The Anesthesia of Old Age: Loving Kindness

 

Victor Hugo: “When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.”

With a slight change in perspective, a journey down the slope, once you have reached the pinnacle after coming up the slope from the other side, can be equally fun-filled and loveable. It has its slow-paced rewards. You are looking into the valley on the way down, just like you looked at the summit while climbing up. Then it was excitement. Now it’s the ripe wisdom. Then it was laughter. Now it’s smile.

Victor Hugo: “Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.”

Feel free to have your pass to the blunders of youth. But if you avoid your manhood from being a mere struggle by honing the art of joy, your old age won't be a regret. That much is guaranteed.

Francis Bacon: “I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.”

In fact, old age may very well turn out to be the crowning glory of life. So play the last act gloriously. With honor and grace, you get into the folds of immortality. You can take your love fruit to ripe to the core. It then drops of its own accord. Painless. Uneventfully. Thus seeped in the naturality of things. Like a dry autumn leave swirling to the breeze and tumbling with childish hilarity. But for that ripening has to go to the core. It gives you anesthesia against pain and regrets. And there is no better anesthesia for old age than loving kindness.

I can recall such vintage peace ripened in those dull old eyes on the wrinkled face. His image strikes me. He is steeped in the Regalia of Old Age. Well that sums it up. Each stage of life has its own type of freeways to joy and happiness. So all those caught in the middle-age doldrums, smile please. The moment you look up to old age with a cool anticipation, your younger version at the moment gets a huge loving lift. You shed the skin of insecurities, fears and tensions. So let me narrate the real regalia of ripe age.

He, the regal old man, embracing his age with fragile but enthusiastic grip, lives happily as the tail-end of a great life lived. He has weathered the tempests of youth: the force of beginning, starting and acceleration! And now the path of letting it go; losing the pace slowly, gracefully and receptively. The deceleration.  Slowing down with effortless muse. To stop finally. It gives him as much excitement as the force of starting. And then the final rest.

Now, during the slowing down phase, his time has become slow, the world is a small puddle around his feet. He lives like in a dream. A slow-paced one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like months and months like years. In slowing down gracefully and effortlessly, he lives equal to a dozen lives lived in the beginning mode.

He enjoyed the choices that fate sieved for him. Just grabbed his share. Now he picks up and plays among the coarse, discarded chaff that remains unwanted above as the fine particles, much in demand, trickle below. But it’s great fun, he tells with mischievous gusto:

“In youth, we just think that life means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. But life can be equally enjoyable among the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains, specks and chaff. Now I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was once waylaid by the youth’s blast. It’s now the precious wealth of my old age. Mellows down the rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I enjoy it alone, without that competitive drone.”

The old reveller, away from the fire, cosily lying at the margin, where the faintest traces of warmth touch his old bones before moving into the cold darkness.

The majestic slow down, as important and enjoyable as the headlong thrust of the beginning, the youth. The source, the beginning, and the slowdown, and the end. A cycle. Enjoy it!

With such acceptance, you embrace your own self primarily. Your love for your own self turns a classy vintage wine. Take sips and see the slow-paced, eternal majesty sprawled around. The love booze spreads the self to include everything around, and you are willing, and welcoming even, to get merged into everything.

Fears melt. Pain loses its meaning. The shaky graph stabilizes to turn a single, straight line of harmony and peace. And you say bye to everything with love. The soul with the last panoramic zoom-shot of love takes a huge flight to go leaps and bounds into the cosmos. Well, this life, defined by this body, is nothing but a launch pad for your loving self’s meteoric rise. So let it be that way.

Add to the Love Pool in you by Loving your Journey

 

Arthur Ashe: “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”

There is a real journey beyond the mirage. We simply need to have the eyes for it. The mirage leaves you struggling. Its blinding sands chuck out the rays emanating from your real compassionate self. As a struggler you cling to your fears, limited gets the vision and you constrict. The real journey, on the other hand, lends you a simple task, leaving you with enough scope to retain your loving rays as you smile and move on, appreciating the efforts of fellow travelers.

Matsuo Basho: “Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

So buddies keep your eyes on the journey itself instead of the destination. Real happiness and joy lie in doing rather than completing the task. In the latter’s stronghold, we miss the fun, looking as we are all the time at the finish line.

As Raheem DeVaughn says, we are on a journey to mastering our inner peace.

You are not here to discover new miracles for the world. You are here to recover your own self, your own truth, your own loving nature. This mainly is the basic journey. Try to stay perpetually in this journey; never mind the destination. Let your joy and happiness be your journey itself, instead of some far away goalpost. You can simply be the map-maker of a short-sweet fable. Chart your waters.

The journey is priceless in that you row your boat with your skills, talents and abilities. It is empowering. Your fears change into definite steps to freedom. And freedom cannot help but make you an embodiment of loving kindness.

Life isn’t just sailing in calm, composed waters. Mostly, the waters are stormy. That is the law of nature. It simply cannot leave things static. Things will turn static only at the moment of the cosmic crunch, the opposite of the Big Bang when the universe will implode to start exploding again in the next spell of activity. So till then enjoy the activity.

Overall, our character is defined by the manner we captain our little boats to enter the peaceful waters, the doldrums, for a short period of time. Sailing in calm waters is not the reality though. The storm lurking over the horizon defines the reality about life. Keep an eye on it as you are cooling your heels after the last battle.

Sadness may strike you while you drop your knapsack, like a battle weary soldier easing her of the metal armor and weapons, and look at the dreamy destination you have toiled to reach, which unfortunately doesn't look the way you expected it. Don't forget this destination, which you find short of expectations, at least gave you a journey and made you richer by adding positives to the man and woman in you. Irrespective of the destinations, love your journey, for there are no destinations, only journeys.

