Pests of Criminality in the Love Crop: Apathy

 

Helen Keller: “We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings.”

The moment one succumbs to apathy, one surrenders a considerable portion of his/her loving self. To nurture our indifference, we feign ignorance many times. Allowing the bug of apathy to bite you is an open invitation to get caught in the quagmire of stinking mediocrity. It robs you of your chance to be great in your own ways because no greatness is complete without a kind, considerate and loving heart.

Leo Buscaglia: “I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.”

The best in you is unfortunately buried under a layer of apathy. It needs to be dug out. Changing the world means basically changing our own self. Look outside and you find it the most daunting task. Look within and you find the key.

Handle apathy, and you can avoid the creeping bugs of skepticism, which will definitely save you from becoming a cynical being. After that nothing matters too pointedly to burn your self in agony.

And now for a clearer picture, look around. Beware, murderer and robber are just an arm-length away!

Long before we see outright criminals, there is a low intensity, almost intangible process at the mass scale that eats into common psyche, facilitating mass apathy, boosting millions of transgressions. It makes an individual careless of his step, as long as it helps in reaching the perceived objective, and so many times this tiny step carries the massive effect of spoiling someone’s journey altogether.

Feeling lucky not to have come across a real-life murderer with blood-ridden hands and a dagger in hand? Feeling at ease not to have faced a robber, with muscular barrel chest, eye-patch and devilish beard running away with yours and others’ money? Well think again for you might be grossly mistaken. There are murderers and robbers on the prowl around. And in far more numbers than you can ever think even in your wildest of horrifying imagination.

There is a lot more violence hidden under masks than you see in actual battles, street quarrels and brawls. Fire of hate on the surface may not actually give clue to the smoldering heat under the surface. 

It can be your sheepish looking, harmless milkman, holding the potent weapon of slow death over the years. Yes the milkman with his passable crime, with little doses over months and years. In India the fight for self-survival is so brutal that poor milkman won’t flinch an eye before mixing urea and adhesives like Fevicol to make adulterated milk. It breeds death, slowly over months and years, with no sign of a murder committed. To the milkman all that matters is a successful day with all the pots empty and sold out. What happens later is none of his concerns.

It can be the sweet-tongued sweet-maker pampering your sweet-tooth with an affable smile and still honeyed words. Yes the sweet-maker with his shortcuts to profits with fake milk derivatives and cancerous chemicals and colors. And there are many, as many as you count the sweet shops, except for the few moralistic ones. India is crammed to the guts, and the mere struggle to survive, at any cost and through whatever means, justifies the end to get more bucks in the wallet.

It can be the poor-looking harmless fruit vendor. You even end up having sympathy for him. Little do you realize that the fruits you presume to add to your life are in fact cutting into your days. Their expertise to survive the cutthroat competition lies in artificial, cancerous, chemical-catalyzed ripening, waxing on the surface to make stale fruits look fresh and scores of other devil-devised machinations to get some more bucks at the cost of disease and destruction in others’ livers.

These are the murders on the safer side of law. Nobody dies instantly. Death comes slowly. It’s a visibly causeless disease. Nobody can be blamed. They vend out poison slowly, in mild doses. They add a day to their survival at the cost of years from the lives of those whom they serve.

There are robbers around as well, in clean shirts and socially respected avatars. Law cannot touch them because they don’t rob outrightly like the condemnable criminals barging into a bank and running away with the whole vault of money and gold. They do it in slow sips over years, as invisible cogs in the corrupt machinery. In both governmental and private institutions and departments, these legalized robbers sit on their desks with an affable smile and clean slate. It’s facilitation money. The extra money has to land invisibly into their pockets to move the process stuck at their check-post.  

Then there are countless petty criminals and transgressors, stomping their way to their destination at any cost. It’s an ant-swarm. Law never looks more impotent than in the face of such brazen frequency, everywhere, every moment: spitting, urinating, defecating, shouting, molesting, eve-teasing, raping and countless other forms of violence from the mildest to the heinous most. It makes it seem as if the rulebook is just a draw of lots for all the criminals around. Only a few are unlucky to get their name taken out as legal offenders. The rest clap over their luck for being left out.  

