Recently, I came across an excellent story on the true purpose of relationships. Of course we always want to notoriously draw a definition on anything that’s human and inexplicable by logic… However, this one definitely caught my eye. Have a read and reflect back :)

In a land far away a beautiful princess was about to get married to her dream man. She had been told he was the perfect man. Full of love, compassion, strength and intelligence – and of course handsome as hell. She was so happy. The wedding day came and went, the whole kingdom celebrated and all was well. The morning after an equally wonderful wedding night, the princess brought her new husband tea and biscuits in bed. He smiled, ate, drank, told her how deeply he loved her and then slapped her flush across the cheek. They had not lied, he was strong and the princess was knocked to the floor by the force of the blow. She was dazed, in pain but mostly just in shock. What was more surprising was the shock on the husband’s face. He was even more bewildered.

The husband convinced the princess that he was just as taken aback by what happened and was genuinely sorry. His kind eyes and sincere tone clearly indicated to her that he was telling the truth so she forgave him and they moved on. Some years passed and soon both forgot the ugly event, until one day just as suddenly it happened again…. Whack! Then, soon after it reared its ugly head again…. Whack! Now it was too much for both to take and so they decided to seek counsel. Being royalty, all the best medics were summoned and consulted. Various theories were postulated and several cures were tried. Calming oils, exotic herbs, exorcisms, but every so often… Whack! It would happen again.

Desperate, they finally went to see a mysterious sage who lived high up in the mountains and was reputed as the wisest medic in the land, but one who would rarely accept an audience. After a long, hard journey they finally arrived at the sage’s cave. He was sitting on a rock outside in deep meditation so they waited patiently. Several hours later the sage opened his eyes and noticed the couple and much to their relief agreed to speak to them. He led them inside and then heard about the problem. At the end of the narration he asked to see the husband’s hands and closely inspected his palms. Once done with the husband he surprisingly asked to see the princess’s hand and carefully began to check her pulse. Finally he looked up smiling and said, “I will tell you what is happening here, but in exchange you must not refuse me what I ask.” Anxious to have this mystery finally solved they both agreed.

“Well, my dearies”, said the sage still smiling and looking at the husband said, “You sir are a great, healer. Your hands contain great power and you my dear princess have a terrible disease that keeps re-occurring every so often. By slapping you he has been curing you of this affliction time and again. If it had not been for those slaps, you would have long perished by now.” What relief they both felt. Overwhelmed by what they heard they fell to the feet of the sage and tearfully thanked him. As for the payment, well the husband wound up and laid one directly on the sage…. Whack!

What is the point of this story? Relationship produces pain for you so that you may awaken to what needs to be worked on within yourself. In the case of the princess she was lucky as the pain was benefiting her without her knowledge, but in most of our cases we need to utilize the suffering caused by the relationship to inspect closely the disease of our attachments. The pain, upset, discomfort caused in the relationship helps to reveal the attachments we have and the inner working of our minds. It could be as simple as feeling bad for not being complimented on a new dress or as complex as getting upset with your partner for giving away too much to charity. All the upsets, big and small, simple and complex have their roots in our attachments. The attachments could be to security, money, sex, power, prestige, name, fame, religion, children, family, country, comfort, food, etc. It does not matter, our relationships, specially the intimate ones, will poignantly reveal them to us.

As long as we have these attachments, and they are strong within us, we live in fear and misery. Afraid of not getting that which we want, afraid of loosing it if we have it and fearful of those on whom we depend on for their fulfillment. Any relationship upon which you depend for your personal gratification and security will eventually lead you to the mess of anger, control, possessiveness, jealousy, fear and hatred. This is relatively easy to see if we watch relationships in action. So measuring the strength of one’s relationship by the level of attachment is quite silly. In fact, life will not allow such relationships to endure and by producing a few storms she will eventually tear it down and force a new one to be built. On the other hand, when two self-sufficient people meet, adore each other and enjoy each other’s company we have the makings of something special.

