“A Very Common Human tendency is to enlarge all the problem by unnecessary worry, without considering it logically”
~Imm
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1. Story
A logical Hit of the mind’s hammer
A giant ship engine failed. The ship's owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine. Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom. Two of the ship's owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do.
After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away.
The engine was fixed! A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars. "What?!" the owners exclaimed. "He hardly did anything!" So they wrote the old man a note saying, "Please send us an itemized bill."

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer....................... $ 2.00

Knowing where to tap.......................... $ 9,998.00
~ Send by Ruchi Tendulkar

2. Story
An alternative
When ‘A’ country began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens would not work at zero gravity (ink won’t flow down to the writing surface). To solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.
And what did the ‘B’ country do…? They used…..
A pencil
~ Vijay Krishna

Moral: Effort is important, But where... That is what really matters.

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“Happiness is the state of acceptance, Happiness doesn’t come ONLY by winning or earning the things, but it exists where you satisfy yourself with the things you win”
~ Imm

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Enjoy your tea

A group of alumni (graduate students), highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests tea: the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of tea and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the tea. All the students had a cup of tea in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the tea in most cases, just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was tea, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups...and then began eyeing each other's cups.

Now consider this:
“Life is the tea, and the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the tea God has provided us."

God brews the tea, not the cups..........enjoy your tea.

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बीते हुए वर्ष की, दिल में उठे हर्ष की,

चिर पुराने बंधुओं की, खट्टे-मींठे अनुभवों की,

अविष्मरणीय यादों की, नव मिले आगंतुकों की,

पूरे वर्ष मन में न जाने, जन्मीं कितनी भावनाएं?

आपको नव-वर्ष की शुभकामनायें.

गत सर्दियों की ठिठुरन की,

शर्माते सूरज और ठंडी हवाओं की,

गर्म-गर्म चाय और कॉफी के बुलबुलों की,

धूप और बादलों में मची होड़ की,

खिचड़ी में पतंगों के आपस के दौड़ की,

सुनसान सड़कों और खामोश रातों की,

कितनी ऐसी यादें हैं जो भूली न जाए.

आपको नव-वर्ष की शुभकामनायें.

जाड़े के संग-संग आये ऋतुराज की,

मदमाते मंज़र और सुलगते पलाश की,

मलयांचल से मदमाती बहती-बहती हवाओं की,

मदहोश नव-यौवन और होली के रंगों की,

मत्त हुए महुओं और पीपल के पल्लव की,

कोयल की कूह्कों और कौवों के वाचन की,

कवियों की, जिन्होंने रची ऐसी कवितायें.

आपको नव-वर्ष की शुभकामनायें.

रंगों को करके फीका, आये ग्रीष्म की,

क्रोधित हुए सूरज और गरमाती हवाओं की,

दहकते हुए शहर और तपते हुए गावों की,

पिघलता हुआ आसमान और पेड़ों के छाँव की,

बढ़ते हुए दिन और छोटी हुई रातों की,

झुलसती हुई धरती और सूखते हुए तालों की,

ठन्डे कोल्ड्रिंक्स और लस्सी के मिठास की,

ग्रीष्म अवकाश की, जिसमें जहाँ चाहें घूम आयें.

आपको नव-वर्ष की शुभकामनायें.

ग्रीष्म की विदाई पर आई वर्षा रानी की,

सावन के झूले संग झूलती नवयवना की,

कड़कती हुई बिजलियाँ, गरजते हुए मेघों की,

चमकते हुए इन्द्रधनुष, छमकती हुई बूंदों की,

टर्राते मेंढक और कूदते हुए मोरों की,

झूमते किसान और धान के खेतों की,

भीगते हुए पेड़ और टपकते हुए छप्पर की,

हरे-भरे मन की, जो लगता है अभी झूमें गाये.

आपको नव-वर्ष की शुभकामनाएं.

~ नवनीत नीरव

My wishes for you in year 2011
Great start for Jan,
Love for Feb,
Peace for march,
No worries for April
Fun for May,
Joy for June to Nov,
Happiness for Dec,
Have a lucky and wonderful 2011.

