A sage in making

 Kaka Maharaj...a saint in making...on the path for the last five decades...his hut outside the village on the bank of a canal..

Enlightenment is just a step away: Awareness

The early mornings in the beginning of winters have a mild chill. So here I’m draped in a chador, the best way the farmers and their ilk feel warm. Give them the best of a thermal clothing, which would keep one warm even in Antarctica, but the farmers would feel unequipped against cold in the absence of chador or blanket load over them. It only shows the level of habits in shaping our realities.

So here I’m draped in a light chador picking up fresh clothes to wear after a bath. The set of clothes slung over my arm, I’m looking for the missing towel. The towel has gone missing. It gives me concern as I go searching over the place. Then the concern turns to irritation for the inconvenience caused due to the missing towel. Then arrives self-justification. I’m sure that I always place my things at their proper place. So the reason for the missing towel must be someone else, not me. My family members can hear my irritated exclamations over the missing towel as I wander around looking for it. It’s not to be found anywhere. I’m sure that I cannot be so careless as to put it at a place where it cannot be found. There is a prompt conclusion that someone else has misplaced it—the very same old habit of putting the blame outside of one’s own self. ‘I always place it here, someone has misplaced it for sure!’ they hear my summarized mumbling over the episode.

Then it’s found. All of them are staring at me as it’s found. It’ there on my shoulder, hidden by the fold of chador draped around me. That was the first item I had picked up but then the chador corner must have slipped over and while adjusting it the towel got hidden. So here I stand with my lost towel found now. The towel that was always with me. But for whom I had already gone searching out, looked for the missing cause outside and already made judgments about the others as the cause.

It’s deeply humbling to be caught so wrong-footed, to be found so unaware. It only shows the level of unawareness we carry with ourselves on a daily basis. Then we go for a frantic search over the missing towel, the towel that was never lost. We go out on a search outside and naturally look for the reasons for its misplacement in other people.

Well, the towel is always there. But it’s hidden in the deep folds of the chador of unawareness. The chador of ignorance spun by a conditioned and customized self; made of the threads of limiting beliefs, fears and insecurities. Unawareness is draped around us like a chador’s folds and hides the towel of our real self. And thinking that the towel has gone missing, i.e., our real essential self, we go on a frantic search. We believe it to be outside. And when we don’t find it, obviously we blame others.

Like the missing towel we have lost touch with our real self. The hiding blanket of unawareness draped around us gives us a false sense of security against cold and vicissitudes of life. The towel of our real self is hidden among its folds. And we going on a futile search, feeling restless, wading our way through the network of family, friends, relatives, acquaintances. Assuming them or the larger world outside to be the cause of the missing towel. And we won’t feel the real rest till we find the missing towel. It but is nowhere to be found. How will it be found outside? It has been with us all along this time. But we have moved far and wide. We judge and blame others for the missing towel. We try different occupations, careers, faiths, belief systems and relationships to find the missing towel but fail.

The experience was deeply humbling. It showed me how our unawareness is the cause of all the unhappiness. From the missing towel to the estrangement with our true essential self, it’s the same germ of unawareness that begets us unhappiness and suffering. We just need to watch, understand and be aware of all that goes within and around us. Then maybe suddenly we find the towel slung right there on our own shoulder, while we had futilely covered miles after miles searching for it.

Reading the book of life

 

Aha the book of life! Every day a new chapter. Each incident, happening or phenomenon a fresh sentence with profound meanings.

The new sun rising on a misty morning arriving with the message that there is always light after dark to help us see and realize the illusions and unwarranted fears that we imposed on us in the dark.

The setting sun saying ‘a smiling bye’ with a message that one has to accept and willingly dive into oblivion after a dazzling day, after touching the peak of brilliance, after a full-hearted bear hug with life, after completing an innings in career or a relationship. That a ripe fruit has to drop, that even very dear people will go out of life, that smiles will be followed by tears as well. Acceptand recognize that we have to welcome this play of existence in totality and that includes smiles-tears, win-loss, falling in love, partings, birth-death. Everything.

The shifting shades and reshaping clouds in the sky brimming with the message of change and impermanence, of new forms overtaking the old ones, of a smooth transition, of the old changing into the new without any drama, without any hassles.

Mother earth holding this portion of existence on her maternal palm with unconditional love and the undying spirit of just giving all that Her children need. The message of giving! How much more satisfying it seems in comparison to taking! That we evolve by a great margin just by giving a smile. And ‘taking’ also is highly undervalued. If we ‘take’ with a smile and gratitude, doesn’t it create a ‘giver’ who became joyful for the act? Mother existence prefers a graceful and full of gratitude ‘taker’ than a cranky ‘giver’. Give with a smile of kindness and empathy; take with a smile of gratitude. To mother existence these are simply two facets of the same coin.

The chirping of birds conveying the spirit of keeping songs alive on one’s lips even while engaged in the day-to-day commitments and routine practicalities of life. Their free flights spreading the fragrance of freedom, the urge to fly on one’s own path.

The trees with the message of growth irrespective of the changing environment and the divine instinct of giving fresh air, shade to the weary traveller, inspiration to artists, nests to the birds, fruits for the hungry. A new shoot sprouting from the cut on their bark:the message that we too can get fresh colors and shoots to our personality at the points of cuts, wounds and adversities.

The flowers with the message that smiles carry the touch of divinity, that fragrant petals and nectar fuel the colorful sorties of many butterflies, that we too touch many lives positively with our gentle manners, smiles and sweetness of temperament. That our rainbowed touch can make many people joyful like nectar-satiated butterflies. We smile, say soft words, treat them gently and they soar high and become joyful.

Beautiful relationships with the message that our travel-weary heart, mind and body need a soft touch, a cool brace, a healing bonhomie; that friends, family, relatives, partners, lovers are all there to help us cross a milestone on our eternal journey and then melt and get reshaped like clouds in the sky. But we carry the invisible imprint of their persona on our individual selves. It’s firmer than a line on stone. People might have tears on account of you, once the pathways have parted, but ensure that the tears are accompanied by a smile as well so that the dry tears don’t singe someone’s soul.