Seeing the trouble that attachment brings and realizing that love and fear cannot coexist, what can be done? Change your attitude towards relationship pain. See it for what it really is, an opportunity for insight. Insight into the working of pleasure and its child – desire, or pain and its child – fear. The way of insight is through delicate observation. When any upset occurs watch closely how you react to it. Watch closely how the storm of thoughts start to take control. “I can’t believe he did this again, he does it every time, I have told him so many times before, he knows how important this is for me, he is so selfish and inconsiderate, I bet he would not treat his mother like this, why doesn’t he change, I am never going to speak to him again, … I am so right!” On and on thought takes over and one is caught in the chaos. This is childish and won’t help at all, and the worst part is that a golden opportunity is being wasted. An opportunity to observe the self in action and perceive the root cause of the attachment. Have you ever tried to observe the actual feeling, the physical reality of what is taking place without interfering and without getting carried away into all the mental threads? By doing so, you will allow the fact of what is happening, anger, jealousy, fear, etc. to reveal itself to you in its complete detail. This is to understand by direct perception and allow insight to blossom. This is the only approach that will root out and weaken attachment. Any other reaction on your part to suppress the feeling, or run away from it, or replace it with good feelings, or psychoanalyse it, etc, will simply leave the underlying causes intact only to have the outburst happen again when the time is ripe.

The princess had cancer, which was cured by life through her husband; life tries in the same way to cure the disease of attachment that we are afflicted with using our relationships. Observing carefully our internal reality, that is reflected in our relationships, is the beginning of meditation. And meditation alone brings freedom and self-sufficiency. Relationship provides the most useful opportunities for applying ourselves in this way, so be ready, prepared and poised the next time you get Whacked.

Source: http://anmolmehta.com/blog/2007/01/08/the-true-purpose-of-relationships

An ardent hiatus isn’t it? Hehe. Yes I know it’s been too long since I’ve posted. Too many things happening currently in this prolonged stretch of a time-lapse.

In the essence of true internet “surfing” – you know, where you Google (oops did I offend you? guess not hehehe) for something and follow links – next thing in about 20 minutes you realise you’re reading something that has no relevance to what you were seeking in the first place?

So, as I was saying, in the true essence of internet surfing, I happened to chance upon this particular article. Yes I know – the first thing you’d notice is the domain name there – canada.com and the emoticon in your head would pretty much instantiate a WTF :)

However – so I landed upon this article and couldn’t help but continue to read further. Now to be honest, as I’m posting this, I haven’t really read the complete article yet – but I can definitely tell a good read when I spot one ;)

So here we go – an article on “Forgetting about a love” – How to stop obsessing about your “ex” (as much as you’d hate to admit the EXistence of the word EX in reference to him/her).

A quote from the article states –

“They [your ex] want to feel that they are still important. It is a lot about feeling wanted and loved. It’s that idea in our society that you’re nobody if somebody doesn’t love you, so if this one person doesn’t need to be with you anymore, it attacks your self-worth.”

But, for instance, what if you’re harbouring a feeling of deception in love? Do they give an answer to that?

I guess not! Some answers are so personal that no book, no article, no quote, no song, no movie, no emotion can do justice to them… they apparently seem to only come with time… or so I’ve been told.

As they say, time heals all. Or is it to just only “learn” how to mend a broken heart – just so you’re well “equipped” for the future?

Ooops – almost forgot – here’s the link: http://www.canada.com/topics/lifestyle/valentinesday/story.html?id=b08a9a9d-5e63-4d6a-a2f6-830851b381ab

My dear friend Vabeez forwarded this email to me from work this evening. I think she’s carting vengeance on me with all the “Inspiration Peak” messages I’ve been sending to her over the last year or so :)

All said and done, this really struck a chord in my heart and I wanted to share it with anyone who stumbles upon it:

“There was once a wise woman traveling in the mountains who found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and she opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked if she might give it to him. She did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime, but a few days later he came back to return the stone to the woman who had given it to him. ‘I’ve been thinking,” he said, “I know how valuable the stone is, but I’m giving it back in the hope that you can give me something much more precious. I want you to give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone.’ ”
— Author Unknown

Sometimes in our continual drive to get ahead, we forget that the things we gather around us, no matter how precious they might seem, pale in comparison to the love and light we hold within.
May you always recognise that what is truly precious is not to be found in the outer world, but inside of you.

As busy of a week this is going to be at work, I literally didn’t have anything to do almost all day today (we were waiting on a few reports to finish running on the servers).

And having nothing to do I was randomly surfing around a few sites to catch up on some reading – anything interesting.

Now I landed on this blog which had a list of interesting uses of everyday items and chances are that you’ve probably never heard of em!

