RUMI: Telling It Like It Is
Keep walking, there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances,
That's not for human beings. Move within,
but don't move the way fear makes you move.
One day, you will take me completely out of my self,
I'll do what the angels cannot do,
Your eyelash will write on my cheek
the poem that hasn't been thought of.
Since I've been away from you,
I only know how to weep.
Like a candle melting is who I am.
Like a harp, any sound I make is music.
Happy, not from anything that happens.
Warm, not from fire or a hot bath,
Light, I register zero on a scale.
(Who remains to write the last line of this poem?)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:36 PM | Comments (1)
VIDEO: Dearest MaharajiBeautiful images of love, devotion, and happiness. Beautiful vocals by Tim Hain. Beautiful life! We are all so lucky to be alive. We have so much to be thankful for. Count your blessings! Enjoy each breath! The past is over. The future is a dream. Now is the moment!
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A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words
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October 26, 2008The Diamond Cutter's Stroke of Love
This morning, on a weekend jaunt in New York City with my wife and two kids, getting ready to go out for brunch at an overpriced West Village restaurant and obsessing about cash flow, U.S. politics, and the sound of my two kids bickering in the kitchen, I clicked on a 20 second mp3 of Maharaji.
"Listen and try to have that bond of affinity with the silence that is so simple, so precious. Try to have that relationship with the eternal. If a little rubs off on you, that's a good thing."
This is one of the amazing things about Maharaji -- his ability to cut through the Gordian Knot of my own illusion and awaken the very best of WHO I AM in just a few seconds.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2008Love in 60 Seconds
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2008VIDEO: The Value of a Breath
Four brief interviews with people about the value of Maharaji's gift -- and then a 4 min. video of Maharaji speaking about thirst, breath, and Knowledge.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2008Failure Is Not What You Think It Is
If you're inspired and have an idea you think will make a difference in the world, chances are good that you are feeling two things -- excitement and a fear of failure.
You're excited because you're motivated from the inside and see how your idea can help. At the same time, you're hesitating, because you don't want to fail.
This is the same challenge all people face. It's been going on for thousands of years. Failure? The only failure that can happen is you choosing not to act because you are afraid to fail.
Take a risk! Step up to the plate. The force is with you! As a great pundit once put it, "If not YOU, who? If not NOW, when?
But hey, don't take my word for it. Click below for some juicy quotes on the topic -- everyone from Miles Davis to Thomas Edison.
"An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots." -- Charles Kettering
"Do not fear mistakes. There are none." -- Miles Davis
"The way to succeed is to double your failure rate."
-- Thomas Watson, Founder of IBM
"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently."
-- Henry Ford
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -- Confucius
"Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it." -- Horace
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." -- Bill Cosby
"I have not failed once. I've just found 10,000 ways that didn't work." -- Thomas Edison
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
-- Robert F. Kennedy
"No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy." -- Sir Laurence Olivier
"If your life is free of failures, you're not taking enough risks."
-- H. Jackson Brown
"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try." -- Beverly Sills
"I failed my way to success." -- Thomas Edison
"99 percent of success is built on failure." -- Charles Kettering
"Act as if it were impossible to fail." -- Dorothea Brande
"Failure is success if we learn from it." -- Malcolm Forbes
"You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." -- John Barrymore
"The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success." -- Paramahansa Yogananda
"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down." -- Mary Pickford
"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." -- Winston Churchill
"We are not retreating -- we are advancing in another direction."
-- Douglas MacArthur
"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." -- Thomas A. Edison
"Fall seven times, stand up eight." -- Japanese Proverb
"Stumbling is not falling." -- Portuguese Proverb
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2008Excerpts from Maharaji's Talk in Montreal, Part 2
The following excerpts are my best attempts at capturing, live, some of what Maharaji said at the Montreal event on October 7th. In some cases, I have paraphrased his words. MD
"You have the incredible ability to be fulfilled and feel joy in your heart. Not once. Not twice, but have the impossible at your command whenever you want. Experience it! Experience what? Joy! Of what? Of being alive. What does alive mean? Alive means the infinite is residing within you."
