Gerald D'Cunha

Pic.: Malabika Ganguly “All the advice you ever gave your partner (or anyone) is for you to hear.”   ―   Byron Katie O ne of the thoughts I have, always, believed in is this: The basics of every chapter I teach are very important; therefore, my students should not miss the initial lectures of every chapter… particularly the first lecture. So, I keep reminding them about it, much in advance. “Look guys, I will be starting this chapter on such and such date. If you miss the basics, you will find it very difficult to cope up later. So, come what may, please don’t remain absent.” Now, most of them don’t miss. Mercifully, because, they have realized the meaning and value of my advice. But, some of them do miss and walk into the class, the following lecture, as if my advice - or warning, whatever it is - meant nothing to them! And, look at my behavior. If I operate from my rigid belief that they’ had to’ attend the class com...

  Pic.: Unnati Jiandani ‘THE COBWEBS’ was one of the popular booklets I had written and published for THE DAWN CLUB in its early years. It was first published in 1991. Once again, what made this book connect with the readers was that it spoke in first person… The passages – some twelve of them - seemed straight from one’s own heart, they sounded like one’s own voice… In my coming Posts, I wish to bring you these passages, one by one… Here is the FOREWORD to the book and the first passage - ‘My Life, my house’. Hope, you will like reading them… FOREWORD O ne reason, why we all wait for the Messiah to come, is that we haven’t realized that he has already arrived! The Kingdom of Heaven is, for most of us, far away. We haven’t noticed the beauty of the kingdom here on earth. When the Messiah comes, we stone him, crucify him. When heaven is here, we abuse its virtue. Yes, we wait – there is a great pleasure in wait...

When I first read the book ‘Loving What Is’, by Byron Katie, I had come to realize that stress in my life is the result of an ‘unexamined problem’. That, what happens in my life does not cause stress in my life, but the story that I weave around it , in my mind, does. So, she urges us to write down, as clearly as possible, our ‘Problem’… what we think as the cause of our stress… and she leads us, through a very therapeutic inquiry, just through her four simple questions… Mrs. Katie calls this inquiry - 'The Work'. By the end of dealing with these four simple questions… yes, when we have answered sincerely these four questions, we will be left with nothing or no one to blame! We realize that  it is our life, and, hence, it is our business… Situation changes when its perception changes… Till then, we would only go crazy wanting to make a cat bark! As Mrs. Katie, so beautifully, tells us that, at the end of all our frantic attempts to do that, the ca...