End Of The World

Recently there was a tragedy in my home community a special person passed away at the young age of 44 years old.

He left a Large family of children most not married yet. This is after almost a year of suffering with cancer.

I did not know Shia on a close personal basis but I knew him well as a member of the community. 

Shia was known to everyone with his kind words and sense of humor and especially with the talent of making people laugh; he had the ability to make people smile, all in a very dignified way.

Our community truly lost a treasure that will be felt by all continuously in the years to come.

The next morning after his passing I woke up in the morning with the scent of sadness still in the air.

 Thinking to myself, I’m sure the world has come to a stop, I’m sure the community, has put everything on hold, I’m sure everything has come to an end.

 However, what a surprise I had, when walking in to the synagogue and everything looked normal like.

People who knew Shia closely were smiling and even laughing, some studying all like a normal day.

It was very disappointing to me, murmuring to myself and thinking how unfair this is, with my head bent I headed for my place while murmuring to myself and thinking how cannot this tragedy make an effect on everyone.

How can people just continue with life, as if business as usual?

This thought process enlightened me again on the phenomenal  realization  that all of us are just guests on this world.

We are all only here for a certain period of time, some longer than others. 

One thing we all share in common, we are for a purpose to achieve something of importance.

It is if it is in the DNA of this whole universe to keep on moving forward to continue to grow.

However, we humans have on slight factor that differentiates us from all the other life forms in this world.

All forms of life,  have that inner drive to grow and survive no difference of the circumstances or environment they might find themselves.

With the exception of us humans, we have the choice to keep on growing and developing our lives to be better and nicer people or we can decide we would like to keep on doing things that are to the detriment of our lives or society.

So how important it is to find meaning in one’s life. 

  We all have something or somewhere we are making a difference.  However, we tend to trudge along in life not putting a thought behind the actions we do and the impact we have, to acknowledge the importance of it.

As an example, a woman raising her little children. This is one hectic and life consuming task.

On a side note before I continue let me share with you a humorous story I heard

A husband comes home one evening  from work and opens the door of his apartment and yells,

 Hi Honey I’m home!!  He  gets no response he enters and lo behold his heart starts pounding, the house is in complete chaos. Chairs are overturned; food and toys all over the floor, the sink full of dirty pots and dishes.

He yells again frantically, Honey are you home?  He hears his wife talking laughingly on the phone and she answers back, YES honey I am here in the bedroom.

He continues to the bedroom while stepping over dirty laundry and what not.

He enters the room and sees his wife lying on the bed giving him a beautiful smile and a wave while continuing to chat on the phone.

He sits down, patiently waits for her to hang up the phone, and then says to her WHATS GOING ON DID SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPEN HERE

She smiles and answers everything is wonderful but you always ask me what I do the whole day, how I keep myself busy, WELL  today I JUST DIDN’T DO WHAT I DO EVERY DAY!!!!

On a serious note, to what we were discussing how we tend to underestimate our actions and the impact we have on others and not valuing them for their true reality.  It can even be, your complete existence is due to the habits you do on a daily basis.

It is imperative to transform your day in to a meaningful one.

Put some deeper thoughts and feelings behind your daily activities and understand that you were not born to this world by your choice and like it or not, “you are on a mission to make a difference”

The following is a good idea how to exercise some deeper thought to what you do every day is to write a daily journal and notate at least one or two things that can be considered a win or accomplishment.

You will be surprised that some days you will be scratching your head thinking what can you write down as a win. This is great, since it will cause you to rethink and examine your daily actions to find more meaning and significance to it.

Prayer Why To Keep On Praying

Greetings Everyone

September is usually the time of the Jewish new year. Massive amounts of hours are spent in the synagogue praying.  After all this praying one can ask themselves what is the purpose of so much prayer  G-d knows  my thoughts and isn’t once enough to let him know our needs.

This is amazing question and something to think about since prayer is part of all of our lives, some more and some less. It is interesting to find that even to those far from prayer but when circumstance pushes one in to a corner, for example something that is beyond our control, it is almost a human instinct to reach to a higher power for help.

We all have picked up our hands and voice in prayer OH G-D HELP ME!

Well questions are more about causing us to think about a things in a more creative and deeper  way, to be able to see something that was not so obvious the first time we looked. 

For starters I would like to mention what Jewish sages have said that G-d loves to hear the prayers from his creation and that is the reason there seems sometimes to be a delay to our request, all because G-d craves sincere prayer.

To understand this concept better let me share with you a parable of Rich Parents and their beloved children.

Nothing is too expensive or extensive when it comes to their beloved children. All their hear desires are fulfilled with most minimum of the children asking. The parents just love to watch the look of amazement on their children’s faces when getting the latest and best of what this world has to offer.

 One day they decided instead of every time the children coming to them for their latest request, why not just give them free access to get everything they desire without the need to come to their parents every time they need something. The idea sounded brilliant they opened a bank account and deposited for each of their children twenty million dollars to use to their liking.

Well can you imagine how grateful the children were with this amazing generosity. For the first few months, every time they made a new purchase they right away shared the great news with the parents the excitement of what new gadget or vacation they had purchased.

But as time passed the calls became less frequent and the sharing became less and less. The parents looked at the silent phones and the empty driveway; there was no sign of the children and no more sharing with what was going on in their lives.

