A group of highly educated students visited their old university Professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering them coffee, Professor returned from the kitchen with a pot of coffee and an assortment of cups- porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee. When all had a cup of coffee in hand, the Professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain ones. While it's but normal for you to want only the best, that's also the source of your stress. What you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you still went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups! If life is coffee, then jobs, money, and status in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. Don't let the cups drive you. Enjoy the coffee!"

The devotee knelt to be initiated into discipleship. The Guru whispered the sacred mantra into his ear, warning him not to reveal it to anyone. "What will happen if I do?" asked the devotee. Said the Guru, "Anyone you reveal the mantra to will be liberated from the bondage of ignorance and suffering, but you will be excluded from discipleship and suffer damnation". No sooner had he heard those words, the devotee rushed to the market place, collected a large crowd around him and repeated the sacred mantra for all to hear. The disciples later reported this to the Guru and demanded that the man be expelled from the monastery for his disobedience. The Guru smiled and said, "He has no need of anything I can teach. His action has shown him to be a Guru in his own right."

Man is divine by nature. Either as created in the image of God, or as his spark or one with him, the essential nature of man can never lose this perfection. There is no such thing as sin, which can change the quality of the soul. The wicked action of a man may impose a veil upon the divine nature, but can never destroy it. God exists in us as potentiality and possibility. An action is called good or moral that helps us rediscover this hidden divinity. and action is immoral or bad which conjures up before us the appearance of manifoldness. The experience we gather at the physical, mental or aesthetic level does not belong to our real soul. They may be called at best a mixture of truth and falsehood. Through this inscrutable ignorance, we behave as if we were corporal beings. We have hypnotized ourselves into thinking that we are imperfect and limited and that we exist in time and space, subject to the law of causation. The aim of religion is to de-hypnotize ourselves and make us aware of our divine heritage.

Forgiveness is a word that is the real joker in the dictionary. "Thy will be done" is the basic concept of every religion. Nothing can happen unless it is His (God's) will. "Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer of any deed," says the Buddha. Who, then, is to forgive whom for what?

A little girl was dying of a disease from which her 8-year-old brother had recovered sometime before. The doctor said to the boy, "Only a transfusion of your blood will save the life of your sister. Are you ready to give her your blood?" The eyes of the boy widened in fear. He hesitated for a while, then finally said, "Okay I'll do it." An hour after the transfusion was completed the boy asked hesitantly, "Say, doctor, when do I die?" It was only then that the doctor understood the momentary fear that had seized the child -- he had thought that in giving his blood he was giving his life for his sister.

Once a monk Maulikyaputta asked the Buddha several metaphysical questions. The Buddha promised to answer all his questions after one year, provided the monk observed complete unbroken silence and simply watched his thoughts as they passed through his mind. Maulikyaputta spent one silent year just watching his thoughts. At first, his mind was a humming beehive assailed by a multitude of diverse thoughts. Gradually they began to subside and by the end of the year, he was totally free of the tyranny of horizontal thinking. A year later, the Buddha appeared before the monk. The monk bowed low before the master and confessed that he now had no questions, not a single one.

"The wise mourn neither for the dead nor for the living. I, you and the assembled kings have lived and will live at all times. Jivatman, the dweller in this body passes through childhood, youth and old age; then with the same ease into another body through the door of death, hence the wise are not deceived by the phenomenon of death."

"Arjuna! Bear heat, cold, pleasure and pain as they are ephemeral, being dependent on the senses. This serene existence will lead to immortality."

"The wise know that if truth is non-existent, it cannot be created; if it is existent, it can never cease to be. It is changeless and pervades the universe."

" Bodies die, but the truth, which possesses the body is eternal and indestructible. This is the Atman. It is without a beginning, an end; unchanging forever. How can it slay or be slain? Don't dream that you kill the Atman. It only sheds bodies like worn-out garments and dons new ones. It is not wounded by weapons, burned by fire, dried by wind, wetted by water. On the other hand, it is the being of being, changeless, eternal, as it is beyond the senses and the mind, it is not subject to modification."

"All that is born must die. Rebirth is certain for the dead. Hence, do not grieve."

In 2012 there will be higher awakenings; shifts in consciousness; new beginnings at all levels. Love is the light that dissolves all walls between souls, families, and nations. On this eternal journey of god/self-realization please be sure that the only thing that lies ahead is our own true greater happiness. Infinite peace, gratitude, and love.