So there are murderers and robbers all around. And law cannot sneak into each and every soul to arise either fear or conscience to think of injustice done to others’ in the struggle to survive. Poverty and greed make a person too thick-skinned to be sensitive to the world beyond the self. The only option is to hope for a generational shift when more people will be aware of the issues beyond the limited self. Don’t you think we need to have the topics of kindness, consideration and civic sense in our curriculum?

Unfortunately with the Indian population ever-exploding, and more people fighting for diminishing resources, it seems a dream to visualize a society where the milkman, the fruit-vendor, the sweet-maker, the government officials and rest of the horde will become humane enough to be self-responsible and follow the laws even if there is no apparent risk of getting caught.

Law-abiding instincts get honed over a period of time. It’s like stopping at a red light on a totally empty road, in the depths of night, with absolutely nobody around, and no fear of punishment, but you still put up breaks, and smile. It gives a strange sense of contentment to be self-responsible for such tiny transgressions. Just looking forward to a day when majority of the Indians will come out of the pit of self-obsessed survival and be self-responsible not just for their own existence but for others’ convenience as well. 

Considerate individuals make a loving society where you at least take care of your fellow journeymen’s interests, or at least try not to stomp over neighborly feet. In this manner, we can avoid a stampede at least. With our little caring outlook in traffic, in parking lots, in bazaars, and everywhere, a small rectified step is far more effective in changing the system than you believe. If you still have any doubts about the effectiveness of your considerate, caring step, which in effect mathematically add to loving kindness, then I take some time to narrate an Arabic story.

A fire broke out in a city. Everybody was running around to salvage as much as possible before escaping to safety. From the wealthiest to the poorest, from the strongest to the weakest, all appeared in a mad frenzy to take something more from the pits of fire. A small sparrow but was seen scurrying back and forth between a pond nearby and the burning city. It would take a beakful of water and drop it into the fire. A powerful man saw this and laughed, “O little sparrow, when the world is burning, and so high and mighty find themselves helpless to do anything, what will your tiny drops do?” The sparrow said, “It might not mean much to the fire, but on the day of the judgment I will have the freedom of saying that I did what I could.”

Well, I don’t think we need to say more on this to emphasize the point.

Chronic Self-seeking: Love’s Enemy

 

Selfishness is the mask we wear to hide the vulgar lines of our fears and insecurities. We, self-pitying, covering our self-fulfillment, justify our self-conceit under the stated principle of practical tools of survivability in a dangerous world.

Long before you fight to earn respect, try it with self-respect. Self-respect increases with decreasing selfishness. But most often we stand for self-pity, taking selfishness as the mark of our achievement. Mark my words, it’s nothing but an effort to maintain a false position.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

Well, selfishness is the real life manifestation of an inconsiderate nature. And the symptom and the disease both point to a bigger reality, lack of loving kindness.

In the natural scheme of things, it's a walk on the tightrope of giving and taking. Trees draw nutrition from earth and give back fruits, foliage, oxygen and more. We humans have a tendency to take more and give less. It’s perhaps an off-shoot of our oversized brain. But then don't you think being take-oriented has turned it into an unnatural stampede, toppling natural cycles and dislodging natural laws. It's literally a big house on fire and everybody running around to gather as much as possible.

Quite ironically, we term such mad frenzy as the mark of progress and development. Guys, most of the time we are simply running away to find solutions to the problems created by us only. If you put greed in the forefront as a collective goal at the largest level, all endeavors turn counterproductive and leave us with two more problems with every solution we find. After a time, the pool of problems becomes so large, having crossed the critical limit of sustainability, that progress and development amount to be mere futile efforts at finding solutions to the mountain of problems.

Little do we realize that salvaging petty things doesn't matter anymore if the house itself has burnt, another matter that we always contrive morally better-sounding justification for our chronic self-pursuits. But it requires no brains of a mathematical genius to realize that in a scenario where everybody is shooting off to grab the cake, what will be the result.

My humble words might sound dull in front of the dazzling sun of enlightened selfishness. But believe me it has turned the scale too lopsided to survive. Loving kindness is the counter-weight. Policies at the institutional level should drive cumulative excellence instead of pandering the inconsiderate self-seeking mad rush. We need to learn to give away, let it go beyond a point for our peace and larger gains at the collective level.