Destinations are the shifting mirages. Reach one, and its latest variant teases you from a distance again, pulling you into an endless pursuit. With biggest uncertainty about its ending, life is naturally supposed to be a journey and its carrier simply a journey-woman. Had it been meant for destinations, the timing of its ending, death, won’t have been the most uncertain thing for each and every being alive out there. There never was a happy person who didn’t enjoy the journey to have his bumper reward of happiness in one lot after reaching the so called ‘destination’.

Braving the stormy patch and keeping an eye on the next one is the formula to become a successful caption of your life. So simply be a journeyman or journeywoman. Quite ironically, the destination is just being there on the path, simply journeying.

Look into the past and try to remember all those who died and try to recall how many reached the so called destination. The only fixed destination is death, which is the most uncertain event (in term of its time of occurrence) for all of us.

There is no such thing as ‘life’, the hard-fixed noun. All we have is a sweet-sour poultice ‘living’, the verb, the activity, the process, the journey.

So do your deeds, make your run, have your shots at your so called goals, but never forget that the process of doing itself is your reward. Beyond that any idea of rewards and destinations is just like mirage in the deserts. And thousand miles after mirages don’t give you as much as a few steps to the nearest stunted tree and a tiny water puddle may give.

Practice to be a Happy-go-Lucky Person

 

Tom T. Hall: “I'm a very comfortable and happy-go-lucky old man. I never wanted to be great, because I'd just get worried.”

A certain level of smiling level-headedness makes you a relaxed, anxiety-free and fun-loving guy. Well, for that you have to contrive your happy-go-lucky image in your own ways. Please don't get carried away by people's birth-time entitlements. Happy-go-lucky attitudes are raised up instead of the inheritance, entitlements and attitudes we are born with.

Don't go by the meaning in letter as somebody cheerfully unconcerned about future. The mere fact of unconcerned cheerfulness makes you easy-going. This is not to make you overtly carefree and casual, nor is it to instill devil-may-care attitude. It's a benevolent light-heartedness. We only know of one type of concernedness, and that is chronic. But there is an untroubled mild concernedness that allows you a smile on your face instead of a painful frown as you slog it out in life.

Enjoy your healthy nonchalance. It's basically about the right proportions. They say, even nectar in larger amount is more dangerous than poison. And poison in right amount can be more beneficial than nectar. So look at these adjectives carefully. In due amount they hold the key to a great contended self and hence a loving persona. So enjoy being lazy and laid back in little amounts. They save your engine from getting burnt out prematurely. Believe me, they ward off whole lot of distress and confusion.

The adventure and fun of life decrease in proportion to the distance between the point of your craziest, wildest urge of your heart and instincts on the one hand and the low point where you chose to be, driven, rather checked, by your fears, overvaluation, inhibition and assumptions, all of which stopped you from saying 'yes' to the moment and the choice that had all the possibilities to change your life miraculously.

Never underestimate the consequences of your endeavors. A butterfly flapping its wings in Africa is linked to the causes that drive a furious hurricane in America. So no action is small, only our fears and insecurities turn it puny, belittled piece of failure.

Coming back to the choice that could have seen you soaring up on a sunny journey at the highest height, but which you missed through over-analysis and chose to crawl on earth, cursing yourself at every step over the so called missed opportunities. Long after that choice is gone, and you cast a helpless look at the sweeping miles between where you could have reached if you had the guts to say 'yes' to your heart and the poor point where you chose to be, you just can't help but find life almost meaningless.

Destiny isn't a cheater altogether. There are moments passing through our lives when, with only a little bit of daring 'yes' we can change the entire course of our lives. Say ‘yes’ to the liveliest, loudest, craziest and wildest cooing of your heart. If not the destination (and there is no destination by the way), you will love the journey for sure.

A little stroll impregnated with your heart's consent is far more substantial than hundreds of miles of sweating run if you have forced yourself into it. Those miles after miles are not the rewards to your self-punished self. It becomes a punishment for not being true to yourself.

Listen to your heart, shut off all over-haggling by your mind that is tricking you by forcing you to compare and belittle your worth through the scales of others’ journeys. You need to have your own scale to measure the worthiness of your journey, how many miles you have to go, to what pace, availing how many stopovers and many more.

Use others' scales and all you do is just self-fuck at the cost of lot of pain to your ass. So we always have the option of being a happy-go-lucky person instead of a self-fucking moron. And unlimited love is always lurking around such a self-made happy-go-lucky person.

Cynicism: A Check-dam in the Stream of Love

 

Allow the boons of nature and manmade conveniences to bathe you. Let them fall spontaneously on you. Like a mountain allows the rains to kiss its slopes, bathe its forest and drench its top. It just enjoys it without trying to retain the showers. It is not looking for fullness with the help of external agents. It just loves the way it is.

A lake, on the other hand, is looking for completion through the outside phenomenon. It tries to retain water. It wants to hold onto it. In the process, it forgets the bliss of just being; all this while it is trying to capture the fleeting transformations of the free-flowing boons of life. No wonder it loses a lot.

I am afraid, we also unnecessarily cling to so many things that are simply meant to fall our way, giving us a skin deep sensation and a bit of learning, only to be left behind with a sweetly cute detachment. Don’t you think there is a mystical detachment in nature as things move on from this moment to the next? But we prefer to carry the unnecessary load that becomes unbearable after a time. It turns us cynical. There is hardly any chance for the flower of loving kindness to blossom in a cynical being. Love is a feather bed. Hardly apt to carry the iron weight of cynicism born of failed attempts at retaining the things that are just supposed to flow along. Let us try to understand it through a tiny fable. 

There is an old ascetic staying very happily under a banyan tree. No material possessions, almost naked and no worldly desires. The spiritual force of his wisdom is spreading far and wide. The King gets so impressed that he touches the saint’s feet and overcome by huge pangs of reverence for the sage asks the old mendicant to come and stay in his palace.

He is sure that the ascetic is going to say a loud “no” thus verifying the big mismatch between asceticism and worldly possessions. But then very surprisingly, the old sage says “yes”. So it becomes mammoth news and the King is even feeling duped. The old friar comes to stay in the palace. In irritation the King is pouring more and more worldly comforts around the mendicant who never shows any unwillingness to roll over more and more in comfort.

The sage is accepting all the worldly facilities on offer. The King’s agitation is turning into burning jealousy and then anger day by day. He starts condemning the sage as an imposter who has now forgotten all his wisdom after staying in the palace. The King’s anger reaches a breaking point and he condemns him as a disgrace in the name of monkhood and banishes him from the luxurious palace.

Nothing changes in the old monk. He smiles and says, “Ok King, as you wish! I was just fulfilling your wish to offer me luxury.” Smilingly the old sage prepares to leave the King with a blessing and a little sermon:

“I stayed in your palace but your palace didn’t stay in me. I am not a lake, I’m a mountain. I enjoy the water falling all over me, cutting my sides, kissing the trees on my slopes. But I am not possessive to hold the waters back. I simply allow it to flow down. I don’t hold. I don’t pull back. I just let it be as it is supposed to be. The lake is hollow. It craves for fullness. It wants more and more water. It has to hold. It has to collect. It is attached to collection. But the water will in any way flow away. So there is pain at the exit. Hence it’s forever looking upland for more and more water. I allow the flow, so enjoy the process, the mix of past, present and future. The lake holds. It suffers. It hardly enjoys its present, its being. It just turns it cynical, the cornerstone of suffering.”

So let’s try to extract the seeds of cynicism from our being. If not so, it lets loose a parasitic growth of bitterness involving scorn, doubt, distrust, sarcasm, skepticism, suspicion and pessimism. It just sours life’s taste to a point of revulsion.

Without cynicism one is healthily restful, holds a practical perspective, and possesses a balanced confidence, sense of security, patience and simplicity. All these are the manure nurturing the flower of a loving persona. Cynicism simply turns you skeptical to the inherent loving nature in the people around. Optimism for the possibility of selflessness in fellow human beings is the stepping stone to allow sunshine in one's dark corners. It enables one to see above one's personal miseries and problems of life. If you shed your insecurities, these appear like simple problems of life that everybody is facing.

A cynical attitude is the breeding ground of negativity. Once it sets in, it eats positivity like termites eat wood. You impose a blindness over yourself thinking all the people around are there to hurt your interests. Surely, the journey starting with such a big ‘no’ to life's prospects takes one to disappointing ends only.

Undue distrust is the rust that eats the iron fabric of one's being. With distrust we can simply justify any miscalculation of ours because it masquerades as wisdom and practicality. And mind you, one's empathy plummets down in proportion to the rising cynicism.

Most of the time, we camouflage our cynical nature as over-sensitivities, which in turn we self-justify as the natural results of our hurts and disappointments. But at the roots of our cynicism are our fears. And fears are nothing but bugs that plague a heart and stop it from actualizing the potential it got at birth time.

We are basically self-fucking species. Sorry to say it this way! I am looking for a better word to define us.

Very easily we allow our disappointments to turn us cynical. But if we go a bit deeper into the roots of our dejections, heartbreaks and losses, we find a simple truth. It’s basically we ourselves we have been stopping the winner in us? Just re-align the meaning of victory here. If you cannot win a gold medal at the Olympics, who has stopped you from enjoying the game in your local park? Nobody! Only we ourselves deprive us of the moments that could have fetched unqualified happiness and joy to us.

We don’t enjoy because we look at the end, the gold medal, and totally ignore the process—the present—of playing.

So what if you can’t be the handsomest man and the prettiest woman on earth! But who stops you from getting decked up to be the best for your resources and looks? There is no scale of beauty; we create one on the basis of our complexes. Nature made all of us different in appearance. Nobody holds the copyright on beauty. It’s a freebie lying there dirt cheap to be claimed by one and all.

Accepted that you can’t own a Jaguar. But who stops you from enjoying the pleasant drive in your old car while nature is at its kindest and the weather is applauding at its best?  

Long before destiny, society and governments arrive to rob us of our claims to happiness, it’s we ourselves who shut the door in our own face. We are basically self-fuckers, always pulling down our own pants to shame our own selves.

So guys, sulking self-fucking moron or a happy-go-lucky filly? The choice is always ours!

Tame the Superbugs of Evil

 

Mahatma Gandhi: “Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.”

Plato says ignorance is the root and stem of all evil. So my dear seekers of truth, the first step lies in recognizing it. Even the most hateful of individuals have some good in them. The shiniest of personas around have some bad in them. All of us have our entitlements and copyrights to both good and bad. So it's better to start rectifying our own house, putting things in order in our own yard.

Our strengths stand out too shiny and hence most often we remain blind to the shadowy gray areas in our persona. Shade your eyes with the palm of your hand and look for these murky areas. It's here the parasites lie waiting to stall the full luxuriant blossoming of your personality.

John Bradshaw: “Evil is a source of moral intelligence in the sense that we need to learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.”