A river in the hills, furiously cutting big boulders, passing the message that we have to raise a blizzard of karma to later enjoy a peaceful flow in the planes and still later merge into the bigger serenity of the sea. That we have to cut karmic stones to come out of the stones, walk joyfully on the plane of relationships, kindness, care, share and finally sleep in the lap of mother sea.

The silence in a forest loaded with the message that this is what all the words and languages point to, the language of silence, the mother of all sermons and preaching.

The exotic chaos and cluttering noise in a city heavily pregnant with the message that all of us are destined to wade through inner conflicts, puzzles, trauma and tension like the common people beautifully engaged in the sweet-sour poignancy of the cities.

Falling in love loaded with joy, pleasure, care and share. It tells how important these feelings are for our wellbeing. Just recall the feeling of bliss while freshly in love! Isn’t that wonderful?

Falling out of love, tears, pain and suffering passing the message that we always could have been better lovers. In any case, it’s always for the best in future. We just become better lovers after partings.

Everything around us is full of messages. The book of life! Observe it, feel it, understand it. It opens the experiential dimension in life. With experiential knowing, the phantoms of intellect and mind take a backseat. They always bow down to the confident sovereign, the soul, the observer now fully aware of its kingdom, its colors, shapes, hues, everything.

The beauty of carefully reading the book of life is that we learn to touch our own self, our own body, mind, thoughts and emotions with more empathy and self-love. We fall in love with the life overall. We simply come out of the definition of life within this particular body and feel related to the life overall. Then we touch many lives very-very positively. We become healers without trying to do it intentionally. It’s just a natural state of being in that dimension. Happy reading the book of life!

Lightness of being

 

Who doesn’t appreciate the genius of Leo Tolstoy? Through his beautiful writing the sagely author continues to inspire millions even a century after his death. Undoubtedly he was a great human being. But his wife had a diametrically opposite view of him. To her he was the same normal, almost oppressive, husband. Does it mean that all of us are essentially the very same poor humans after we enter the privacy of our room, shed the clothes and behavioral bearing?

We don't just cover ourselves with clothes. We wear multiple layers of thoughts, attitude, behavior, calculating mind, scheming intellect and maneuvering to maintain an image. This is a subtle clothing. Hardly visible like the clothes we wear. But this is the primary steel armor that we carry with us. Maybe it’s necessary to wear it to survive in the struggle as a human. We have our jobs, duties, responsibilities to fulfill. There we need this subtle steel armor. But we get habituated to keep it on us, always, day and night, even within our walls. Its weight crushes relationships. No wonder we feel tired even while lying on the bed. Its weight crushing the soft petals of relationships. It challenges our own essential faith.

The armor is still sitting on our chest as we enter the domain of our intimate people where we are supposed to be open, free and light. So why not go for complete disarming at least within the privacy of our rooms, in our little intimate group, with our closest dear ones? Join them as a very light being, almost naked like a baby with all your vulnerabilities, flaws, fears, insecurities, anxieties. To feel very light, to be disarmed of the heavy battle shield, to almost float in your secure, personal bubble. Drift like a cloud with your vulnerabilities within the security of your cozy bubble. Lay bare your soul. Lift the iron chains from it. And just be. Becoming something is a necessity I know. But put it on as you come out. However, stay light, open, honest, frank and see-through among the people you trust.

Share your pain. Speak out your miseries. Shower your ecstasy. Offer your smile. Show your tears. Present your kindness. Drizzle your pure emotions. Then one can feel the soothing solitude within the safe bubble. Make your little capsule of solitude and peace among all this meaningless crowd and intimidating chaos. It can be done anywhere with faith, love, care and share among the chosen few. And float lightly in it, like a balloon drifting to the ceiling fan’s wind within a safe room.

If we make it with the ‘Lightness of Being’, it’s possible. Do it with vulnerable gentility, disarming smile, openness and baby-type nakedness after shedding the steel armor of ‘becoming something’ that we need to wear once we come out of our cozy bubble. Then go out with your behavioral clothing and perform the essential tasks and come back, put off everything and enjoy the ‘Lightness of Being’. This is the little workshop in the art of the ‘Lightness of Being’.

The enlightened sages are the ones to whom the entire existence becomes such a cozy bubble. The entire humanity becomes merely an intimate, warm bubble. They float freely without the need to become something. They shed the steel armor forever and turn baby soft. No wonder they float so restfully. That is a high degree in the university of the ‘Lightness of Being’. We the common people are in the schooling stage of the same subject. We have to pass the higher and senior secondary school exams in the art of the ‘Lightness of Being’. It’s a low grade examination. It doesn’t require research scholarship. It’s a tiny assignment—to enjoy the ‘Lightness of Being’ within a carefully nurtured little bubble. But believe me it carries the taste of the cosmic bubble.

Trainee fighter pilots learn and practice in simulated indoor environment and then fly freely in the open skies. If we learn the art and craft of the ‘Lightness of Being’ in our tiny intimate bubble, maybe one day we will be floating free among the vast expanses of this existence.

The lightness of life

 

There is a marvelous lightness in ‘being’ alive. The extra dimension of sentient life in matter (we may call it soul for simple reference) makes the matter very light. The same matter without this energy, or call it soul, feels weightier.

The birds are very light. Hold a living bird in your hand and you would marvel at its weightlessness. How can such a feathery thing accomplish such airy dances and sing-song chirpings!

A babbler entered the fenced yard. It seemed a suitable plan on the bird’s side to seek safety because it couldn’t fly. Maybe it was a sick babbler. It sat there on the ground sad, silent with a drooping beak. It would hop for a few paces and then rest. It sat near a water puddle and took a few beakfuls of water. I tried to feed it with a dropper but it won’t eat anything. When I held it in my hand it felt so light, just a winged representative of the air around.

It came in the morning and died in the afternoon. I found it in its eternal sleep in the flowerbed. As I picked it up for giving it a dignified burial I could feel weight this time. So there is a mystical type of lightness in being alive. Maybe the soul has a floating quality to make the matter feel less weighty while it’s in the body. The soul gone and the same mass feels heavier.

