The Secret to Real Confidence

 A lot of life and life energy gets wasted in resisting the present. However, only the present is true. This moment is never going to come again. When we are children, we want to become adults as soon as possible and when we are adults, we want to become young or youthful again. Grace is all about acceptance of the present and honouring your present life conditions. 

I have wasted a lot of my life resisting my father. Even though I highly respected him and did what he wanted me to do, I did it with a lot of resistance and hence suffered myself and built resentment. Eckhart Tolle says you must either accept the present, change it, or escape it. If you help someone without wanting to, better not. This does not mean we only have to do things we like. It means, that we need to temper down our likes and dislikes. We need to arrive at a place of more acceptance and less judgment or else do something about it. Living with resistance not only affects, our mindset, thoughts and feelings but it affects our relationships, health and life circumstances. 

Only when we accept something the way it is right now, can we live with it or change it gracefully. 

Also, this resistance to what is creates a fission within ourselves. It makes us inauthentic and deprives us of integrity. This is because, rather than taking our circumstances as a part of ourselves, we reject them and focus on what others have or what we want instead. We cannot feel both happy and sad at the same time. So we cannot focus both positively and negatively at the same time. So, if we want something that others have, we can focus on that thing positively and also focus positively on the similar thing that we have or the way(s) in which that thing manifests in our lives. This way, we are focussing positively and are hence attracting it into our lives. 

However, if we focus on our own life situation in a negative way, it is not possible to focus on the life that we want positively. We feel negative emotions to see the gap between what we have and what we want or where we are and where we want to be. Then, we feel emotions like grief, hurt, jealousy, shame, guilt, etc. These are forms of pain. Eckhart Tolle talks about what he calls as 'pain body'. This is the pain that we have been carrying around due to the wounds that we have not healed. This is why different people feel emotional pain because of different circumstances. These circumstances vary in both intensity and type. 

When there is pain, we can remind ourselves about what we need to do in the situation by remembering the following acronym:-

P-Pay 

A- Attention

I- Integrate 

N- Now. 

This way, we can completely change the meaning of pain and be thankful for it having come up so that we become aware of our pain body and heal more. As Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev has said, many yogis have actually prayed for difficult circumstances to spiritually grow faster. 

As we know, our experience of the world is not actually how the world is. This is because the way each one perceives and experiences the world is different. For example, you must have noticed that after a spiritual practice, the world seems better, and everything you see is fresher and clearer. Whereas, if you are grieving, the thoughts that come to your mind are all negative. So, whatever happens to us, is not happening to us as a fact. Actually, what is happening to us is the same as what we are open to receiving. This is why they say like attracts like. Also, what we are open to receiving depends on the level of our vibration. Thus, the world is not literally a mirror to us, but our perception of the world is and that is all that we could, can and would be able to know of the world. People say that travelling the world is necessary as we know of only one life. However, this is a horizontal way of doing things. One may not travel the world but the depth of one's experience can be as vast as his awareness. So, wouldn't it be nice to travel the world while also increasing our receptivity? 

What I am saying may not be easily understandable for everyone. To put it simply, do not cry over split milk, make hay while the sun shines, if don't get what you want, like what you get and if life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

All pain is because of resistance and fragmentation. Acceptance and integration go hand in hand. The moment we accept our life circumstances the way they are, we love the parts that are to our liking or we are motivated to move forward to change the parts that aren't. Both these ways take us towards meeting our own needs and becoming more fulfilled individuals. This also raises one's confidence as we develop self-acceptance, peace and drive for action. In the process, especially while making decisions, we further integrate our parts by bringing all conflicting parts of ourselves on the same page and evaluating the priority of our various values. This way, we get to know ourselves and are more self-assured. 

You are The Purpose

Often it is said that a human needs a purpose in life.  However, what should those who are still figuring out their purpose do? What would motivate them to live a good quality life? 

Some say, the answer is self love.  Okay, but loving yourself is a weird and counterintuitive concept for many.  How can one love oneself, love is an emotion and also a verb. Love, in essence means to take another as a part of yourself. How can you take yourself as a part of yourself? This is why, the concept of self love is a bit difficult to comprehend. 

