DHARMA THE CAT'S

Multimedia Messages
for cell phone and Broadband downloads

Dharma's wry wit and wisdom come to life with these short animations, for mobile phone and various broadband applications.  The customer subscribes to a 15-week period of daily theme messages, 6 days per week, with an appropriate Theme for each weekday.  The Themes are as follows:

Each message is introduced by a short animation of Dharma The Cat. 

Here are the 15 daily messages for the first 6 week period:
 

MONDAY: Beat The Blues

1. DEPRESSION: Thoughts produce feelings.  Habitual negative thoughts produce habitual negative feelings, plus unhealthy blood chemistry.  But genuinely positive thoughts produce the opposite.  Habits can be changed, as long as you want to change.  Counselling and therapy can help make those changes to thought patterns.

2. ANTI-DEPRESSANTS can help you to cope and continue, but not necessarily to heal.  Genuine healing requires a change in your thought patterns, attitudes and reactions, as well as a change in your nutritional, fitness and health habits, and possibly even your social environment.  Just be aware that you always have that choice between coping and healing.

3. FEELING DOWN: When you’re in a down mood, with low self-esteem or feeling worthless, a cure is very simple: just go out and be helpful to someone else in need.  Go ahead, I dare you.  Just once.  For one hour.  But not everyone will be able to do this, so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t.

4. FEAR OF FAILURE: You can talk yourself down from this condition.  First, imagine the worst-case scenario, in which you actually do fail.  Then ask yourself if you can cope with and adjust to the consequences of that failure.  Usually the answer is ‘yes,’ which relieves the fear.  But if your answer is ‘no,’ seek professional guidance.

5. SINCERE APOLOGY: If a sincere person hurts you, he will apologise and mean it.  ‘Meaning It’ means not doing the same thing to you again.  However, if an insincere person hurts you, he will also apologise, but then he will use your forgiveness as a license to repeat the offence.  Such an apology is worthless, and this repetition can really get you down, so regard this insincere relationship as toxic, and get rid of it.

6. CARING: When we give a person or animal genuine caring, with our kind words and feelings, happiness wells up in us, as well as in them.

7. START AT HOME: If you want to make the world a better place, start by making your own home a happier place to be in.  This might even entail improving your own behaviour, habits and lifestyle.

8. SMILE: A nice smile warms both the smiler and the smilee.

9. PEACE: Do you want to help create peace in the world?  Start by creating your own inner peace, and that will spread.  You can help can maintain inner peace with daily meditation, aerobic exercise, yoga, good nutrition and positive thoughts.

10. HAPPINESS: Why are so many rich people unhappy?  Because the driving belief that happiness comes from material wealth alone diverted them from pursuing their inner path to happiness, peace and contentment, through personal and spiritual development.

11. NO SYMPATHY: No one feels much sympathy for someone who feels sorry for himself, because that person has taken up all the sympathetic energy himself.

12. PERSPECTIVE: When tragedy strikes, bringing to mind other people’s similar and larger tragedies can make your grief a little easier to bear.  You are not alone.  Tragedy is inescapable in this life, and not accepting the inevitable is like trying to push the tide back.

13. ATTRACTION: Like attracts like.  Violence attracts violence, but respect begets respect, and good will toward others attracts good will in return.  Kind words beget kind responses.  Now you know how to attract the social reality you want.

14. BAD FEELINGS: Bad feelings, like anger, resentment, envy and fear, seem to just come and go.  When seeing this, you can easily understand that these poisonous feelings can be abandoned, by re-training your habitual thought patterns..

15. SELF-ABSORBED: Being self-absorbed is a big part of being depressed.  Focusing your mind and energies outside yourself will take the edge off your suffering. 

TUESDAY: Today’s Wisdom

1. NON-RESPONSIBILITY:  It’s our own reactions to people and events that make us feel bad.  But we usually make the mistake of blaming others for how we feel.  Take responsibility for all your own feelings.

2. DISCRETION: Many of our thoughts are better left unsaid.  Speak only those thoughts whose benefits will clearly outweigh the harm or hurt they might cause.  Ask yourself, “By saying this, who will benefit, and who will be harmed?”

3. DISTRACTION: When your head’s in the clouds, your feet miss the path, so be prepared for a stumble.  It’s better to stay focussed in the moment than to be lost in thought.  To bring yourself back into the moment, focus on your breathing, posture and the angle of your head and neck.

4. RELATIONSHIPS: In order for any relationship to be harmonious and balanced, both parties must develop harmony and balance within themselves, through individual work.

5. ARROGANCE: Trying to change other people is a painful and unsuccessful endeavour, rather like trying to baptise a cat.  Instead of perpetrating this arrogance, just be content to make improvements to yourself, such as being more tolerant of other people’s differences.

6. MIRROR EFFECT: People’s judgments and criticisms of others are unwittingly self-descriptive.  But this does not apply to neutral observations, which have no judging or critical tone.

7. GOALS: It's helpful to aim for goals that are appropriate for you alone.  These goals may well change at each stage of your own development through life.  Avoid striving for goals that are only appropriate for someone else.

8. UNDERSTANDING: Being informed about something is not the same as understanding it.  You can learn to use a hair dryer without understanding electricity.

9. ADVICE: Giving advice is easy, but following it is not.  Ironically, those who need advice the most are always the most eager to give it.

10. ENDS & MEANS: It is misleading to say that 'the end justifies the means,' because the end result bears a legacy of the means.  The end is always coloured and flavoured by the means.

11. REVENGE: Never mimic behaviour you don't respect.  How you conduct yourself is more important than what others do to you.  Don’t let others define your concept of yourself –- define yourself, starting by not reacting outwardly to their deeds, and by resolving to not be the same kind of person they are.

12. TWO SIDES? The expression ‘2 sides to every story’ implies two fair and reasonable sides exist on every issue.  This is a monumental fallacy.  For example, what’s the other side of the story for the Holocaust, Child Molesting, Gang Rape, Serial Murder or Starting Wildfires?  Although there are always two points of view, most issues are not evenly balanced as to fairness or justice.

13. NO DOUBLE STANDARD: If you screw up or do something you regret, be as compassionate and forgiving to yourself as you would be to your best friend.  Don’t live by a double standard.

14. MISTAKES: The most important thing about a mistake is what you do immediately afterwards, both to rectify it, and to minimise the consequences by helping the victims.  The second most important thing is to learn from the mistake, and not repeat it.

15. LOVE: Real love does not hurt.  If you’re feeling hurt in a relationship, then something is going on besides love.  For example, it could be need, dependency, control, possessiveness, jealousy, resentment, neurosis or any number of things that can masquerade as love.  People often sincerely believe they love someone, when in fact their feelings are something else entirely.

WEDNESDAY: Laugh Out Loud

1. PROCRASTINATION: What you don’t do today, you probably won’t do tomorrow, either.  But on the bright side, the sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!

2. FREE WILL: Isaac Bashevis Singer, when asked if he favoured the theory of free will or predestination, replied "We have to believe in free will --- we’ve got no choice."

3. SIN: "He who but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it, hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart." -- CS Lewis

4. ACADEMIA: To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

5. SUCCESS: “To succeed in politics or academics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.” – Oscar Wilde

6. RAT RACE: The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

7. HYPER-PROCRASTINATION: “I have not yet begun to procrastinate.” – Robert Benchley.

8. ENGLISH LANGUAGE: How can a 'slim chance' and a 'fat chance' be the same, while a 'wise man' and a 'wise guy' are opposites?  How can 'overlook' and 'oversee' be opposites, while 'quite a lot' and 'quite a few' are alike?  Writers 'write' but fingers don't 'fing,' grocers don't 'groce' and hammers don't 'ham'!

9. IN THE NOW: I don’t know why some people find it hard to live in the present moment.  Be Here Now . . . and be somewhere else later.  Is that so difficult?

10. PSYCHOLOGY: A neurotic is one who builds castles in the air. A psychotic is one who lives in them. A psychiatrist is one who collects the rent.

11. LAUGHING: “A great many animals laugh,” asserts a scientific study.  Indeed, and a great many scientific researchers give them good cause to!

12. POST-PARTY TALK: “Well, you certainly made a fool of yourself!  I only hope no one realised you were sober.”

13. MARRIED TALK: “I think I’ll have another drink.  It makes you so witty.”

14. AWAKENINGS: “There was an old man in Peru, who dreamed he was eating a shoe.  He awoke in the night, in a terrible fright – and found it was perfectly true!”

15. MODERN PHOBIA: Man to psychiatrist, “Doctor, I don’t have any delusions, or even illusions.  My problem is that I exist day after day in a world of grim reality.”

THURSDAY: Get Healthier

1. STATE OF MIND: State of mind is virtually everything, as it dictates the quality and content of everything you do, think and feel.  So it’s important to cultivate the state of mind you want every day, instead of accepting the one you get by default.  Good sleep and nutrition, exercise and a morning meditation all help maintain a healthy state of mind and more buoyant moods.

2. ME ADDICTED?  Can you remember the last time you happily went 48 hours without caffeine, alcohol or nicotine?  To reduce your habit with minimum stress, keep up the frequency but lower the dosage gradually over time.

3. WEIGHT LOSS, NATURALLY:  Your body ‘stores’ only the carbohydrates you haven’t burned up by bedtime.  The body cannot ‘store’ protein that way.  So don’t have carbohydrates (starch, grains, fruit or alcohol) after lunch.  Have only protein (meat, fish, chicken or tofu) and greens for dinner.  You’ll lose weight slowly and naturally, reaching your optimum weight and staying there for as long as you keep up this regime.  Remember: big breakfast, medium lunch and small dinner, to burn it all up by bedtime.

4. STAYING YOUNG: Exercise, stretching/yoga and meditation are all rejuvenating influences, if done daily.  From exercise, your body feels strong, and there’s plenty of oxygen in your blood.  From stretching or yoga, your inner energy flows uninhibited through your supple joints.  With meditation, you have inner calm for part of each day.  With all that, you will feel great and stay younger than your peers.  Good nutrition plus periodic fasting with bed rest enhances all the above.

5. PAIN FOR GAIN?  The expression ‘no pain, no gain’ only applies to elite athletes.  If you are not going for gold, but simply trying to stay fit and healthy, then pain should never come into it.  Exercise within your fitness limits, or else you are impacting on your organs and your long-term physical condition (like many elite athletes have done to themselves). Always respect pain as a stop sign, and always be kind to your body.

6. FATIGUE: Habitual overeating or oversleeping can cause habitual fatigue, lethargy and even depression, by making your organs sluggish.  In such cases, less is more – have  less eating, less sleeping, less dairy foods, less sugar and fats, and no caffeine or stimulants (which give you a short-term lift but a long-term depletion).

7. SERIOUS HEALING METHOD: Fasting with bed rest for 2 to 5 days channels all your body’s energy into healing, cleansing and rejuvenation.  Bed rest means not stimulating the mind or body at all -- minimal books, and minimal TV.  Eat tiny watermelon snacks to quell hunger pangs and keep your discomfort level down, so you will be happy to repeat the exercise periodically.

8. HEALING YOUR FEELINGS: If you’d like to feel better, simply follow this regime for one week: a) eat a big breakfast, medium lunch with any food you like, then a moderate dinner with no carbohydrates; b) eat no dairy products, sugar, caffeine or stimulants; and c) have no more than one alcohol drink per day, preferably well before bedtime.

9. CHANGE NOW: The effects of an unhealthy lifestyle build up so gradually that we don’t notice them.  In fact we grow to accommodate them, until it’s too late and the conditions are irreversible.  Be aware of this, and improve your living habits today.

10. CONFIDENCE: Upper body strength improves confidence generally, so get a couple of light weights, and lift them while you watch TV.  After 3 weeks of strengthening arms, chest and shoulders, you’ll notice a difference in attitude.

11. HEALING: Your body has built-in healing mechanisms, which are ideally the best to rely on, as opposed to medical intervention or pharmaceuticals.  But your healing mechanisms get blocked by bad nutrition and unhealthy lifestyle habits.  If you turn those habits around in time, you might well say good-bye to expensive medical intervention and drugs, and all their side effects.

12. CAFFEINE: Here’s how it works.  Tea and coffee give you a ‘lift’ because caffeine is a toxin which irritates your nervous system, so your body goes into a mild alarm state to expel it.  This raises your blood pressure and pulse rate – and that’s what the temporary ‘lift’ is.  However, the cost of this lift is a long-term depleting effect on your kidneys and liver, as well as putting more load on your heart.  So get by without it, and eventually you’ll feel and perform just as well or better without it than you did before.  And the craving will disappear.

13. MILK PRODUCTS: Go for one week without any milk products (even in your tea or coffee), and see if your face looks clearer, and if you feel a little lighter and brighter in general.  If so, you know what to do.  Throughout nature, milk is strictly for infants.

14. VITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS: Our soil is depleted of many important elements.  So even if you eat a well-rounded diet of organically grown food, you’ll still be lacking in certain nutrients.  So daily vitamin and mineral supplements are important to long term good health.  Especially important are organic flaxseed oil, and a full-spectrum of amino acids.

15. FATTY FOODS: Even if you can lose weight while eating fats on the Atkins Diet, fat can still harm your health in other ways.  For example, it clouds your blood and makes your metabolism inefficient and incomplete.  It’s important to eat plenty of fibre, which absorbs the excess fat in your bowels and carries it out.  Without that fibre, the fat can be re-absorbed, then stored.

