"All Through Eternity" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

All through eternity
Beauty unveils His exquisite form
in the solitude of nothingness;
He holds a mirror to His Face
and beholds His own beauty.
he is the knower and the known,
the seer and the seen;
No eye but His own
has ever looked upon this Universe.
His every quality finds an expression:
Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;
Love, the life-giving garden of this world.
Every branch and leaf and fruit
Reveals an aspect of His perfection-
The cypress give hint of His majesty,
The rose gives tidings of His beauty.
Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;
Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.
When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart
entangled in tresses.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.
They have together
since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step.

 My blue is not your blue.
Your blue is the clear sky
Or the waves of the calming seas.
Your blue is someone's mesmerising eyes
Or perhaps the winter breeze.
My blue is my second skin
My work wear, my prickly scrubs.
My blue is on the desktop screens
At the doctors' & nurses' hubs.
My blue flows through my pens
And scribbles medicines on charts.
My blue is the gloves, the needles
The syringes and the plastic carts.

Your red is not my red.
Your red is a garden of roses in bloom
Or the carpet that your film stars walk.
Your red is the dress you wear
Or the lips that glow when you talk.
My red is blood that flows out
Through the arteries and the veins
Or the red lights, the alarms and bleeps
Of monitors or ambulance vans.
My red is the pricks and scars
The bruises and the bumps I get
As I try to save the breaths
Of strangers that I had never met.

Your white is not my white.
Your white is a wedding gown
Or the marvels of the snow.
Your white is a scoop of icecream
Or perhaps a diamond necklace's glow.
My white is the shroud I hate
Or 'propofol' that I love so much.
My white is the generic pill
Or the cotton swabs you seldom touch.

My yellow is not your yellow.
Your yellow is the sombre sun
Or the daffodils in your yard.
Your yellow is the summer drink
Or the minion on your lanyard.
My yellow is a sign
Of failing liver in your eye
Or your urine telling me
Your kidneys are about to die
My colors are not your colors
My rainbow is different too
So don't mind me saying it
My blue is not your blue.

-Anonymous

☕️ THE STORY of the TEA CUP☕️

Love this story or not, you will not be able to have tea in a tea cup again without thinking of this insight...

There was a couple who took a trip to England to shop in a beautiful antique store to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. They both liked antiques and pottery, and especially teacups. Spotting an exceptional cup, they asked "May we see that? We've never seen a cup quite so beautiful."

As the lady handed it to them, suddenly the teacup spoke, "You don't understand. I have not always been a teacup. There was a time when I was just a lump of red clay. My master took me and rolled me, pounded and patted me over and over and I yelled out, 'Don't do that... I don't like it! Let me alone.'"

But he only smiled, and gently said, "Not yet."

Then WHAM!

I was placed on a spinning wheel and spun around so fast it made me feel dizzy and then he put me in the oven. I never felt such heat. I yelled and knocked and pounded at the door. "Help! Get me out of here!"

I could see him through the opening and I could read his lips as he shook his head from side to side, "Not yet."

When I thought I couldn't bear it another minute, the door opened. He carefully took me out and put me on the shelf and I began to cool. Oh, that felt so good! "Ah, this is much better," I thought...

But, after I cooled he picked me up and he brushed and painted me all over. The fumes were horrible. I thought I would gag.

"Oh, please, stop it, stop, I cried." He only shook his head and said, "Not yet."

Then suddenly he puts me back in to the oven. Only it was not like the first one. This was twice as hot and I just knew I would suffocate.

I begged.
I pleaded.
I screamed.
I cried.
I was convinced I would never make it.
I was ready to give up.

Just then the door opened and he took me out and again placed me on the shelf, where I cooled and waited and waited, wondering, "What's he going to do to me next?"

An hour later he handed me a mirror and said, "Look at yourself." And I did.

I said, "That's not me !!!

That couldn't be me. It's beautiful. I'm soooo beautiful!"

Quietly he spoke: "I want you to remember. I know it hurt to be rolled and pounded and patted, but had I just left you alone, you'd have dried up. I know it made you dizzy to spin around on the wheel, but if I had stopped, you would have crumbled. I know it hurts and it was hot and disagreeable in the oven, but if I hadn't put you there, you would have cracked. I know the fumes were bad when I brushed and painted you all over, but if I hadn't done that, you never would have had any color in your life. If I hadn't put you back in that second oven, you wouldn't have survived for long because the hardness would not have held. Now you are a finished product. Now you are what I had in mind when I first began with you."

God knows what HE's doing for each of us. HE is the creator, we are the created.

God will mold us and make us and expose us to just enough pressures of just the right kinds that we may be made into a flawless piece of work.

So when life seems hard, and you are being pounded and patted and pushed almost beyond endurance; when your world seems to be spinning out of control; when you feel like you are in a fiery furnace of trials; when life seems to "stink", try this:

Brew a cup of your favorite tea in your prettiest tea cup, sit down, look at the tea cup and dwell on this story and then, have a little talk with God.

⏰GOOD DAY to YOU⏰

 This is one tremendous message, read it completely at a leisurely pace.

A learned man was once asked to explain the difference between Religion and Spirituality. His response was profound:

▪ Religion is not just one, there are many.
▪ Spirituality is one.

▪ Religion is for those who sleep.
▪ Spirituality is for those who are awake.

▪ Religion is for those who need someone to tell them what to do and want to be guided.
▪ Spirituality is for those who pay attention to their inner voice.

▪ Religion has a set of dogmatic rules.
▪ Spirituality invites us to reason about everything, to question everything.

▪ Religion threatens and frightens.
▪ Spirituality gives inner peace.

▪ Religion speaks of sin and guilt.
▪ Spirituality says, "learn from an error".
 
▪ Religion represses everything which is false.
▪ Spirituality transcends everything, it brings you closer to your truth!

▪ Religion speaks of a God; It is not God.
▪ Spirituality is everything and therefore, it is in God.

▪ Religion invents.
▪ Spirituality finds.

▪ Religion does not tolerate any question.
▪ Spirituality questions everything.

▪ Religion is human. It is an organization with rules made by men.
▪ Spirituality is Divine, without human rules.

▪ Religion is the cause of divisions.
▪ Spirituality unites.

▪ Religion is looking for you to believe.
▪ Spirituality you have to look for it to believe.

▪ Religion follows the concepts of a sacred book.
▪ Spirituality seeks the sacred in all books.

▪ Religion feeds on fear.
▪ Spirituality feeds on trust and faith.

▪ Religion lives in thought.
▪ Spirituality lives in Inner Consciousness.

▪ Religion deals with performing rituals.
▪ Spirituality has to do with the Inner Self.

▪ Religion feeds the ego.
▪ Spirituality drives to transcend beyond.

▪ Religion makes us renounce the world to follow a God.
▪ Spirituality makes us live in God, without renouncing our existing lives.

▪ Religion is a cult.
▪ Spirituality is inner meditation.

▪ Religion fills us with dreams of glory in paradise.
▪ Spirituality makes us live the glory and paradise on earth.

▪ Religion lives in the past and in the future.
▪ Spirituality lives in the present.

▪ Religion creates cloisters in our memory.
▪ Spirituality liberates our Consciousness.

▪ Religion makes us believe in eternal life.
▪ Spirituality makes us aware of Eternal Life.

▪ Religion promises life after death.
▪ Spirituality is to find God in our interior during the current life before death.

-We are not human beings, going through a spiritual experience.

-We are spiritual beings, going through a human experience.
🙏🙏🙏🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Repent, O Scottish Sinner......
There was a Scottish house painter named Smokey MacGregor who was very interested in making a penny more where he could, so he often thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further.
 
As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings. Smokey put in a bid, and, because his price was so low, he got the job. So he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with water.

Well, Smokey was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, the sky opened, and the rain poured down, washing the thinned paint from all over the Church and knocking Smokey clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint.
Smokey was no fool.  He knew this was a judgement from the Almighty,
Smokey he got down on his knees and cried: "Oh, God, Oh God, forgive me; what should I do?"

And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke,

(you're going to love this)
 
"Repaint! Repaint!
And thin no more!"

 Beautiful 10 short stories worth reading.

1) She was very excited
     today, after all the
     school was re-opening
     after a long summer
     break. Now, once
     again, she could start
     selling stationery at
     the traffic signal to
     feed her family.

2) She, a renowned artist
     and a strict mother,
     often scolded her 6-
     year-old son for he
     could never draw a
     line straight. As he
     breathed slowly into    
     the ventilator, she
     begged him to make
     one more crooked line
     on the ECG.

3) "Everyone goes with
      the flow… but the one  
     who goes against it
     becomes someone
     remarkable.” Before I
     could explain this to
     the traffic police, the
     man issued me a fine.

4) Their love was
     different. She was
     happy every time he
     kicked her in the
     stomach. Every time
     he kicked, she loved
     him more. She waited
     for the time she would
     hold her baby for the
     first time.

5) All my toys are yours..!
     Read her brother’s    
     death note.

6) They took his father,
     and only returned a
     flag.

7) At 25, I became a
     mother of one; at 27 I
     became a mother of
     two; and today, at 55, I
     have become a
     mother of three!  My
     son got married today,
     and brought home his
     wife!

8) “Born to rich parents,
      this boy is so lucky,”
      exclaimed the
      neighbors!
      Somewhere in
      heaven, three unborn
      sisters cried.

9) “You ruined my career,
      I was supposed to be
      an Executive Director,”
      she thought to
      herself.  The little
      angel held her finger
      tightly and she forgot
      everything; A mother
      was born.

10) Once a 5-year-old boy
       was standing
       barefoot in the
       shallow water of the
       ocean. He was
       repeating the same
       sentence to the
       waves, “Even if you
       touch my feet a
       thousand times, I
       won’t forgive you for
       taking my parents    
       away."

Breath taking! Aren't they?  Short stories with deep meanings.

For the lot of us who grew our ears in the late 70s,the ride to adulthood was one mind blowing trip on the back of the humble cassette tape.

Elvis made us dislocate our bones. Dylan helped us discover poetry.

Abba made us fall in love with blondes and brunettes. Beatles inspired us to imagine and live in an octopus’s garden.

Cohen gave us a baritone complex. Marley taught us to stand up and fight. Boney M lit us a rocket to Venus.

Osibisa brought us the sounds of Africa. Eagles flew us to a hotel in California.

Dire Straits put us with some sultans high up on swings. Jimi Hendrix spoke to us with his guitar.

BeeGees did us in with very deep love. Carpenters led us to the top of the world.

Queen brought us the legend of Mercury. Rainbow invited us to the Temple of the King.

Kenny Rogers told us about cowards. Doors opened us to a certain Mr Morrison.

Deep Purple set us on fire with smoke on the water.

Smokie got us Alice. Don McLean fed us Pie. Cliff Richards congratulated us. Dolly Parton distracted us.

Santana hypnotized us. Tull broadsworded us. Floyd pinked us.

Michael thrilled us. Kiss kissed us. And Jim Reeves, Harry Belafonte, Tom Jones and others left us with memories that will never leave.

Long Live the Music of our Time!

 These are photographs by Krutik Thakur.