Joyce Meyer: “If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!”

Self-restraint carries its own type of sensuous luxury. Try it. You will find it better with a less full tummy than a burping, gas infested glutton. Centurions are the ones who are meager eaters, not gluttons. Nature gives signals. If a bit of self-restraint in eating can add decades to one’s age, why cannot restraint in your life's force turn your path into the shady, wooded, luxuriant vales where happiness and love are in abundance? Here you find your soul. There you were definite to lose it. And the biggest loss is not to feel, know and discover one's soul. That is why chronic self-seekers die a miserable, regretful death. They realize what have they missed.

Sharing my friend's message during a metro ride in the morning on her way to office:

“Started my day on a good note by offering my seat to a heavily pregnant woman....she was leaning against the pole and looking so exhausted at the start of the day....such robust young and old men, shameless enough not to even ask whether she would sit...they just pretend not to have seen....such small things tell you to what extent people are selfish for their own comfort....Even other women are so insensitive....looking away so that they don't have to offer a seat....”

Do you find such petty selfishness worth it? I think most of us find it repulsive while reading. Unfortunately, we flow along the tide apathy while we get tested for this in real life.

Believe me, an act born of such loving kindness keeps our day fragrant. Ask those who decided to look the other way. They will need more effort to keep the truth buried under false pride and petty vanity. They will have to divert the gaze from the real self to retain the false ego. 

Well that proves my diagnosis of the commonest of the common Indian trait of petty selfishness. A result of too much of population and forever falling short resources, I suppose. Everything falls short of expectations including metros, buses, roads, jobs, bread, butter, forests, water, land, sky, etc., etc. The list is endless. Overpopulation is one of the biggest social maladies. People just never have enough. It breeds discontentment. A sinister apathy for the cause of fellow sufferers in the crowd creeps in. It narrows the vision. It clogs the spirit. It veritably dehumanizes the collective self. Individuals merely follow the suit.

Caught in the tentacles, you just cannot see beyond the small platform of your own struggle. It breeds very unhealthy personalities. Clinging to their own little grabs is the skill they get versed in over the years in their lives. Then it becomes a very selfish mass, the terrible self-seekers incapable of grasping the civic sense of any cause that lies outside their own.

People get basically so absorbed in their own world that the senses, which allow them to perceive the world around, don't work at all when it comes to their fellow human beings. This attitude is criminally callous. Very unfortunately, we Indians seem to be very tiny hearted. There are hundreds of little incidents daily that prove it more and more.

Herein exists our chance to grab greatness. The mere fact that you decide to come out of the inconsiderate club, and be more sensitive, considerate and loving for a bigger cause, will set you apart, making you an achiever in itself. Come, grab your chance of greatness! Only this much triumph will be carried forward by the karmic DNA of your soul in the journeys next. The mountains of gold will remain on earth to be recycled and claimed for a false sense of victory over the generations.

Desert Palm and Mountain Oak are Great in their Own Ways

 

Every seed carries the potential to be the mightiest, luxuriant-most tree. The powerful force of creation provides the potential for the maximum in seeds and species. Nature doesn’t want it to be a world of half-smiles, half-growths, half-blossoms and half-potential. There is a tendency for fullness. It draws the process of evolution for the maximum.

There is a natural drive for completion, for what we humans call greatness. You, me and all of us are born for greatness. There are seeds of greatness in all of us. And there is no better barometer of evaluating greatness than realizing one’s loving kindness.

A desert seed has the potential to grow in its own way, in harmony and adjustment with the harsh environment. A seed in a lush green rain-forest has its own level of potential as per the rich soil, water and nutritious weather. Does it mean a date palm can never reach the levels of greatness because there is sand, burning temperatures, dry winds and no water? Does it mean that only a mountainous oak has the right to greatness because it has the best climes, abundance of water, cool temperatures and cradling lush green mountains?

A desert palm is great in being the signatory of life in the lifeless sand. It is great in merely surviving. In being there where life has almost no business to be. It is great in standing as a milestone of hope for some lone traveler who might come and rest under the shade for some time and then take the journey onward. It is great in throwing a piece of shade on the burning sands. It is great in showing the light after a long time and prompting the traveler to carry on and reach out to the oasis full of life. It’s a major link in the chain of hope.