WISH U A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR

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We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone.

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One night, at 11:30 PM, an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rain storm

Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car. A young white man stopped to help her - generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 1960s. The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxi cab. She seemed to be in a big hurry! She wrote down his address, thanked him and drove away.

Seven days went by and a knock came on the man's door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home. A special note was attached. It read: "Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes but my spirits. Then you came along. Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband's bedside just before he passed away. God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others."

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“Other people may be there to help us, teach us, guide us along our path, but the lesson to be learned is always ours.”

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There's no such thing as too late. That's why they invented death.

~From a movie

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When Are You Too Old?

When asked how it was that she has lived so long, one 91-year-old woman replied, "I think God is testing the patience of my relatives."

When is "too old"? At what age do we give up? At 100, Grandma Moses was still painting, and Titian painted "Battle of Lepants" when he was 98.

At 93, George Bernard Shaw wrote "Farfetched Fables."

At 91, Eamon de Valera served as president of Ireland.

At 90, Pablo Picasso still drew and engraved.

At 89, Arthur Rubinstein gave one of his greatest recitals in New York's Carnegie Hall, and Pablo Casals, at 88, still performed cello concerts.

At 82, Winston Churchill wrote the four-volume work, "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples," Leo Tolstoy completed "I Cannot Be Silent," and Goethe, at the same age, finished "Faust."

At 81, Benjamin Franklin engineered the diplomacy, which led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.

When are you "too old"? Only on the day when you truly have nothing left to give. And the good news is this: that day never has to arrive!

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“Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value”

Jim Rohn quotes

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Time offers opportunity:

The problem with waiting until tomorrow is that when it finally arrives, it is called today. Today is yesterday's tomorrow. The question is what did we do with its opportunity? All too often we will waste tomorrow as we wasted yesterday, and as we are wasting today. All that could have been accomplished can easily elude us, despite our intentions, until we inevitably discover that the things that might have been have slipped from our embrace a single, unused day at a time.

…Time offers opportunity but demands a sense of urgency.

Regardless of a person's current age, there is a sense of urgency that should drive them into action now—this very moment. We should be constantly aware of the value of each and every moment of our lives—moments that seem so insignificant that their loss often goes unnoticed.

…For most of us, there will be a tomorrow, a next week, a next month, and a next year. But unless we develop a sense of urgency, those brief windows of time will be sadly wasted, as were the weeks and months and years before them. There isn't an endless supply!

~Jim Rohn

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think differently - you still have a way to go...

Most complex problems do have a solution, just need to think in a different way.

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Thinking "Out Of The Box"

Many hundreds of years ago in a small Italian town, a merchant had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to the moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the merchant's beautiful daughter so he proposed a bargain. He said he would forgo the merchant's debt if he could marry the daughter. Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified by the proposal.

The moneylender told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty bag. The girl would then have to pick one pebble from the bag. If she picked the black pebble, she would become the moneylender's wife and her father's debt would be forgiven. If she picked the white pebble, she need not marry him and her father's debt would still be forgiven. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail.

They were standing on a pebble-strewn path in the merchant's garden. As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick her pebble from the bag.

What would you have done if you were the girl? If you had to advise her, what would you have told her? Careful analysis would produce three possibilities:

1. The girl should refuse to take a pebble.
2. The girl should show that there were two black pebbles in the bag and expose the moneylender as a cheat.
3. The girl should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment.

The above story is used with the hope that it will make us appreciate the difference between lateral and logical thinking.
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Read on...

The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles. "Oh, how clumsy of me," she said. "But never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked."

Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that she had picked the white one. And since the moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an advantageous one.

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If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

~ Maya Angelou

Don't Change The World!

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Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a prosperous country. One day, he went for a trip to some distant areas of his country. When he was back to his palace, he complained that his feet were very painful, because it was the first time that he went for such a long trip, and the road that he went through was very rough and stony. He then ordered his people to cover every road of the entire country with leather. Definitely, this would need thousands of cows' skin, and would cost a huge amount of money.

