Help me see things the way You do

"Help me see things the way You do. Help me see things the way You do."The ability to see things the way the great, cosmic, benevolent and presumably loving God does is the plea of human beings going through all kinds of anxiety, from combat to poverty to cancer to a romantic separation, seeking to understand. 

This is from an excellent article on The Thin Red Line - Read here. 

Thoughts

Yesterday, after I had climbed up the wall and come down a few times and done some stomach crunches and lay on the ground panting and staring at the ceiling, I felt so COMPLETE. Sometimes I feel like I really want to escape my life, but at that moment I felt like I could simply keep revelling at the simple beauty of it.

How important is food!! Strangely, it comes as a complete surprise to me, but I have finally figured out that my mind and my body need food to function and if I dont give that to it, it ACTUALLY fogs up and shuts down!

Sometimes I wish the kind benevolent universe would personify and lay next to me; but then i wonder if the subtle (subtler than space) aware loving universe want me to drop the gross and the subtle bodies and identify with It? (you know, air really is in the love.)

It is INSANE the number of times that people I work for/with tell me I am selling myself short; you are capable of more than this - why aren't you doing it? Interestingly, Swami Chinmayananda's talks on the Bhagvad Geeta, called The Art of Man Making, starts with this question about the gulf between proficiency and efficiency; this gulf between the capacity to work vs the actual work that we do. To think that the Bhagavad Geeta was written thousands of years ago, is simply crazy - sounds like my favourite mentor speaking to me!

Sometimes I just add so much to my agenda, I keep falling short - if I die today I will get Yamraj to tell me about Nachiketa. 

Bad haircut does not cause an impure mind

A pure mind, according to the definitions that I have heard, is one that is free of jealousies, anger and so on; it is, to get to the crux of it, free of desires and expectations, because when we desire or expect we feel jealous of those who have what we want, angry when the world prevents us from getting what we want, and greedy or scared when we have what we want. The practical reason to have a pure mind is that it is a happy mind, and we experience most happiness in this state.

Which is not to say that a happy mind is a pure mind. Like Swami Chinmayananda says, it is not that coffee doesn't give us happiness, but it is not permanent. Sometimes the world DOES meet our expectations; but also, sometimes it exposes our expectations and leaves us with an option that either our expectations burn or our minds – if we are intelligent, we let the expectations burn and purify our minds.

Whatever Z might think, he over-estimates the purity of his mind and mine. A few minutes a day I am a loose cannon and I am so confused about my motives and so full of some emotional energy that I need to vent it out. I would like him to know that his is not a victim less crime; but before we hurt anyone else, we hurt ourselves – to make him the criminal, I will have to make myself the victim.

Thin Red Line

Like the best things in life, this one too felt like an accident. Many years ago as a poor broke student, I discovered that the university library stacks Movie DVDs as well as players to view them on. for some unknown reason, i went to watch 'the colour red' and accidentally picked up The Thin Red Line. Not only was I unable to stop watching the movie, I went back a month later to watch it all over again. And since then, if I have any deep thoughts, i always find something in the thin red line that sums it up perfectly...

as my life went from here to this, i am wondering, "Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine?"

but even before that when i knew that something was amiss, i was reminded of these lines from the thin red line

The other side of the coin

Z once said that feeling guilty is part of being a parent; I think it comes with loving people - sometimes we fail to be the best we want to be, the best we are capable of being - sometimes we can't even figure out how we have failed ourselves - but when we love, we strive to live our best possible self*, and hence we grow. In selfishness, we live for our desires and our best ideals are are limited by what we can want, and hence we implode.

It is my grandmother's birthday today, and I think she is brilliant. She retired many years ago and she is not very well these days, she walks slower and hears a bit loud. But she has this wonderful life giving faith in something that keeps her safe from fear, uncontrolable agitation and unkindness. I met her this weekend, and she spoke about a lot of things - about how the world was when she was a young bride, about how she met my grandfather with whom she has spent 60 years and nearly all of her adult life. She spoke about dying - she said it wasn't anything to fear, nor to await as an escape from health problems; that it might be something that may come in 10 days or 10 years. I have heard these words before but I have never heard them in a way that took away that abstract other-ness of death and gave peace, even to me. and somehow, as i think of all this, i feel miserable that i did not do enough for someone who has been such a source of strength for me, but i'll lean into it - i promise i'll lean into it!

*ooh, 'shouldn't have lost my temper' or 'should have been efficient and found time to listen to them' or 'should have been a better example' or 'should have helped them take care of themselves' and so on...

love's illusions

i wonder if there are some privileges of trying to live the most honest life you can - like being able to trust yourself?

so the guy i would call 'the love of my life' emailed me today to tell me that he doesn't love me and actually never has - and my response was (am i really that predictable?) of complete calm, "now that's just BS." unfortunately i replied saying as much and i am killing myself now because, my housemate pointed out to me that, apparently, a) i wasn't respectful and b)denial is the first stage of grief...

(anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are the next stages... in case you are curious) but what if i were right, instead of being denial i was just calm and knew what was going on? is that a possibility or am i on some stupid treadmill? 

and what is this grief thing, anyway, it was on 7th July that we started this thing; and I am certain I was happy on 1st July... so nothing gained, nothing lost - what is this grief thing?  on the other hand if you told me that in my previous life, for some ridiculous reason, i had pulled out finger nails off little babies fingers and this was all karma, i'll believe you! (i might warn this guy, that he might be actually doing that in this life - god help him!)

time here

Is coming to an end... I am going to live somewhere else in only 7 months... and I don't know where!

am i being blind?

Who were you that I lived with, walked with? The brother, the friend? Strife and love, darkness and light--are they the workings of one mind, features of the same face? Oh my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.

grains of sand or not

From a distance, the earth looks blue

And the ocean meets the sky       

From a distance there is harmony …

I was humming this song in my head today, when I realised that the singer and I were drawing completely opposite conclusions from the same phenomenon – I think the song is talking about looking at the bigger picture and I was thinking about the illusions our mind weaves. We are semi-drunk neurotics most of the time, if you ask me, constantly trying to call a thing by its true name and to see it for what it is – constantly trying to see why are we here and while we believe, with good reason I hope, that there is something meaningful and joyous, within our reach in our life ahead – I think that most of us are not good predictors and constantly surprised that the world is not an enid blyton book, but more the way Shakespeare wonders about it, "there are more things between heaven and earth…" There is music in the world that we are all dancing to, unconscious of its sound – and hence we constantly surprised by the way we react to the world and the way the world reacts to us.

I was also thinking about this article from the paper today that said that people have just over a hundred clothes in their wardrobes that they don't use; and apparently we have around 9 recipes that we circulate between at any time! Fascinating considering that most homes I know carry a small library of recipe books as well.

Maybe we must walk thru the world and live in it, to neither stick to things nor carry them – to keeps our palms empty as they take and give. To have no list of things to do before we die, knowing very well that such lists are always going to be too long and too incomplete at the same time – the depth of beauty in the world is unlimited – and to try and hold it in ones grasp is as unnecessary as it is impossible.  So what of it? Are moments of life as scattered as grains of sand in the wind or is there a meaning to it that string them together?  Let's simplify and find out…