FRIDAY: Become Enlightened 

1. PRACTICE: It’s no use having wisdom unless you practice it.  You can’t get fit just by reading about exercise, and the same is true with mental and spiritual development, which are based on practice more thanreading.  With only a little knowledge but a lot of practical application, you can achieve great things.  However, with a lot of knowledge but only a little practice, you might never get around to achieving anything.

2. KARMA: Helpful intentions behind your thoughts, speech and actions attract helpful consequences.  Harmful intentions attract harmful consequences.  That’s the law of karma, from a Buddhist perspective.  Intention is the most important thing.

3.  BELIEF:  Don’t be persuaded by someone’s passion.  The intensity of a person’s belief is no measure of its veracity.  It’s only a measure of his need to believe.

4.  LIFE: Life is not an audition, a rehearsal or even a guided tour.  It’s a solo journey, and we are creating our route and destination with every single thing we think, say and do.

5. GIVING: Giving with the expectation of a reward or a specific result is not giving, it’s investing.  True giving is spontaneous, is from the heart, feels good and is its own reward.

6. EGO: Ego is a trap that can lead to one’s demise, especially in a spiritual context.  But by working with the ego wisely, it's possible for one to eventually get beyond it’s influence.

7. LETTING GO: Methods and devices we use to help us in life eventually become habitual.  After this, they stop helping and start holding us back.  There is a season for using all things, and an appropriate time to let go of all things – even those that have been of great help in the past.

8. MEANING: The ‘meaning of life’ is really a sense of purpose and values that we either have or don’t have.  Purpose and values are defined by each of us for ourselves, sometimes unconsciously.  If you don’t know what the meaning of your life is yet, it’s time to start defining it for yourself.  Ask yourself, what is your ideal purpose, and what are your highest values?  And how will you act on them?

9. INTEGRITY: If you are nervous about speaking to groups, or just another person, you can ask yourself, ‘Am I completely honest and sincere in what I’m going to say?’  If your answer is ‘yes,’ your nervousness will lessen or disappear.

10. SELF-REVEALING: People’s comments about others reveal much more about themselves than anyone else.  So be mindful of what you say.  Speak only with beneficial intentions, as you are displaying your inner self with your every word and intonation.

11. ETHICS: There is only one fundamental ethical principle: treat others exactly as you would feel fair beingtreated if the roles were reversed.  That’s not always easy to do, but it’s always the ‘right’ thing to do.

12.  SOCIAL ROLE:  To maintain clarity of purpose through life, one must choose to be either a Warrior, fighting what you believe is wrong with society, or a Creator, building what you believe is right.  A spiritual seeker would feel more harmonious on the second path.

13.  SELF-EMPOWERMENT:  There are some problems in life you can’t heal or change.  But you can change and heal how you respond to those problems.  You can learn to replace  your unhealthy reactions with kinder and more helpful ones of your choice.

14. FORGIVENESS: If you put your hand into a lion cub’s cage, and it bites you, you can easily forgive it in your heart.  But genuine forgiveness does not require you to put your hand back into the cage again.   Don’t confuse forgiveness with poor judgment.

15.  NOURISHMENT:  We are emotional beings, so our intellects should serve our hearts and spirits.  Instead of honouring the Science that narrows our minds, and the kind of Logic that inhibits our vision, we should strive for the Attitudes that nourish and uplift our lives.

SATURDAY: Quote A Quote

1. SELF-MASTERY: “He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is mighty.” – Lao Tse

2. REALITY CHECK: "The lion and the lamb shall lie down together, but the lamb won't get much sleep." -- Woody Allen

3. IMMORTALITY: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work ... I want to achieve it through not dying." -- Woody Allen

4. DISCRIMINATING TASTE: "I won't eat anything that has intelligent life, but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician." -- Marty Feldman.

5. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY: "Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -- Eleanor Roosevelt.

6. THE TRUTH: "That's what show business is for -- to prove that it's not what you are that counts, it's what they think you are." -- Andy Warhol

7. WORLD WEARY: "If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?" -- Lily Tomlin.

8. IRRELEVANCE: "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." -- Gloria Steinem

9. HUMAN FOLLY: “When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.” -- Abraham Maslow Tord

10. BIGOT: “A ‘bigot’ is one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.” – Ambrose Bierce.

11. FRIENDSHIP: “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” - Oprah Winfrey

12. BETRAYAL: “If someone betrays you once, it is his fault; if he betrays you twice, it is your fault.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

13. MENTALITIES: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

14. MISTAKES OF OTHERS: “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

15. RISK: “Great love and great achievements involve great risk.” – HH The Dalai Lama