Dont get used by it. 

Keep Smiling. :)

-Prashanth Ram

Love : The only Unification

Everyone who has taken birth has spoken about love all the time, but if you search the horizon, you will discover that most of the things written about love are either pithy or cynical.Society in general can be cruel and heartless toward real virtue of any kind. In the most popular venues, love is seldom dealt with with any degree of sobriety. Modern humor mocks marriage, husbands and wives, then glorifies every conceivable breech of virtue, such as sexual immorality, profane and obscene values.Real love is a mystery to most people. Most people never realize the true potential or value of love, nor do they learn to practice the art of love. It is usually very poorly defined.

People think they are in love, but they can't explain it. There is a great deal of confusion and cross-referencing of the terms LOVE, ROMANCE, INFATUATION, AFFECTION, TENDERNESS and so forth.Love may include romance, infatuation, affection and tenderness. But even if those elements are not present, it could still be love.A lot of people will tell you that they are in love, or that they have been in love, but there is a huge disparity between one person's definition of love and another's.Two of my favorite statements on love are:Love is a choice to do the highest good for someone.Love is the bond of perfectness (Colossians 3:14):It is the perfect glue.Love is noble and idealistic. Love is the highest of all the virtues. God Himself is love

Paul classified faith, hope and love as the highest virtues, and concluded that love was the highest of the three.Love is essential to all perfect relationships.What most people never realize is that true love is not always romantic. Romance is different from love, even though ideally, they should occur together. Romance is the emotional component of love. Romance adds the sparkle in your eyes. Romance adds the perfume and the colors. Romance embellishes the scenery and swells the music. Romance is the gilding of love. Romance is gold leaf. It is ornamentation. Romance sometimes becomes a means unto itself. It even becomes a cheap substitute for love at times. Some people seem to desire the trappings and embellishments of romance in place of genuine relationships.

By comparison, romance is superficial to love. Romance is skin deep. Love is heart deep. Romance requires things that love does not require. Romance requires gifs and surprises and lavish attention.

Romance sometimes demands things that contradict love. Romance is offended when the gold leaf wears off. Romance condemns love that is not eye-pleasing. Romance often injures and denigrates true love because love doesn't always appeal to romance's selfishness. Love is for givers, not getters. Those who demand to be loved before they will love shouldn't be surprised if no one gives them love.

Lovers live in a world of giving. The getters, the ones who are looking for love, is a different world. We have a duty to love, but we have no guarantees that we will be loved. We have it in our power to love, but we have no power to force others to love us. It is folly to spend life demanding love from others.

If we are true lovers, our entire mindset is in a giving mode. There is no place for bemoaning the ways others neglect us.Love is fascinating inasmuch that it draws a person into an expression of caring and concern for another. An entirely selfish person cannot love. Anyone whose desires are only for self-satisfaction cannot manifest love. Love requires the giving of ones' self to another. It involves an element of self-depletion, self-exhaustion.

Love is empathic. It puts itself in someone else's shoes. Love seeks to understand. Love cares. It does not pre-judge. It does not pass sentences. Love does not jump to conclusions. Love does not throw down ultimatums. Love does not declare war on its object. Love is tender, it is kind, it is forgiving.Love is tuning into another's sensitivities. Love sense's another's strengths and weaknesses. It uses the other person's measuring stick. It suffers and rejoices on another's terms.

Love seeks rapport. It seeks to interface with another at their level. It seeks to relate emotionally, intellectually, physically and spiritually. Love compromises whenever possible. Love sacrifices personal whims if they are incompatible with the one who is loved. Love abandons pursuits that hurt the one who is loved. Love will do without.

Love will dress in the color that another chooses. Love bends. Love stretches. Love must sometimes keep silent. Love is a desire that someone will fare better than yourself.

It is the willingness to spend yourself for the well-being of another. Love will pay a debt the other cannot pay. It will bail them out for the sake of survival. Love wants the other to survive even if it means death to self. Love will die so someone else can live.

Relationship : What my FATHER told me.

How can you really stay together for a lifetime? Are feelings of happiness the kind of “glue” that keeps people together? Not likely, and certainly not alone. What about commitment? Does it take a strict sense of duty and conscious decisions to make a lifetime marriage possible? That’s part of it. But there is something more.

“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.”

Day-to-day activities and events give partners shared experiences and memories. Over time, these small moments grow into a shared history that is deep and binding. We feel strongly connected to our spouse not just because we feel love for him or her, but because we have a life together, every day, including good times, and bad times. Children bring new threads that can tie us together even stronger as a family. Their day-to-day smiles, tears, and growth tie us to them as well as to each other. The tiny threads of our interactions and care for them over time weave rich bonds between us in the fabric of our lives.

When we married we made a commitment. As our shared history builds on our commitment, our sense of being part of one another takes that commitment to a higher level called loyalty. Loyalty is both this powerfully binding feeling and the quality of our actions, both with our spouses and with others, to strengthen our ties and keep us together. There are two places loyalty is especially important in character friendship marriages: in our conversations and in our priorities.

