To feel emotions is fine, to get emotional isn't

Well, not to make this anymore than what this is meant to be - a post to remind myself of  simple lesson learnt, in case I ever forget it. This is for me.

The nature of the mind is to feel emotion, it will as circumstances arise, feel hurt, feel angry, feel longing and all the rest of it. To feel these emotions is fine. But to be overcome by any emotion, and thus lose all sense of everything else, the past, the future, your goals, your roles - identifying with just that one emtoion, isn't. For example, it is natural to be hurt by people's behaviour but to forget all else they have ever done for you, to lose perspective, is not right.

closer to me than my skin

Not very long ago, I went on a holiday with one of the nicest people I know. While I have my share of short sighted, irritating, inconsiderate, stubborn people in the world; it has been an absolute pleasure to be around some very wise and wonderfully generous people. It is wonderful to look at them and realise that this thing can be done.

We went on to do the Pinnacles Hike in Malaysia, and stayed at Camp 5 (This guy does a good description of it - except that we are better food. I particularly remember a stir-fry made with the freshest, most organic wild bamboo from the wild.) For one reason (it was cold and I wasn't prepared) or another (the animals are unbelievably noisy at night), I was up and about a few hours before dawn.

This is when I experienced the awe inspiring sky that I could ever believe possible. With the background of the incredibly loud animals and insects, the water rushing down the river AND a group of hikers preparing to leave quite active like a colony of ants - I looked at the sky and saw an unbelievably bright night sky simply covered with stars.

I looked at it and thought about all these people who had lived before electricity became so pervasive, and how they saw would have seen the sky - and suddenly the story of the three wise men following the star, and people navigating using the night sky and when they must have been building those amazing structures in Egypt and India and the rest of it gained a bit more meaning, context. I looked at it and thought how I have lived under them all my life, and I have never seen them, and how they will completely disappear once the sun starts to shine - and I thought of all the various very permanent and completely invisible things in my life.

Usually when I see something like this, I feel like I have something of great significance before me if only I had the eyes to see it but this time, for once, I felt like I did understand, that more things make more sense than they did before; that I wasn't trying to hold on to something that was escaping me but that I was recognising something I have always had, always will.

it was too hot to put some ginger in

Come on in
here's some water
let me make you some chai
and get some atta biscuit

look who has dropped by
on their way back?
(been doing that for the
past 30 years! :)

 

nothing quite compares with the consistency with which my family has been having innumerable cups of tea around our oval sunmica dining table.

A revelation :)

Now this is a revelation. I had updated the name of my blog and did not realise that google, stats counter and pretty much everything has gotten updated pretty seamlessly. This is wonderful and not so great, at the same time. There are times I write to people, and there are times I write to myself - they are not entirely different in content but in context.

Take for example, this blog post, which is a tad bit embarrassing now. This post, I am very inclined to explain now, was a trial of "the secret" method... this method, i understand, emphasises on the clarity of goal - unless you know exactly what you want, how can you ever get it? more importantly, i have heard, it works.

Well, news from my end is - it hasn't worked for me, so far. I haven't entirely given up on the idea, and not that I am removing that post - so, not to a huge degree, but I must register this teeny tiny ripple of contradiction that I see. I have grown up believing that happiness is not in things, or situations, or people - happiness is in us. Also, I have heard of the story of the monkey's paw. Also, the first thing on the list was an understanding of the Bhagavad Gita, which explains, as far as I understand it - to enjoy things in life, but to not depend on them for our happiness. To do what we must, and then let nature take over, there is so much we can do, but there is a whole lot more that we can't - this would be depressing, except, our happiness doesn't depend on what nature does or doesn't do. Arjuna's happiness did not depend on whether he won the battle or not; his comfort probably did - but to equate comfort with happiness is stupid - a stupidity that I do often. Arjuna's happiness depended on his freedom, if he depended on things and situations and people - then his happiness was here today and gone tomorrow.

It is like playing monopoly, not that I don't enjoy making houses and getting money in my bank - but when I lose those houses, and the money, I still like the people I am playing with and I have neither gained or not lost when the game wraps up.

Having said that, I have come to the world to play as me, and I think there are a few things that I would very much like to have.