A Personal Encounter with my Karma

I promised that I would share some of my special spiritual experiences from time to time here when I wrote the introduction to this blog. Here is a very special one that evokes strong emotions from me every time I think about it. This is Karma at work. Imagine the astronomical odds of this ever occurring and you will understand that this was meant to be. What an incredible lesson and gift this was and always will be! Enjoy!



After experiencing extreme trauma, having two "near-death" experiences during a six hour emergency surgery to put me back together, and one of several years of rehab, I would return to the hospital to visit the amazing nurses who cared for me during my months of acute care there. They always seemed to have at least one severely injured person who had given up the fight to live that they would ask me to talk to in hopes my example would help to motivate their patient to at least try to survive. I always gladly honored their request. There was one young man who was severely injured from a motorcycle wreck as I had been so I visited with him awhile. I never knew what to say so I just told him my story and that he had only two choices now. He could lay there in self-pity and surely die or he could choose to try to live and work like never before to rebuild his life. I ask him to please choose life and let these incredible professionals take his hand and help him through this daunting challenge. I left feeling very sad that he may just lay there and die but I had to stay focused on my chosen path to live. I managed to pull myself together well enough to continue on my lifelong path of daily challenges and moved 600 miles away to go to college. Nine years later I was having a beer in a little biker bar on a side street off of the courthouse square in this small college town when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see a man looking intensely at me but I had no idea who it was. He then ask me if I remembered talking to a young man several years ago in a hospital in my home town that had been severely injured in a motorcycle wreck and who had given up trying to live. My neck hair started standing on end and a wave of intense emotion started rushing from the center of my being as I heard his words. I managed to get out a yes when he said, "that was me and you saved my life".

One never knows the effect that their words and actions have on the vast majority of people they encounter during their life and few ever stop to consider the effects. I had tried to help many such patients at "my" hospital during my visits back there but I never thought for a second that my words to these strangers would mean anything. That night, though, in that tiny bar in that little town everything came full-circle and I experienced the power of my words and actions. My life has never been the same since that moment. In fact, I am reliving that incredibly emotional moment again as I tell my story here... and the feeling is wonderful beyond description!

Namaste'

Poems of Love for Our Oneness

Here is a selection of thoughts and poems on Love and Oneness for this Valentine's Day. Peace, Love, and Joy to the Oneness of us All!

Namaste'
____________

The significance which is in
unity
is an eternal wonder.



We try to realize the essential unity of the world
with the conscious soul of man;

we learn to perceive the unity held together
by the one Eternal Spirit,whose power creates the earth,
the sky, and the stars,

and at the same time irradiates our minds with
the light of a consciousness

that moves and exits in unbroken continuity with the outer world.

~ Tagore



What is Love??


Love is the scent with the lotus born.

It is the silent choirs of petals

Singing the winter's harmony of uniform beauty.

Love is the song of the soul, singing to God.

It is the balanced rhythmic dance of planets -

sun and moon lit

In the skyey hall festooned with fleecy clouds –

Around the sovereign Silent Will.

It is the thirst of the rose to drink the sunrays

And blush red with life.

'Tis the promptings of the mother earth

To feed her milk to the tender, thirsty roots,

And to nurse all life.

It is the urge of the sun

To keep all things alive.



Love is the unseen craving of the Mother Divine

That took the protecting father–form,

And that feeds helpless mouths

With milk of mother's tenderness.

It is the babies' sweetness,

Coaxing the rain of parental sympathy

To shower upon them.

It is the lover's unenslaved surrender to the beloved

To serve and solace.

It is the elixir of friendship,

Reviving broken and bruised souls.

It is the martyr's zeal to shed his blood

For the well-beloved fatherland.

It is the ineffable, silent call of the heart to another
heart.

It is the God-drunk poet's heartaches

For every creature's groans.



Love is to enjoy the family rose of petal-beings,

And thence to move to spacious fields -

Passing by portals of social, national, international
sympathy,

On to the limitless Cosmic Home –

To gaze with looks of wonderment,

And to serve all that lives, still or moving.

This is to know what love is.

He knows who lives it.



Love is evolution's ameliorative call

To the far-strayed sons

To return to Perfection's home.

It is the call of the beauty – robed ones

To worship the great Beauty.

It is the call of God

Through silent intelligences

And starburst of feelings.



Love is the Heaven

Toward which the flowers, rivers, nations, atoms,
creatures – you and I

Are rushing by the straight path of action right,

Or winding laboriously on error's path,

All to reach haven there at last.

~ From: Songs of the Soul,
by Paramahansa Yogananda.



The Power of Love

When the power of love
Replaces the love of power
Man will have a new name: God.


A moment's love
Can and shall
Make the world perfect.


My Lord,
Do teach me only one thing:
How to love the world
The way You love me.


When my peace - heart dreams,
My bliss life sings.


Yesterday I was clever.
That is why I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise.
That is why I am changing myself

- Sri Chinmoy