"Sit back, relax, and feel this passion, even if it is only for a few minutes. It will do you a lifetime of good."
"Gratitude is a song that is sung."
"Understand, if just for a fraction of a second that within you the immortal resides, in you is the infinite -- not was -- IS! It can't be bought or thought or created."
"People know what they don't want. The Master asks, 'What is it that you DO want?'"
"If you don't want to be separated from Knowledge, it has to be renewed everyday."
"You inherently know that which you value above everything else in this world is peace, understanding, and joy. What do you do to make sure that this joy does not waver and this understanding does not come and go?"
"The possibilities are endless. There is no end to the possibilities. Here is the most amazing magic that is taking place."
"The joy that exists here in the company of the beautiful inside of you, in the practice of this Knowledge, does not exist in heaven."
"We all have these little deflectors -- concepts that deflect the reality away from us. We say, 'Oh, Kabir was enlightened, but not me. We say, 'this experience might be true for that other person sitting next to me, but not for me. I am nothing.' Not true. We are blessed beyond belief. The most incredible wish has come true."
"Invest a little every day in this Knowledge. Your piggy bank will become huge. Massive."
"Practice. Participate. Enjoy Knowledge. Enjoy life. Enjoy this existence. Forever. Now."
"What is my message to you? There is more."
"Sometimes the words of a Master come as a storm and sometimes they come gingerly, like the rain in the middle of the desert."
"I have seen joy in the eyes and smiles on the faces of people who have been told they have less than six days to live. Can you imagine that?"
"This Knowledge is the only thing I know of that will be there to the very end. I'm asking you to make a sound investment in that."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:03 AM | Comments (3)
October 08, 2008Excerpts from Maharaji's Talk in Montreal: Part 1
"Awaken! Arise! Live this life consciously! Accept this most beautiful challenge to sing the song of gratitude. Your audience is no less than the divine itself. So sing and sing and sing and sing. Never stop singing!"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:34 AM | Comments (1)
October 04, 2008Excerpts from Maharaji's Talk in Toronto
The following excerpts are my best attempts at capturing, live, some of what Maharaji said at the Toronto event on October 4th. It is not verbatim. And in some cases, I have paraphrased his words. MD
"I have a message of hope -- that you've been given something so precious. What you have is the most beautiful thing. But for most people that's the hardest thing to understand -- that they already have everything they could possibly want."
"A Master takes the most complicated thing and makes it simple."
"The message resides in the heart. That's God speaking to you every single day. Awaken! Understand! You have the message. I don't have to interpret it for you. The heart wants to be fulfilled. Listen to that!"
"Remember when you were young and your mother told you to study hard so you could become something? The message was you are nothing -- and that is simply not true. I'm not here to tell you your mother was wrong. Maybe she was right about everything else except this one thing. You are something -- something divine."
"Walk this life on your own feet, not somebody else's. Understand its value from the heart. Experience Knowledge from the heart. Don't try to grasp it with the mind."
"99.99% of religions say you are a sinner. The first card you are dealt? An unsaved sinner. I'm here to tell you that's not true."
"What is the reality? The blessing of breath coming and going."
"Everyone has figured out a pin around which to revolve. It might be a person. It might be something you like. It could be anything. You actually do not revolve around these things. The only thing you revolve around is the breath. Because when this breath stops coming and going all your revolving is finished."
"For those of you with Knowledge, what has been made possible to you? Only the impossible. Within you lives the infinite. Outside you is the finite. The two shall never meet. They are opposite by nature. But you, with the gift of Knowledge,...somebody has bypassed the impossible, and made it possible for the finite to experience the infinite."
"I know this feeling is true because my heart rejoices. I feel peace."
"Go beyond expectations. Go beyond your bucket being full of ideas. And whose ideas are they? They are not yours. Your bucket is full of other people's ideas. Whose definition of God do you carry around? Yours? How many of you call God a 'he'? How do you know? You don't! It's your bucket, filled with somebody else's ideas, and you're carrying it!"
"The Master is like a mirror. When you look in it, you see everything."
"The reason you cannot imagine this is beyond your imagination. Imagination doesn't go that far."
"Of all the time your mind has had your undivided attention, it has never take you to a place where you feel calm and peace. Knowledge, on the other hand, slows it down and brings you inside to feel that joy, beauty, simplicity, and clarity."
"The outcome of practicing Knowledge is gratitude."
"Knowledge is about feeling the happiness -- being grateful you exist -- even when everything on the outside is wrong."
"If you have to be worried, be worried about this breath. Being worried about anything else is like having a hangman's noose around your neck."
"Life is not about the dream castles you want to build. Those castles are doomed. What you call yours today will be someone else's tomorrow. You have a house, you decorate it, paint it, and give it your personal touch. One day, when you are gone, someone will remove all of it. What you call yours will not remain."
"What is yours? This breath that just came is really, really yours. It was made just for you from the workings of the universe. God knows where it came from, but it came exclusively for you. It's yours."
"I'm not about what's going to happen at the end. I'm about NOW. In the end, Knowledge will be there for you. Nothing else."
"What I have to say is a story about you. It is not a myth. You are here for a reason. It is not a mistake. It is not a random act. How can you ascertain what this reason is? Why am I here? What is the goal? What is the purpose of my life?"
"What does it take to turn within? Great words. Sounds good. But I am not here to merely repeat what others have said. A lot of people will say the same thing to you, but they don't know what it means. They've read it from a wise book."
"You can read Kabir's words and get great inspiration from them, but what was Kabir reading? He was illiterate! Where was his inspiration coming from?"
"The first place peace needs to be established is not the outer battlefield, but the inner battlefield. It is much easier to establish a cease fire on the outer battlefield."
"Here's something I read from Kabir that I really like: 'Yogis are drunk on discipline. Priests are drunk on scriptures. Celibates are drunk on vanity. Monks are drunk on prestige.' What are YOU drunk on?"
"What I talk about is completely different than religion. There is an answer, but it is not in any language. It cannot be spoken, written, pronounced, or uttered. The answer to this question is so close to you. It could not possibly be closer. It is inscribed on the beautiful pages of your heart. You and you alone are capable of reading and receiving this answer. You are the only one who can decide whether this answer is true or not."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:50 PM | Comments (3)
October 01, 2008Back to the Garden
I'm sure there was a time back in the Garden of Eden before the biting of fruit, naming of lizard, and placing of fig leaf, when Adam turned to Eve or Eve turned to Adam and, in the delightful absence of language, greeting cards, or text messaging, found a simple way to communicate something real about their experience of being alive.
Ever since those halcyon days, we've been trying to do the same -- to express something basic, primal, and pure. About what moves us. And why we often linger in the gaze of another who lets us in just long enough to experience the blessing of being received, no strings attached.
It is into this space I find myself being transported upon seeing Maharaji -- a space that continues expanding the moment he leaves the stage.
He's gone and so am I -- my body now a hologram, my heart a happy camper.
Stunned in my seat, I am completely still, infused, fulfilled, free, my blood a kind of overflowing champagne fizz.
I'm sure I could move if I wanted to, but I don't want to. The desire to go anywhere has vanished. All I want to do is sit here and soak up the feeling forever. My name, my plans, the details of my life all seem like odd relics.
I am driftwood here, washed ashore, something a curious tourist might find.
I breathe. I bask in the light of an interior sun now made brighter by the one I have no words for. I breathe. I follow my breath like a happy drunk follows the dotted white line home after an endless night of celebration.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)