You have got to believe that there is a methodology of driving the evil, first, out of your body, second, your mind, and consequently out of your soul. This is the process of wiping the floor clean with disinfectants so that your loving nature has a scope to bloom in perfect splendor.

At the level of the body, in the domain of the visible world around you, put up a conscious effort to avoid doing anything bad that may hurt someone in its multiple meanings including the physical, economical, emotional and social. Avoidance of bad at this level will help you become a law-abiding citizen. It will give you a clean social image. These are required to keep you motivated and bound to the path leading to the next level of goodness, or the path to taming the evil.

Taming the evil at the level of mind is a bit tougher. Thoughts come more rampantly than actions. It’s basically a free float. In fact, these are even more suitable outlets for the bad. We can think bad to any extent in the hidden corners of our mind. We can plan any sinister scheme in the safe secrecy of our brain. We can hate anybody to any extent inside us. We can burn in jealousy about anybody on earth.

This mode of letting out badness is even more tempting because, unlike badness in action that might get us punishment at the hands of law or fall in our public image, this channel of hate does not carry the risks of such immediate, visible punishments. It but harms us in more ways than we can ever think of. The punishment crawls slowly, silently. And it is poisonous.

All these negative emotions of hate, jealousy, frustration, fears, apprehensions, illusions and unrealistic assumptions let out toxics on the impulse of our brain. By engaging in such thinking you are bombarding your own body with chemical weapons. You are your own enemy before anyone else. You are putting your gun at your own poor head.

Slowly over a period of time these poisons, the unseen punishments of uncontrolled evil thoughts, eat away the body. Our brain, the seat of unrestricted potential to be good to the self and others, becomes the ticking bomb, letting out toxins in our blood stream, eating our vitality, our strength and drawing us to a frustrated death. That is the cruel-most punishment, your own brain letting out poison in your body. Mind you, your thoughts are the trigger for this.

So driving out the evil at the level of ideas and thoughts is of utmost importance. Right from our birth, life is all about bypassing the snares of mortality. But the inherent meaning of life is to find happiness while we avoid the snares of death. You cannot find happiness in any corner of this world, under any material comfort if your thoughts are plagued with the virus of evil, the bugs of hate, jealousy, selfishness and anger.

We cannot avoid death. It will come. But we can turn it meaningless. The success of death lies in giving us a painful feeling that life was meaningless at the last breath. If we die with a feeling that life has been worth it, we deny death its final laugh. Life prevails over death in this regard. (Because there is journey after the interruption, don’t worry.) We can do justice to life by being happy, and making others happy as well along the way, and be loving. There can be no other meaning of life.

So train your mind for better thoughts and better emotions. It will help your brain in becoming a launch pad of creativity instead of a toxic tool of death. Meditation is the first step in taming the restlessness that is basically the foundation of the evil in the mind. Dislodge it from its seat. Sit down and practice restfulness. Calm your mind. Give it a space as you contemplate peace.

Be a neutral observer and witness to what goes in the mind. Try to be aware of your trail of thoughts instead of just allowing them to float freely in the dark rooms of negligence. The real you, the best judge, keeps a watch over the trail of thoughts either positive or negative. Believe me, just by being aware of the negative flow of thoughts leads to check-dam these after some time. Under the stern watchful eyes of your consciousness the shadows will vanish. Positivity and good thoughts start becoming your instinctive nature because with each good thought you feel rewarded by your soul, and with each negative one you find yourself reprimanded. And who doesn’t need rewards?

As much as bugs of death are ever eager to finish their task of chucking out organisms and lives, the angels of healing are even more eager to sustain life. And the seat of healing is in love, in caring, in positive emotions. Allow yourself some time of stillness, repose and rest. The angels of healing, the agents of life, the couriers of love will cure you.

The practice of love and rest in thoughts leads to a healthier soul. It nourishes the soul as much as it heals the body. As a loving person you become a flower spreading fragrance and beauty. As a hateful individual you become a thorn drawing blood from the feet that are leading to their destination. Both die anyway. But look at the roles they play while in their journey.

Power + Hate < Mediocrity + Love

 

War has a tendency to flare up and eat itself up, simply because hate is too combustible to last for too long. It’s an aberration in human evolution when you break down like an overheated engine. Peace has a tendency to persist because love and harmony carry it without any cribbing and combustion. It’s full with moments when you make. It’s when you are creative.  

Power plus Love is enlightenment. And Mediocrity plus Hate is hitting the lowest-most miserable point of existence. 

Just like defeat gives us more dejection than our elation on getting victorious, the pain of loss is far greater than the joy of win. Since the scale is already tilted in favor of pain, we approach with fear. And our fears are directly proportional to the suppression of our real essential self, i.e., love.

A sword fighter has a beautiful wife. She is in awe of his reputation and is almost daunted by the force of his persona. She respects him, but love is missing in the secret chamber of her heart. As it happens, she falls in love with somebody outside her marriage. As if that is a small problem, to make it still worse, the lover happens to be their servant.

Lies and deceit can be hidden, but love has the natural propensity to shine like sun from behind the clouds. It comes to the light. That is its nature. As per social norms, love usually stands out scandalous. The offended husband challenges the servant for a duel, taking it for granted that he will surely kill the illicit lover, thus giving him death and earning more laurels for his swordsmanship as bonus. The deed will not reek of cold-blooded revenge and his motive to kill the servant will lie buried under the fair game of duel.

So it is supposed to be a sure death for the poor servant. The sword fighter hides his revenge and anger under the art and craft of his swordsmanship. Most importantly, he is sure of victory, because by the logic of it, how can it be otherwise, pitted as he is against a man who has just picked up the scabbard from his famed walls to clean it. And he being a master swordsman, whose reputation chimes across the four corners of the state. The servant is thus sure of his death. He has accepted his fate, death.

When you are eying victory, you are also eying safety to yourself from the corner of your eyes. And you have fear also, because without that the sense of victory cannot sustain. With a sense of victory you just cannot be fearless. There is something to fight for and achieve and for that you have to remain alive. This breeds fear. But the servant has accepted death and failure. His acceptance is hundred percent. He has no doubt about it. And when there is no doubt, you become fearless.

The swordsman isn’t totally free from fear because his certainty about his victory falls short of the servant’s certainty of his defeat and death. He isn’t as sure of his victory as the servant is of his defeat. So, irrespective of the fighting caliber, the servant is more fearless of the two, simply because he is under less doubt. In his fearlessness, he decides to let loose all madness in him before his death. He doesn’t hate the opponent. He isn’t angry. His acceptance of death enables him to give all to life before death.

The sword-fighter on the other hand cannot give all in the fight, because he is fighting to save respect, prolong life, take revenge, and all these with further expectations from life. Life itself means fear in this way. The offended husband takes maneuvers as per the art of sword-fighting. In pre-death fearless madness, the lover strikes with sword like he is striking with a stick. To all the conventional strokes of the sword-fighter, he hits back with the most awkward and unorthodox ones. Fearlessness in his eyes creates fear in the opponent’s eyes.

The servant kills the master! Why? Simply because he is sure of his death, and the master isn’t that sure of his victory! How can he be? He simply cannot. He is fighting to save a lot of things and fighting to save things cannot allow you to be cent-percent fearless.

Moral of the story is: However strong you are, plus some hate and revenge, you get cut down to your least possible mediocre size. And however weak you are, plus some love and the consequent fearlessness and acceptance, you hit your optimum best. Love has the power of alchemy to tilt the scale in your favor in almost mystical ways. You have to believe it.

As a powerful man burning with hate, you are like a furious storm eating its own existence. And as a commonest of the common person with loving kindness in your armory, you are like a gentle breeze that has no limits and bounds of space and time. You evolve. You spread. Then you become one with the supreme self. In hate you shrink, your own fire eats you up.

Be there in the Orbit, Love and Greatness Await You

 

There is an option for the best chance to survive, move and be happy. Choose your orbit and glide with perfect harmony. The objects that fall out of the orbit, presuming it to be a leap of freedom, go burning and crash-landing into smithereens. The destination is not into the depths of cosmos for you to get into hot pursuit like a burning meteorite. It’s always nearby, at some place in the same gentle periphery of your common journey.

No journey is common by the way. Extraordinary is just maintaining your hold on the ordinary. Love the gentle loops of your circular journey around the axis of your being: the axis of your small, small commitments and responsibilities. That is the mother planet for your individual self to revolve around in circles. It defines you. It keeps you in the orbit. It helps you in your happy journey. It stops you from escaping into the black guts of the cosmos like a rootless rock going burning and turning to ashes.

So choose your little orbit. Staying in the orbit does not mean being tied to a chain. It’s a grasp for lasting freedom. It is the life-force, this gravity that keeps you bound to your orbit. Your destination lies in the orbit itself. The day you get it, it becomes the loftiest orbit and the journey worth it.

Things as small as bunking office to be with kids, surrendering your right to the TV to allow kids to enjoy their cartoon show, letting the little one to play on your abdomen and suppress the discomfort to give a winsome smile and even laughter, laughing when the little one pees on you, going to office daily over the years to see that small world back home in the evening, saving money over the years to give the surprise gift of a car to your children, and many more. These are the forces that keep you in your orbit. They turn life into living. Unconditional love is the catalyst that propels this alchemical shift from life to living.

Love your orbit. Glide effortlessly. You will cover astronomical distances on the same familiar path. Love these common repetitions that go unnoticed and unrewarded. Loving these is the reward itself. Like your path. It’s strictly yours, stamped with the unique greatness of your unseen efforts to stay in the orbit. Just to stay in the orbit means to be great.

There are countless milestones that you reach. These are as shiny as the biggest stars. This universe started with a bang from a point. That was the explosion of potential for countless souls to carve out their orbits, to glide peacefully in their trajectory. Be there, smile, feel the goose-bumps of loving kindness, and give a victorious cry for you are already a winner.

Dig up your Treasure

 

It’s a beautiful, fresh morning. A fox is on hunt in the forest. The sun is verdantly casting long shadows from the east. The fox gets drunk with ego and pride looking at its long shadow.

Smitten with excited goose-bumps, it goes into self-bragging, “I must be really big and powerful to cast such a huge shadow! So little rabbits and tiny rats aren’t worthy of being in my big body! I have to hunt an elephant at least. That will do justice to my true status and standing.”

So all through the morning it roams around to get an elephant. Many small preys cross its path, but swooning with ego and pride it just ignores them. It’s not before the noon time it sees an elephant. The sun is hot and brightly overhead. The fox stands in the elephant’s path. But before it even realizes what is happening, the elephant swipes it away like a dust particle with its trunk. It lands at a distance very painfully. It now runs in panic.

While running it looks around its feet and sees the tiny shadow clinging to its scared self. “How come I’ve become so small after the fall?” it wonders.

Holding onto the impermanent elements on the shifting stage of life is the cause of pain and suffering. The externalities are the moving shadows. They give the impression that they define you. But how can such fickle, impermanent, transient, fleeting, temporary things and phenomena be the component of our real self? Peace and happiness lie in connecting with the essentially real self, the substance, the permanent entity. It lies inside all of us. But is of no use unless and until we spot it, observe it, realize and acknowledge it. If it’s not recognized, it’s almost of no use like the beggar who died wretchedly on a hidden gold treasure.

