Quick Reads From Awakening Wholeness
A book on young leadership with compassion for Myself, Others and The Earth.
“Awakening Wholeness” is a book focused on young leadership driven by compassion for oneself, others, and the Earth. This book encourages youth leadership by emphasizing mindfulness, mental wellness, and holistic living. It promotes young leaders making a positive impact through emotional well-being and mindful living.
————————————————————————————————————
Happiness lies in different things for different people at each stage of our lives. What makes us happy as children — like our favourite toys or hanging onto our mother’s skirt — changes as we grow up. We then begin looking for happiness when reading storybooks or getting good marks.
Our source of happiness then shifts to our boyfriend or girlfriend. Happiness could subsequently change once more after the person gets married, and then further again to a nice home, children, and achievements on the job.
Happiness could also be a cup of hot chocolate or coffee, or standing on the mountain watching the sunset on a semi-cloudy day, when the sun and clouds paint masterpieces of riotous colours in the sky, or being listened to and understood by close friends. What brings happiness is different for different people at different times.
The Dalai Lama gives a beautiful metaphor to describe the common ingredient of compassion in all our acts of kindness as well as in the things that bring us great joy.
He likens compassion to water. Just as water is the common ingredient in the different flavours of tea, we find that different things make different people happy. However, the common core is the same feeling — of wholeness and compassion, dressed in the remembrance of our intrinsic oneness. Just as tea can be made in many different flavours, like Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Green Tea, Mint Tea, and so on, all of them have the same ingredient: water.
In exactly the same way, every single act or thing that makes a person happy has at its core a sense of wholeness or oneness with the entire universe.
This is the common ingredient in all forms of happiness. Instead of running after things, understand this and know that this wholeness is also the source of compassion and love. Perhaps our lives would be less frenetic knowing this.
When we are silent and we pause, and when we begin to look at things from this perspective of wholeness, we find that we’re intimately and deeply connected to everything and everyone.
According to Harlow Shapely, there are about 3×10 to the power of 19 argon atoms in each breath we take. In the breath you just took, more than 400,000 argon atoms were those breathed by Einstein and Michelangelo in their lifetimes.
The eternal core of awareness of Mother Teresa, Buddha, or Rumi is exactly who you are at your core right now ! There is only one life, one wholeness.
We are like waves on this ocean of wholeness. We emerge from the ocean for a few years and then merge back into the ocean. In exactly the same way, all that you see around you — the table, the chair, the photographs, the trees, the dog sleeping on the floor — all arise out of this wholeness and all go back after some time into this same wholeness. You are not just a limited creature bound by your skin. You really are the unbounded, infinite consciousness or awareness that permeates everything and is everything. So, through the lens of wholeness, reflect on your connection to everybody and everything. It is very, very intimate.
