One unknown book by Leo Tolstoy which he himself valued the highest of all his writings January 15, 2010

No, it is not War and Peace; Anna Karenina or Resurrection…This is an almost unknown book by Leo Tolstoy of exceptional value and beauty which, despite author’s great want, has not made it to a bestseller by now.

 

Unfortunately, Leo Tolstoy is less known for his numerous religious writings, which present a challenging and original point of view.These works have been obviously undervalued.

Путь Жизни (Path of Lifeor also translated as A Calendar of Wisdom),  by Leo Tolstoy is considered to be his most important contribution to humanity, the work of his life’s last years. Widely read in prerevolutionary Russia, banned and forgotten under Communism; and recently rediscovered to great excitement, A Calendar of Wisdom is a day-by-day guide that illuminates the path of a life worth living with a brightness undimmed by time. Unjustly censored for nearly a century, it deserves to be placed with the few books in our history that will never cease teaching us the essence of what is important in this world.

The reader will notice that Tolstoy anticipated many of the ideas presented in contemporary books on spirituality, such as the observation that our thoughts determine our lives. Tolstoy began to write this book in 1910, the last year of his life, when he was 82 years old. Given that he began the book in January and completed it in October of the same year, one would think the writing went quickly; but it only seems that way. Tolstoy actually had been developing the themes presented in Path of Life for the last thirty years of his life.

In Path of Life Tolstoy defines how to find continuous happiness in life and how to die without fear. In presenting his views, he cites his own ideas and includes many quotations from an eclectic collection of ancient and modern philosophers and religious figures. The choice of quotations is a unique reflection of Tolstoy’s view of life reached through his ‘dialogue’ with the world’s best religious minds. Tolstoy deliberately marshals a chorus of religious thinkers who voice similar religious insights. By identifying religious themes that are consistent over time and from country to country, Tolstoy seeks to prove their eternal verity.

Leo Tolstoy’s short stories – true pearls! December 6, 2009

 

Leo Tolstoy is mostly known for this great works like “War & Peace” or “Anna Karenina”, however he has left many short stories of great wisdom. Let me share with you one here.

THREE HERMITS. 

 An OLD LEGEND CURRENT IN THE VOLGA DISTRICT

‘And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.’ — Matt. vi. 7, 8.
A BISHOP was sailing from Archangel to the Solovétsk Monastery; and on the same vessel were a number of pilgrims on their way to visit the shrines at that place. The voyage was a smooth one. The wind favourable, and the weather fair. The pilgrims lay on deck, eating, or sat in groups talking to one another. The Bishop, too, came on deck, and as he was pacing up and down, he noticed a group of men standing near the prow and listening to a fisherman who was pointing to the sea and telling them something. The Bishop stopped, and looked in the direction in which the man was pointing. He could see nothing however, but the sea glistening in the sunshine. He drew nearer to listen, but when the man saw him, he took off his cap and was silent. The rest of the people also took off their caps, and bowed.

‘Do not let me disturb you, friends,’ said the Bishop. ‘I came to hear what this good man was saying.’

‘The fisherman was telling us about the hermits,’ replied one, a tradesman, rather bolder than the rest.

‘What hermits?’ asked the Bishop, going to the side of the vessel and seating himself on a box. ‘Tell me about them. I should like to hear. What were you pointing at?’

‘Why, that little island you can just see over there,’ answered the man, pointing to a spot ahead and a little to the right. ‘That is the island where the hermits live for the salvation of their souls.’

‘Where is the island?’ asked the Bishop. ‘I see nothing.’

‘There, in the distance, if you will please look along my hand. Do you see that little cloud? Below it and a bit to the left, there is just a faint streak. That is the island.’

The Bishop looked carefully, but his unaccustomed eyes could make out nothing but the water shimmering in the sun.

Extraordinary experience of ONENESS November 4, 2009

These days I am reading a truly unique book , a bit later I will post my review. However now I cannot hold myself back from posting a true gem of it, a beautiful experience of the author, Daniel Andreev – a Russian poet and religious thinker of the middle of the XX century. The book itself  is called “Roza Mira” (“The Rose of the World”, “Роза Мира”), it was written mostly in prison at Stalin’s time, and is about religion in the modern world.

