Episode 116

Episode 116

You have a rare gift for tapping into your world’s timeless wisdom & making it timely by infusing your every day moments with your mom, son and useless husband with meaning and grace. You have already shared glimmers of that wisdom with me many times. You has made a fascinating journey, from classroom to college and unfascinating journey from love to failure marriage and again fascinating from motherhood and now to entrepreneurship. You have brought your experience, religious teachings and love for conscious, purposeful living to your most beloved partner. Before you met me you have started thinking like a monk: When you were thinking like a monk you have understood: 

 How to find your purpose?

How to stop overthinking?

How to overcome negativity? Why comparison kills love? How to overcome fear? How to use fear? Why you couldn’t find happiness by looking for it? How to learn from everyone you meet, including me? Why you are not your thoughts? Why kindness is crucial to your success. Making wisdom relevant and accessible after meeting me is your superpower now. You are profound, poignant and practical. I believe it will help your mom, son and other people creat new habits, practices, and wisdom that will guide them to the lives they truly desire. Nowadays you have shown me step by step how to build your power, shifting your focus from self- image to self- esteem. You will become the architect of your own life. You know so many religious discourses and now you should be on a mission to share the timeless wisdom of India in an accessible, relevant and practical way to hundreds of children. Ask yourself: ‘what I am afraid of losing?’ Start with the externals: Is it your car, your house, your looks? Write down every thing you think of. Now think about the internals: your reputation, your status, your sense of belonging? Write those down too. These combined lists are  likely to be the greatest source of pain in your life– your fear of having these things taken away. Now start thinking about changing your mental relationship with these things so that you are less attached to them. Remember – you can still fully love and enjoy your partner, your son, your mom, your home, your money, from space of non-attachment. It’s about understanding, accepting that all things are temporary and that we can’t truly own or control anything, so that we can fully appreciate these things and they can enhance our life rather than be a source of gripping and fear. What better way to accept that your son eventually, go off to live his own life in a hostel and call you once a day, if you’re lucky? This is lifelong practice, but as you become more and more accepting of the fact that we don’t truly own or control anything, you’ll find yourself actually enjoying and valuing your mom, your son, your useless husband, your partner, people, things and experiences more, and being more thoughtful about which ones you choose to include in your life. The cause of fear: Attachment, 

The cause of fear: Detachment.

Though we are developing intimacy with our fear, we want to see it as its own entity, separate from us. When we talk about our emotions, we usually say ‘we are that emotion’. I am angry. I am sad. I am afraid. Talking to our fear separates it from us and helps us understand that the fear is not us, it is just something we are experiencing. When you meet someone who gives of a negative vibe like your treacherous husband, you feel it, but you don’t think that vibe is you. It is the same with our emotions – they are something we are feeling, but they are not us. Try shifting from I am angry to I feel angry. I feel sad, I feel afraid. A simple change, but a profound one because it puts some of emotions in the rightful place. Having this perspective comes down our initial reactions and gives us the space to examine our fear and the situation around it with judgement. When we track our fears back to the source, most of us find that they are closely related to attachment – our need to own and control things. We hold on to ideas we have about ourselves, to the material possessions and standard of living that we think define us, to the relationships we want to be one thing even if they are clearly another. Clinging to temporary things given gives them power over us, and they become sources of pain and fear. But when we accept the temporary nature of every thing in our lives, we can feel gratitude for the good fortune of getting to borrow them for a time. Even the most permanent of possessions belonging to the most wealthy and powerful, don’t actually belong to them. This is just as true for the rest of us. And for many – indeed, most of us, that impermanence causes great fear. But, as I learned, we can shift our fear to a soaring sense of freedom.

[सुबह 11:08 बजे, 28/5/2023] J P Singh: My memories.

Birds on a Stormy sky.

A monstrous cloud was approaching from the far western side to engulf the azure sky. On its footsteps, came a strong & gusty wind in a whistling sound. Storms are pretty enjoyable at the end of such scorching days (at Nagpur as the scorching temperature is generally 43 degree to 46degree centigrade), since they bring down the temperature by a few notches while inviting often a welcome shower. However, they’re also infamous to carry dust, powdering our rooms and corridors. I hurried fast to shut the doors & window so that no unwanted filth can enter the rooms. In the backdrop of the cloudy sky, I noticed a flock of herons flying towards the north braving the wild breeze. The sight was so strikingly scenic that I forgot my intention and stood standstill observing their flight. There is a distinct speciality in the flying pattern. At the front, there is single bird; behind it on either side, one bird each, third row contains four and next row eight, etc. The whole formation looks like the tip of an arrow of which vertex is occupied by the leader. Somewhere I read that this particular arrangement gives a scientific advantage to the winged creature. On an earlier occasion I observed that such each such block generally contains an odd number of birds and the tip is never occupied permanently by any particular bird. After some time, the leader goes behind & another bird comes forward to take its position. Commotion created in the air by the wings of the leading bird helps the bird in the second row to fly with relative ease. The air cut by the birds in second row is fruitfully utilised by those in the third row and so on. In the process, all the birds can fly hours together without getting tired. This arrangement of birds is also the most prominent example of aerodynamics. During war fare fighter jets, fly exactly in similar fashion to pounce on the enemy bases. With rapt attention, I continued to watch the flock flying. It is truly splendour in how disciplined and organised a manner these birds fly! The interval for changing the relative positions is perhaps fixed, as in front of my wide eyes the leader was changed twice after almost equal time gap. The strong wind disarrayed the pattern a few times, but the herons came back to form the arrow head again. This is not possible unless there is a marvellous understanding among all the team members. Suddenly, a queer thought came to my mind. Where do the birds come from and where do they go every day? This is not the season when migratory birds would come from cold terrain to warmer places. Moreover, such flocks are seen almost daily in the morning and evening sky flying towards the north. As such, two things appeared to be cleared in my mind,

1: The birds might have their nest in the north, 

2: The place may not be far off from the city as they come back the next morning and evening again. When the birds went out out of sight, I slowly closed the window. The storm was still continuing. I could see torn papers, plastic bags and dry leaves flying haphazardly in air. While puffing my face and hair with a layer of dust, the unseasonal storm had presented me a wonderful visual.