Like desert palm you might be born in the poorest of poor conditions. But that doesn’t mean you are not born with the potential to be the greatest. You are! Just that your greatness is different from the mountain oak and the people lucky enough to be born in somewhat better circumstances. Greatness shouldn’t be compared. When we do, we just cannot appreciate the worth of our journey.

We are born in the predetermined soil of our destiny. We have our own individual destinies. Destinies are but not bigger or smaller. They are just about realization of the full potential one is born with. Nature is kind enough to give us the maximum potential to grow as per the conditions.

A desert palm can be a mighty achiever and feel proud if it doesn’t compare itself with the mountain oak.

Strive hard, rake up the soil of your situations, nourish it with the moisture of your sweat and actualize the potential you are born with. And be great in your own way. Don’t compare your greatness with anyone around. Instead of comparing the tiny size of your prominence with the tall structures of success around, look at your own growth from the dusted toughness around the place where you took hold and rooted yourself to grow.

You might be happier in tough situations with lesser growth than unhappy people with taller growths in best soils. The moment you realize you have sucked out all the potential that was given to you since birth to grow and survive, you acknowledge the progress you have made. A proud feeling sinks in and you can’t help smiling.

So isn’t it natural that the date palm can be happier than the mountain oak? 

Need not retell that such genuine happiness is a fertile ground for the seed of your compassionate self to sprout forth in full luxury.

Barge through the Traps of Self-annihilation

 You must be really happy. You take pride in the fact that you don’t smoke, don’t drink, exercise daily and keep up the best diet plan. So everything is supposed to be OK on the health front. O wait! You may still be ingesting toxins into your body, suffering slow poisoning stretched over a period of years.

Long after the symptoms become visible, quite ironically, the thing responsible might still stand unaccused, putting blame on more tangible things like lifestyle, diet, pollution, biological accident, etc., etc. It’s better to know this unseen source of suffering. It’s the uncontrolled mind. It’s as potent a risk factor as any other visible agent of ill health like smoking, drinking, imbalanced lifestyle or accidents. To make it really dangerous, it directly obstructs the emergence of real compassionate you on the stage of worldly affairs. Its turbulent waves disturbing the surface like wind tosses the pond waters on a full moon night thus breaking the moon’s full reflection. You see broken pieces of its beauty scattered over the surface.

The consequences of an uncontrolled mind are no accident. This self-destruction takes a long and winding route to its destination. The spin-outs of an uncontrolled mind—hate, anger, greed, jealousy, impulsiveness, anxiety, worries, illusions and false assumptions—are as bad for our body as they are for the social life we lead. Although not advisable to say this, but I would prefer to be an alcoholic or smoker than having an untamed mind. An unkempt mind fluxes toxins into our blood stream, corroding the basic principles of self-preservation. It’s unnatural.

What is mind? It’s just the operational aspect of our brain. So we have to put up the operations in order. The brain will save you from becoming a self-destroyer. Long before there is any outside enemy, we have to spot the enemy inside, i.e., the treacherous trait of being utterly irresponsible towards our mind. That is the real enemy. It stops you from loving your own self primarily. After that the talk of loving kindness for others remains an unachievable hypothesis. So put the runaway mind in order. The outer world is a mere reflection of the invisible world inside. Hold the reins of your mind firmly and you become the master of your destiny.

The challenge lies not in trying to control the external environment. The real task lies in managing the mind. Isn’t it sheer folly that the thing that keeps the potential to limitless happiness is allowed to go out of loop and spin into a chaotic trajectory where it releases poison into our organs?

We spend literally 24 hours to control the external things in life and hardly anyone tries to control the ticking time-bomb of our doom inside. The fire that is supposed to power us to excellence is hardly managed. No wonder it becomes the pyre of self-annihilation. You fight so hard to manage the worldly affairs. And you hardly care about the management of the world inside you. The guiding flicker of life, the patronizing beam having limitless potential to infinite happiness, goes out of control and becomes a wild fire. A fire out of control is destructive. It’s useful as long as it’s managed. The mind is like that fire. Tend it. Manage it. Keep an eye on it. And you will have its life-giving warmth and path-showing light for you.