The extraordinary experience I am quoting here reminds me a lot of the Enlightenment of the main character Herman Hesse in his famous novel Siddhartha. This is the unique experience of ONENESS, of feeling oneself being not only the part and parcel of the whole, but actually being this WHOLE…

Enjoy:

“In my life such an experience took place on the moonlit night of July 29, 1931, on the banks of the Nerussa, a small river in the Bryansk Forest. I usually try to be alone when in Nature, but that time it so happened that I had taken part in a camping trip with a small group.
We reached the banks of the river at the close of a hot, cloudless day. We took a leisurely dip, then gathered brush, and, building a fire two meters from the quietly flowing river under the canopy of three old willows, prepared a simple meal. The sky darkened. A low July full moon glided out from behind the oaks. Little by little the conversations and stories died down; one by one my companions fell asleep around the crackling wood. I was left awake at the fire, lazily waving a branch to ward off the mosquitoes.
When the moon, noiselessly moving behind the finely patterned, leafy branches of the willow, entered the range of my vision, those hours that come close to being the most wonderful of my entire life began. Breathing softly, having laid back on a handful of hay, I heard the Nerussa flowing not behind me, a few paces back, but as if through my own soul. That was the first unusual thing I noticed.

A book of books! October 15, 2009

I’ve just finishied reading a book. A very unusual one. It is not a book in a real sence of it, but it contains…the best of all that has been known of this Earth so far!

Sounds very intriguing, isn`t it?

Here is the book:

 

This is a Biographical Dictionary of Realised Souls. It contains 160 entries for key figures in the History of Spirituality, together with a Glossary of Terms and a Bibliography, as well as great links to the sources.

The book contains short bios of the truly great people who deeply influenced the evolution fo human civilization, personalities whose enlightened hearts and minds sculptured the face and soul of Mankind. The true heroes, not the false ones who are presented to us as such by the mighty brainwash.

Among these 160 are those who are very well known like Christ, Leonardo Da Vinici, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Rumi, Carl Jung, Lenin, Mozart, etc.  and some are less known like Dadu Dayal, Joachim of Fiore, Hildegard of Bingen, Daniil Andreev, Patacara and many more… What brings all these personalities together into this book is that their heritage has truly good vibrations, opposite to many so called gurus and leaders, whose heritage emits heat. Having all these people in one book, creates a different perspective on the world history. It suddenly becomes clear how, through the great souls of all nations we are all genuinely connected and how they all have been speaking about same things…

Your Thought and Mine May 27, 2009

 (image by me, this is ONE rose, half white/halth pink)

Your thought is a tree rooted deep in the soil of tradition and whose branches grow in the power of continuity.

My thought is a cloud moving in the space. It turns into drops which, as they fall, form a brook that sings its way into the sea. Then it rises as vapour into the sky.

Your thought is a fortress that neither gale nor the lightning can shake.

My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying.

Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it.

My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.

You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought allows you to believe in the unequal contest of the strong against the weak, and in the tricking of the simple by the subtle ones.

My thought creates in me the desire to till the earth with my hoe, and harvest the crops with my sickle, and build my home with stones and mortar, and weave my raiment with woollen and linen threads.

Your thought urges you to marry wealth and notability.

Mine commends self-reliance.

Your thought advocates fame and show.

Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon the shore of eternity.

Your thought instils in your heart arrogance and superiority.

Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence.

Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads.

My thought speaks softly in my ears, “Be clean in body and spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head.”

Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices.

Mine exhorts me to humble service.

Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman March 26, 2009

This is a re-post of one friend’s writing about the meaning of woman in his life. This small essay is not only incredibly profound and sincere, but also breathtakingly beautiful. Apparently many men will appreciate that revelation.

(image by swaps)

Seeking Aphrodite

“Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman … This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin …an imprint or ‘archetype’ of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by woman” . Carl Jung, Collected Works 17:338

All my life I have been haunted, and sometimes pursued by an angel archetype. I have wondered where this comes from? Encounters with this archetype have been the cause of experiences filled with otherworldly elation, wonder and beauty as well as incredible disaster, suffering and grief.

I have met this archetype in many forms throughout my life: it gave birth to me, I married it; I have loved it, lost and regained it several times over: it goes, but I know inside me it is never gone for long. It is too interested in me and I am too interested in it. So yes, it keeps returning in a slightly different shape, with minutely altered characteristics, but otherwise substantially the same. I see the cycles, I know the dramas, I have read the script, memorized the lines, and know the ending.

But my vision of it refuses to pass. This archetype resonates deeply inside me and all the efforts of wisdom, emotional pragmatism, and philosophic analysis have failed to eradicate this figure I seem to know so well, this tantalizing angel, this mischievous, eternally present Aphrodite, this vanishing and returning, fascinating and perplexing, milk skinned goddess figure who never allows me to fully forget her. Indeed, there are some deep patternings inside ourselves that elude rational analysis: “the heart has reasons of which reason itself is unaware”.