Maybe the soul is always acting in reverse to the forces of gravity, always looking upwards for expansion, always trying to expand and go up, trying to evolve into a higher dimension. Just like the lifebelts keeping the body afloat on water. Maybe that’s why it feels like to be in a cage, I mean that vague sense of being trapped, that niggling sense of something missing. Like air trapped in a balloon, floating the body around. And once the tendency to float, the inclination to expand, the urge to evolve—represented by a particular soul—is gone for a free float (before getting trapped again) the mass that remains behind feels weightier. Like a balloon would weigh more after getting deflated and the air gone out.

It’s marvelous that just one breath keeps us alive and afloat, keeps us in the category of the lightness of being. Maybe the soul is just a breath. But look at its divine component of ‘the lightness of being’! We can easily lift a living being. Lifting a corpse is far weightier proposition. The floater is gone and the stickler is left behind. Just one breath gone and we have a piece of relatively heavier matter. One breath in and we have a far-far lighter being.

So we have this iota of infinite freedom and expansion trapped in this body. It’s always trying to float freely, like the air in a balloon taking it in different directions. But that is the irony with existence. To manifest, the component of absolute freedom has to be trapped in the confines of limited ‘matter’.

But why do the free-floats, the individual souls, again get trapped in the body? A spiritualist once told me that all the surrounding air around us is full of free-floats helplessly, even jealously, looking at we the embodied ones. They look like jealous children at the embodied ones. Probably we love and hate the prison in almost equal measure. A kind of addiction to being something. And to be something you need a body. Body is acquired, then what. The one that acquires the body, the cosmic representative of ultimate freedom (the soul), has the fundamental inclination and urge to be free. It breeds a type of endless love-hate relationship.

What is ultimate liberation or freedom? Maybe it’s the state of a free-float when it no longer feels jealous of the embodied entities. When a sage quits the body in complete freedom, without fear, without any attachment, without any desire or expectations, he goes for a cosmic expansion, so large that it can no longer be trapped in a confined body. Because a fragmented individual disembodied entity cannot beat the greed of getting trapped again unless it becomes a part of everything that’s there. The wholeness cannot be lured to be confined to limited ‘somethingness’. 

Maybe this is what they mean by getting ultimate liberation by feeling all and everything within you. By acquiring this unqualified and unconditional trait, all that is trapped and non-trapped feels within you. Like free air feeling the trapped air in a balloon as a part of itself. So it won’t feel inclined to be trapped in a balloon to feel its existence.

So this body itself is the gateway to break the final barrier. It’s the portal to enter that unqualified state of absolute freedom. That is why they say that being born as a human is a blessing because we arrive qualified to pass the final test. Best of luck for the examinations of life! 

The fiction of scientific reality

 

Once you have a theory, you can surely prove it. Like it’s possible to move from Point A to Point B in infinite ways. I think the shortest and the most convenient path from A to B comes to be established as a fact, a mathematical reality. But that doesn’t mean it’s an absolute fact, or say truth. An absolute fact has to stand on its own, without any sort of assumption. To fix a portion of reality within our perceptual domain, we have to assume certain points, however hard the logic of any scientific model might be. And for that ‘assumption’ we create another hypothesis and find a way to prove it. We create proofs and facts. They don’t exist. We create the factual reality using our perceptual faculties. However, what definitely exists is an absolute uncertainty, an absolute sense of probability, an utmost potential, an infinity, an endless loop in which we generate our meanings.

The treasure trove of real self

 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. “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 a 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. But 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 misery. To their surprise there was hitherto unfound golden treasure under the hut. There was gold just a few feet under and a man who had met a slow, prolonged, painful death due to poverty on it.

Same is the case with the treasure trove of our real 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!

Settling the account forever

 

In its dealings with a person, destiny keeps its account book always open. The account is never closed from her end. It's always open. It needs a tapasya to close the account by the person himself, wind up the calculations forever, come out of karma's loop and take an indefinable shape on the canvas of eternity.

The seat of ego

 The huge sense of self-righteousness has its origins in a very little dark space in our egoistic chamber where mammoth ghosts of judgement and opinions burst to their seams. They have been suffocating in a little dark space and that's why they run wild to assert and claim more territory in other's mind once the door gets unlocked.

The secret key to joy

 Children have no fixed expectations from a toy. Let it be new, they have full joy. Let it be broken, they play with the same perfection like earlier. So does it mean that imperfections around in things and situations aren't that big a factor in deciding our state of being as we grown ups have accepted on principle?

Love and hate

 Creation has just one source, single point of focus. Elixir of life and curse of death spring from the same source. The nectar and the poison originate from the same place. Life’s shadow is death, and death’s shadow is life. The perceived duality is a mental image projected in vacuum as we peer through the lens of “ego”, i.e., helpless bondage to the outermost layer, the grossest level of our material existence. The latter stands as the bridge to the shaky walk this way or the other. Break the bond and these drift away into non-existence. Love is tied to hate. And our “ego” is the rope, the bridge holding the two extremes of duality. Clinging to the two extremities, we have the option of treating one as the substance and the other as the shadow. If your ego allows love to be the substance, then hate turns a shadow. And vice versa. But in treating hate as the substance, we contradict the basic principle of nature. Hate is an exception, love is the rule at the cosmic level. Endless swathes of cosmic tranquility into fathomless depths cannot sustain without inherent love, peace and harmony. By hating we are putting a roadblock, a speed-bump in the path of infinite space-time continuum. Through love we speed up the cause of evolution. In choosing love and the elixir of life, we add to the inherent cosmic harmony. In hating we add to the cosmic explosions and accidents.

The ultimate code-maker

 

In this apparently meaningless chaos of energy circulating around, there is an urge for seeking symmetry, design, a meaningfulness, a tangible manifestation. It blooms in flowers, beautiful wings of the birds, in leaves, in animals, reptiles, everywhere. This instinct finds the codes of genetics for the evolution of species. It then seeks still subtler manifestation in emotions, in beautiful sweet-sour urge for relationships, in companionship, in interactions, in thoughts. Spiritual quest is the subtlest manifestation of this meaning-seeking artistry. This is the quest for seeking the best design pervading across all the fractional designs floating around. So design well all ye artists, design with awareness; design your career, skill, relationships, art, culture in a way that it holds you safely in its bubble. The bubble will burst one day, but till then design your destiny and dreams as per your own choices within that little space. Happy artistry of life and the best of floats in your respective bubbles!