A beggar died in most wretched poverty in his hut. The place just reeked of misery and suffering. After cremation they just couldn’t bear up with the stench, so decided to dig up the place to remove the signs of wretchedness. To their surprise, there was hitherto unfound golden treasure under the hut. There was gold just a few feet under the surface and a man had met a slow, prolonged and painful death due to poverty on it.

Same is the case with the treasure trove of our real self, the essentially loving self. Find it, acknowledge it, nourish it to be happy and be at peace, or meet a painful, discontented death. Much as we run after the shadows, the centre, the pivot lies neglected. Shifting shadows never give permanent joy. So go down, unearth and lay bare the treasure you are sitting upon! The deeper you go, the more interconnectedness you will feel. This web of unity will land you in the zone of harmonic being where self-love is no longer separate from love for all. 

Author Interview (Sandeep Dahiya)

 

Author Interview

·         Can you tell something about yourself?

That’s my primary quest: To know more about myself. The real joy starts once we begin to be more aware about our real self. Most of the problems of life are born of our illusions, presumed fears and imagined insecurities. As a matter of fact, only 10% situations are objectively challenging and they need our methodical approach to resolve them. The rest are the phantoms of our mind. Now the question arises how to dispel the clouds that hide the sun of truth from us. Well, it’s an exploration, a kind of journey. This journey is what we call as our life. We learn from books, from others, from our own experiences, from observing this wonderful game around. The nearer we come to our self, the better we feel. So I would say, primarily I am a seeker of my true identity. I love travelling in the Himalayas. Reading is my full time occupation. I have decided to be a learner for life. In between, I write my version of truth under the expectation that it helps fellow travelers on the path.    

·         How are your books different than others?

All of us are unique products of mother existence. Genetically we may share a big pool with our fellow Homo-sapiens but our Karmic imprint related to our individual consciousness stands out, making you a representative of the entire existence. Writing is immensely personal. Every book has a message, so has this humble writer. I write with the intention that my word will reach someone who needs a message at some point in his/her journey. As a writer you have to be sensitive to the fact that by putting your creation on a public platform you are taking a commitment to the cause of wellness of all. All of us have our individual philosophy of life. We have our versions of reality. It includes what should be done as well as what we can avoid. I have seen a lot in life. I believe we are the products of our circumstances. But we have it in us to mould our circumstances as well. We know where we goofed up things. Through my fiction, non-fiction, poetry and sketches, I try to share my experiences. I write about small things in life. It helps in viewing life as a very simple process. I try to simplify the process of life through my writings about nature, little ironies, small tragedies and the interesting quests of human mind. The words, phrases and sentences are mere tools for us to forge our path to the next destination in life.

·         Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?

From the book of life itself! It’s endless. I think observing things more closely is a habit that all of us can work on. The reality as it appears has multiple dimensions. It’s within our capacity to interpret life at a joyful level. Most of the time we are puzzled and our muddled thoughts create an imaginary baffling situation. Learn to simplify things. There is an inherent simplicity in the design of mother existence. Although there are agonies on the road yet there are many reasons to smile about. As a sensitive heart it’s better that we feel the pain beyond our own self. But I would also advise not to miss the smile of a lone flower by the path. I roam around and observe things. It triggers varied emotions. I observe my own emotional reaction to the stimuli and then write something that may help someone at some phase of his/her journey.

·         What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

That writing makes me instantly feel better. It’s a sort of catharsis. My Ikigai. Sometimes you don’t know where you stand. There is some deep discontent. Contradictory thoughts and paradoxical emotions pull you in different directions. That is the time when you need some support. It can come in many ways. You can talk to someone, read, play music, do exercise, get busy in painting or write. All of us have our means of feeling instant relief. Writing a few sentences helps me in getting my footing back. How can I expect others to feel better by reading my book if I myself don’t feel that relief while writing it? I am surprised to know and feel how writing instantly uplifts my mood. It gives a sense of purpose, of doing something beyond my own self.  

·         What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

I don’t follow a strict routine when it comes to writing. Words, thoughts and emotions have their own sovereignty and I respect that. A particular routine makes it cumbersome and hence less joyful. Give yourself full freedom. But yes, I try to keep my senses open to what goes around. Writing something on paper isn’t an abstract event. It has a sequence of events. A lot many things are happening at the level of thoughts and demotions as you follow your routine. In my subconscious I have this resolve that all this flux is going to give me a nice, presentable version of reality that will not only help me understand life better but will help someone as well in his/her journey. But there are a few techniques I follow during that preparatory stage. I keep in mind outstanding keywords for the incidences and happenings that draw my attention. I keep them in mind. Sometimes, different keywords link up nicely to give me a story. As they say, nothing is fictitious in fiction except the names and dates. 

·         What do you think makes a good story?

A good story is an instrument of support to the reader. A broken heart needs some succor, a puzzled person needs some wisdom and practical advice, a sulking human needs some mood uplift through humor, someone going within needs some spiritual guidance to help reach the destination or somebody needs simple entertainment. All of us have the need for something or the other. That’s just to be human. Someone is lonely and a book is a nice friend. A good story will have one or more of these elements. It will add a positive dimension to the reader’s life. Someone has entrusted his/her time and money in reading your story, so it’s your duty to add value to the people’s life. 

·         What is your writing process like?

