Happy New Year...

Wish all of you who step into this space a happy, safe, joyous, love-filled and self-explorative new year..

proving a point...does it matter...

'(In a controversy)......The instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth and have begun striving for ourselves.'

- The Buddha

kabhi haan kabhi naa...

was watching the shahrukh movie, kabhi haan kabhi na, today..one of my favourites...can resonate with the character...don't all children/youth go through handling judgements, condemnatioins, guilt...and crave to be loved and accepted? just as they are....more often than not, they are not able to accept themselves....love themselves..and herein lies a story of bruised self-esteem...leading to so many links - becoming manipulative to get their ways; telling lies, sulking and being bitter and irritable, angry with everyone and everything...the list goes on...Consequently, we also become insensitive friends, insensitive lovers, insensitive spouses,insensitive parents and so on... We can only share what we have within...if we are full of hurts and resentments and hate, it manifests in our relationship spaces outside...

We also become beggars for affection, craving for it in myriad ways.We want to make ourselves indispensable, often humiliatingly in the lives of people whose affections we seek; we crave for recognition in all we do...Thus , our lives are an incessant struggle to appear more beautiful, more sexy, to cook better, to earn more..the list goes on..we are constantly insecure about losing the people we care about, and strive to make ourselves more attractive/useful to them, so that they continue to need us.

it also manifests in a seeking for constant social attestation of our actions.We want to be ourselves but not at the cost of various social privileges a "conformist" attitude brings with it.Thus, we wear elaborate and burdensome masks, pretending to be what society expects us to be.

It has happened to me....as an older guy, I have learnt through those.....worked on my resentments, my hatreds, my insecurities,my tendency to judge incessantly......so many of them....i am still in process, learning even as I share.

Can i remind my younger friends, that everything is ok..it is ok the way we are, nothing wrong with it....we can always improvise, but we are not condemned species in creation....we are equally special as anyone else..does not matter if we are thin, fat, dark, short or whatever...we have our own space....life is not hurting and humiliating because of what we are or not, it is hurting and humiliating because people(including us) are still learning to love, learning to care....we are also a part of that great learning process...and very critical links of the chain called life....let us discover that sacred space within each of and enrich ourselves as well as others we meet on the way...

a fundamental human need...to be accepted as one is....and then, in that acceptance,one flowers....

humour in everyday life....

i called up a public utility service.The voice told me that I had got through to the wrong number and I was to call xxxx.

I called up the number she gave me. The same voice answered. I verified it was her. She told me that she was doing both the jobs that day!!!!!

to be or not to be...

most of the time , we wear our masks.we are afraid of being ourselves.To be "ourselves" makes us vulnerable; to criticism, to ridicule, to humiliation, to condemnation and so on..

but then , is there any other way to be, if we have to stay vibrantly alive?

integrity is a critical need in self-actualization spaces.we have remain centred there, in a dynamic awareness.

we can only "relate" from there...

judgements....

"Before you criticise someone, you should first walk a mile in their shoes.”

That way, you will be a mile away... and you’ll have their shoes! This ancient advice still holds true. We don’t know what other people are really thinking and feeling. We don’t know what they have been through or what lies ahead for them.

We take a few snapshots of their behaviour at some random moment in time and then judge them for evermore on the strength of this.

Or, perhaps more appropriately, on the weakness of it.

- author unknown

come alive...

Don't ask too much what the world needs. Ask yourself, what makes you come alive and go out and do it. Because what the world needs most is for more people to "come alive".

- inspiration from Howard Thurman

laws of karma...

Whatever you resist you become.

If you resist anger, you are always angry.

If you resist sadness, you are always sad.

If you resist suffering, you are always suffering.

If you resist confusion, you are always confused.
We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.

--- Adyashanti

authenticate life...

The whole world seeks happiness as a "collective".Efforts abound in trying to make it happen.Each one of us has our understanding of the causes and solutions towards it.But our attempts only seem to add to the chaos and confusion.Thus, we crave for peace, but endlessly create wars and conflicts; we yearn for joy but end up being disappointed;all our projected ideals remain just that - projections of our aspirations.The reality remains familiar, yet there is a disconnect.
Can we see it differently?
We seem to be addressing the symptoms rather than the root causes.While components of the system remain as they are, we seek a change in the summation.Rearranging the parts can create a cosmetic illusion, nothing beyond.Thus, we play around with perceptions, strategies etc while the fundamentals remain the same.
And what are the fundamentals?
Man as an individual is ridden with conflicts.He is a 100 different parts himself; conflicts and confusions reign supreme within him; joy and spontaineity are distinctly lacking.Hurts,rejection and pain qualify the core of his being.
Given such a situation, is he capable of contributing to healing processes of the collective, is the moot question?
Insights that occured in my life indicate otherwise.When the micro processes get healed, the macro has to respond.The seeds of change lie in the micro.And a morphogenetic quantum of micro level changes can enable a paradigm shift in the macro.Yes, the responsibility lies with each one of us.To address our conflicts, pain and hurts within...just see our states integrally, without condemnation, judgement or guilt.It is just the way we are.No justifications, no explanations.Helpless....Seeing ourselves as we are unfolds a miracle in creation.It is a "happening" , not a matter of effort.A flood of creative energies flow through us re-aligning our erroneous perceptions.
Awareness is not the means to an end, it is an end by itself.
This is not intellectual masturbation.Try it out for yourself.Authenticate it personally.Do not try to love; it is pathetic; instead become aware of the absence of love; the death of feeling within, the unabashed abuse of people in our lives, cloaked elaborately in declarations of love and caring.But a word of caution; it is not easy to accept ourselves as we are when we see ourselves as manipulators and abusers; insensitive to the core.This is the greatest challenge; not escaping into guilt trips,not condemning ourselves, just seeing things as they are.Then watch the miracle of life unfold, just as it is, pristine pure and unadulterated by conditioning.

perceptions....

i recently met a person who had just been visiting some tribal hamlets.. she was aghast at their clothing and casual lifestyles and wanted to activate some help for them...

sometimes intents are misplaced due to fundamental misconceptions..we tend to judge the world by our standards...never sparing a thought to the fact that we may be destroting fundamental fabrics of existence.

The USA of today was created by people from across the seas who felt that they only knew how to live and set the behavioural benchmarks for the world...today the world is discovering the depth and clarity of native american wisdom...and the prudishness and narrow confines of the people from across the ocean...

it has been the history of the world...

i do believe one has to network and synergize skills but lot of supposed help is top down..thus medicines which are often unwanted are shared with under-developed communities( who can forget the norplant issue in india)....initiatives tend to be resource driven rather than need based...and more often than not do more harm than good..

coming back to tribals, there is so much natural intelligence and spontaineity in their lives; in a world characterised by cosmetic smiles and highly difficult to arise laughter, they are spontaneous in their expressions and uninhibited....

i am not able to remember the name of the character froma somerset maugham classic who goes for a visit into the rustic interiors , far away from the confines of his disinfected social world which moves through definition rather than feeling, and never returns back...his peers and his fiancee feel he is stupid but again that is a matter of perspective....

reality...

Reality, mostly is not what it is, but what we have decided it is.

We first make our conclusions - then find some way to arrive at them!!!!

- Anthony De Mello

centering...

Talking or silent, moving, unmoving, the essence is at ease. The essence is at ease: that is the key word. The essence is at ease: that is the key statement. Do whatsoever you are doing, but at the deepest core remain at ease, cool, calm, centered.

~Osho

life- an experience.....

life is not a problem to be solved ; it is a mystery to be lived , loved and experienced....

-osho

learning to love.....

a recent post on www.intentblog.com threw open a q by Mallika Chopra on whether it is really possible to love a person with whom we differ on very fundamental perspectives of life and living....

i will share something which i observe to be very common place occurance...initially i used to think i was unique in feeling this way....

this concerns our relationships with our parents.....

i do not share many of life's perspectives with my mom....i lost my dad earlier and we are the two of us who share our lives....geographically and otherwise...

in my earlier years, i was constantly judgemental....saw her as a weak person , a loser in many of life's endeavours....our conversations were invariably of an argumentative nature.

i tried loving her from my mindspace...pathetic....i was expected to be nice to her..be a source of support.....which i did...but where was all the spontaineity and feeling.....there was a certain dryness, a dead habit to our interface....

an event i distinctly remember was the death of my dad when i was 14. I have found the mind to be a weird entity, capable of randomly generating thoughts...on the day of father's death, Prince Charles was getting married to Lady Diana and the event was being televised...my mind was actually flitting across the two events...making me feel very guilty...

later , when i read The Story of My experiments with Truth , I could easily relate to Mahatma Gandhi's integral expresses....of how he was overcome by lust when a parent was dying....and lust seemed to control him....lust is a pattern in the mind....

i could not deny my realities....i could not wish them away....i wished to be something which was very far from what i actually was...the way i saw myself or wished to see myself was a "projected ideal" inculcated in me by various aspects of conditioning and i was trying to live upto it....i was trying to love when i intrinsically lacked a capacity....

acceptance was the key to transformative processes within.....

i realized i was "incapable" of love and joy.....from domains from which i was operating....love and joy are not about directed and manipulated thoughts.....thoughts can hardly be controlled; most of the time they control us....as i was to learn subsequently....i cannot plan to love, sometimes thoughts force me into situations where i go after an innate need...like thoughts can create a habitual need for food out of force of sheer habit..contrast this psychological need with real hunger....

a lot of my spiritual explores and seekings addressed this innate dryness...the desert within...until the oasis within manifested in a gentle spring....just a "happening", not a matter of effort....i discovered a fountainhead within which was just there for the asking.....beyond logic, beyond concepts, beyond planning.....non-judgemental, unconditional.....just a part of my intrinsic being.....not person or activity specific.....like a river in flow....flooding all in its' wake....

the mind is not the faculty which is capable of love and joy.....it is a beautiful faculty to design a chair or a software programme.....but one has to explore beyond for accessing domains of consciousness which are intrinsically trusting, intrinsically loving and intrinsically joyous and blissful.....totally accepting and non-transactional.....

a state of being......domains in existential consciouness...

i am still exploring and discovering the potential of these realms....where one just melts away...there is no holding back....as natural as a flower in bloom or a bird in flight....

and yes..i share much better spaces with my mom.....in acceptance, not in perennial judgement....

in deep gratitude to my masters who have facilitated and enabled this evolution.....when i say thank you today, i feel i mean it much more...there is a certain depth to the words as different from the lip-service i was accustomed to in the past....

civilized?

a friend of mine was talking of a pattern in her household. Whenever her mom dropped by to see her or to stay with her, her husband and mother-in-law would just go out under the flimsiest of excuses.Her mom used to feel humiliated and avoid coming to her house.

this is not an issue for "ngo addressals"....but should we not pause to consider the abuses that are inflicted day in and day out....the ironic part is that my friend had married her husband after a torrid romance....and such sensitivity in such "love-filled" space!!!!

and the person in q is educated, widely travelled......still very lacking in fundamental human courtesies....

shocked? i am not....sensitivity and humaneness are not products of the education system...nor of our social systems..they are breakthroughs in consciousness....spiritual processes...and abuses are not inflicted on women alone..all of us are perpetuators and victims alike....

events such as the one mentioned above are not at all rare......

the personal touch....

when we think air india or indian hostesses, what comes to mind more often than not is cribs and complaints, almost habitually....read an interesting first person share on a fellow blogger's site...check it out...http://sigmund007.blogspot.com/ ......humans make all the difference, beyond roles and definitions....

close encounters....

2 recent encounters stand out...

one , a svelte socialite I know, who was going through a heart break...she was feeling abused....her last date was now an "item" at local parties with her best friend..."how could he do that to me?, she was asking me. But, dont people forever do this, day in and day out? carefully masked , maybe, but is it not almost an omnipresence...do we really know to relate?when people say, "i love you" are they really meaning, "i need you" and "i need you to need me"...i wonder....

could not help contrasting this conversation with another I had a few months back....it was with a commercial sex worker who had called me to help her father out....she was on a ngo connect...i knew that this was her step father and he had been pretty abusive to her....when i asked her about her concern for him after all that she had gone through...she just said, "sometime people have compulsions....my mother likes him....he has been able to give her some happiness...in an otherwise deserted life...how does it matter if i help out.....all of us use each other all the time....sometimes individually and sometimes collectively....some subtly and yet others not so subtly....nafrat sirf humhe andhar kha jaati hai, saab, " so saying she signed off..

there is nothing glamourous...in the way she behaved....just a mechanism she had devised for herself in understanding life....

main hoon na....

main khayal hoon kisi aur ka....immortal lines from nida fazli ( i think)....

we exist in other's thoughts as they perceive us....figments of imagination.....as different from the entitities we really are....

every moment - priceless....

moments are but peeks into the infinite, the limitless...the depth with which we savour them makes all the difference....in awareness and integrity....every moment is sacred....

kuch baat hai hum sabhi mein.....

saab, aapke paas do minute hain?

The cab driver halted me as I was getting off. I knew him by face...was a regular at the cab stand just around our locale.

I paused. He wanted to talk....... about some domestic matter that was bothering him.

we connected.....so many faceless people we meet , day in and day out....histories behind each of them..legacies of experiences , of feelings.......

if we only pause to hear.....life speaks in a million languages....

a moment beyond facades and masks..a moment where just the humans in us connect, no roles we play or identities that have got created.....just human to human.....

emptiness...

music needs the hollowness of the flute; letters, the blankness of the paper; light, the void called a window; sacredness, the absence of the self.

- Anthony De Mello

gems from the Dhammapada...

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you..... as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart...Speak or act with a pure mind. And happiness will follow you.....as your shadow, unshakeable.

~Dhammapada (the sayings of the Buddha)

high moral ground...

every now and then i see people resort to "high moral grounds"...closer observation reveals their emergence in a desperate need to mask oneself much more for obvious lack of integrity in everyday nuances...an observance, nay a judgement...as with everything else morality concepts seem to have become convenient props...to enable us face our lack of integrity in life...i have seen spouses lie to each other quite unabashedly, i have been witness to manipulative behaviours....with near and dear ones..and all this being "love"....morality, to me , can never remain isolated from integrity....something that seems conspicuous in its absence when one pauses to observe...

check this link...thought it was very beautiful and connected deep within...

www.enlightenedbeings.com/music/shania-noll.mp3

images...aaina..

was watching the movie Daddy after a longtime...never tire of seeing it....and the song by talat aziz, aaina mujhse meri pahle ki surat maange...one of my all-time favs....

completed the naseoh seminar today....very good participation....and we had a moderator from ndtv.....am hopeful of a few dynamic feedlines evolving...

met an indian stephen hawking....

he just said, if one is able to be mobile and access a "loo"....fundamental infrastructures, what not can be achieved....

though invariably a "panelist" sought for my expertise, i invariably end up only learning more......

just to give u a perspective, mumbai is estimated to have over 10 lakh people with abilities different from ours....while the indian estimate is closer to 100 million.

we have 30 out of 1000 buses which can cater to them....this is a recent development.....there are no public loo facilities....across india about 1 lakh differently abled people are supposed to have some employment....