The parents pondered what had changed, till they realized that change was needed. They implemented one small change on the bank account. They added a condition to withdraw money the children needed an additional signature of one of the parents. This small condition brought along the continuous contact of the children with their parents since they needed the signature to withdraw the money, they felt foolish not sharing all that was going on in their life, to the utter delight of the parents.

I will not waste time explaining the analogy between the parable and the need for continuous prayer it is a tactic to build our connection with the creator.

However in all honesty I am writing this post to share with you my personal enlightened thought on continuous prayer.

This philosophy is not only useful in prayer but in our overall thought process at succeeding at our goals.

The five senses are our most basic important tools to discover and navigate our way in this beautiful world.

1.       Touch

2.        Sight

3.       Smell

4.       Hearing

5.        Tasting

However, these five senses can lead us to our detriment as well, since they sometimes tend to give us inaccurate information.

As an example, you might be out walking late at night and you see something that looks like a sinister person standing in the shadow and the street is empty, your heart starts pounding thinking all kinds of thoughts what kind of things that person is up to.  Finally, you get the courage to walk up the block and what a surprise, the shadow you saw was just a tree branch that looked from afar like the shadow of a person. Well your eyesight is to blame to this misinformation.

How about you go to a party, the table is set with all kind of delicies and all tasting soo good but you’re a diabetic or someone trying to lose a couple of pounds. If you just go by taste, you would not hesitate a instant but grab one of these great cookies and might even go back for seconds but in reality taste can be so deceiving while in reality these foods are bad for your health.

Therefore, in this instance your sense of taste was the one misleading you.

I can go on and on but I think you got the point.

The solution is to use the additional six mental faculties that we are graced with.

1.       Will

2.       Imagination

3.       Perception

4.       Reason

5.       Intuition

6.        Memory

(This post is not the place to dwell now on the explanation of the mental faculties.)

Let’s get back to prayer – when a person turns to the creator with a request. The person is usually bound by the reality and information what their five senses have fed them. The reason why a person turns to the creator, if it is not to express gratitude it is usually the request of help and change.

But since they are bound by what they perceive reality is, they tend to believe that change is possible but only in the guidelines that their senses perceive possible.

That is where the six mental senses come into play.  With these six mental faculties you have the power to transform your seemingly reality to an authentic one.

Let us take one of the mental powers to elaborate on,  “IMAGINATION” 

Imagination is a powerful tool being used by all of us every day but a lot of its use, is to hurt ourselves rather than to help us. As an Illustration instead on focusing on your fears and worries, seeing in your mind’s eye all the terrible predictions you foresee.  Instead, why not paint a beautiful picture of the real results you so desire.

All these mental faculties are all designed to help you discover the hidden part of the universe. The truth of the universe can only discovered by putting in the effort to discover them.

So let me take this a full circle and get back to where I started the reason of continuing to pray for the same things repeatedly since the creator knows our thoughts and wants.

The repeat of prayer is for our benefit, by delving on what we want by consistent prayer, we can convince ourselves of the unseen, or the unimaginable is possible.

Call it a form of affirmations if you may, so when we turn to G-d, sometimes we are missing true belief that G-d can help us. However by continuing to pray and focusing on what we want we can reach the level of belief so our prayers can be answered 

And even not just in prayer to those seeking success, you must believe you will achieve and see yourself in your mind succeeding already now  in order to succeed as Napoleon Hill said “whatever the mind and conceive and believe it can achieve”

Read more about the power of the mind and the success mechanism that we are all endowed from when we are born. A great source Is the book from Maxwell Maltz, Psycho Cybernetics and Think and grow rich from Napoleon Hill as well The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D Wattles

And there is lot more information out there on this, these are just some of the books that I liked.

Wishing You The Best

Pinny

Snowing Again !!!

Living here in New York amid the bustle of city life, I love the transformation snow does to the city. It is just breathtaking the beauty that accompanies it.  The world transforms like the image of a bride in her gown on her wedding day that no words are needed to explain its beauty.

What amazes me is the way the snow makes it transformation to the world. 

• Snow makes its entry in silence no thunder and lightning to announce its coming.
• Snow makes change one flake at a time
• Snow makes its change by being consistent
• Snow makes change in a graceful way

This observation was very insightful to my passion I've been researching for a long time, how can a person make changes in one’s life. 

Since I myself have struggled for the longest time and as well as seeing a lot of us struggling, how to make the changes we want in life but seems to be eluding us.

Well let us dissect the lessons snow is teaching us with every beautiful snowflake falling from the sky.

Snow makes its entry in silence - When making change, make it silently don't push your inspirations or insights on other people. Do what you have to do without trying to force your inspiration down their throats.

Snow makes change one flake at a time – A good idea when trying to make change is to pick one small thing to change.  A small change is not so hard to make without shaking the boat, and one change will lead to the next, one success will lead to the next

Snow makes change by being consistent- Whatever change you plan to implement, remember this consistency is the back bone of all change. If you commit to make a change there is no going back.  Keep up with what you are striving for and you will reach it.

Snow makes its change Gracefully - Do it with a smile, anticipate that you will succeed in your goals. Eliminate your limiting beliefs, see the good in those around you will help you see the good in yourself.