Then one of his wise servant dared himself to tell the king, "Why do you have to spend that unnecessary amount of money ? Why don't you just cut a little piece of leather to cover your feet ?"

The king was surprised, but he later agreed to his suggestion, to make a "shoe" for himself.

There is actually a valuable lesson of life in this story : to make this world a happy place to live, you better change yourself - your heart; and not the world.
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I'm a great believer in LUCK and I find the harder I WORK, the more I have of it.

~ Thomas Jefferson

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One day, a train was approaching the small town of Cheekyville. On the train was a strange guy with a big suitcase. He was called William Warbler - the man, not the suitcase - and he looked very common indeed. What made him most unusual, though, was the fact that whenever he needed to communicate he did it by singing opera. It didn't matter to William whether it was simply a matter of answering a brief greeting, like 'good day'. He would clear his voice and respond,
"Gooood dayyy to youuuuuuuu..... tooOOOO!"
It wouldn't be unfair to say that almost everyone considered William Warbler a massive pain in the neck. No one could get a normal, spoken, word out of him. And, as no one knew how he made his living - and he lived quite simply, always wearing his same old second-hand suit - they often treated him with disdain.
They made fun of his singing, calling him 'Don No One', 'Poor-Rotti', and 'Lazy Miserables'. William had been in Cheekyville for some years, when, one day, a rumour spread round town like wildfire: William had secured a role in a very important opera in the nation's capital, and there were posters everywhere advertising the event. Everyone in the capital went to see it, and it was a great success. At the end of its run - to everyone in Cheekyville's surprise - when William was being interviewed by reporters, he answered their questions by speaking rather than singing. And he did it with great courtesy, and with a clears and pleasant voice.
From that day, William gave up singing at all hours. Now he did it only during his stage appearances and world tours. Some people suspected why he had changed, but others still had no idea, and continued believing him to be somewhat mad. They wouldn't have thought so if they had seen what William kept in his big suitcase. It was a large stone, with a hand-carved message on it.

The message said:

"Practice, my boy. Practice every second, for you never know when your chance will come."

Little did people realise that he only got the role in the opera because the director had heard William singing while out buying a newspaper.

~Pedro Pablo Sacristan

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Have patience... and take time to judge…

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

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“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

~Elbert Einstein

The Faithful Dog

There is a legend of a woman who had a faithful dog. This dog was so faithful that the woman could leave her baby with it and go out to attend other matters. She always returned to find the child soundly asleep with the dog faithfully watching over him.

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One day, something tragic happened. The woman as usual, left the baby in the "hands" of this faithful dog and went out shopping. When she returned, she discovered a rather nasty scene. There was a total mess. The baby's cot was dismantled. His nappies and clothes torn to shreds, with bloodstains all over the bedroom where she had left the child and the dog. Shocked, the woman wailed as she began looking for the baby.

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Presently, she saw the faithful dog emerging from the under the bed. It was covered with blood and licking its mouth as if it had just finished a delicious meal. The woman went berserk and assumed that the dog had devoured her baby. Without much thought, she clubbed the dog to death.

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But as she continued searching for the "remains" of her child, she beheld another scene. Close to the bed was her baby who, although lying on the bare floor, was safe. And under the bed, the carcass of a jackal torn to pieces in what must have been a fierce battle between it and the dog which was now dead.

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Then reality hit the woman, who now began to understand what took place in her absence. The dog fought to protect the baby from the ravenous jackal. It was too late for her now to make amends because in her impatience and anger, she had killed the faithful dog.

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How often have we misjudged people and torn them to shreds with harsh words and even with serious fight before we have had time to evaluate the situation? A little patience can drastically reduce major life long errors.

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Somthing about Creativity....

Intelligence is something we are born with. Creative thinking is a skill that must be learned.
~ Edward de Bono

Creativity works on a very deep level, and is a more automatic process than you may think. Deep analysis of situations is good when faced with problems that require an analytical solution, but often this mode of thinking can block the creative process. When faced with a problem that has a unique solution, some people find it difficult to just let go and let the ideas flow from them.