Another way to be loyal in conversation is simply to listen to our partner with our full attention. Supportive, whole-hearted listening lets our partner know that he or she is really our first priority. It takes time and effort to understand one another and to be cheerleaders for each other. And, because new parents go through so many changes and life becomes more hectic, loyal listening can be even more difficult. But we also need it more than ever.

Keeping your partnership a priority is a big part of being loyal. Living with a new baby is also a time when friends and hobbies may seem like an easy way to escape from tough daily problems. Being loyal takes staying focused on your shared life goals, even when it is difficult and takes sacrifice. You may have to reexamine the time you give to other interests outside your family. Everyone needs time to rejuvenate, but you’ll probably have to adjust the way you use your time to make sure that your family becomes your highest priority.

A unique challenge to your loyalty that some couples experience during the transition to parenthood is getting too much advice from family and friends. For the most part, becoming parents has a wonderful effect of bringing extended family and friends closer together in a supportive way. But, sometimes, the advice from family and friends divides you as a parenting team. Being loyal to each other may mean letting well-intentioned people know you appreciate their help, but keep the boundaries around your relationship firm. Your spouse is your first and most important advisor. Making decisions between the two of you about how to care for your child as he or she grows will strengthen your loyalty and partnership.

Practicing loyalty to your partner means remembering all that you owe to your spouse and being true to your shared history and shared future. That leads to a constant effort to keep your relationship strong. Cultivating the character strengths of friendship, generosity, fairness and loyalty is a life-long process, but it gets easier over time as these traits become second nature to you. The birth of your child is only the beginning of many new adventures. As your relationship grows stronger through practicing character friendship, generosity, fairness, and loyalty, you will go beyond “happily ever after” to discover that the every-day moments in your marriage are deeply meaningful and rich with real joy.

Why failure pains ?

You've no doubt heard about the bricklayer who applied for time off work for the following reason: "When I got to the building, I found that the hurricane had knocked off some bricks around the top so I climbed onto the roof and rigged up a beam with a pulley and hoisted a couple of barrels full of bricks to the top of the building.

Then I went to the bottom, and holding onto the line, I began releasing it. Unfortunately, the barrel of bricks was much heavier
than I was and before I knew what was happening, the barrel started coming down, jerking me up. I decided to hang on since I was too far off the ground by then to jump.About halfway up I met the barrel of bricks coming down fast. I received a hard blow on my shoulder. I then continued to the top, banging my head against the beam and getting my fingers pinched and jammed in the pulley.

When the barrel hit the ground hard, it burst its bottom allowing the bricks to spill out. I was now heavier than the barrel, so I started down again at high speed. Halfway down I met the barrel coming up–fast–and received severe injuries to my chin. When I hit the ground, I landed on the pile of spilled bricks, getting several painful cuts and bruises.

"At this point I must have lost my presence of mind because I let go of my grip on the line. The barrel came down fast, giving me another blow on my head, putting me in the hospital. I respectfully request sick leave."

Everybody has times when things go wrong. But when troubles come, it's not what happens to us, but how we react, that counts. Troubles destroy some people. Others they make. The difference lies in our attitude, being realistic, acceptance, and what we do about resolving our problems.


Attitude is more
important than aptitude.

Attitude. If we respond to our difficulties positively, determined with God's help to overcome, we will. If we react negatively with a defeated attitude, we will be beaten, no matter how brilliant we are.

As Zig Ziglar says in his book, See You at the Top, "Attitude is much more important than aptitude.... Despite the overwhelming evidence which supports the importance of the right mental attitude, our entire educational system from kindergarten through graduate school virtually ignores this vital factor in our life. Ninety percent of our education is directed at acquiring facts with only 10 percent of our education aimed at our feelings—or attitudes.

"These figures are truly incredible when we realize that our thinking brain is only 10 percent as large as our feeling brain. A study by Harvard University revealed that 85 percent of the reasons for success, accomplishments, promotions, etc. were because of our attitudes and only 15 percent because of our technical expertise."

Being realistic is also critical in determining the outcome to one's problems.

Talking about myself, i have failed, not once, not twice but 6 times in my life in various instances which meant alot to me. Leaving aside the magnitude of the events, they still meant alot. Today is one such event, I failed to make it up in my event. Thinking of this, i realized its not the event that makes me feel low but it is the reason why i wanted to win it. But yes, it's not a mistake that i have done to bend my head infact, its a growing reason which led me to realize this. This write up took exactly 18 mins to finish this till this word. If this post of mine can be of any use to one person then that would show the power of a failure which is indeed a Stepping stone for Success.

(P.S : My apologies to the person who wanted me to make it up today. )

Modern Science proving Spirituality ?

