Helping Our Planet Together with Kids

In Europe, it’s quite an ordinary things to use different garbage bins for different kinds of garbage. In Russia, such a thing was organized only in the cities where the WIFA World Cup was held and only for the period of the Championship.

Why cannot it be done everywhere on a permanent basis is still a mystery for me… The happier I was to learn about a social and ecological campaign “Kind Caps” held by the “Eco Truck” Company. The goal of the project is to involve children and adults in the joint solution of environmental and social tasks in order to show that each of us can take care of the other and help somebody without any special material means, and that the usual “trash” may a valuable and necessary resource. At this time, the money received from the collected caps will go to the aid of a little boy. Such a project exists in every Russian city.

Any of my walks about the city or in the woods brought back about 20 caps. Then how much plastic remains in nature given that bottles are not as easy to collect as the caps?! Maybe then it is better not to throw them? I understand that this problem is not so topical for Europe and the US but it is still topical in Russia.

With the active participation of the children, we have already collected quite many caps for the campaign. What I have noticed is that the children seeing me collecting the caps have started thinking over the whole issue on a deeper level: first of all, they have become more conscious of the idea of taking garbage to bins and not throwing it at any place one likes. And of course, it influenced them that there are kids like them who have severe problems with health and who really need help from other people.

Nature vs Humans

When in most parts of Russia it is still snowing (though it is already May 12) and the bloggers, one by one, are writing how tired they are from the 7-month winter, we are happy to enjoy flowers in the forest living in 900 km from the capital. Frankly, I have not expected there can be such a great variety of flowers in the forest just at the beginning of May!

 

First Snow. April

19 April 2017

Seems winter has decided to strat again.

The Greatness of the Nation

One person said today, “I just cannot live without birds of prey!” This man, Alexander, is the initiator and motivator of the shelter for wild birds. I had not known before that such a shelter exists in Togliatti (though it has been even shown on the central TV channel). But, judging by the number of cells and pets in them, such a shelter for birds is really required – a refuge from people, from their cars, guns, hands, especially for those who cannot fly any more.

After all, man is higher than birds and animals not because he can torment them but because he is able to pity them. The man sympathizes with birds and animals because he feels that in them there lives the same thing as the one which lives in him.

I cannot say that

We are what we think

I’ve just happen to find a pic which I saved on my PC 5 years ago – a picture with the words: “Make your brain creative“.

But the same pic can be also commented on with the words: “We are what we think. We are all that appears in our thoughts. With our thoughtsw we create the world” (the words by Buddha which I also appeared to store in my comp several years ago).

 

On the Life-long Road

“Any person in our life appears just in time when we mostly need the lesson he/she is carrying”.

 

Travelling changes our brain

To get of a bad mood doctors and scientists recommend “switching off” your brain. A way to do it is to go travelling.

Researchers observed a group of people who walked about a forest for 1,5 hours. In each of them brain activity decreased in the areas of their brains responsible for psychological illness. Just imagine what can happen if someone spends several days surrounded by nature!

Their level of creative thinking increased by 50%.

So, it’s worth dropping everything once in a while heading somewhere quite beautiful.

Garden of Flowers. Kabir

Garden of Flowers

Do not go into the garden of flowers

O friend, go not there.

 

In your body is the garden of flowers.

Take your seat on the thousand petals of lotus

and there gaze upon the infinite beauty.

 

There is a strange tree,

which stands without roots,

bears fruits without blossoming.

It has no branches and no leaves.

It is Lotus all over.

Two birds sing there:

One is the Guru and the other the disciple.

The disciple chooses the manifold fruits of life

and tastes them

And the Guru beholds him in joy.

Kabir

photo by the author of the blog

Beautiful World

On Saturday, we watched a movie “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson in the main part. Americans’ struggle for independence. Many families are ruined, houses are burnt. In the middle of the film, one of the characters asked what they were fighting for and another one answered that when they were free they would get an opportunity to build a new, beautiful, world.

This phrase just did not leave my mind… Americans got freedom. Two hundred years have passed since then. What is their world now? Loss of values, extreme consuming, money-thirstiness, spiritual coldness in families – what can be called beautiful there?