It doesn’t take too much of an effort. It’s nothing in comparison to the huge effort you put in managing the world outside. It doesn’t need your sweat and blood of worldly battles. It just needs half an hour of quiet contemplation, the time even less than you might spend in thinking about your enemies out there and visualize doom and destruction to them.

All it needs from you is to stop running, close eyes, put up a smile on your lips, look inwards, feel your breathing and walk silently to your real self. The closer you reach that core, the foundation of your real self, healthier you become in mind and body. The better the inner world, the better still will be the external circumstances related to you.

Inhale peace and tranquility. Douse the ravaging fire. Turn it into a soulful bonfire and you like a fatigued traveler basking in healing warmth and peace by its side while the snowy blizzards hit around. Dive deep. Leave the turbulent and disturbed surface and move towards the unmoving bottom. You will discover the futility of just wasting life in the storms on the surface.

Once you come out on the surface after the deep contemplative dive, the world outside will not be the scary choppy sea of earlier. It will be a playground of excitement. Life will be fun. Struggles will become just a sport to be enjoyed. Life turns into an enjoyable game instead of an agonizing struggle.

All it needs is just a daily dose for the mind. Some quiet moments when you leave the visible and go into the embrace of the invisible. When you go into the source of your creation and emerge almost reborn. With loads of love, of course.

Come out of the Cave (sic) Grave

 Some day you have to choose to come out of the tunnel. And see light. I do the same and have never fallen short of congratulating myself for doing so. I smile and have a restful inhale of the fresh air. I open my arms and embrace this world, my world. It welcomes me back with a brotherly hug. I smile again and close my eyes to look inward. I take a sip of peace from the sea of tranquility and open eyes. The world has changed. It’s far better now. I have changed my eyes to look at it differently.

It was dark and intimidating. It was as much frightening and menacing as it was painful. The tunnel was as much dug by the external circumstances as the negative tools of my own mind. I had entered a cave. A little recess in the mountainside of life. An anguished escape from the routine troubles in life. Then I became my own enemy and started digging earth in the direction I shouldn’t have. I was digging a tunnel. An aimless futile struggle. My depressed, bruised mind removing earth faster and faster. It was taking me deeper into the womb of darkness. It was like digging my own grave. A bruised brain and injured mind are the potent tools of a self-grave digger.

With sweating body, soiled clothes and aching limbs, now I come on the other side of the mountain of life. Out of the self-dug cave that almost became a grave. Life has changed its meaning. The poles have reversed. I take credit for the small act of having kept on the digging job.

It’s a new beginning. I know myself better. It’s a new sun. The air is so fresh. The earlier life seems a little book of lessons. This entire self-grave digging job can make or break. There is a very thin line. One can have a threadbare escape if the realization strikes in the nick of time. I feel blessed and lucky that it did in my case.

As I close my eyes, a feeble smile on my lips, and inhale the essence of a new, redefined life, the journey seems worth it. Life is almost on a pause now, so slow in motion that I see the marvels of nature around. They are for me as much as they are for anybody. The spring sun kissing the winter-beaten leaves. Songs of birds. Gentle breeze and the swirls of a footloose bird in the sea of cool air. Bits of peace lying around. Watch closely, there are countless pieces of beauty floating around in the eternal sea of time. All we need is to stop to observe and own the great artwork of existence waiting to be possessed.

I inhale the fathomless fragrance of peace, harmony and integrity from the farthest part of the cosmos. Cosmic harmony. Endless orderliness in orbits. Ever-going periodicity. Supportive synchronization. Fury of explosions and astronomical speeds tamed to harmless, slow acts of space-time continuum. Me and my environment feel like an iota of this cosmic harmony.

I allow myself a gentle smile. Ripples of peace cascade through my soul. I close my eyes again and look inwards, deeper than the superficial world of my body and the worldly circumstances. I can travel far deeper than I ever thought. There are undisturbed paths leading to my true self. It’s a replica of the cosmic orderliness. I am on the path to meet my true self, the self that is destined to be happy and at peace with itself.