Here are a few of them which you may find useful :)

• Get a Shine with Banana Peels: If you are not eating bananas, you should be. In addition to the health benefits of the fruit itself, its skin is a built in shoe shine kit. A banana peel can shine your leather furniture and shoes. Just remove the stringy matter from inside and rub the inside of the peel on your shoes. Apparently: While you’re removing the stringy bits, you can dry them and “smoke” them as they contain enzymes which give a high when smoked. Don’t take my word for this, I haven’t done it (well yet LOL!) – A friend of mine at work replied back with this “tip” when I sent her the email of the other ones :D
• Remove price tag with peanut butter: Have you felt exasperated when you purchased a gift for a friend and before gift-wrapping, you tried to remove the price tag with no avail? Apply some peanut butter on the tag and rub it gently. You’ll be happy to see the price tag and its sticky residue gone.
• Deodorise the refrigerator: Is your refrigerator smelly despite the thorough cleaning and defrosting? Dampen a cotton ball with vanilla extract and leave on the shelf. After few hours, you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you open your refrigerator.
• Control your dandruff with baking soda: Do you feel low self-esteem due to dandruff that scares you every time you are on a date or other social gatherings? Well, create some homemade baking soda shampoo. Use this solution every time you shower and after a dry spell, you’ll find your hair free of flakes and softer.
• Deodorise your garbage disposal: Does your garbage disposal smell yucky? Pour 1/2 cup of salt into the bottom of the disposal and rinse it with warm water. The smell will go away quickly. Add a little lemon if you want to freshen things up even more.
• Remove car dents: Before paying a good bit to a body shop to fix the dents on your car, wet a plunger, push it over the dent and pull it out sharply. It may remove the dents at free of charge.
• Streak free glass with a newspaper: Before pitching old newspapers into the recycling bin, try cleaning your glass windows with glass cleaner or warm water and a piece of newspaper. You’ll see an absolutely streak-free glass surface as a result.
• Beer Hair Product: Want to keep your hair style in place but don’t want to buy hair spray/moose/etc.? Just comb a few tablespoons or so of beer into your hair and style away. It’ll stay put.

Source: “Dumb Little Man Tips for life” Blog

I came across this article a few months ago – I vividly remember how it made me feel at that time.

Then, as time has it’s way, I conveniently forgot about it.

Recently I re-discovered my Tumblr (I had completely forgotten I had an account there) – and saw the link to the article which I had posted there then.

It’s an excellent read on the process of “detachment” – titled aptly: “The Art of Giving Up” written by Dyske Suematsu.

Here’s an excerpt from the article which I particularly liked. The link can be found below for those who are interested to read the whole article :)

We develop attachments and we don’t even know it. Only when we are threatened by the lack or the loss of them, do we realise how much we are attached to them. If we lose our sight, for instance, some of us would probably consider suicide, but if we think objectively about many blind people enjoying their lives, it seems silly to even be depressed about being blind.

- by Dyske Suematsu

Click here to read the whole article – “The Art of Giving Up“

I’m gonna be posting more often on my other blog from here on.

Not that i’ll ignore this one – I’ll just try and be more consistent posting across both.

I’ve been contemplating merging the two, but then scrapped the thought – the other blog is more “emotional” – as I like to call it – “etched in life – riding this rollercoaster called life” and I don’t think it’ll fit well here as on this blog I’m more casual and periodically update what fancies my attention!

So I’m gonna keep them seperate :)

Any reason why you think I should merge them? Drop me a line!

I was going through Sakshi’s blog, which I happened to land upon today and found myself spending more and more time reading her posts…

I really liked something she wrote in one of her post’s “Live-In relationship vs Marriage” and I quote:

The love that we all want from a partner is not possible without both having the commitment to try to make it last. Cooperation, compromise, that sort of thing. There’s a saying, “Happiness in marriage is not so much FINDING the right person as BEING the right person.”

If it’s easy to change one partner for another, where’s the incentive to develop staying power in a relationship? Instead people will think “I’m upset at my partner which means I’m with the wrong person. I’m going to get out so I can hook up with the right person.” It’s human nature, and and i think that this approach is creating increased numbers of people without the ability to sustain a long-term relationship.

It’s definately an eye-opener. So simple and true!

I’m gonna go back to reading some more of her posts :)

i think this is one of the best threads i’ve come across in a long time… totally exemplifies the idea of “web 2.0″!

http://yh.yayhooray.com/thread/90661/yh-collab:-redesign-famous-logos-in-web-2-0-format?page=1

read this one surabhi’s blog. quite true and very inspirational… something i should put up on my wall cause i need a constant reminder of this:

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.
- Charles Swindoll

this one definately makes my all time favourite posts :razz:

http://www.neoalchemist.com/archives/2004_06.html#000480

something that so many of us need to be reminded of :smile: