Brahma Baba's Remembrance Day: January 18th

Om Shanti!

New Year's Message From Dadi Janki

Administrative Head of the Brahma Kumaris



Dear Friends,

On the threshold of 2012 we are uncertain about what time may hold for us. Ours is a time in which there are two energies at work: an ascending energy and a descending energy.

We are reminded constantly of the descending energy and its destabilizing effects on the world, increasing feelings of fear, anxiety and hopelessness.

Perhaps less visible, but assuredly more powerful, is the ascending energy. Like new growth below the ground in late winter, ascending energy is working quietly in the hearts and minds of people everywhere, shaping a new story. We see it in the surge of those seeking spiritual truth and in the hundreds of thousands of civil society organizations requesting transparency, authenticity, and a return to values.

We have a choice about which energy we affiliate with, about where we put our support. We make this choice at the level of thought. When we allow anger, greed, or fear into our thoughts, we strengthen the descending energy, and we lose our capacity for generosity and mercy.

When we meet situations with peace, love, and persistent happiness, when we are careful not to say or think anything that would hurt another's heart, we amplify the energy of ascent.

We find these qualities inside of ourselves, as they have always been our true nature. But to find them ready in moments of need, we have to nurture them daily. To make the greatest contribution to the world at this time, keep the fire of goodness alive in your heart and mind. Fill yourself with the energies of peace, love and happiness and let them infuse your every action.

With love
BK Janki

Happy New Year: 2012

Are YOU a Free Spirit?

Our favorite greeting at this time of year is, “Happy New Year!” Looking back, we are likely to see previous new years weren’t that new or happy at all but simply more of the same old sanskar and unhappiness all around! Authentic happiness is irrevocably intertwined with freedom! Freedom comes from change from within and change from within comes by burying our old habits and starting and setting new sanskar in our life. Here are seven of the most common ‘prison bars’ that make up the cell in which we imprison our self to ‘serve out’ the time of our life… unhappily! Identify your prison bars that imprison you and consciously work daily to break them to set yourself truly free for authentic happiness.

BLAMING: We make our self a prisoner of the belief that others are responsible for our present and future predicament. Freedom is restored when we end all blame and take complete responsibility for our thoughts and feelings.

COMPLAINING: We make our self a prisoner of how we believe and therefore think circumstances ‘should be’. Freedom is won when we accept everything as it is and everyone as they are at any and every given moment. If we want to improve things, we must find a happy way to improve them.

CRITICISING: We make our self a prisoner of our ‘idea’ of how others ‘should’ behave. Freedom is regained when we ‘let it be’ and realize that each person is playing their part, dancing their dance, in the musical drama we call life!

ARGUING: We make ourselves prisoners of our own opinions, and the belief that we are ‘right’. Freedom is only attained when we re-affirm the idea that each is entitled to their opinion.

POSSESSING: We make our self prisoners of what we believe we possess. Freedom is achieved only when we mentally ‘let go’ and remember nothing is ‘mine’, thereby changing our relationship with all that we may have gathered in our life.

SELF-LIMITING: We make our self prisoners when we identify with an image of our incapabilities! Freedom is restored when we realize that there is nothing we cannot learn to do if we are prepared to embrace our failures as well as our successes.

WORRYING: We make our self a prisoner of our own fears based on our imaginary speculations about a dark future. Freedom is only possible when we realize that what we think and do today create ‘our tomorrow’.

Now that we know where our authentic happiness lies, shouldn’t our greeting for the New Year be as follows?

Wishing YOU New Freedom Next Year!

The Way to Change

Why can it be so hard to change our self? We’ve made all the attempts; read the books, attended retreat, sought advice …yet nothing changed or changed insignificantly.

A successful chief executive, disillusioned with his life happened to come across an ice cream seller and ordered an ice cream, “Please make me one with everything!”, and handed over his twenty-dollar bill and asked for the change when he picked up his ice cream. At which point the ice cream seller put both his hands together bowed, and replied, “Ah, but all change must come from within!”

It seems obvious that we have to do our own work and change our selves from inside out. Yet we still look around for help to change our self. Reason? We have not yet realized how deeply we need to go within ourselves to empower our self for the necessary change we seek. Changing a habit of action is not enough to change our self. Just as, we must pull the weeds along with the roots to get rid of them permanently, changing how we think, what we feel, how we perceive requires us to go deeply within us and pull out their roots and that requires energy. This energy comes from four daily practices that enable us to access our inner power and innate wisdom to make this change permanently.

Daily Meditation to Access our Inner Power

The practice of meditation gives you access to the core of your being where you always find your inner peace. Meditation is the practice of connecting with the power of your peace in order to remain calm while the world around you prefers chaos and crisis.

Daily Study to Bring Out Inner Wisdom

This is the practice of using your mind and intellect to explore spiritual ideas. This will involve the ‘contemplation’ of the wisdom and insight of others to begin with. We must use those insights as signposts to trigger the ‘realization’ of our own wisdom and insight to demolish the old belief systems.

Daily Application for Learning from Experience

The power of our realization brings change in us. Make those changes practical by recognizing that each relationship is an opportunity to apply our power, our realizations and our new insights without imposing them on others. This enables us to take back conscious control of our own thoughts and feelings from others.

Daily Contribution for Our Consciousness

Our ingrained notion that the purpose and success in life is to acquire and accumulate causes the most personal stress and suffering. Changing our habit of wanting and taking, and freeing our self from the worry and insecurity, is only possible when we consciously seek opportunities every day to give with no expectation of return.

Adapted from Mike George’s article© 2010, The Way to Change.

Thank You

Thank you. We have come a long way in our culture in using these two important and necessary words. We now often use these two beautiful words to express our gratitude to someone who is courteous to us or who helped us or inspired us for something better in our life. Though we use these words often, very few times they emanate from our heart with pure intentions of goodwill for the person who has facilitated us at that moment that was important to us.

Our feeling of gratitude may emerge as a result of big acts or very simple acts performed by others that made us happy or relieved us from burden or worry, for example in a situation wherein our partner helps us out in cleaning, shopping or cooking. This feeling shows us how important it is to step out of our busy demanding work life and help our friends and Family.

Our life is a journey and everyone plays a meaningful role during this journey before reaching our destination. What makes our journey more enjoyable, fulfilling and pleasant are the experiences and the people we meet during this journey. Thus it is important to bring change in our own nature (behavior) to accept and love others for who they are and in the process, God, the Ultimate gardener, will clean our heart and plant the seeds of love, wisdom, happiness and purity so that a new world filled with fragrance of virtues and values emerge.

So this month let's thank everyone and all situations (Good or Bad) which have mould our life strengthened our character. Let us make a resolution to build a life style which helps us in earning blessing of thanks from everyone who enters our life.

Success and Celebration

Success and Celebration! Wow! These words generate a pleasant feeling for doing something big and sharing the joy of a favorable outcome with positive energy and enthusiasm with your friends and family. Upon arriving at the moment of celebration, most of you will be very happy and possibly visualizing your next successful moments!

Now pause for a moment and think about these successful moments when there was a feeling of joy within us and a sense of happiness for celebrating and sharing with friends and family. When we share our success and joy, we get an insight and a chance to understand ourselves and what True Success and True Celebration are to us. In this process, we might also come across a few of our achievements where we got Success and celebrated it but the sense of Joy and happiness was missing.

What is the cause of the difference between these two celebrations? In our busy lives, sometimes we tend to be superfluous where success is closely associated with just the end result but the path traveled to attain the success is ignored or that the sympathy for other who have not yet succeeded is not felt consciously within us or that the sacrifice of others in your own success is not recognized. These are some of the reasons that deprive us subconsciously from true feeling and the joy of celebration.

True success is a feeling of happiness, a sense of joy, where our inner consciousness feels that you have honestly succeeded and you feel the pride of true and inclusive accomplishment. Such a success brings a real celebration from within and our heart starts dancing with the tunes of satisfaction, joy and lightness.

How do you stay close to a true Success? Knowledge and meditation help us to live a life aligned with the values and principles which will help us make right decisions and every action we take will leave us with a sense of joy and celebration.

Dushera & Diwali are a celebration of the awakening of the individual to his or her true nature by winning over his own weaknesses. One's true nature consists of peace, love, bliss and inner joy. When awakened, these qualities bring new meaning to life.

Wish you such a Happy Dushera & Diwali filled with wealth of knowledge, Happiness, Joy and celebration of true success of self-mastery and self-sovereignty.

Diwali & Dushara Celebration

Om Cafe On Courage

Emerging young leaders (ages 13-35 yr) are invited to join like-minded souls in a cafe-style setting to explore, express and exchange values that hold the potential to create a new story for humanity. Light refreshments served.

Talk on Happiness Index

Date: Sun, Sep 11;
Time: 11:30am onwards; Followed by lunch
Place: East Bay Hindu Temple, 595 School St., Pittsburg, CA 94565

Stay On The Path To Success

All of us wish to succeed in our life in the face of difficult and challenging situations. When faced with such a situation, we should ask ourselves if we are ready to face the situation or we are waiting for the situation to change. Those who just wish and pray for the situation to change find themselves using up all of their energy trying to escape from the situation, languishing in their success.

Majority of us start with enthusiasm to overcome the challenges and change the system but on the way to success, we come across many hurdles and we feel that we cannot continue forward and abandon the efforts. A few of us, however, keep faith, continue their progress in the face of obstacles and reach their destiny successfully with the same enthusiasm as when they started.

This raises a million-dollar question: What is the difference between these two types of people? The answer in short is, “Those who reach their destination successfully know how to keep their spirits alive through the tough times and how to cope up with the changing situations. They know how to increase their inner powers when needed.” In fact those of us who use their inner powers to face the challenging situations in the positive way find themselves becoming more powerful with every new situation that they face.

If you find a challenging situation difficult to face, think about how your loving family or a company of a friend with experience will support you and encourage you during these tough times and then develop courage and determination to navigate through the challenge. Yes, power of loved ones and the company of experienced people are great gifts only lucky ones have.

In Sangham yug we are blessed with such elevated company of GOD and his Family. He bestows on us 8 powers (The power to Withdraw, Tolerate, Discriminate, Judge, Accommodate, Face, Co-operate, Pack Up) to destroy our vices and make us victorious. This Dushera and Navratri, while we worship and praise Goddess Durga, the powerful 8-armed one, let us discover our own hidden powers that we could use in a practical way to achieve the aims we have set for ourselves. All of us have powers within ourselves, like weapons, which we can use according to the need and time to successfully achieve our aims.

Personal happiness & success are related to how well we align ourselves with ideals and what we believe to be true with our actions. Practice the methodology based on ideals that motivate your journey forward to a higher aim. An understanding of these powers, regularly practicing them and keeping them handy is the key to success in facing all challenges successfully and confidently.

For better understanding of such inner powers, call us to attend Raj Yoga Foundation course.

Ganesh Chaturthi

Raksha Bandhan

Date: Sat, Aug 13;
Time: 10:00am - noon
Place: Jain Temple Auditorium, 722 S. Main St., Milpitas, CA

Note: Registration required. e-mail at contact@bksiliconvalley.org

Real Freedom

Freedom! Wow, the word itself generates a pleasant feeling in our heart. One of the innate aspirations of the people today is to be free. When we are free, we can listen to our own feelings and follow our own heart to lead a life with purpose and reach our destiny in our own unique style. In short, we want freedom to choose, to take risk and to succeed.

Happiness we get from this process of deciding (“what we want to do”,” how we want to do it”) and doing it successfully on our own is a great feeling. There is no better sense of fulfillment in the world! But to experience this freedom, we have to first free our mind from many restraints we have imposed on ourselves, for example:

1. Restraints of Attachment: a) Attachment to Name: your fame makes you think, “What will others think if I do this? “and it stops your free thinking; b) Attachment to POSITION: when we get attached to a particular position, we become dependent and subservient to our superior in organization. These restraints of attachment create negative traits in us such as jealousy, hatred, ego, etc. These negative traits will imprison our thinking pattern, thereby making us a life time prisoner.


2. Impressions of the past and worries of the future.


3. Influence (but not inspiration) of friends and family members who have dominant presence on our thoughts and actions. Inspiration is great thing but not Influence. Influence is a subtle restraint which makes you dependent whereas inspiration frees you and motivates you to do and achieve something bigger and better than you ever thought possible on your own.

How do you break free of these restraints?

1. Self-Belief: Believe in yourself; set time for your hobbies and listen to songs of your heart.


2. Knowledge and wisdom: Gain enough knowledge and wisdom from all available sources.


3. Self-Mastery: Train yourself and become master of your mind, feelings and emotions.


4. Spirit of Adventure: Get out of your inertia and develop new ideas, plans and take calculated risks. Do not worry of failures; a person who never failed is person who never tried anything in life.

Freedom, however, is also a word that is highly misinterpreted and has led to many problems and wars. Freedom brings responsibility. Experiencing and enjoying Freedom is just like freedom of driving an automobile to the destination of your choice via the route you prefer, subject to the traffic laws while driving to your destination. Freedom requires you to respect the rights, values and freedom of others while you are enjoying your own Freedom.

Real freedom is achieved when we are free from within. Real freedom is when we are masters of our own mind and we value others freedom too.

So drive your vehicle (life) carefully; decide your destiny with self-belief and gain wisdom to reach there and have a spirit of adventure to face the situations and obstacles on the way to your destiny; remember to yield or stop to avoid accidents with drivers of bad sanskars on the way.

Talk by Sister Jayanti : Is God Listening?