It awaits there, the self, with unlimited dose of happiness, comfort, compassion and peace. We only deny ourselves the dose of this cosmic healing pill by looking out on this world, the superficial world of frustration, jealousy, hate, futile rat race, mundane cravings, illusions, assumptions, fears, apprehensions and cravings. It doesn’t allow us to smile, to close eyes and start the journey inward. No wonder we have hardly travelled in the real sense even if we are lucky to spend hundred years of chronological time in a lifetime.

The journey to the real inner self, on the other hand, is not bound by the puny limits of time and funny horizons of space. It’s open and there are unlimited dimensions. In minutes one covers cosmic distances. And when you smile and look at this world outside, you see a replica, a reflection of the inherent beauty. You are better now and happier. You look at this world with a healthier mind and sturdier brain. More importantly you have a better heart. You are capable of loving more and hating less, the hallmark and definition of a real human being.

Fight for Love as a Soldier of Peace

 

Norman Schwarzkopf says, “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

Strictly at the personal front, the more you put up a concerted effort to be at peace with yourself, the less will be the burden on your life through the shady agents of hate, jealousy, anger and greed.

Mother Teresa says peace begins with a smile. So take the first step. Smile. Universal peace and harmony is looking for your peace of mind. Anger, resentment, war and strife are not anything in themselves. They are simply absence of peace.

Inner abundance presents itself the moment you decide to be aware of it. With a bit focused attention, you will see that brotherhood, grace, generosity, peace and nonviolence are simply the pictures reflected on this inner screen. Let there be disturbance in this pool of peace, you see power, possession and pleasure taking the front seat and drive away love and joy from your life.

For the things to fall in place, there has to be a starting point. The world outside is infinite, so who will decide and judge where to begin from? It will take million years to decide. Cut it short. We can start from ourselves. Like cells make the body, we constitute the human and the overall system. Peace in your heart and love in your eyes is a good diagnosis for creation. Feel proud of your contribution. And mind it, before you go searching for the rewards of a heart at peace, remember that peace is its own reward.

Dalai Lama: “We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”

If avoidance of fight and quarrel is cowardice and escapism, then biting back a dog that has bitten you is bravery. If running away from fire is defeat, then standing in front of a speeding car is bravery.

Acceptance doesn’t mean defeat. It means taking control of yourself, sympathize with the self, giving yourself an understanding pat on the back, pause, sit down, rest and allow the storm to pass over. And then you see the light. Believe me, storms burn out too fast. While peace drags the moments to eternity.  

When you get caught in the quagmire of adverse situations, the more you struggle, the more are the chances of drowning. The perilous eddies are most dangerous on the surface. But sometimes allowing yourself effortlessly to be sucked in gives you a chance to slip out of the vortex, because the base is very narrow. Similarly, problems have an apparent broad surface, but in reality have a very tiny base below the surface. So don’t choose to waste yourself on the surface of issues and routine headaches. Just dive down. There you see the reality. Most of the seemingly mammoth problems eddy out of a very small, funny base.

So the cool soldier, be on your guard, lower your head and dive to survive and see your glorious sun some other day at some other point. And don’t forget to smile when you see the light. Love will be your destiny because bitterness will be dissolved in the process.

Dissolve in Loveful Trance through Sufi Meditation

 

You have to accept the calling of a path that is receptive to life, love and peaceful living. Sufism is calling attention to the inherent unity under different caste, class, creed and religions. It unearths love, which in turn melts pride, prejudices and ignorance, the breeding grounds of hate and jealousy.

My father named or nicknamed me as Sufi. As a Hindu, I rate it as a great syncretic sentiment. And why not, probably I am the only Hindu in Haryana who is called Sufi.

Coming to Sufism, it’s the best mystical offering by Islam to the overall humanity. The strands of unity, oneness, universal brotherhood and love for all waft around from the esoteric incense of Sufism. So, I am happy to be called Sufi.

Music plays a big part in Sufi meditations. Meditation is nothing but being vigilant and aware of your loving self in a totally relaxed body. No wonder it is the best exercise for the soul. Play some soulful Sufi music on a higher volume so that it swathes you in its gripping, haunting pools of melodious surrender to the ultimate. I am going to explain the steps of a simple Sufi meditation technique. This meditation is best done in a spacious room or hall because it involves swirling around.