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There's a reason all of your greatest ideas happen just before you go to bed or right after you wake up. During these times you are at your most creative, because you are more in tune with your spiritual mind. During this phase, ideas are numerous. So numerous, in fact, that we forget most of them. Unfortunately, the conscious mind doesn't focus the thought patterns in specific directions. Can you imagine what you would be capable of if you focused the power of your most creative dreams, and could wield it with your conscious mind? What would you be able to create if your true mind were unlocked Writer's block would become a thing of the past. Acting would become a breeze. Every idea your mind is screaming to let out would be possible to share with the world.

"The most brilliant thinker of all time from artists to scientists were able to think up incredible things because they were able to tap into this part of their brain"

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If it sounds incredible, let me explain the way the creative process works. The left brain is often associated with mathematical prowess, logic, language, and the hard sciences. Meanwhile, the right brain is more of a free roaming explorer that likes to explore different places at random, picking up ideas and connecting them to other ideas and tossing ones that don't quite work right over its shoulder. When we dream we are almost entirely focused on the right brain, which is why many images in our dreams don't quite seem to make sense. The left brain is not as active, and rarely fleeces out these illogical ideas. As a result our brains are immersed entirely in the creative process.

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Our creativity takes the potential of the right brain, and quiets the left brain's activity so that ideas can flow freely and become conscious without automatically being shut down before the conscious mind gets a chance to look at them. The free flow of ideas while in a meditative state is also advantageous, as ideas will not be forgotten like dreams are. The transition between consciousness and sleep is a very drastic process that causes us to forget many great ideas.

“Remember we are a creator. We owe it to the world to share this creativity to better humanity”

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B’cos

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Life is "trying things to see if they work".

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Astrophysics...

20th Anniversary of ‘Hubble Telescope Launch'

From the dawn of humankind to a mere 400 years ago, all that we knew about our universe came through observations with the naked eye. Then Galileo turned his telescope toward the heavens in 1610. The world was in for an awakening.

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Saturn, we learned, had rings. Jupiter had moons. That nebulous patch across the center of the sky called the Milky Way was not a cloud but a collection of countless stars. Within but a few years, our notion of the natural world would be forever changed. A scientific and societal revolution quickly ensued.

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In the centuries that followed, telescopes grew in size and complexity and, of course, power. They were placed far from city lights and as far above the haze of the atmosphere as possible. Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, used the largest telescope of his day in the 1920's at the Mt. Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, California, to discover galaxies beyond our own.

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Hubble, the observatory, is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space, the ultimate mountaintop. Above the distortion of the atmosphere, far far above rain clouds and light pollution, Hubble has an unobstructed view of the universe. Scientists have used Hubble to observe the most distant stars and galaxies as well as the planets in our solar system.

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From far to near, from the earliest moments in the universe to current sandstorms on the surface of Mars... Hubble's launching in 1990 marks the most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo's telescope. Our view of the universe and our place within it has never been the same.

Hubble's top five scientific achievements:

Continued...http://mystery-of-the-universe.blogspot.com/2010/04/hubbles-top-five-scientific.html

happens for a reason...that is unknown to us.

"When things are at their worst I find something always happens"

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A Story

The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for GOD to rescue him. Every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect himself from the elements, and to store his few possessions.

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One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. He felt the worst had happened, and everything was lost. He was stunned with disbelief, grief, and anger. He cried out, "GOD! How could you do this to me?"

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Early the next day, he was awakened by the sound of a ship approaching the island! It had come to rescue him! "How did you know I was here?" asked the weary man of his rescuers. "We saw your smoke signal," they replied.

“Someone is there with….. Only for whom who believes…." ~Imm

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Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson / Winston Churchill

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Criticism

By Peter Shepherd

In the first stage of this series we have been looking at the factors that can cause fragmentation of our identity: invalidation (feeling put-down by someone), co-dependence (where we put aside our own feelings), suppression (the opposition to one's goals and purposes by another), and in today's lesson we look more at how criticism can affect us, and how best to handle it.