Modern Science and spirituality pushes the paradigm of our understanding of spirituality to a whole new dimension of consciousness, existence, and relatedness beyond the way humans normally experience spirituality within a mechanical worldview. Modern Science is pushing the envelope of human consciousness to a whole new level of spiritual thinking. A growing body of scientists, philosophers, historians, behavioral scientists, and spiritual leaders (from Howard Bloom,Robert Wright, Melinda Davis, to Andrew Cohen, to mention a few) are now recognizing the development of a whole new way of seeing the world, a major shift in human thinking and consciousness development which will alter human living as we know it. Beginning with the late Dr. Clare W. Graves, who in 1974 predicted "a momentous leap" in human development (see The Futurist, April 1974), these and many others scholars are now recognizing what Graves, perhaps the first, recognized back in the late 1960s, that we are on the verge of a radical, seismic shift in human development, from "subsistence" levels of thinking focused on human survival and existence, to "being" levels focused on human integration and global community. It is a shift from a materialistic to a spiritualistic environment; from a dogmatic/scientific oriented world to one focused on spiritual discovery and fulfillment, not just for oneself but also for the planet as a whole. To put it simply, it is Integrative thinking and living knocking and opening the door of Holistic thinking and action, in order to enter the emerging world of Wisdom living and experience.

A hunger for meaning in the midst of human chaos as well as the need for a radical transformation in people's lives (the two functions of religion) has now emerged.

Obviously, it is not taking place in all places on earth with the same strength. Most segments of the world are caught up in survival modes of living, tribal warfare of various sorts, or "holy wars" for religio-political dominance. However, in other segments of our global village there is an awakening for the spiritual taking place the likes of which have not been seen in history, and we are just beginning to see the early shallow waves hit the shore of human existence. Soon a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual tsunami will hit with such gale force unlike anything previously experienced. We need to now catch the dynamic waves of millennial change, for if we are not part of the future, we will be history!

These stages of self-organization, development, and transformation lead us into the field of Spiral Dynamics, the theory of levels of existence and memetics, the principal framework for best understanding spirituality in its many dimensions. And it has to do with culture and value systems.

To put a stop to this topic, the basic counter point i would like to put on is that the Modern Science has a long way to go till it reaches the point which Spirituality had reached ages ago. Modern Science right now is just 'proving' in its own way all those points which have been penned down by the past yogis and masters in the path of spirituality ( Pathanjali, Adi Shankaracharya, Jesus, etc.).

Life... Is it really Yours ?

It is often difficult for us to feel in control of our lives. Unable to change the past, or control the events around us, it is easy to feel like a paper sailboat being tossed about on a stormy sea. Dharma, however, offers us a different view. Within the Dharma we discover that we can control the nature of our lives, and that we can find an island of peace amidst this ocean of chaos we call life. Through understanding, we are able to conquer our lives.

The five things that are welcome in this world, but are difficult to attain, are long life, beauty, happiness, honor and liberation or Mukthi. These five auspicious and often sought after pleasures are not found easily. They do not come to us without effort. They do not come to us by way of day dreams or wishful thinking. If we wish to attain these, we must strive for them of our own merit. What is given to us can be easily taken away. Therefore, it is up to us to follow a path that leads us to the pleasures we seek. Those who prudently follow a wise path that leads to the attainment of these five pleasures, is said to attain these things - in both their human and divine existence.

The five things that we can not escape from in this world are age, sickness, change, death and karma. These five things are the nature of Samsara (the cycle of suffering, birth and death). Realizing this, can help improve the nature of our lives. Without clinging to our youth we allow ourselves to grow and mature. Realizing how fragile the nature of our existence is, we nurture ourselves and others. Realizing the impermanence of our lives, we find an appreciation of what is before us in the moment. Realizing death, life has value to us. Realizing we can not escape our karma, we begin to develop and cultivate a path that releases us from our self afflictions.

The life we live, is the result of how we have lived. A life lived with pain and anguish (in dark karma) is a result of having lived controlled by our desire nature. A life lived with merit (in light karma) is a result of having lived in control of our desire nature. A life lived with both pain and joy (in dark and light karma) is a result of having lived both controlled by and in control of our desire nature. A life lived with equanimity and peacefulness (in neither light nor dark karma) is the result of having lived free from our desire nature, and without taking delight in the benefit of our merits.

Karma is the chain that binds us to Samsara. The debts of our dark karma bind us to the wheel of Samsara. Even living in light karma binds us to Samsara, for we are drawn to the delight of our merits. The merits of heaven shall also be spent and bring us rebirth in the lower worlds. Only when we live for the benefit of all living beings, without any intentions of self, can we break the chain of karma and find liberation.

We are the owners of our karma. Karma, the fruit of our intentions, shape our lives. The intentions that create our karma are born of our own desire nature. Our karma manifests in the present, in the future, and even follows us in our future existences. What we run from, we shall run into. All that we reap, we must sow. Even if we allow others to carry our burden, they can not purify our karma for us, and we shall not share in the merit of their virtues.

We can control the nature of our lives. Within this moment, the only moment that exists, the past, present and future are contained. We may not be able to change our past actions or the actions of others, or prevent its results, but we are in control of how we re-act upon them. The Buddha tells us that studying the nature of our actions (before, during and after we act) can help us discern what is helpful and what is a hindrance upon our path. He has given us the Noble Eightfold Path, and adapting this path to our way of life can help us overcome our desire nature, change the light of our karma, and conquer our lives.

May your karma be full of Dharma.