Crème de la crème of this blog (30 out of 300 posts) October 29, 2008

My passionate reader, Sahaja has suggested me to make a list of my favourite  1000petals reads. I have a widget listing the most popular posts by my readers, but they are not necesserily the ones that I love the most 🙂

My favourite posts give a short and clear impression of the core values of this blog.  If you like the first abstract, just click on the title to read the whole post.

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GENERATION S

They live almost the same life as others. You will not check them out of the crowd by their funny dress – they look quite ordinary. They behave as normal, nice people – you will not notice anything special at first sight. However a little more attentive look will identify this new generation.

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Positive thinking? No, thank you!

I am probably one of the most positive people you have ever met (even being able to claim that is a sign, isn’t it). In fact I think positive all the time and it is difficult for me to see a problem somewhere where most of the people see it. But since I heard about the concept of positive thinking several years ago I keep opposing that theory, trying to explain the unnatural character of it. Here are some quite strong arguments.

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I do not believe in God.

I do not belive in God. And I never did.

I grew up in the Soviet Union with my both parents being convinced atheists. However my grand-grandparents who were born and grew up in Czar Times, were very religious. One grand-grandmother was known to be a holy person in her village; another one could heal with praying.

 Once, when I was 8 years old, I bet with my grand-grandma Nura (who was a deeply religious Christian-orthodox) that God did not exist. I said: “I will spit now in the sky. If there is God he will punish me immediately!” – Nothing happened afterwards; I won the bet and was even more convinced in my atheism.

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Freedom is Ego

Freedom is the favorite mantra of the western society. It is the magical word people use left and right to explain their most odd interests and ideas. Freedom is on top of the value system. But how can anybody be free and make choices based on so called freedom when he does not know himself??

We feel that we are free to make our choices: the choice between toast or sandwich or maybe the choice between pizza or pasta. Fine.

Now the clothing: how can we be free persons if we are actually forced to buy the things that are right now in, otherwise we just don’t get anything else in the shops.

No need to mention so called political freedom when every President selections our poor brains are being manipulated to such extend that God save us from knowing it in details!

Let me introduce you – An Everlasting Smile Blog October 19, 2008

Smile…..an everlasting smile…..

As mentioned in the “I am a blog-mama”post I love to support people who want to start blogging. Since I started two years ago the number of my blog-trainings keeps increasing. Normally I meet up with a person for that. Later we discuss the development over telephone.

But the case with Sahaja was very different. She was a blog-reader, and then felt like starting her own blog and asked me for the guidance. I never met her and actually never seen even a photo of her before that… But her innocent comments and very sincere way of communication touched me so much that, despite of my very limited time I wanted to help her to start blogging (over email and chat).

And now, I am proud to introduce you her wonderful, very personal and very special blog   – “Smile…An everlasting smile…”. I love her honest sharing of experiences and feelings about her life as a young Indian immigrant in UK. I love ther distinctive style with exclamation marks and pure emotions…

Apart from her brilliant writings, Sahaja has also started a photoblog Miriad Colours of Life, which is so lovely and sweet.

Good job, girl! keep it up!

🙂

LOVE; axinia

What happens after self-realisation? October 8, 2008

  image by axinia

After getting self-realisaiton… we start to engage in a very subtle battle between the head and the heart, or we can say the ego and the spirit. Up until the moment we gain our self-relisaiton we will have been under the complete “control” of our ego; we have made decisions based on our desires and wants, we have experienced emotional crests and troughs, we have suppressed our true selves beneath an unconscious set of accumulated baggage which has ruled our lives.

How many of us have ignored the warning signs of a relationships which was clearly not good for us, but whoch filled some other need – usually fear or loneliness? How many have accepted situations which we truly did not enjoy, want or need, simply to maintain our popularity or status with friends and family? Who hasn’t acted impetuously and stupidly and not regreted it afterwards? These are all signs of a perfectly normal lifestyle, but one that has been governed by the ego and superego in us. A life of compromise governed by our weakness. Even when we thought we were acting from the heart!

The Legend of the Jewel October 7, 2008

 

 image by axinia

Once upon a time in a long forgotten land people lived happily and in complete harmony with nature. They owned a divine jewel which connected them with their inner light: The Water of Life!

Centuries full of peace passed but eventually people started to forget about the jewel and soon after they turned to greed and lazyness.

The Gods watched this with anger because they once offered this jewel to mankind and so, they decided to take the jewel away from man and to hide it in safe place. (But where? )The deepest ocean, the highest mountain and even the moon did not seem save enough to get the jewel out of reach from the greed of man.  

Then the Gods agreed to put it in the one place where the curious humans would hardly ever look for it: