relating..conceptual or otherwise...

This post is triggered by various contemporary shares/discussions in blogspace.

Let us see what happens when 2 people connect.Each comes in with his/her own idealogy/value positionality and operates from there.Values are acquired concepts and do not come with any absoluteness.It is perfectly ok to find comfort in a set of values, but it is important to remember it's contextuality to our conditionings.

Sometimes, a cyclonic attraction overpowers 2 individuals and they share a lustful moment.Nothing wrong in that either as long as one is able to see it as it is.It is an addressal of a personal need and a happening in a moment where 2 individual needs synchronize in a shared space.

Where is love in all this context?

To me , it is a state beyond the realm of any conceptual positionalities as well as the realm of personal need.It is just a state of being that floods all in it's wake. Thus, it is not person or activity specific.It can express itself in myriad ways including the domain of physical and emotional intimacy.

While not degrading lustful desire or positionalities, love is total in it's acceptance of the other,not conditionally dependant on the presence or absence of certain activities, and a relating paradigm from our cores, the domain of the unchangeable as different from the domain of conditioned spaces.One can still relate in a need-based context but with an awareness and acceptance of our need as the driving force, rather than any masked image that comes forth.

when we operate out of this fountainhead, love is a happening, not a planned or a thought-activated enterprise.

commitment...

Commitment, is an oft-discussed topic in contemporary blogspace.

commitment, imo, is a conceptual adherence to a projected ideal, which remains elusive.Fulfilment in connectedness is not a faculty of the mind, an intrinsic attribute of which , on close observance, is discontent.Moot point , to me, when we relate is whether we are relating to the concept of the other or to the other…for relationships to be fulfilling, a spontaneous sense of connectedness is the key in acceptance of oneself and the other.

In this non-judgemental space, where one is centered within, one relates.

Fear is rooted in the concept of the “self” which strives to protect a cultivated image of itself, a mirage.We relate when we just are, a privilege we experience in some spaces; when we strive to become something to suit the other, it becomes and remains an incessant struggle.

In colloquial relating, more often than not, our relationships are sustained by the “other’s need for us” and we struggle to keep up this equation.Our sense of security emerges in the feeling of being “needed”.

And when it comes to relating in intimate spaces, each of us comes in with a projection of what it should be like and strive to live up to it, again a conceptual adherence..we relate to our concept of love, rather than to the other..and few concepts stand up to a reality check…what we are is a far cry from what we see ourselves to be…

respect...

When we share spaces with anyone, irrespective of the activity in q, an underlying sense of mutual respect is imperative for a sense of connectedness.More than listening to the other person, it is important, we listen to ourselves, our inner mind chatter in the course of a conversation/interaction.Being aware at a moment of conversation enables the dawning of respect in the interaction.

A moment of awareness is a moment of integrity and it is only in integrity that one can really relate.To relate thus, away from masked interfaces, imo, is a fundamental human need.It is a naturally healing space in connectedness and in an unconscious recognition of the oneness of all that is, a dissolution of separatedness.

friends......

it was July 1981. The 25th of july saw me losing my father, an event out of the blue which sent me, a lone child into a tizzy. the event hardly had sunk in when I had to start a new life. I had just completed my class 10 and moved into the freer world of a "college".The mind in turmoil, in incessant conflict. Why did it have to happen to me? Why did I lose my father?

a group of friends entered my life then...Manoj, Ganesh, Jaijiv, Suresh....was it destined? probably so...friends with whom I have shared so much...i have other very dear friends too...but this group has a special place in my life...we spent all of 2 years together in college..handling an awkward adolescence...playing cricket, going on treks and hikes....working on projects and journals together.

after our 12th we went our individual ways into professional courses and the like...but we always were in touch...jaijiv's house at Dadar was the common meeting place...after engineering yet another separation was in store..jaijiv, salim and suresh went to the usa.we still were in touch..albeit a bit lesser...Marriages and spouses arrived and the relationship has blossomed...

today, it is 25 years since my father passed on...though it seems like just yesterday...it is also 25 years since we came together...thanks to ganesh who remembers this milestone, all the gang members are in India over the next couple of weeks as we celebrate a bond that has enriched us all...and which is woven into the fabric of our existence...

Thank You , guys...we have never been very emotional in our expressions as friends...but whenever we connect it is like there has been no gaps...

it has been a privilege knowing each of you.....

Relationships....

In the words of Sri Bhagavan, life is relationships and healing our lives of various afflictions is centred on healing the various relationships in our lives with people and things.

Acceptance of the other just as he or she is, is teh key to the setting right of relationships. We constantly seek to change the other , bring others to agree with our povs. This creates misery, stress and conditionality situations in our lives , a situation far removed from joy and love which can otherwise characterise every aspect of our lives. We judge others through coloured glasses we wear and condemn ourselves and the other in the context of positionalities we have consciously or unconsciously adopted.Positionality is an intrinsic attribute of the self in the context of conditionings it has accumalated.Positionality acquires the hue of an ego-centric location in relationships spaces and brusies and harms relationships.

it is ok to have differing viewpoints on various aspects of life, but positionality makes us violent, unaccepting and unforgiving. Needless to add, it is the perfect formula for stressed relationships.

The 9th of June is celebrated as Relationships Day at The Oneness University, a day to become aware of ourselves in the context of our various relationships; with our parents, our spouses, our children, our God and so on. It would also help to become aware of our relationships with aspects such as wealth and abundance, health and body etc.

The outer world is a reflection of the inner and roadblocks we face in life have their roots in our inner worlds. A healing addressal there can manifest miracles in our outer spaces.

the need to feel needed...

Relationships are critical schools for enlightenment.They enable us to understand ourselves and to grow. Our abilities to relate to those in our lives depends on our understanding of ourselves; our needs born in our fears, our insecurities, our vulnerabilities and so on.

We "need" to feel "needed"....and in my opinion, mistake a projection of this need, for love, more often than not...This need finds projection outside through various maskings.

He needs her need of him and she needs his need of her...this would sum up most colloquial relationships....and when this equation gets skewed, heartbreaks occur....A careful balancing of keeping up our "usefulness" in the other's life is what it boils down to when it comes to keeping our relationships intact.

I am not saying it is wrong...it just is..we need to be able to see it for what it is...

We need not condemn ourselves or feel guilty when we compare it with our projected ideals of ourselves.We can grow only in our reality spaces , not in projected ideals tenancy.

our whole life is a pathetic struggle to make ourselves more "desirable" in the eyes of the other...because of a constant "insecurity", the threat of not being needed any longer..a mother feels threatened after the marriage of her son....she feels her "need" in his life has been eroded....we do it at our workplaces, want to be indispensable to the boss.....so that we are not insecure of our future there...we need to be recognized; our importance in the other's life acknowledged.

Towards addressing this insecurity, we strive to be more beautiful, acquire better degrees, earn more monies, cook better...all to make ourselves useful and more valuable in the yes of the other...This struggle, when we are aware of it, is both humiliating and miserable...makes us lose our self-esteem and centring and lead our lives through the expectaions of others as we see it.

It only enhances our vulnerabilities.

to me, love happens only when we are aware of "our needs"......until then,we relate unconsciously in transactional spaces....to grow in love, the consciousness has to expand until finally the self dissolves and only love remains......it is a state of being..a river in flow....and heartbreaks are blessings in disguise for us to understand the true nature and power of love....heart-breaks are also a manifest of creation's infinite love and compassion to enable our growth.love is not insecure....they are mutually incompatible....it does not know fear..., "my need" experiences insecurity, fear....the fear of losing someone or something....the fear of not gaining something...when we are aware of this insecurity which runs our lives, life will acquire a new hue.It is this insecurity and fear which needs healing which needs to be connected to the source for its dissolution...

Love heals us of our vulnerabilities, makes us grow in self-esteem and confidence.

please note, i do not condemn transactional spaces for what they are, but to avoid misery, it is critical to see things as they are....else, we will be "disillusioned""....

To expand our consciousness in love, to me, is the purpose of our lives, while we do keep addressing our needs as they occur....in awareness

friendship-john walker.....

with the falling of leaves ,
the masks of green are stripped off the hillsides;
revealing the uniqueness and diversity of each ridge and valley;
rock and stream , hitherto unseen......
It is in the winter,
when the hills bare their innermost selves ,
we can look at the hills as old friends,
few others can understand....

So it is, with people;
Most of the time we wear our masks.
But during the difficult times, during the winters of our lives;
we shed our facades and reveal all the intricacies of the unique beings we are.

It is in such moments that friendships are formed and people experience each other as few others ever will in such spaces.


to me, friendship is the most beautiful of concepts in relationships.....fundamental to the whole aspect of relating...... unconditional and accepting....

to relate....

to relate is to respond.....
to respond emerges from knowing oneself...
knowing oneself as one is, is enlightenment...
relationships are schools for enlightenment....

- adapted from Anthony De Mello

diwali musings...

diwali morning....my mom keeps the oil ready for the traditional bath....applies it on the crown of my head...she has bought a shirt for me....not exactly suiting my taste..a few years back i would have frowned....today, the giver is more important than the gift....thankfully....

relationships.....

when people relate colloquially, what do they bring to the table...their own legacy of conditionalities acquired from myriad sources...could be education processes, social processes, fundamental childhood decisions, past-life impressions( dunno if that is a reality to you; to me , it is...) etc.

What we are in essence is an emergence from a "pattern" - a kind of blueprint that determines our persona...

our lives today are guided by the mind....and its contents...to me, that is where the root cause of misery lies....the mind is a wonderful faculty, a wonderful tool, for say, creating a software programme or for making a table or for creating countries......so on and so forth...

but it is useless in inner world realms....like joy and love and bliss and so on....not condemning it...i see it as a fundamental incapacity...it just is not equipped ....

The mind cannot be the driver of our lives as it has become today..we should be able to drive the mind....it is essentially a hard disk..storage of memories...can be used...cannot be the processor....

do you remember the famous picture of the Bhagavad Gita, the 5 horses, Krishna and Arjuna...To me, the 5 horses represent the the world of the sense organs, the mind content sensors...when krishna is absent, the horses pull arjuna in different directions, chaotic, full of conflict, miserable....can only result in destruction...it is significant to note krishna's positioning; he comes in as a charioteer, to reign in the horses....

for me, krishna is symbolic of our spiritual cores; the witness within each of us which is different from the mind and its realms....the anchor within....

the mind cannot be controlled....this has been india's single greatest discovery in my opinion...mind , breath and kundalini( psychic energies) are inter-connected....neither mind nor kundalini can be controlled.....india's discovery is that "breath" can be controlled.....the seeds of yoga and pranayama....regulation of breath can regulate the mind....

hence , so many processes revolving around breathing patterns...

we "try" to relate in mind spaces....that can only be contextual, conditional....for the mind with its legacies comes with its own positionalities....which can only be managed in the context of relationships.....

to me, relationships occur from our cores, beyond mind spaces...it just is....not conditional....it is essentially a spiritual space....all -encompassing, all- embracing...to relate is to live...experiencing the oneness...

it is this core which has to guide....and the mind, directed....not the other way round, the mind directing....the mind can address issues such as financial security, opportunities etc....nothing wrong.....it is a sacred faculty.....but it is incapable of love, incapable of joy....there is always a residue....due to its functioning in domains of comparison...

will illustrate it with an eg in one of our scriptures...

a frog ran upto a man and pleaded with him...it wanted to be saved, a snake was pursuing it....the man's code of ethics "demanded" that he save the frog...."code of ethics" , here , represents a conceptual creation for social convenience. in a while, the snake comes upto him and demands that he release the frog as it has not eaten anything for the past 2 weeks.The man is in a dilemna...his "code" again demands that he should not keep the snake hungry....

conflict....

situation 1: he addresses it from his mind; tries to analyse it....ends up paralysed....can't do anything...any decision he takes will leave a residual conflict within....a degree of unsureness..

that is a fundamental attribute of the mind...the sense of fulfilment , completion is not there...always a lingering doubt, an uncertainty...a residue of discontent...

situation 2: he just takes a decision..for the moment..it could be either..there is no demand from within for consistency as the mind domain would demand....he can respond differently at different moments in time for identical situational triggers...

"management" is possible in the mind realms; resolution or dissolution is impossible..when an action is "completed", joy remains....and completion is possible only from the "heart"....

spirituality is a shifting of life guidances to the heart..does not mean the mind is not in the picture...the mind is guided rather than being the source of guidance...the witness consciousness is awakened...the dynamic spiritual dimension , whose natural attributes are joy and love...not a matter of effort as in the mind realms...spirituality is the "absence" of "conflict"....

great creations still happen...but in joy and love; not bereft of it....

the intrinsic nature of "experience" is bliss, love , joy ; irrespective of the content of experience....and to "experience", one has to be liberated of the mind filters....liberation is a freeing of the senses from the clutches of the mind...

and then we relate.....

in processes, i see our evolution in "relating" as the pathways to freedom and liberation...

-inspirations from my master

morality...

fidelity blues ... a posting a few days back evoked a few email responses...just some more perspectives..morality as an enforced adherence parameter is what suffocates..natural emergences are spontaneous and never burdensome...sadly, most institutionalised intimacy falls into the trap of "living upto projected ideals" of how they are meant to be. Conceptual adherence is what becomes burdensome. "Love thy neighbour" sounds beautiful..but in a situation of so much low self esteem and self hate, it becomes tough to actualize it. Rather than pursue a projected ideal and try to reach there, I prefer starting at my reality space..see that it is not there...from that reality, one can grow...

we would like to be so many things; but we are not that...we "try" to "care", we "try" to "love"...

i find that effort pathetic...a struggle...without any results deep within.

i would rather see that i am not able to care, not able to love...an understanding in awareness then enables love to "happen"...within us...a fountainhead that flows through activities....it is not activity dependent, it is not people specific; love is something that just is...an intrinsic part of us..it is like a river, flooding all in its wake... a state of being...

we still may "like" certain people, "like" to share special spaces with them; ...perfectly fine to feel an attraction and desire to share space...love has to manifest in that space..

the state of love manifests when we "relate" from the core of the beings; the domain of the unchangeable....aspects of "liking" can change, mutate...love can live through those...it is an underlying aspect....fundamental to existence...a state of being....

fidelity blues....

fidelity is a morality concept that contributes to many a misery....a friend was recently sharing her insecurities which prompts this post....

some of my perspectives may challenge existing notions.....but i find a clarity of a perception a critical need to address the issue.....and sometimes to reach clarity, we have to strip ourselves of our perceptions nakedly and see them...

relationships in fuctional domains more often than not is transactional and qualified by life-administrative aspects. It is not unconditional space the way it is.

No judgements on that..it is a choice some of us make.

some of us aspire for unconditionality and it requires as much giving as taking in space domains.It is not easy, but then mebbe it is really worth it....

to relate in the absence of possessiveness and other allied attributes has its own unique spiritual flavours..it emerges out of an understanding that it is what relating is all about....else one is transacting...on mutual needs

....it does not entail denial of possessiveness or other attributes....some of us feel suffocated in existing paradigms of relating and explore alternative domains.....

to me , to relate is to be able to accept, to trust unconditionally.....

it is about moments shared in such ambience.....and an ability to respect freedom of expression in other moments as one would chose it to be....conditionality applies to activity or a set of activities and is more administrative in perspective.

to relate , to me, is an ambience of underlying acceptance and love, something i feel most of us tend to confuse with "like".

"insecurity" is within us......and needs to be addressed...."fidelity issues" can be administratively "managed" , but somewhere basic questions on relating have to be addressed for "growth in love".

most of transactional relates have their emergence in our fundamental fears, vulnerabilities and insecurities.We find our security in the "feeling" of being "needed" by the other.our lives sometimes tragically , is a struggle to increase the other's dependency on us to sustain our "need" for feeling "needed".

No problems as long as we are able to see it for what it is. else, some of the emergences in such spaces can be downright disappointing and contrary to desirables as we perceive them.

No accident that the phrase "falling" in love has been coined somewhere in human consciousness rather than "rising" ( no pun intended) in love.Can we through our relationships expand our whole canvas of love?

sexuality

I have received an email enquiring about the relation between sex and spirituality.

Personally, I see spirituality being in an attitude, not in the presence or absence of any pre-defined activity. Love making can be an aesthetic and creative artform in human interface, sensitive and sensual.In such a context , it can be a liberating and enriching experience, unconditional in its perspective. In a state of heightened awareness, all activity is liberating.

However, lust , a desire to possess and where the mind gets fixated can be crippling and inhibitive.It is infact miserable. Lust also forms a part of a vicious cycle with guilt and boredom - intergenerating each other and draining wo/man of energy.

and have we not heard of humiliating rape within the institution of marriage. To me , morality as it exists today is a dead social dynamic, a matter of habit rather than a emergence from a dynamic spirituality.

To me, any act be heightened through awareness , be it sensual erotica, fantasy paradigms , chat interfaces etc...the activity , by itself is not good or bad. It is an attitude one brings into it that matters.Sensitivity in interpersonal interfaces is the key.The rest are a matter of mutual choice.Space shares are contextual to the choices of the participants. Sacredness is a parameter of awareness they bring in.

Life can be an expression in sensitive aesthetics and creativity or a dead, boring duty bound enterprise in any activity one choses to pursue. The key factor is the discovery of joy and love which enable an aesthetic and creative perception to life and flood everyone and everything in its' wake.

crowding people....

sometimes in our anxiety, we crowd people...all of us need our space and we resent intrusions...while knowing this, we still overindulge our concerns and jeopardise our relationships with those whom we care about.Sad, but true. but can we see through the intrusion and perceive genuinity of concern.I always regret it when i snap at my mom if she is over-indulgent.We put up with so many things in our lives but sacrifice our courtesies with those whom we genuinely care about.It is easy to be nice to strangers but extremely difficult with those around us.Paradoxical?