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A person tends to defend himself and protest, when confronted by another's criticism or complaint. Nevertheless he may afterward start to introspect - "Is it really true, what was said?" - causing him to fixate his attention inwardly on himself. Compulsive introspection is caused by a false criticism being accepted, which causes the person to look inwardly and worry about the mystery caused by this error. In a normal person this can cause diminished activity and unhappiness or illness. With a neurotic person it can push him over the edge into psychosis.

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This may begin early in childhood with the 'overcautious-parent' syndrome - "What are you doing?", "Careful, careful, careful!" when you're climbing up a ladder, and such things that interfere with the natural flow of simple actions, so the person arrives at a point in life where he is inhibited from handling the world around him. Such a person has to think about everything he does, rather that just do it.

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Another's criticism or complaint is rarely specific and accurate enough to be helpful. Often it is a generality or exaggeration, i.e. more than the truth ("You're always moaning" whereas I only moan sometimes); or it may be not quite true ("You don't give clear instructions" whereas I have normally been giving clear instructions but I didn't in this particular person's case).

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If the criticism is completely off the mark it is less likely to cause confusion and introspection. The trouble is, criticism often has an element of truth in it, and if the criticism is rejected off-hand, the truth of things remains uninspected and unhandled.

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Even if the criticism is accurate, having behaved in a certain way for some time, often all his life, a person asserts the rightness of it - he IS the behavior! - and becomes resistive to inspecting and handling the condition objectively. Further criticism just makes this worse. But unless a person is able to evaluate his own behavior objectively, which includes learning from other peoples' point of view, he will not be able to break free from the shackles of a limited personal identity and realize his actual unbounded Higher Self.

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For each person that you know, consider if there is something which that person has suggested is wrong with your behavior or attitude?
For each criticism that you find, consider whether it's an over-generalization or exaggeration, and whether the criticism was made from a viewpoint of intolerance or negative thinking.

Was the criticism based on a false assumption?

Is the criticism partly true or is it true of just a specific instance?

Have you ever criticized someone of the same thing?

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The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.

~Robert H. Schuller

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सच हम नहीं, सच तुम नहीं
सच है सतत संघर्ष ही ।
संघर्ष से हटकर जिये तो क्‍या जिये हम या कि तुम,
जो नत हुआ वह मृत हुआ,ज्‍यो वृन्‍त से झरकर कुसुम ।
जो पंथ भूल कर रूका नहीं,
जो हार देख झुका नहीं,
जिसने मरण को भी लिया हो जीत, है जीवन वही।
सच हम नहीं, सच तुम नहीं।

ऐसा करो जिससे न प्राणों में कहीं जड़ता रहे,
जो है जहां चुपचाप अपने आप से लड़ता रहे।
जो भी परिस्थितियां मिलें,
कांटे चुभें, कलियां खिलें,
टूटे नहीं इंसान बस संदेश जीवन का यही।
सच हम नहीं, सच तुम नहीं।

हमने रचा, आओ हमीं अब तोड़ दें इस प्‍यार को
यह क्‍या मिलन, मिलना वही जो मोड़ दे मंझधार को।
जो साथ फूलों के चले,
जो ढाल पाते ही ढले,
यह जिंदगी क्‍या जिंदगी जो सिर्फ पानी-सी बही।
सच हम नहीं, सच तुम नहीं।

अपने हृदय का सत्‍य अपने आप हमको खोजना
अपने नयन का नीर अपने आप हमको पोंछना।
आकाश सुख देगा नहीं,
धरती पसीजी है कहीं,
हर एक राही को भटक कर ही दिशा मिलती रही।
सच हम नहीं, सच तुम नहीं।

बेकार है मुस्‍कान से ढकना हृदय की खिन्‍नता
आदर्श हो सकती नहीं तन और मन की भिन्‍नता।
जब तक बंधी है चेतना,
जब तक प्रणय दुख से घना,
तब न मानूंगा कभी इस राह को ही मैं नहीं।
सच हम नहीं, सच तुम नहीं।
~ Jagdish Gupt

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