The Way to Paradise

                                      ( Paradise, by Meenakshi..acrylic on canvas)   
               

           “Attention! Here and Now!Attention! Here and Now! “Mynah Birds in "Island " by Aldous Huxley

"I became aware of a silent, resistless change taking place within my mind. One by one, the questions which I had prepared in the train with such meticulous accuracy dropped away. For, it does not now seem to matter whether I solve the problems which have hitherto troubled me. I know only that a steady river of quietness seems to be flowing near me; that a great peace is penetrating the inner reaches of my being and that my thought tortured brain is beginning to arrive at some rest." Paul Brunton , describing his first meeting with Sri Ramana Maharishi

Did you remember to BE today?

Did you experience the NOW, true presence and being…or were you lost in past and future, in fantasies and dreams and fears and desires?

Did you LIVE today?

Or did the ticker-tape mind keep running non-stop so that you  just stumbled unconsciously through the day ,like a zombie?

Does the bird struggle with intellectual exercises to fly?

Does the fish need complex mental projections to plot its path in the ocean or does it just swim, without any doubts?

Why is it so difficult for human beings to just live naturally?

Because the human mind runs amok…out of control, twisting and churning in unnecessary agonies of thought, garbage spewing non-stop.

Can you turn it off? Can you use the mind wisely and only when required?

Can you stop the insanity ? Can you stay in the thought-free state of pure being?

The way to Paradise is within you…..in the stillness of your being, in the perfect grandeur of that Silence.

Years later, Paul Brunton writes: „I remain perfectly calm and fully aware of who I am and what is occurring. The Self still exists but it is a changed radiant Self. Something that is far superior to my unimportant personality rises into consciousness and becomes me. I am in the midst of an ocean of blazing light. I sit in the lap of holy bliss.

Divine grace descends and acts only when it is invoked by total surrender. It acts from within because God resides in the heart of all beings. Its whispers can be heard only in a mind purified by self surrender and prayer. Rationalists laugh at it and atheists scorn it but it exists. It is a descent of God into the soul‟s zone of awareness. It is visitation of a force unexpected and unpredictable. It is voice spoken out of cosmic silence. It is cosmic will which can perform authentic miracles under its own law.‟