BANYAN TREE
TEACHING STORY
YOU ARE BECOMING!
Me: Hey God.
God: Hello
Me: I'm falling apart. Can you put me back together?
God: I would rather not.
Me: Why?
God: Because you aren't a puzzle.
Me: What about all of the pieces of my life that are falling on the ground?
God: Let them stay there for a while. They fell off for a reason. Take some time and decide if you need any of those pieces back.
Me: You don't understand! I'm breaking down!
God: No—you don't understand. You are breaking through. What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths, and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.
Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?
God: Only the very best pieces of you.
Me: I'm scared of changing.
God: I keep telling you—YOU AREN'T CHANGING! YOU ARE BECOMING!
Me: Becoming who?
God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off. I love you! Don't change! Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it.
Me: There goes another piece.
God: Yep. Let it be.
Me: So . . . I'm not broken?
God: Of course not! But you are breaking like the dawn. It's a new day. Become!
ONE-MINUTE WISDOM
MOTION
To the disciples who were always asking for words of wisdom, the Master said, “Wisdom is not expressed in words. It reveals itself in action.”
But when he saw them plunge headlong into activity he laughed aloud and said, “That isn’t action. That’s motion.”
—Anthony deMello
THIS, I KNOW
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
• If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it because the answer is not separate from the problem.
• When you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed.
• We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.
• When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.
• No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.
• When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.
• If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
• Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion.
• A man who is not afraid is not aggressive. A man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, peaceful man.
INSPIRATION
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
This do not admit, that you
In this dream can fail.
Think of victory and let
Its bright hope prevail.
Do not say, "If I succeed,"
Say, "When I succeed."
Most of all in any plan
Will and faith you need.
Faith that is, is right for you.
That you must achieve
All you wish for. To do this,
In yourself believe.
—George Ellison
JUST FOR LAUGHS
THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER
A curious child asked his mother: “Mommy, why are some of your hair turning grey?”
The mother tried to use this occasion to teach her child: “It is because of you, dear. Every bad action of yours will turn one of my hair grey!”
The child replied innocently: “Now I know why grandmother has only grey hair on her head.”
QUOTE
“It is not what you do, but what you stop doing that matters.”
—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj