Furthermore, Francis encouraged his brothers [of his order] to go to one another for help and guidance: ‘Let each one confidently make known his need to another that the other might discover what is needed and minister to him.’ This rule may have arisen because the early brothers were striving heroically, but often silently, about their spiritual struggles. But, as Francis reminded the brothers, they should be able to count on one another’s compassion: ‘Let each one love and care for his brother as a mother loves and cares for her son in those matters in which God has given him grace.’

Francis illustrated this early on, while the brothers were still at Rivo Torto. They were in the middle of a particularly severe fast when, one night around midnight, one of the brothers cried out, ‘I’m dying! I’m dying!’ The other brothers woke up, startled and frightened.

‘Brothers, get up and light a lamp,’ ordered Francis. When the lamp was lit, he asked, ‘Who was it who said, “I’m dying”?’

After the brother, probably sheepishly, identified himself, Francis asked, ‘What’s the matter, brother? Why are you dying?’

‘I’m dying of hunger,’ he said.

Francis immediately ordered that the table be set, and they all ate a meal together with the brother. When they were done eating, Francis said, ‘My brothers, I say that each of you must consider his own constitution, because, although one of you may be sustained with less food than another, I still do not want one who needs more food to try imitating him in this… Just as we must beware of overindulgence in eating, which harms the body and soul, so we must beware of excessive abstinence even more, because the Lord desires mercy not sacrifice.’

Francis tempered his demand for obedience, then with mercy.

———–

I hope this incident in his life serves as an example for us to emulate in our own lives.

We need more mean mums. I read a whole poem about it. And I am glad I had one. Today I read a quotation in a little book I bought for my mother:

‘My mother is a lady who has had a lot of problems in her life.

Most of them me …’ – Diana Briscoe

I laughed softly when I read this. It applies to our relationship so perfectly. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t remember my mother with gratitude for all that she has done.

With Mom on our Engagement Day

Another quotation that touched my heart was:

‘She is soaked through everything I see. I look at my face in the mirror, at my mannerisms, the veins in my hands and realize she will always be with me.’

– Harriet Walter

Though she is far away in India and I am in NZ, I feel close to her and thanks to the telephone we can keep in touch regularly.

My mother was strict when it came to our character building. So we had a long list of do’s and don’ts. It was painful when we had to follow all those rules but now in hindsight I am grateful for those restrictions. When I read nowadays about how kids need the adults to define the boundaries for them, I see how important all my mother’s rules were.

Thank you God for a wonderful mum.

I feel more confident now. It helps you create a HTML Reference Library in a step by step process so you build on the tags you have learnt. I was able to add my own code to format the page in a way that I will find helpful later. It is like having an offline website for reference.

Web Banner for the Tigerfernz.com website

I am looking forward writing the code for my company website www.tigerfernz.com which I have been designing in a publishing software. I have named the website TigerferNZ Studio. However, in the meantime I have built the website using iWeb on my Mac computer to get things moving.

It is always a good idea to have the layout and design ready before sitting down to write HTML and CSS code.

I find CSS is similar to other publishing software in the sense that it gives more control over the layout. That is what inspired me to learn the basics of coding. It is important to have control over your design. I thought that it is like learning all about the material and technique of stone carving if you want to be a good sculptor.

I have also been designing web graphics and corporate identity packs. I have also been concentrating on establishing our company called Tiger Fern Ltd and its website www.tigerfernz.com that I have uploaded has only one page which I created on iWeb. Our friend Malcom suggested I put it up so that the search engines can start finding it. Once I am ready with the whole website I can just update it. I am looking forward to doing the HTML coding and layout with CSS for the whole website in the near future.

It is wonderful how many resources you can find to teach yourself new software. I tried many different books and one of the best I found is the one called HTML and CSS in 24 hours by Sams Teach Yourself series. Now I was stunned to see the title because I wondered how one could learn something so time consuming in a day. But when I looked closely I found that the chapters were divided into one hour lessons. I felt that this would be a good way to learn and I was right.

I have done 12 hours of lessons, another half of the book to go.

Practise makes perfect, there is no substitute for that.

The phrase ‘unconscious, spiritually speaking’ hit us like a sudden bolt of lightning! Here we all are thinking we are leading intelligent lives, when all the time we are just a bundle of memories, thoughts and emotions that we identify with as ‘me and my story’, of role playing and thinking we belong to collectives such as to a nation, religion, race, social class, or political allegiance. We also identify with things, opinions, appearances, resentments, or think of ourselves better or not good enough according to our state of mind. Are we really conscious of all this in our daily life?

‘The content of the ego varies from person to person, but in every ego the same structure operates…. They live on identification and seperation.’

That is proof that human beings are alike everywhere. I wonder why we try to prove we are unique. The very act of trying to prove ourselves unique is the common ground on which we all stand. None of us is different underneath. Now that is something hard to digest.

Complaining and Resentments

Under this subheading, Tolle discusses how the ego tries to strengthen itself by complaining and harboring resentments. We are very quick in assigning labels to people, things, situations and even the weather. Never satisfied in the way things are, we always try to think that things would be better if it was some thing else.

We seem to take everything that happens to us personally and that is the root cause of the strengthening of the ego. The only way to dissolve it is to be aware of it and recognize it for what it is and remember to be impersonal.

As an exercise it was decided that in the coming week we would watch ourselves whenever we complain about something. I said, I would actually write it down in a journal and share it with the others!! Let us see how that goes…

]]> http://sushmawebber.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/watching-your-ego/feed/ 0 sushu http://sushmawebber.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/feeling-homesick/ http://sushmawebber.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/feeling-homesick/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:07:42 +0000 Sushma Webber http://sushmawebber.wordpress.com/?p=72 ]]>

Indian gods

Human beings. What is it about us that we are never happy with what we have? Who is it that is dissatisfied? Who is it who is homesick? Questions, the answers to which would be most unwelcome!

It is more that one and a half years since I came to New Zealand. I miss India a lot, but guess what I miss? It is the food and the movies!! Of course I miss my family and friends, however, the craving for Indian food seems to dominate everything. It is not as if there are no Indian restaurants here. Somehow the food does not taste the same. Even when I try to cook Indian food I don’t feel it is quite authentic. Maybe I miss the air of India which helps me perceive taste differently.

I am sure that when I eventually visit India I will be wishing I were here in New Zealand!! Well, so much for being a human being. Eckhart Tolle would call it the dysfunction of the mind. Of course the cause for all these desires and discontent is the personal Ego. I always remind myself of a sentence I read many years ago in a book called the Tao of Peace. An amazing book. It advocated saying to oneself: ‘Everything is perfect as it is.’ Especially when things seem to be going wrong according to our plans.

Another sentence just popped into my mind: ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans!’ Isn’t that comforting. For me these couple of sentences are comforting. Once I was reading a book on healing and in that the advice was given to remind oneself that ‘Let not my will O God, but Thy Will be done’. That hit me like a bolt of lightning. Till then I only knew the latter part of the phrase, ‘Thy Will be Done’, however, when I read, ‘Let not my will, but Thy Will be done’, I finally realized a sense of release. I realized I had been having very strong ideas of what I thought should be happening and was only doing lip service when I said, Thy Will be done. Such Lightbulb Momemts are a most welcome occurence. It changed the way I perceived my ideas of what should be happening in my life.

In the process of writing this blog I now realize that my feeling homesick is a symptom and the cause is much deeper. I am already feeling better. Everything is perfect as it is….

Decide the direction in which to go...

I had a light bulb moment this morning. It is important to know what you want or else it would be very difficult to find the right direction to take.

Whether it is a student, an employee, a businessman, a mother, and so on, if we don’t know what we want we would just drift along in life.

I always thought I knew what I wanted. However, when a lady during a phone interview asked me what I wanted to gain from doing that job, I was lost for words. I had never thought about it. I vaguely knew why I applied for that position but had not defined it in specific words.

This experience came as a wake up call. Do I know what I want in the various aspects of my life. There are so many things I do on a daily basis, do I know what I want from them eventually. Many people say that it is the journey which is important not the destination. But how can you move intelligently if you don’t know your destination. No doubt once a destination is reached there will be others to pursue. However, is it not important to know where you are going?

What do I want from writing this blog? What do I want from my life? Why am I here? These are eternal questions. Another friend asked me yesterday, ‘What kind of work would you like to do if you were given the choice?’ And I immediately said, ‘Something which would have the right balance between creativity and technical knowledge as well as some writing and publishing involved.’

Surprisingly that is what I am doing right now. I am involved in designing logos, web icons, letterheads, business cards and learning to design websites. I am also going to be writing a user manual for a software. Some of these jobs I have done before but others I am learning on the job. Isn’t that exciting? Exactly what I wanted. I also wanted to establish a successful business working from home.

Now that I know what I want. I am going to make sure I will act on it. I suggest to all those who will read this that you too define what you want and go for it.

Today we explored together the beginning of the second chapter — ‘Ego: The Current State of Humanity‘. Some interesting thoughts came up during the discussion:

Why do we apply labels and categorize everything we see and experience? Is it because it gives us a sense of security? In the process of labeling and defining we forget to really look at a thing in its real essence. “The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you.”

I remembered reading a Zen story – ‘Keep an I don’t know mind‘ and shared the concept with the group. Before we label something and stop exploring it further maybe we can tell ourselves ‘I don’t know’ to every question that crops up. I have noticed that provides a certain release and opens up the mind.

The section on ‘The Illusory Self‘ took us on a journey of how the identity with the self, the ‘I’ is nurtured from childhood to adulthood. It also mentions the possibility of finally reaching a deeper understanding by identifying with the real self within all of us. The only way to dissolve the illusion is by recognizing the illusion as illusion. Can the small word ‘I’ really encompass all that you are in your essence?

One of the participants raised the question about how to raise children without teaching them about a sense of identity and yet help them see the ‘I’ for what it is. One suggestion was that children should be encouraged to become conscious observers rather than become unconscious participants in all that is happening around them. For example, to play a game for the sake of playing to ones best ability rather than to win. I was happy to hear that schools in New Zealand actually encouraged wholehearted participation rather than competitiveness.

A flower can give you a glimpse of your inner self

In the next section ‘The Voice in the Head‘ the author tells us the story of how he realized that he is different from the voice in his head. It was an interesting read. We all shared with the others some moments in our lives when we first differentiated between the ‘I’ and that there was something more behind and beyond it. Moments of clarity and of losing oneself in the Now while observing a sunset or a pair of seagulls in flight or while taking the dog on a run.

‘Do you believe some combination of such basic sounds could ever explain who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even what a tree or stone is in its depth?’

We spent a few moments in meditation on the above question and each of us got some insights. After the study session I shared a quotation from the 1917 issue of the The Theosophist:

Education is coextensive with life because life is education, life is the drawing out of the unconscious divinity within to complete and perfect its self-conscious expression. – G. S. Arundale

Cheddi Dosts!!

The year 2009 seems to be the year when I finally found long lost friends from my school days. I feel as if I am in school again, being carefree and surrounded by kindred spirits.

Thanks to the new technological age and the internet. Especially the social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook. It has been a wonderful experience getting back in touch with people who were close to me as a a teenager, the stormy years when we are neither children or fully adults.

The photograph above was taken 1984, if I am right, and the teacher in the picture is fondly remembered by all of us. Most of us have got in touch with each other lately in the last couple of months. We are scattered all over the Earth, and yet because of the internet we are able to communicate with each other.

For the last few days I have been in a new emotional state, full of energy and vitality, the same as it was when we were children when everything seemed possible. I dedicate this blog to my school mates who have come into my life again like a breath of fresh air.

Friendships formed in school are always long lasting and I hope we will all keep in touch and give each other the inspiration and enrich our lives.

Cheddi dost is a hindi term meaning childhood friends. I raise a toast to all my school friends and wish them success and happiness in the years to come.

A friend later mentioned to me about the earlier Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers. And guess what? We have been watching them since then on DVDs. It is great to have a good laugh after a hard day’s work.

I watch them once without subtitles and then again with English subtitles. The very first movie had a commentary by Blake Edwards, where he talks about all the Pink Panther movies. There were some trivia too which was interesting.

Peter Sellers mentions in his trivia that he believes in showing humour that seems possible, that is when people laugh, not when things seem absurd and impossible. I found that point interesting. There are so many funny things that happen in our daily life, and yes, they all happen right in front of our eyes. So humourous things are those things that are possible. The only thing needed is a sense of humour to appreciate them.

I enjoy watching comedy movies, they seem to me to be a good use of my time. Another quote I like to remember is: ‘Angels can fly, because they take themselves lightly!!’

Life is for living, smiling and laughing….