Just being so...

How will a stone know that it’s a stone? It knows how to ‘be’ a stone, that’s why it exists. From the tiniest to the biggest, from the moving to the unmoving, from the dust to a flower, everything knows how to ‘be’. In fact, the things considered as insentient by us know it perfectly well how to ‘be’. The atomic arrangement in them knows how to be a stone. But there is a tendency in the element of just 'being so' to 'become something' and that drives this multilayered flux from ‘being’ to ‘becoming’ ranging from galaxies to a dew drop.

At their essential core, ‘just being so’ and ‘becoming something’ are part of the same game; in fact the same thing. A stone looks just a stone, but it's becoming something as well at the same time. The process is very subtle. And what is consciousness? This is the force of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ itself. The debate is endless and the question will stay unresolved till eternity as long as we are compartmentalizing matter, energy and consciousness as separate entities. That’s a very funny convenience we create. But what else is this existence apart from the limitless potential to create? Mother creation is just an open-ended freeway of timeless and spaceless possibilities.

Coming back to the question of consciousness. If you segregate one fundamental entity into three different categories, like here in matter, energy and consciousness, you have infinite possibilities to create logic, analysis, hypothesis or any other output of mind-work. That’s our logical creation only. It hardly deals with the essential commonality between matter, energy and consciousness. It but serves a purpose. This categorization of the same unity into fragmented elements gives rise to fabulous brainwork in the form of science, religion, ethics, moral codes, education and culture—everything belonging to the blissful and agonizing maya that we create. Who can stop the little children from making castles, dolls, dogs, toys, sepoys from the same mud and clay? They are free to play and take it very seriously and believe their creations to be quite different from each other. But does that make any difference to the mud being just mud? The entire profession of consciousness scientists will turn redundant the moment we put up the little toys of energy, matter and consciousness into the dustbin and mesh them together to make them the undifferentiated clay.

This creation, this game, this play of energy, this churning of matter, this storm of consciousness is helpless in ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. It goes on. And all of us are entitled to erect smart structures of nations, religions, gods, deities, science, cars, planes, relationships, smiles, tears, everything. So keep ‘becoming’ all you ‘beings’. And once you ‘become’, again try just to ‘be’. It keeps us busy like every particle around us is madly busy in spinning. All this is just a tiny storm in the teacup, a little ripple in a tiny corner of the universe or multiverse, whatever you name it. And this play and expansion is so funny as to take itself very-very seriously and churn out wonders, new shapes and phenomena at every point of its expansion. But all this is the same primordial dust playing with itself, making different looking entities: consciousness trying to be conscious of itself. A sort of self-driving motive for its journey; a never-ending journey.

If you are trying to be conscious of something outside yourself, the journey can’t be endless and later or sooner you will stop. But here consciousness is following its own tail, trying to be conscious of itself, like a cat chasing its tail in a circle, unleashing a blizzard of happenings. And that creates newer and newer avenues for latest versions. I hope you remember the ancestors of little house lizards were once mighty dinosaurs. All this maya is simply infinity trying to be limited and make a meaning of its meaninglessness through laws and generalization. And we carry the same tendency of the cosmic entity’s fundamental quest. We are a little ounce of universe chasing its tail, spinning on its axis to find some meaning of all this spinning around. From the so-called best to the worst, we finally convince ourselves that that’s the real meaning. But that again is a solace, a conditioning of our mind to accept something that seems to give us some respite from the mad circling around in pursuance of our own tails.

Whatever meaning you create, whatever toy you make, it hardly matters to the primordial clay. But yes, the clay toys that we create through individual and collective organizational set up in the form of nations, organizations, religion, faith, gods, deities, bureaucracy everything, that’s merely an acceptance, an agreement to behold the validity of our creation. It has no bearing on the fundamental mud and clay, the cosmic pool of consciousness, we are all wallowing in. I have repeatedly used the word ‘consciousness’ because we have all agreed to define it as such. So spin your webs well. Create your realities. Dance on the floor quite energetically. Contort yourself in your dancing as much as you want, move and shake in your own weird ways. Only caution, try not to trample others toes as you go dancing.

During the dynamic meditation sessions at an Osho ashram, people would let loose their inner emotions through crying, laughing, rolling on the floor, shouting or singing. Some would roar like lions and I would be scared that they might bury their molars in someone’s throat. I was particularly scared for one old tauji who usually turned into the cutest goat after every dynamic meditation session. He would crawl on all fours and move around bleating. That was when I got apprehensive that the lions in the group might pounce upon him for their dinner. Jokes apart, the cute tauji had every right to become a goat as long as he took care of not trotting out of the hall and enter the garden for grazing on well-tendered flowers.

Self-love

 

Charity begins at home. Self-love is the seed of the overall tree of love that grows to cover the surroundings. Self-love is the source light of all that can be seen beyond all the darkness. But there is a very subtle, thin line between self-love and selfishness. The latter might even impersonate as the former. But we have to understand, self-love is born of joy. It's something positive in nature. It's a high frequency emotion. The other is born of our fears and insecurities. It carries a low frequency. This is basically a contraction, a primal instinct for self-preservation. Self-love is expansion, evolution. In strictly material terms, they might appear the same numbers. But they are antipodal, like 1 and −1, 2 and −2. They move in the opposite directions on the axis. One sulks and sucks; the other smiles and expands. But at the operational level, it’s a very thin line. One has to be very careful because it's so natural to enter to the other side, the zone of negativity. And constant awareness and continuous asking the self about the difference between self-love and selfishness will do the task.

The Unknowable

 Talking about the ultimate reality, Osho said it’s that stage in the journey of a seeker when after knowing everything still more remains to be known. Material science tried to crack the code and frantically searched for the fundamental particle that cannot be further divided. If ever they arrive at the primary material constituent, they can claim to know all and everything. There won’t be any unknowable. But as they have found, there is no fundamental entity. All the previously assumed smallest entities kept on subdividing, finally merging into the endless depths where everything merged into nothingness, leaving them clueless where to spot the primary constituent. All this merges into the never-ending spools of energy, sparks, vibrations and frequencies. It’s a screen where even our thoughts, emotions and feelings—which itself is a movement of subtle energies as substantial as the gross manifestations of energy movement on the visible level—can project our own creations. And creations of physical sciences have created many means of convenience for us.

I would even deter myself from calling it maya, the illusion, because we can call something illusion only in relation to something permanent. There is hardly any permanent entity, apart from the unknowable rule of the rules which says the first part of the statement.

If there is no ultimate destination, one may ask, then why should one go on a quest to know, realize or feel the secrets beyond the boundaries of our ordinary sense perception. If all remains to be known after knowing everything then why take the path. Why this quest? In my opinion, it’s our humble attempt at upgradation. Consider for example, the routine life of someone defined by the basic driving forces of sense perception, the life set on the most basic, littlest stage where basic instincts of fear, greed, anger, jealousy and hate confine life into a tiny ghetto which is very engaging. This is no moral judgment against anyone who sets up life in a tiny cell. It’s never about morality or immorality or a higher life or lower life. In my opinion, it’s about the actualization of the potential. All are free to choose. If one can be joyful in the little so called prison, then what is the problem? Why then hatch a bigger one?

Coming to the life at the most rudimentary level, I however take it as a life spent in a tiny cell, its boundaries defined by self-set parameters, majority of them simply adopted in the name of conventions and prevalent beliefs. Where is the creator, the godly faculty with us, if we spend life merely as a product, as a creation? The problem with spending life in a little hovel is that there is hardly any possibility of becoming one’s best version. One doesn’t become a creator. The things that pile up in the congested space narrow down the space further. The grip of the prison turns to literally enslavement. As one sees things piled so precariously overhead in such a narrow space, we get further scared of its fall. We crib because we hardly have the space to move.

Doesn’t a prisoner feel very relaxed, if he is let out from the cellar and allowed to go into the yard outside? He feels relaxed. He will feel still better if put in a spacious garden, and still better in open spaces. Same is the case with us. We want to evolve, to liberate, to move freely, to feel relaxed, a sum and summary of that nagging pinch of restlessness that always reminds us that something is missing in life. Under the open skies and the vision set on the distant horizon, we get opportunity to create, the real destiny of mankind in this avatar—not in relation to anything in particular but freely as per our benchmarks. We know that there is still something beyond the horizon—and the horizon will keep shifting as long as we keep on moving in our quest—but we don’t feel imprisoned because there is no fixed boundary. The limitation of our vision to make us see till the horizon doesn’t create a fixed boundary. One can move on and on and be part of a larger and larger reality. This is what I call creation, the basic steps towards liberation. Liberation is not about reaching the boundary, the final destination, because in that case one will still be a prisoner with the ultimate wall blocking the view. Liberation is in moving towards an ever-broadening horizon. Out of the open possibility, we change the congested cell into an open panorama where the unknown doesn’t imprison, but keeps on beckoning us through a see through walk-able horizon in the distance.

I don’t differentiate too much between knowing and awareness. Knowing is the seed that sprouts the fruits of awareness. Knowing is the beginning of awareness. The awareness of more and more leads to the realization of something beyond even knowing and awareness. Call it Samadhi, moksha or liberation. The enlightened ones whom we revere are not the ones who have cracked the code. Nobody can. The honest ones will accept, the businessmen types will create more wordiness to drown the primary question within itself and earn some more respect from the followers. The revered ones are the ones who created the most. Who walked to the distant most horizons, who walked to the brink of liberation and realized that come whatever may, it’s the same circle beginning and ending at the same point. One spreads and spreads the awareness to finally realize the point. Awareness spreads so much to be sucked into a point. Realisation is all awareness condensed into a point. A divine sublimation. This is the creation of the little seat of godliness. They inspire, they guide, they heal, they do most of the things we believe them to be capable of, but beyond that all remains still as much unknowable as before.

A little slice of truth

 It’s a lush green forest around you. Birds are chirping. It’s early morning and a cool breeze is blowing. Nearby, gurgling waters of a brook add music to the stillness around. You feel better. It feels good. The external orderliness, peace and calm raise the bar of your better feeling. With the same set of your own individual, internal, self-specific problems, worries and concerns you feel better if the surrounds are better.

The desert sand is burning. It’s noon and forget about trees you cannot see even a blade of grass for miles. You feel horrible. You feel bad. Worse than your self-specific set of worries make you feel normally. You feel bad if the surroundings are not convenient.

We cannot inhale in isolation. If there is misery in air, it will enter your lungs. Use air-masks and air filters, do whatever. Life still will be stifling and genuine efforts just a struggle because we cannot help inhaling our share of the miseries. The solution lies in cutting down on pollutants. Not in wearing masks. But when it comes to our struggle to increase our happiness, the efforts are almost as useless as wearing masks when the air is polluted.  

Our own set of factors that make life either good or bad are not the sole deciding elements in making us happy or unhappy. If we are happy, then we are just sharing a fraction of the overall happiness surrounding us. Our lungs are safe just in proportion to the purity of air around. If the quality of air is good, only then the individual battles like quitting smoking, eating healthy and doing yoga to keep lungs safe will be meaningful. 

If we are unhappy, that also is a fraction of the overall misery spread around. Individual is just a constituent of the whole. Happiness is drawn from the overall pool. How long the frogs will sing songs of self gratification in a vanishing pond? Its waters vaporizing. Its shoreline decreasing. Stanching green mossy puddle. What can be drawn out of it? Only death and misery, not life and happiness.   

A talented software engineer, with his tools of prosperity and happiness, is of no use at a place like Somalia. There is no surrounding prosperity to help him nurture his talent. There is no supportive economy and companies to help him contribute to the overall wellness and get a fraction of the happiness and feel good. A software engineer prospers in America because using his skills he can contribute to and earn back a fraction of the happiness spread around.         

The surroundings set the stage for either make or break. 

“Love thy neighbor!” By loving others you are loving yourself. By caring for others, you are caring for yourself. By contributing to happiness, you are adding to your own happiness because your share of happiness and prosperity will be just a fraction of the overall happiness around. With your effort and skills, you draw a big portion if the social forest around you is healthy like the natural forest where each breath installs new vitality in you. 

