SPIRITUALITY, ART, NITHYANANDA

Surrender feels  as if the light in me bows to the source of light knowing that that inner light itself is the source that is longing to lose separation.   There is no inferiority feeling but there is a feeling about the Grandness of the Guru.  Feeling of being relaxed.   Seems hard to express.  Swamiji expressed it this way: When we believe there is a Life-force that is conducting this Universe and is taking care of us, we relax. When we relax and are not stressed or worried, we can live and function to our optimum potential. We can express our creativity and live spontaneously. We experience a great freedom and liberation. This is surrender. This is true knowledge also. This is the knowledge that cannot be taught or picked up. The Master can simply transmit it when our being is ready to receive it. -PURNAVATAR PARAMAHAMSA NITHYANANDA.

Funding for the arts and art education is being cut all across the United States. To me, this is a huge mistake. Art is not an extracurricular activity, yet that’s the way most people think about it. Instead, I believe that art, when taught correctly, is a core skill that can inform the way we approach all other subjects. Valuing art means valuing innovation, creative problem-solving, and the search for every person’s unique mode of expression. Our children are not the only ones being impaired by these decisions. All of us lose when we let art fall behind. I believe all things can and should be approached as an art – from accounting to sculpture. At the core of this failure to value arts is a mentality that wants to create automatons who can score well on standardized tests and fit into a broken economic system. 

People are the biggest assets on the planet Earth, said Nithyananda tonight.  He added:"They need right education". I thought to myself.  Oh, how I wish that Enlightened Masters were in charge of the curriculum in our schools. Our planet would be a kinder and more beautiful home for us.  

When my daughter had a speech delay, one of the things that I had to do was to use only English around her.  I was born and raised in Moscow, Russia.  I left Russia when I was 30 not 3 y.o.  However, I have to face the reality that my Russian is not that great and I have to work to bring it back where it used to  be. The difficultly I faced when I wanted to call my baby these cute little nicknames in Russian and had to instead switch to English was huge.  It was not just that I needed to learn different words, update my vocabulary. It felt as I had to do an emotional switch.  We are connected to our native language at our core level.  We hear it  when we are babies, it is in the body itself. Today when I was making posts on Nithyananda Russia page on facebook I again realized that my Russian was not good enough.  I was later driving around and finally found the words I could not find when I was posting earlier.  Now I am "neither ...nor..."  My English still needs editing

Another memory takes me back again to our family's wonderful country house; that day there were many visitors including two artists, two sisters, two kids, and all these amazing friends of my parents: a medical professor, a writer, a physicist, a scientist, and other artists.  There is an argument: Does a person need to be trained to be able to appreciate art?  Can a person from a street without any background or education understand art, or do you need an education?   They are loud and passionate and think totally differently from one another.   I am fascinated as their voices rise, hands waving wildly in the air… Someone lights a fire and the physicist starts a song and says, “This one is for you,” talking to my stepfather.  Everyone joins in and they sing together his favorite folk song about simple love.  Their voices are in harmony of warmth and tenderness around the crackling fire.  We are somewhere on this planet, not far from Moscow, yet very far from an everyday

That sentiment applies to our genetic makeup and our life’s experiences.     It is that conditioning (training from our elders in the home and society) that later in life often needs to be reconditioned or just lost altogether, through either hours and hours of psychotherapy or meditation (whatever works but meditation was a faster and cheaper way for me).   It may also, however, be that same conditioning that will keep you going and will not let you give up; will make you so sure that there is another way or…not.   My ancestors – those little voices that sit on our shoulders - always tell me there is another way.   I just have to look a little harder.    When we are youngsters, we try hard to avoid family comparisons.  We don’t want to chew funny like Grandpa, or walk weird like Grandma.  We certainly don’t want to tell stupid jokes like Dad or wear old-fashioned makeup like Mom.  After all, we are unique, special, and our own person.  We make every effort humanly possible to se

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Have you ever noticed that your child thinks or expresses him or herself differently?  And although it is not a conventional way of thinking it is still quite amazing if we only stop worrying about their future or ‘fixing the problem’ and listen.      Early one morning at my kitchen table, a tiny five-year-old sits staring up at her seventeen-year-old brother Lev.  They are doing math.  My son is exhausted because he just spent 25 minutes explaining the complicated concept of addition to his little sister.    He looks very serious and hopeful that she got it.  He rubs his eyes and asks his "test" question:  "So, Alice, one plus one equals ....” “Friends,” Alice answers, smiling. He starts all over, using his fingers, fruits and other objects.  He tries really hard and then he says again, “One plus one. . .” “Love,” she says.   I laughed so hard I nearly choked.  He was so big and strong.  She was so small and insistent.

"...Not giving up on people is neither keeping quite nor discarding what people are saying.  Remember,when you  give up on people you give up on you.  Decide today: I will not give up on me based on my past record.  Do the same to others..." "If you are not serving others you are hurting others.  Either you are serving others or you are harming others.  Life happens to you from outside so you have to positively contribute to other's lives. Commit to enrich other's lives.  It is the law of nature, if you do not enrich other's lives you are harming others."

There is a saying that nothing really is what it looks.  Well, I am thinking that depends of course on who is looking.  Ordinary eyes - probably yes.  Enlightened eyes - I do not think so. I do not have enlightened eyes yet but often find that I see much more than what I used to.  By seeing I mean understand and feel.    Much, much better but still ordinary, conditioned to see things. I did my first proteksha pada puja in 2010.  As I wrote many times, all these things were really foreign to me.  Proteksha Pada puja is when your Guru accepts your puja and you are right in front of him.  I was there for about 40 minutes and then you can speak to him and ask questions or ask for healing or whatever seems important to you at that moment. Anyway, After the ceremony I got gifts, his framed footprints and my photo of the ceremony. Footprints were framed and I brought them home without ever opening the frame.  They were not really visible, just a little pink color on what I thought was a

One day when my cheerful, smiling three-year-old sat on the steps and cried with grief changed my life, plans for the future... I sent her upstairs to tell her brother that lunch was ready.  My goal was to push her to speak more clearly and deliver the message to her brother.  (I was somewhat concerned, but our last appointment with speech evaluation had convinced us that the root of the problem was in our bilingual family.  Denial…) She goes upstairs and in a couple of minutes comes back crying and in despair. She sat on the bottom stairs and huge  tears roll down her cheeks , “No one understands me, no one understands me, Mommy.”    My heart just goes into such a strong shock that I can almost feel the heart muscles clenching like a fist; I feel overwhelmed by her pain.  There is no space between her being and mine.  I feel that my whole being goes into resolve that I will change it, I will change it.  I will do something, whatever it takes, to help her.  Eventually

jump, jump. Left foot, right foot.  Brown dress, black apron, red scarf, two braids… Moscow, 1973.  A girl is walking the streets of Moscow and dreams intensely about…bananas.   One day, she thinks, many years from now, I will be living in Canada and I will have a kitchen and every day I will have a bowl of fruit on my table with lovely yellow bananas.    Why Canada, you may ask?  “No clue,” I tell you, but I think perhaps that it is because there was so much negativity then toward the U.S., and a neutral attitude toward Canada, and so it was okay to dream about it.     Three years later the banana dream is still there, but it has grown: I can clearly see myself speaking English as if it is my native language.  Oh, and of course presents, presents, presents for my two best friends.  I have a house and money and I am packing a suitcase full of awesome stuff for them.  For one, I would bring a fur coat that is red because she would look so good in it and for another one I woul