It’s a multi-pronged approach. Observing things more closely is a habit that all of us can develop. Once you know that you are working on a particular book of a specific genre, your idea of life comes to centre around the main theme. You observe life from the perspective of your characters and plot. You read the books that help you enlarge your perspective on the topics related to your work. You travel the places keeping in mind the subject of your writing. You talk to the people who may add some value to your pursuit. So basically you look at the world around you as the stage on which your characters will play a little drama. Creative people have a lot of emotional upheavals. It’s necessary to use that surge of energies. I work on multiple projects at a time. Sometimes the soul wants to sing through poetry, so I write a poem. Another time, the mind has hardcore analytical frame of operation, so I write some non-fiction. Sometimes I write stories. In this way, many books develop in a sweet parallel. It helps avoid the process from turning monotonous. 

·         What advice do you have for budding writers?

Avoid writing strictly to earn worldly laurels. Write only if it makes you feel better and joyful. Feeling the joy of writing is a reward in itself. It’s a lifelong process of learning to write. There is no retirement age. Read as much as you can. Maintain a journal. It helps in enlarging the perspectives on life and living. Listen to the inner voice what kind of writing helps you feel better. Keep the dream alive over a period of decades. Writing is just a portion of our experiences. So naturally all of us are sure to become better writers as we add to our experiences and learn more from life. If you have the real passion for it, you will definitely hit home some day. Till then keep observing, journaling, reading, and on top of that WRITING.

·         Tell us how the stories occur to you?

Even a wayside flower has a story to tell, so has a beggar on the railway platform, or a street puppy, or a rag-picker. There are countless stories unfolding every second around us. All we need is to be a good receptor. First we have to acknowledge the existence of something. Greet the wayside flower. How will it tell you its story if you just pass by lost in your miseries? Open to the surroundings. I keep myself open to the nice emotions and ideas and they just float in. Doesn’t water flow to an empty basin? Keep some space vacant inside you and welcome little things to enter your heart. You will have your stories. 

·         What are the books all about?

I have many books to my credit. I am lucky to have someone like Mr. Ajay Setia to publish my books. Kindly refer to my website www.sandeepdahiya.com to know all about my books. There is a separate ‘About the Books’ section that gives a gist of the books.

Repose, Rest and Creative Imagination: The Seeds of Love

 

Don’t be in haste, don’t run too fast, for in running too fast, always looking at the destination ahead in future, you lose the real charm of your journey. You forget yourself and identify yourself with what you are not. You snap your ties with your real self, and with broken ties with your true self, you hardly stand a chance to grow firm roots in the personal and professional domain around you.

As a speedster you miss the real fruits that were placed solely for you along the path. You hardly realize the real profits and boons coming across your path. You miss your present, the real you who can exist in the present only, the rest is just a mere mirage of ideas about incomprehensible future and regretful past. The unreal you has no tangible existence except as a bunch of insubstantial, phantom thoughts. Unfortunately, this phantom idea takes precedence over the real you, deriving a chasm between what you think yourself to be and what you are in reality.

So under the fallacy of identification with the unreal, you forget yourself, you overlook the present impregnated with countless things around waiting to be defined just by your look, your insight, your observation. Every phenomenon is incomplete without you as an aware observer. So by forgetting yourself, you ignore your role in the process of creation.

Forgetting yourself, eyes peeping into the hazy distances, leaving all the multi-hues of things and phenomena waiting to be defined by your aware look, you stumble so many times. And the blame game starts. You target destiny, you point out unfair forces against you, you crib about injustices and system failures. All these are but the projections of your unreal self on external circumstances. The things outside are simply the screens where you play the disharmonic drama driven by the wrong protagonist impostoring as you.

So you run very hard with all your might, your eyes mechanically glued to the so called target. But is it, in any way, better than a blind run? And mind you, no destination is defined in isolation, just in itself, something lying at a distance in abstract. Every destination is the sum total of the experiences coming across the way. The so called ‘reach home’ is just one more milestone like any other along the way.

The runner is always more important than the act of running and the so called finish line. So cool down. Take a pause. And move restfully with equipoise and respectful awareness. The things that light up your awareness at each step are as important as the goal to which you are dying to reach. The ever-giving trees, singing birds, cotton soft clouds floating as spectators, gentle breeze applauding your march, motherly soothing sunshine, restful ponds, naughty rivers, gracious people, charming conversations, and what not. The list is endless.

Not that there aren’t grey shades to the things around. There are, but they are mere appendages to the basketful of bounties. As they say, change your outlook and the world changes. Grey has just two factors of white and black. Multicolored probability, on the other hand, has a big rainbow of possibilities. However, it’s never complete without the participation of your prism, your heart.

The little wayside flowers have no meaning if you don’t pause to reciprocate their smile. A sub-atom of reality has an observer and the observed. Nature has played its part; now play yours by being a keen onlooker. These small milestones coming with each watchful step have their rewards and satisfaction, provided you don’t belittle them as mere steps to the so called final trophy.

Each step is a destination itself. I hardly see any final destination apart from dying without too many grudges from life. The rest are mere steps following one another. To avoid the final judgmental hammer-strike at the fag end of the journey, it is simply required to be just a journeyman. The journey itself is a reward. It’s an end in itself. Pain arises when we take it as the means to something. There is just one journey, life. There is just one destination, a regretless ending of the show.

Your each step carries the prospects of the pearls of happiness provided you slow down your time. The time that is yours, defined by you, not by the clock’s clicking hands or other’s expectations and your imitation of the conventionally safe pursuits. The latter give you a fake sense of security but leave your soul thirsty, depriving it of the adventurous nectar that could have been sipped from the flowering of your own self by gracefully picking up the pollens lying for you.

There is no absolute time, just relative fixations of it to serve tiny human purposes. That doesn’t mean it should become the master of your destiny, casting you in its cement mould, making you a caricature of your true self. Your time ought to obey you, not the vice versa. You can slow it down with your increased awareness. Stretch each second on the enlightened curve of awareness. Time then serves you, giving you more in seconds than you ever observed and experienced in whole days. As Abraham Lincoln mused: “In the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” So sisters and brothers, pump life into your days.

Do you think a journey is accomplished by the running force you propel into? Think again if you say yes. It’s not possible to run forever. A run has to depend on rest and pause to sustain itself. Do you think the accelerator paddle in your car takes you to the destination? Not at all! It’s the brakes intervening to give restful pauses for safety to give meaning and control to your speed, to make it an organized run instead of a mad rush ever accelerating and crashing into some fatality.

The break, the pause, the rest, these are the basic ingredients to turn any random movement into a meaningful, assured and safe journey taking us to some point further in the voyage. Miles and miles of mindless dash without intervening, restful pauses are meaningless crazy pursuits in a desert ending in painful mirages.

As you run without pause, rest and awareness, and with heedless hurry, you stress yourself out. This stress and tension kills the imagery. All tensed up and stressed, looking anxiously at the destination far, far away, you lose the dreamy imagery that makes each step a victory in itself. Do you think life is meaningful without restful reflections and creative imagination? It simply isn’t. If not now, you realize it later when unfortunately it is too late.

So guys watch your step. And look around you. Countless things and phenomena are waiting to enrich you. These are the things that make your journey fruitful and meaningful in the true sense. The destination stands defined only in terms of the process of journeying and the experiences gained alongside. And when you reach your destination as a victorious king, it’s only the experiences before the final goalpost that have turned the scale in your favor.

Dale Carnegie: “Today is life—the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”

The nutshell is: Enjoy the journey fella! Don’t just close your eyes to the surroundings thinking about the destination where you assume to become happy some day in future. Forget it. No destination can give you happiness if you haven’t been happy while journeying. And happy journeymen are all extremely loving in nature by default.

Happy journey! Carry on! Be loving! All the best!

One More Step, One More Breath and One More Sip of Love

 All you need to avoid a fall is to take one more step, then another, and then another. You should be bothered about just one more step. Forget about miles and more miles. These are meaningless without the step just about to define your current journey, your present. Being in league with one more step makes you the real journeyman. It means you are right there, still moving, still fighting. The chance of victory is always alive as long as you are ready to take one more step. And the possibility of life is active only and only because of the upcoming breath.

So mind your step on a beautiful dawn. One more day, one more step and the fresh dose of the next breath. These are the basic building blocks of a well-meant life, a purposeful journey. You look too far into the hazy distances, and you lose yourself in the puzzlement that lies scattered around. You mind your next step, and you immediately find yourself. You mind your next breath and instantly you feel the enthusiastic pulse of life throbbing in your veins.

Just like life means one more breath, living means one more step. Life and living are simply a beautiful symphony between the next step and the upcoming breath, laying the foundation for the next and then the next, and on and on. These set up the notes for the beautiful melody that life is.

Each meaningful, mindful step becomes the destination in itself. If you completely mind your step, you then need not look for destinations and their assortment of heartbreaks far away into the distances of time and geography. If you inhale and absorb completely the portion of life provided to you in one breath by the existential forces, you won’t feel the need to explore living in the farfetched quarters of make-believe concepts erected in the hope of a happy, contented life. If you mind your breath, allowing it to give you the most it has to offer, you won’t be running into many decades of longevity to feel the elixir that living is. You get it, right here, in an instant. Life then turns into living and a reward in itself.

One more step and one more breath, taken under tender observation and careful awareness, are the building blocks of life and living. They are the fabrics of your being. Work on them and you get a wonderful framework decorating your mind, body and soul.

Don’t fall, take at least one more step, then another, then another. Only this much! That’s all you have to do for life and living: one more breath, one more step. And your one more step becomes more significant than the endless miles and still more miles. Your step defines miles not vice versa. One more breath, one more step! Seeped in the awareness of this incredible duo, you will first surprise yourself in the effortless ease you have walked on the path of life and living. You create and retain countless chances to reach a point, where you astonish yourself the most in your achievement.

The darkness isn’t completely dark as long as the tiniest of a flicker burns steadily, unsteadily in any corner of the cosmos. It holds the chances of light, of a win, of a fight, sometime when the conditions are more suitable. Hold your light. Hold onto your chances of a full blaze. It can even be the littlest star reflected in your fatigued eyes from the farthest distances across stormy clouds.

Just look back and spot some small-time remark of appreciation, some grateful bow, some serious acknowledgment, some feeble smile, some tiny reward to the tune of INR 500, or some words of praise. Hold them. Cherish them. Pick them up from the dusty corners of your room. They are the treasure. They are the light. They are the breath. They are one more step. One more step is as important as the complete journey. Or even bigger than that! A tiny flicker of light, lost in the darkish wombs of loss, is as big as the big-bang of primordial light and fire that created this universe.

Long before you conquer the world, learn to be happy with the tiny rewards that hold your dreams in piece, which sustain the life of your goals just like one more breath sustains your life. A tiny word of appreciation will one day turn into a massive trophy, a huge applause, with camera lights flashing around and thousands of screaming fans. This little smile on your lips will turn into a broad grin of triumph.

Hold the littles in your life, acknowledge their role like one more step keeps the journey, and one more breath keeps life together. Do only this much and you will naturally find yourself taking your sips of love and kindness, turning you richer on any scale you weigh upon.