Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Thanks giving and gratitude....

To be grateful means you are thankful for and appreciate of what you have
and where you are right now.

Gratitude fills your heart with the joyful feeling of being blessed with many
gifts and allows you to fully appreciate everything that arises on your path.

As you strive to keep your focus on the present moment, you can experience
full wonder of "here". Gratitude is a lesson that needs to be reinforced often.

It is too easy to overlook the gifts you have when you focus on those that you
hope to obtain, and you diminish the value of where you currently are on your
path if you do not pause often to appreciate it.

There are many ways to cultivate gratitude: Imagine what your life would be
like if you lost all that you had, this will most surely remind you of how much
you do appreciate it.

Make a list of all that you are grateful for, so that you can stay conscious daily
of your blessings. Or spend a few minutes before you go to sleep giving thanks
for all that you have.

Spend time offering assistance to those who are less fortunate than you, so that
you may gain perspective. Look for the gift in each challenging incident.

However you choose to learn gratitude is irrelevant. What really matters is that
you create a space in your consciousness for appreciation for all that you have
right now, so that you may live joyously in your present moment.
[Scott, If Life is a Game, These are the Rules]

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Pearls of Wisdom 430

1. Do not be shaken by criticism; instead, be firm. And know that, in proportion
to your worth, the level of people's criticism rises.

2. Patience, as opposed to anxiety, bears the fruit of comfort; and the one who does
not voluntarily show patience will have it forced upon him by circumstances.

3. Tribulation is similar to sickness; it must run its course before it goes away, and the
one who is hasty in attempting to remove it, often causes it to augment and increase.

4. It is imperative that the one who is afflicted be patient; he must wait with hope for
relief, and he must be persistent in his prayers.

5. If you are of sound judgment, show resolution. For ill judgment is in hesitation.

6. Life is too short to make it even shorter through disputes.

7. Do not grieve over trivialities -- and know that the whole world is trivial.

8. A person's value is measured according to his determination and his goal.

9. Do not grieve when you are shown overt enmity, for if you forgive and forget,
you will have achieved nobility in this world and honor in the next.

10. An angry man is always replete with poison. Who needs the poison?

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Lesson of the day 1428

Ayahs of the Day:
They [the martyrs] rejoice because of the grace of Allah and kindness, and that Allah wastes not the reward of the believers. Of those who answered the call of Allah and the Messenger, even after being wounded, those who do right and refrain from wrong, have a great reward.
[3: 171, 172]

Hadith of the Day:
The best person is he who has a long span of life and his action and conduct are good. [Tirmidhi]

Wise Quote of the Day: 
All humans are dead except who have knowledge, and all those who have knowledge are asleep except who do good deeds, and all those who do good deeds are deceived except those who are sincere, and those who are sincere are always in a state of worry. [Imam Shafi]

Guidance of the Day:
As for the cure for arrogance, there are several aspects. First, we should remember our humble organic origin. This will suppress any uprisings of arrogance and conceit.

In Islam we have religious heroes for a reason. To study the personalities of the Companions of the Prophet is to study incredibly great people who were humble. Scholars say the following, "If you are not like the real people, at least mimic them." It is better to simulate humility than to be an outright arrogant person.

The cure for arrogance owing to beauty is to realize that beauty can be the most illusory of things. Social conditioning impacts our sense of beauty more than we would admit. Why should beauty ever be a cause of arrogance? First of all; God is the fashioner; It is He who gives all things their shapes and forms. Second, beauty wanes, as the pressures of age and stress tear down flesh. And what we are left with is what we should have focussed on in the first place, the content of our character, our beliefs, and our deeds. [Purification of the Heart].

Food for Thought
Nothing so conclusive proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does himself from day to day to lead himself.

Saturday, November 02, 2019

Pleasure and Happiness....

A lot of people equate the two

The reality is they are two different things:

Pleasure is short-lived, happiness is long-lived.

Pleasure is visceral, happiness is ethereal.

Pleasure is taking, happiness is giving.

Pleasure can be achieved with substances,
happiness cannot be achieved with substances.

Pleasure is experienced alone, happiness is
experienced in social groups.

The extremes of pleasure all lead to addiction,
yet there is no such thing as being addicted to
too much happiness.

Pleasure is dopamine, and happiness is
serotonin.

There's one thing that down regulates,
serotonin, dopamine. So the more
pleasure you seek, the more unhappy
you get.

Las Vegas, Madison Avenue, Wall Street,
Silicon Valley, and Washington D.C, have
very specifically and in a coordinated
fashion confused and conflated happiness
with the term pleasure, so that you can
buy happiness.

And in the process, we have become most
decidedly unhappy. (Dr. Robert Lustig)