There is one way to explain it. There are two ways to go about it. 

First way: 

You are fragmented and hence you have many parts inside yourself which have different needs and thus pull you in various directions. Some are stronger than others. However, if you deeply accept and embrace all the parts within yourself and each of your parts relates to another in a harmonious way, the needs of all of them become important and you fulfill them in the best way possible such that it is advantageous to all your parts or the whole of you.  In this way, you practice self love and truly honour the value of integrity. 

Second way: 

This way is more external than internal. You don't need a purpose, you just need to know your value. This very moment of your existence has an impact on the world. Even your thoughts have an impact on the world. Thoughts emit a vibration  just like sound waves. The world was first created by a sound (Aum). God said, "let there be light". In Hindi it is said, "Sankalp se srishti". 

Also, at this moment you exist to expand the universe. You are a culmination of a long line of humans and you might lead to further expansion. The way you evolve has an impact on the future generations. 

I had read somewhere that the children of older and more educated women are more intelligent because of the higher education of the mother.

Also, although we cannot see properly from our current limited perspectives, we all are more interconnected and interdependent than we. Who knows, if you help a person today and he greatly benefits from it and after 60 years you see his grand daughter marrying your grandson. So, limiting love towards your own family or community is absolutely meaningless. Being all inclusive is the only rational way to be.  

So, irrespective of whether we value our lives or not, or we have a purpose or not, our lives don't stop being significant. Investing in yourself now, means that you are preparing yourself for when the opportunity arises and for when you are able and available to do what is needed to be done. 

Out of honour, pride and  gratitude to our ancestors and hope, responsibility and blessings to our future lineage, the natural outcome is to improve the quality of your body, mind, intelligence and develop yourself spiritually. 

As David Goggins says, "You are the purpose". 

Unlearning What Brings You Down

Once upon a time, I was quite triggered by a guy I liked who wouldn't reply to all of my messages. He would reply in single words or reply quickly when we were planning to meet.  In person, he had been quite sweet and caring but his not replying to all my texts made me feel quite hurt, angry and confused. He didn't have a plausible explanation nor did he apologize. So I lost interest but it got me thinking about why was his behavior on texts affecting me so much.  I had already come a long way since my childhood in recognizing my self-worth and what I deserve, and I have had very therapeutic experiences in which I was accepted completely for who I was.  So yes, despite all the inner work and correctional experiences, why was I being at the mercy of a boy? 

I was nudged into this direction by a podcast episode by Hailey Hoffman Smith titled 'How to work with your triggers and move to your highest timeline'. So, as she recommended, I felt the pain and discomfort completely and reminded myself that this trigger was actually calling my attention to a wound that I'd been carrying for a long time. I was happy and thankful for this pain and hurt to have come up because now, I can consciously give it attention. So, I did that during my meditation session but still couldn't understand why I was so hurt. However, sleep is an amazing thing.  👏  Just after a nap, it dawned upon me that we as children are quite sensitive and soak in everything.

The root of this pain came from me seeing myself in the role of Kajol in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. As a child I did that because I used to dress like her then but boy oh boy, it was an extremely unhealthy stereotype that I had internalized. First of all, I made looks very important in my mind but at the same time knew that you can not look very fashionable or glamorous but still be a good person. However, if a guy doesn't like you, it is mostly due to your looks. But this messaging was not quite strong. What was of primary importance and the root cause of my pain was seeing Kajol being devastated and shattered to know that the person she loved so dearly was in love with someone else.  This shows non-acceptance of the reality of people's wishes and extremely low self-worth that makes you feel bad about yourself just because a guy does not like you the way you like him. She did not see herself to be worthy enough to think that she had better things to do in life than whine over someone who didn't love her romantically. She did not have an Eckhart appreciation for life and the enormous possibilities that this amazing, juicy, resourceful and responsive world provides! She did not value her own life which is surely magnificent and amazing but temporary. The problem is that we create hopes and expectations of the future as we dream about it and we reject the present. In the 'Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle, he has put it quite sensibly.  He states that to be in the now or to be free, you need to forgive not just people, including yourself but also the past, present and future; and that there is no difference between forgiveness and acceptance. Both of them mean that there is no resistance to your experience of reality. This way, every moment is seen with new eyes. 

It is relevant here to understand that we keep making so many decisions and live our lives, without really questioning if the value-judgements that we live by are ours or are inherited from our ancestors or our society. Basically, it is called conditioning or socialization. We would accept that we are quite delusional if we actually realize the multitude of ways in which society has messed up our minds.  The 'civilizations' all around the have socialized us in every aspect of our lifestyle so much so that it has literally imprisoned us. I am using a very strong word here but if we actually trace back our thoughts or contemplate why we do the things that we do, we would notice that civilization has made life unnecessarily complex and the norms, expectations and values that we have internalized are often not healthful for us. Many of them are not nurturing or nourishing in any way whatsoever. The entire fashion industry is built around shame. Feeling less worthy and judging others goes hand in hand and it is not one person's fault. It is just the effect of growing up in a society that has a long but sure way to go spiritually.  

Last but not least, that realisation that I had internalized the need to pity myself, get hurt and feel disappointed because a guy didn't treat me the way I expected, was an aha moment! I am forever cured of this problem and it is in fact quite laughable to even think all this from a soul level.  That's because the present can't change, I don't want anyone who doesn't want me anyway and I know for a fact through experience that when I'm feeling bad, I am feeling that way because I am not aware of the truth. When you're aligned with the truth, you can't be sad.

So, now if anyone ignores you, to bother is none of your business. Live and let live but first, live! The best thing to do is to be grateful to have had the experience and thank the person for it.

The Value and Need for Human Rights

My favourite subjects have been Value Education and Philosophy. While studying Political Science, I got the opportunity to study Political Philosophy. I was quite impressed and inspired by the value given by the constitutions of all the nations to individual and community rights. Coming together with people is essential for securing the rights of a group. Only because of the Constitution in particular and the laws, in general, do we have stability and a foundation for a secure society where there is always hope, even if the situation hits rock bottom. 

I want to see a society where there is equity and people are happy and they enjoy good health. Human resource is a magnificent resource and the return on investment is too valuable to quantify. Hence, I have always been concerned about what can be done to provide people with a good life. 

People who belong to marginalised groups face many difficulties only because of their social situation. For example, people who have been displaced by large projects like the Sardar Sarovar project. Among these, those who are women, dalits, adivasis, gender and sexual minorities and persons with disabilities, have to undergo double the trouble.

These communities face structural violence that is propagated by our tradition, social miscreants and the lack of empathy for them in general.

These groups of people share two things in common:-

1. The world is not made for them just like scissors are not made for lefties.

2. They are perceived to have lesser worth and thus less able.

Thus, they do not have equal access to opportunities from the get-go and are thus at an unfair disadvantage because of the social location of their birth. 

I am of the firm opinion that if people feel included, through a sense of belongingness and ownership in the polity, they will all be happier, healthier and, more productive and self-actualized. 

Why Are the Most Rational Ways to Do Things Called the 'Alternative'?

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/dear-narayana-murthy-heres-why-you-need-to-read-karl-marx-thoreau-and-john-ruskin-9009732/ 

This is such a beautiful read. it is a respite since the world has been becoming predominantly masculine. Living life fully in the present is an art that needs to be relearnt. There is great scope for making improvements in the work culture in many organizations. As Avjit Pathak sir said, there are some mad people, so there is hope. One pertinent question that comes to mind is, why does the norm always have to include practices that are short sighted, unsustainable and unhealthful? Why were enlightened people like Ramakrishna Paramhansa were labelled as mad by the society? Why non-intrusive and healfthful treatments labelled 'alternative' therapies or why renewable sources of energy have to be called 'alternative' sources of energy? It is understandable that man was not always wise, buy how long will he take to rationalise his activities? Now that, wisdom has dawned upon him, how long will the sustainable and healthful practices become the norm so that the feminine and masculine balance each other out. We always knew that ecology is indirectly economy, what is within is without and personal is political.