different spaces, different strategies....

We face issues both in our inner domains and external domains. External functional domains are generally stuff like financial , health, career , relationship and other aspirations.Inner world paradigms are stuff like hatred, anger, jealousy and other challenges, we are uncomfortable with.

To actualize things in our functional worlds, amongst other sadhanas, we need to constantly keep visualizing the way we want to be.It helps in the actual manifest when accompanied by right effort and grace.

In the inner world , however the approach needs to be totally different. Most of us get entrapped in a "psychological entrapment process" where we struggle and strive to reach our projected ideals.These projected ideals are the product of our various conditionings from religious, cultural, social and so many other sources. Thus, we try to " love" , try to be "angerless" , try to be "fearless" etc......There is an incessant struggle between what we are and what we would like to be.And the situation is really "Never the twain shall meet".

it is really pathetic - people associate "love" with certain activities and gestures; these also gain acceptance in the collective consciousness or people make child-rearing a rule book exercise. We try to behave the way that is expected according to certain norms that govern our lives and follow it to the minutest. We manage to create septic situations, but they are accompanied by an intrinsic dryness, a lack of fulfilment.They are robotic in their expression, even the reactions are mechanized.

We cannot "try" to love. It is not a set of exercises or rules or activities.It cannot be simulated.

We have to see and become aware of the dryness within. And we have to watch it non-judgementally. It just IS. It is our reality. It is not our fault , it is like , we are "incapable". To us, love is merely a concept, a projected ideal of how we should be. It is an idea of the way we see ourselves.

Far removed from our reality.

So what do we do?

We have set ideas of what is right and what is wrong created by our various ideas and accumulations. And against these conceptual benchmarks, we evaluate ourselves, we judge ourselves. Rather than accept our realities as they are, we reject them; we cannot believe that we can be otherwise, for that is not the way to be. We are cultured , morally advanced people. We cannot have greed, lust, envy, hatred etc.....only "bad" people have such qualities.

And we pretend that we are the real time reflections of the virtual images we create about ourselves.

We live pretending to be the persons we would like to be , far removed from what we actually are.

And the consequences are disastrous - plastic smiles, meaningless words , superficial and cosmetic relationships...no depth to anything in life. We fool others and ourselves.

A residual lack of fulfilment qualifies every aspect of our lives.

The solution lies in being aware of ourselves and accepting ourselves the way we are - non-judgementally.

We are not the creator of our thoughts. Thoughts flow through us, we are not the source.Our sense of identification with them is unjustified. We tune in to certain thoughts much in the same way as an fm radio tunes in to certain stations.

Whether we "react" or "respond" to them makes all the difference in our lives.

Normally, we react and try to behave contra to the way we are and in a way we would like to be.This is a reactionary mind exercise with little or no impacts on the real quality of our lives.

When we are aware of ourselves and accept ourselves whichever way we are, we respond with spontaneity, rather from comparison and conditioning.

And life acquires a new hue.

When we are able to see, we are not operating from love, what happens in the moment of awareness is love. It is a state of being, not activity or person dependant.

Similarly , with the entire canvas of our feelings and emotions.....

Life is a journey from truth to truth...it is created on the foundations of integrity....

- inspirations from Sri Bhagavan