I do not say through hearsay. Having lived one year in the States (I met the millennium there), I also became infected with money making (though, on returning home, thank God, my zeal was cooled down).

Another example. India. The previous century. A struggle for freedom. India got physical independence by many victims. Not much time has passed since then (what are decades for history?) but what is happening in this country now where spirituality have been nurtured for centuries? Spiritual values are being exchanged for cheap aspects of western culture.

As being known everything that we create is the reflection of what we are inside. Only a pure (dharmic) person can create beauty around. As far as the beautiful world is concerned.

***

…Interviewer: The theory that scientists say that man came from a little cell from heaven know where; how did you feel about those?

Shri Mataji: It’s a fact, it’s a fact. He (man) came through a cell, evolved through a cell. How did he evolve? Why did he evolve? What is the purpose of his life? It is not all answered by science. What is the power that males you evolve? Also, that is not answered. So, in Sahaja Yoga you know all that. Not only you evolve but with the same power you go higher.

Interviewer: What is your theory about that then? Why are we here or, why are we so long in the process?

Shri Mataji: You see anything that you create, even human beings for example, you have created things. A beautiful lamp is to give us light, isn’t it, the power. So, that’s how God has created us, to give His power to us that we feel Him and know Him in our awareness and understand and we emit His powers and enjoy it; to say in the words of Christ ‘to enter into the kingdom of God’…

Interviewer: Is it what Self Realization means; that You mean as a Realized Soul?

Shri Mataji: Yes, Self Realization means when the Self, which is talked about in all the scriptures, starts emitting its manifestation in our conscious mind; means that time when we become aware of it. To this extent our central nervous system starts recording the power of our Spirit, of oneself and we start feeling the breeze-like vibrations of the Spirit which is called in the bible as the ‘Cool Breeze of the Holy Spirit’…

Interviewer: Two very interesting thoughts come to my head at this point. One, is it through being Realized that one gets to knowledge of what’s on the other side of death, as it were and two, whether one really through this Realization that one finds a little bit of God inside oneself?

The Sweetest Memory of the Week

What is your sweetest impression of the previous week? This question is simple but I have come across the fact that many people do not remember what they did at the weekend or last week (including the most pleasant moments) – so busy they are. What’s the purpose of our living then if we even do not remember what we do going along life? The psychologist in one American college used to say: “Every evening try to remember ten nice things which have happened to you during the day”. And this recommendation really helped many students overcome stress and homesickness, helped them look at life in a positive way.

So, do you remember?.. Anyway, this is a rhetorical question. I will tell you about my memory of the last week – the situation which is still before my eyes.

Three weeks ago a 10-year old son of our friends was knocked down by a bus when he was running across the road together with some other boys. His head got such a strong blow that the boy lost his consciousness and was in coma for a week. During this week the doctors could not predict how the process would develop.

We sent e-mails to several Sahaja Yogis in different parts of the world asking them to keep their attention at the boy’s physical and spiritual health and make a bandhan for him to recover sooner. These people do not even know Andrei and his parents but they know that we all are a big family, all the people are one, and if someone is suffering all the rest should and are willing to help him. On Friday, we got several nice e-mails from some yogis which were full of love and vibrations. An extract from one of them: “My heart was filled as I made a bandhan for Andrei today. May the Divine Mother establish Her all bliss on him and Shri Ganesha and Shri Hanumana help the boy recover faster than we human can ever anticipate. May Her love and bliss fill the boy to get well soon…” The same Friday Andrei recovered from coma.

He did come to his senses exactly in 7 days after the accident had happened. I visited the boy and his mother in the hospital on the third day after Andrei had recovered consciousness. I brought fruits and some other tasty things. At one point when I was there Andrei asked for a peach and his father started cutting slices from the peach I had brought and gave them to his son. The boy ate two or three slices and said, “Tasty!” When the father gave him one more slice, Andrei asked, “Treat mum to it”. The boys’ mother took the piece. Then, when his father cut a fifth slice, the boy asked him,