Long before you really start doing something to add to the overall wellness around you, start with a simple practice. You might be busy with scores of neck-breaking responsibilities, leaving you with very little time for real action on the goodness front. Start thinking good of others. Think good for your surroundings. Be happy over others’ victories. Smile over somebody’s stroke of luck. Feel bad for somebody’s loss. Say some sympathetic words as well. Over years, the goodness in womb will get healthy. It will deliver a healthy baby. And sooner or later you will definitely ‘do’ something to add to the overall goodness around you before you finish your journey. 

You will then have a larger share from the pool of wellness. When the sun will be setting and you preparing to enter the night for rest, you will walk into the forest with well-meaning steps. It will be a far happier retirement than it would have been otherwise.

The pointless point

 To look for ultimate truth, or reality, or absolute knowledge, the body would need immense amount of energy. Because the normal levels of energy would be sufficient to sustain the normal, collective perception that conditions our mind to settle for base-level actualization of the infinite potential.

It’s mankind’s destiny to go for truth, now or later, in this journey or the ones to come. It’s a natural evolutionary flow, it cannot be avoided. In an unawakened state this energy will go randomly, in dissipative ways, creating sweet-sour mischief, this worldliness. But it’s merely a matter of time—the time spanning various lifetimes—before it stabilizes, develops patterns of self-discipline to touch a peak in that very individual consciousness. It enables the carrier body to look for what lies beyond the simple perception-based reality. And the still remaining stumbling blocks in body, mind and emotions have to fall along; otherwise one learns the things in a tough task-masterly way.

This heightened energy finds different expressions like bhakti (devotion). Gyan (knowledge), karma (action), art and still much more that we don’t have a clue as of now.

The evolution in consciousness will never hit a dead end. It’s a cosmic soup of infinite potential. What you think, feel, imagine or act sets a new point of reality. And it goes on at every point of existence.

Faith-based expression of heightened energies is a very sublime form of expression. This dimension unfolds in the corridors of bhaav. It’s very near the soul, this channel. It’s warmly loving and draws warmth from the soul itself, the high point of joyous realization in the individual consciousness. It’s so easy to jump into the river of ‘relative bliss’ from this point because it’s very near to the source profound bliss. But before that faith has to shine bright in its purity and there will be tests through situations and circumstances, just like there will be in other paths.

In its karma expression, this energetic blizzard will sire a karma yogi in the carrier body. The carrier body will express its energetic storms in setting up disciplined, righteous energetic patterns (dharma) in the society around, like Rama and Krishna did.

In its gyan expression, the individual consciousness in its carrier body will try to know more and more, observe keenly, understand, draw logical conclusion in an effort to make a meaning of this mystery and chaos. It’s an effort to cut the mind with its own tools, using the basic faculties of the mind to undo its own framework. To allow mind to run as much as possible in its pursuit of knowledge, so that finally it stands helplessly, falls and sees a better expression across the cobwebs of its constructs.

There is another dimension of the expression of this energetic storm, a replica of the massive stars bursting somewhere in the cosmos. It’s kindalini awakening. It’s the most tangible of all the expressions. It’s a raw, naked force. It stands in front of you, holding you in its grip with a direct maneuver. It doesn’t take any diplomatic cover. It stares in your face. It shakes you. It’s nearest to the gross body in its expression. It’s so near to the base level of ego identification that you clearly feel its storm in the body as it breaks the obstructions in its path. I would say it’s a mixture of all the three above mentioned expressions. You are jolted off your safe zone at all levels of your existence. To make a meaning of all these psychic reshaping, the reformulation of the nervous system, the remodeling of the perception channel—which is usually tough with many instances of things going very wrong—the carrier body takes help of bhakti, gyan and karma (randomly, in various orders) as per the shifting surges of this psychic force in the system.

Whichever way it happens in an individual carrier body, I don’t think there is a final arriving. It’s an infinite potential. The so-called ‘final arriving’ in itself a self-set benchmark by the evolved consciousness who rose high, perceived far more than normal people and agreed to a point. It’s just like space travel. You keep travelling and never reach any edge and then accept a conceptually defined reality: Ok, let’s agree to set up this point as the boundary of the space.

At every point, in every individual consciousness and its carrier body, there is the seed of infinite expansion and potential and maybe that draws these energetic storms. And however far one goes with howsoever heightened energy, the mystery always remains the same. It all remains to be known after coming to know everything. There is always more to be realized after realizing everything that is to realize. A bit puzzling though, right? But we have to accept it logically, as long as we believe in the concept of infinity. 

Human Touch

Being a bookish guy, I’m not much into physical activities. But walking on pilgrimages seems to add a different dimension of physicality and I’m able to surpass my individual capacity and surprise my own humble self sometimes.

I share a special bond with my brother and we are here at Rishikesh at the yearend to say a bye of gratitude to the year going out and greet the new year with hope in the lap of mother Ganga. We bathe in Maa Gnaga’s holy waters early in the morning and start on the foot track to the holy shrine of Baba Neekanth. The track passes through verdant Shivalik hills of Rajaji National Park. It’s fresh and rejuvenating. At the grossest level it’s a nice exercise for one’s legs and lungs. For those who are looking for the nutrition of their souls, the names of Maa Ganga and Baba Neelkanth do the task naturally.

We go on day one and return pretty joyfully in the evening. The next day we again take early morning bath in the holy water of Ganga Maa and suddenly feel so reinvigorated to start walking again to the holy shrine. The same happens on the third day. And before we realize we have walked to the holy place on three consecutive days. Our schedule didn’t allow us to continue the walk on the fourth day, otherwise I believe I would have continued for maybe a week at least. Bathing in Maa Ganga’s sacred waters cleanses one of age-old sins. So getting one free of tiredness and fatigue is a mere cakewalk for the divine waters.

Each day, an old woman would greet us from a distance during the last stretch of the track to Baba Neelkanth. This is the offseason for the pilgrimage and very few people hit the track. She peers into the distances to spot some odd pilgrim. She is an old woman beaten by poverty, age, circumstances. Almost beaten by life and its leela, she has a pleading voice. It strikes you. Her helplessness and disadvantaged situation acting like a speed-bump, pulling at your conscience, forcing you to slow down, look at her. And that sometimes forces a few pilgrims to take out a coin or a ten-rupee note and offer it to her.

On the way up, the first day, we have given her ten rupees. She would continue showering blessings at your back as you walked away. I heard her till the next bend and waved and looked back a few times. On the way back, she again accosts us as fresh pilgrims. ‘Tai, you can see I know. We already met on the way up!’ I laugh. ‘Yes son, I know. But beta I have to ask from you even on the way down because I have collected too little money,’ she tells us very honestly. We give her a little money again.

It gets repeated on the second day as well. Somehow I felt very easy with her and talked and joked and she laughed. On the third day, December 31, we decide to give her hundred rupees as a new year gift. And what does a tiny currency note mean as a gift if you don’t sit by that person and have a word of empathy and kindness? So today we sit by her and offer her the gift money.

Then the spontaneity of those somber, kind, holy moments created a simple reality of human-to-human connect. Its real significance would strike me later and it does even now with a powerful effect. As we held her hands and offered her new year gift with kind words of happiness in the new year, the check-dam of her age-old emotions burst out. She started crying. These were tears of pain, happiness, suffering, hope. All mixed in one. She seemed a little baby crying for affection, for sympathetic human touch. My brother is a spiritualist in practice. I have a very high regard for his genuine values that he keeps on the practical platform of life. But what he does now even stumps me. I see him putting his both hands on her head, his both hands affectionately covering her head. He touches her like a father, like a son, almost like a god.

Her lifelong pains melt. She flows. She cries profusely. I have no doubt ours happens to be the first human touch of love, respect and dignity in her entire life. Her soul felt it. As a poor begging woman, the best she can expect from people is some charity money even from the kindest of souls. I felt she wasn’t prepared for this warm, genuine human touch. The way she gave into it seemed as if it was her first experience that made her realize she was also a human being. She is also something above and beyond a beggar. I know there are people who would throw a thick wad of money even without taking care to look how she looked. But will that enrich her soul that way this touch did?

We move onto the holy shrine of Lord Neelkanth. She is still crying with love and gratitude for that human touch and we can hear her blessings till the next turn. On the way back, I can see that she is peering into the distance to see us. As we reach her she greets us with a cheerful demeanor and smiles. As we sit by her to have some more chat, the sweetest fruits of human touch and kind words drop like a blessing on us. She opens her soiled, torn cloth bag and opens a treasure of human love. We get the best new year gifts by a devi. In our absence, she had hastened to a nearby pathside tiny tea seller and bought gifts for us. She gives us our gifts like a kindest mother. It’s a packet of Kurkure crunchies and a small packet of biscuits. We are the richest people in the world. I’m not a fan of crunchies but this one I would relish like a little kid. After all it’s a gift by a mother.

Did our few ten-rupee notes and one one-hundred note opened this lottery of human affection? No. Money is too small to buy human empathy and love. It was the human touch and kind words. Touch at the closed stony gates of a poor human and see what treasures topple out, the treasures that would have withered and died unseen if not for your touch.

We feel so indebted for the priceless gift that we offer her some more money and she takes it with confidence and faith like a mother receives her well-deserved share from her sons. She is very happy and points to her tattered sari and says she will buy a new one with this money.

As we get up to go and express our hope to see her again sometime in the new year, she starts crying again and says who knows she may not be alive by that time. Through tears she says that her life might be over before we come again on this path. I can feel that she would very much like to meet us—for that human touch. Thankfully there are enough kind souls who would at least give a bit of money which is also necessary for survival in this world. But how I wish there were more people who provide human touch as well, a touch that reminds a poor person that she also is a human being.

We moved slowly on our path, her blessings showering like rose petals from behind. It was a sad feeling, somehow; leaving someone behind with sad tears—even if these are of gratitude and love—is too much for a poetic man like me. I looked back a few times and waved and she waved in reply. At the bend I turned again, had a glimpse of her waving hand, heard a feeble reverberation of her blessings and moved on with the hope that she will be there when I return sometime in future.        

             

In celebration of life and living

 

Why would there be sense pleasure in nature? Can you imagine any type of life possible without it on the planet? Is manifestation possible at all without sense-driven gratification? Isn’t sensual pacification the gateway from the unmanifest to the manifest? When a flower blooms isn’t it a result of the black-bee’s sense gratification? When a rishi goes into the caves to launch his war against the senses, isn’t he himself a result of the sense gratification of his parents? When I aim for the ultimate gratification, the much cherished perpetual bliss, isn’t that a super gratification?

Poor sense pacifications, they are such a maligned entity. Their theoretical negation forms the base all the endless stream of words in holy books and scriptures. While the reality is that at the level of life’s manifestation, as it’s on earth, how will you even survive without this faculty? These are merely the faculties that have evolved with us in the game of survival. The key lies in their balanced usage for a wholesome life.

Those on the path of so-called spirituality start with an acute sense of some imbalance, some pain, loss, bitterness. The latter are just results of mismanaged, skewed usage of our natural faculties. I have seen very well-poised and balanced people serving as hawkers and rickshaw pullers in crowded bazaars; almost saintly in demeanor; at so much ease with whatever nature has given them at the level of senses and their use. And I have seen high priests, the careerist spiritualists, unfortunately most of them in fact, who are well decked up in the armor of dharma and holy look, but peace is farthest from their eyes. Many of them take a cute tumble with their lady followers.

It’s only about being at ease with yourself; nothing less, nothing more. One can use any kind of words to describe it. There is no end to words. They are the products of the faculty of our mind only. Sometimes back an old sadhu was ruminating that he got a nightfall which he considered a sin. Well, had you been healthy in your ideas about sex and women, had been balanced in your ideas and usage of this natural sense-born faculty, you won’t have been crying over night falls in old age, I thought. It’s not about negating sense-born desires. It’s not even about getting saturated with them. It’s all about balance. Like when you eat. Not much to give you ache, not too less to starve you. Like Buddha realized when he almost died after starving himself for months.

Learn to be at ease dear brothers and sisters. If you are sitting in a brothel and are at ease with yourself, you are your own saint. If you are occupying the highest seat of a pontiff and itching with restlessness then you are a novice still. So learn the art of being at ease with yourself wherever you are situated. Balance. Balance. Balance. In everything that life offers. Accept. Accept the windfalls of the pleasure of flesh with humility and gratitude and pay back with sincere hard work. It’s a beautiful world because of the teasing interplay of sensory desire seeking, not because of those who preach against it and keep smoldering with desire within.

You dear seeker, you ought to feel obliged to the teasing ways of desires. You have been given this beautiful life by an exciting play of desires between your parents. I am sure they were not meditating while you got launched into the womb. Desire is the force that’s catapulting the forces of creation and generation: at the level of species in mating urge, and huge galaxies expanding at the cosmic level. That’s the force that pulls this cosmos. Those who are running away from life, relationships, needful responsibilities, mundane pleasures need to remember that most of our gods, rishis and munis had beautiful partners, families and children. They are called bhagwan because they used their energies in an optimum way and managed their sensual faculties in the way they wanted. They used them in a balanced way instead of falling imbalanced to one particular impulse.

In balanced amount even poison serves like amrit. In imbalanced amount even amrit turns poison. A judicious mix of what nature has given is nothing short of enlightenment. Why put your fate solely in the pages of holy books? They are mere indicators, just creation of the minds who could write better than you and me. So ease up. Just be. Accept what you are. Why negate? As the component of being at ease builds up, the tendency to go into impulsive, imbalanced use of sense pleasure faculties will get transformed itself. New neurological circuits develop that drive more hormones of wellness through our system. It’s a very simple physiological fact. Why interpret it to mythological proportions?

The ultimate untroubled playfulness is a result of carefully nurtured well-balanced use of our energies and sensorial faculties. We come to a ripening. The impulses lose their meaning and desires drop off without pain like a ripe fruit drops by itself. The senses and their potential for pleasure still remain in the body but their use or no use means the same. They no longer drive our thoughts, actions and emotions. You get a choice and use doesn’t drive you crazy and no-use doesn’t make you suffer. In a way one rises above that dimension. Call it realization or enlightenment. It’s but merely more conscious, aware form of living; just transformation of energies for a bit more refined thoughts and emotions; a shift in perspective.

It doesn’t mean I find people in the so-called worldly dimension as lowly placed. Everything is just same in mother existence. It’s only about a choice to be something extra if our present sense of existence makes us restless and we feel something missing. It’s merely a choice to be at more ease with the self.

Just learn to stay in the present. This is the ultimate meditation. No need to roam in the Himalayas. Do it among the sweet-sour scent of humanity around you. It’s almost always about what we had been or what we would be. Very rarely we are what we are now. And thus dear brothers and sisters, we exit from the portals of life as ignorant of its meaning as when we entered it.

The flower bud opens with a pining majesty. Infantile petals ready to be born for one more fragrant, juicy season. The goddess of beauty opens another eye to see this world with more colors. But the de-juicing black-bee is also around! Things of beauty and joy are almost always accompanied by the greedy swirls of utilitarian air—two aspects of duality. But that doesn’t mean the things of beauty and joy shouldn’t smile and bloom.

I know it disturbs many minds who have accepted the superiority of particular paths in taking them to the exclusive class of refined and holy beings on earth. That also is another form of ego: the desire to be in a state from where the rest of humanity seems a group of meek ignorants who need reformation and enlightenment. So take this slightly bitter pill of information with a glass of water and be at ease. If your mind still feels disturbed then rethink about the utility of gurus and scriptures who haven’t given you equanimity of mind to even digest this. Then reboot. And smile. Then laugh. At yourself. It helps.

The infinite perceiving itself through the finite

 Nothing stands in isolation. Can a drop of water stand alone in the ocean? Can an ocean exist without a drop, i.e., with a hole in its heart and the drop missing? Same is the cosmos. It's one continuity in one or the other form. Sea is nothing but drops drops everywhere in the expansion of its geographical spread. Same is with the super sea of cosmic consciousness. It's merely individual consciousness everywhere. Now the question is: how come there is a perception of individual consciousness? Well, that's how the fabric is! Start dividing a sea into tiniest dots! What happens? All we have littler seas made of tinier drops! The threshold from individual to infinite intelligence exists and doesn't exist at the same time. Possibly the sea itself perceives itself like a drop. Divide it into countless drops, they retain the feeling of individuality. Individual consciousness is thus nothing but a point of perception in the transforming whirlpool where the elements are going cyclically. Is a drop fundamentally and qualitatively different from a big sea? It isn't! Coming to humanoids. The so called conscious is the littlest bit of perception surrounded by the subconscious, which in turn melts into the infinite intelligence and consciousness pervading all around. That's the ladder to spread yourself, to feel more meaningful. One's subconscious part of mind is most active just before sleep and immediately after waking up. That's when the gates open tangibly for taking a quantum jump from conscious to subconscious and further on into super-consciousness. Grab it. Put your affirmation and claim to a larger self. There are infinite possibilities. What you seek at your greediest best may not be more than a drop of water desiring to double its size. You have the pathway etched to be the sea itself. You already are. Just that all that remains to be done is to start seeing through the walls of conscious, watch eagerly through the windows of subconscious in those walls and get connected to the infinite right there in front of you. It's suitable to start with tangibles to break the virtual shackles, just like it's easier to start with body in yoga. The higher battles with more virtual demons are managed further on the path. At the mind front, it's more convenient to start with the conscious part because it's tangible through its operational part through thoughts and emotions. There starts the second tier of management leading to the subconscious part and further on to be out of the prison to come united with everything around. It's not mother existence's concern whether there are storms lashing a drop, pond or sea, or peaceful calm waters pervade. To her indiscriminating eyes all things are just as they are. What happens in the drop of your consciousness is solely your own concern. You create the storms or peace in the tea cup of your existence. And the tools to make and break are conscious thoughts and their shadows in the form of emotions and feelings. They majorly decide the energy pattern pervading across this specific pattern of awareness, this little arrangement of energy within the super sea of energy. Pain, suffering, disease, stress and tensions are mere effects, little obstruction in the flow of river, the life stream. And the repair work primarily begins from the conscious part of the mind , which operates through thoughts, emotions and feelings. So just like u go gymming, go gymming with thoughts. Work like a mason. And etch your reality, your better self on the subconscious, which in turn reflects as your truth on the endless canvas hung around with its infinite dimensions. Good luck!