Listen to the initial notes and you will feel some spiritual haunts spreading from the central Asian lands. It is about connecting to mother earth, and from her to the solar system, galaxy and the ultimate. So perform it on naked feet, or be in socks at the most if the climate in your part is too harsh.

Stand still as you listen to the build up of the Sufi melody. Just relax and look within, taking the enchanting trilling of the music seep into you. Now spread your right arm by your side, raise the arm to the level of your shoulder, elbow turned at an angle and the hand raised up, palm facing upwards . Your elbow shoulder and chest being in a line. Spread the left arm to the other side, keep it comfortably straight, without putting strain to straighten it. The palm spread out and pointing to the ground. The hand dangling at an angle from the horizontal.

And start swirling, go round and round on your feet in anticlockwise direction. Just slowly build up the momentum. There is a difference between exercise and meditation. In the latter, your spirit is involved. The body is just the starting point. Keeping the hands as mentioned above, as you start swinging, swirling, allow the divine forces to take control of your body. If you really do it, believe me you won’t fall, because there are balancing forces all around you.

When we stand, we think we are in control of our body and only we are managing its position. Little do we realise that our apparent control is just an illusion. The all-balancing forces of eternity are what which maintain our standing. And look at the eternity’s grace, it allows us to think that we are solely responsible for maintaining our posture.

Your body will be swinging in circles, like a swinging top, but that is just the outer periphery of your being. After a time, you will realize that just the matter or food body is going in circles. The real you, the axis of your being, the consciousness, remains immovable. Just like a swinging top swirls around a central nail, you will go within to the immovable point of your being. The externalities will be swung out by the centrifugal forces of divine realization. The centripetal forces will suck you into the core of your being. And the apparent objectives around you—and so will the illusions—will just merge into an all-pervading continuum, one layer of energy, which even quantum physics has verified.

The differences will melt. Going in circles around the point of your consciousness, you will realise it is all just one energy, spreading, transforming, altering, from here to there. If you maintain that equipoise of spirit, soul and matter, you can build up the momentum to continue forever! Well, you need not do that of course. Haa Haa.

So continue as long as you enjoy the deep sips of solace. After that lie down on your stomach. Surrender to mother earth and grandmother eternity. Just lie like a child. You will have glimpses of that cosmic security and protection when your mother carried you in her womb. Remain like this till the momentum of mystical oblivion embraces you.

Open your eyes later. Take a turn to lie on your back. But move very gently, without giving any jerk to the body. Be so soft as if you want to preserve the softest things in you. Rub your hands. Place them gently on your face, smile, be thankful to the eternal law for the moments of peace. 

Learn the Art of Emptying

 

Well before you take steps to fulfill your dreams, learn the art of emptying, of letting go, of letting out unwanted mossy dregs in the container of your destiny. Emptying isn’t defeatist in nature. It’s not surrender. It’s a calculated step towards victory, towards fulfillment, towards love. It’s the preparation for gain, the beginning of filling up. Instead of running after the mirage of fulfillment, first focus on emptying. Fulfillment is just a step away.

Fullness starts at the moment of complete emptying. Wash, scrub, rinse and drain out the muck from the pot of your destiny. Wash away hate, anger, jealousy, ignorance, unrealistic desires, phobias, complexities and overblown ambition. Drain these out. Let it be a perfectly clean and swanky pot of emptiness. The universe is expanding. It wants clean chambers to pour its energy into. It will sneak into the clean house in the form of your dreams and aspirations. And love of course in a form spread out in an unimaginable way.

The swabs clinging to the bottom are the repellents to fulfillment. Clean these. Work on emptying. Work on emptiness and you are in fact moving towards fullness. In a perfectly clean container, there is no limitation on fulfillment, no hurdles to materialization of dreams, no restrictions on the infinite cosmic harmony pouring its vastness into it.

A scribbled canvas has limitations of painting, but a clean one has infinite possibilities of shapes and pictures. Scrub the slate clean before you start the journey. Even if it means a lifetime of emptying, it still will not be a loss. Even a second of fulfillment will be worth it. It will still be better than pouring the nectar of your efforts into an unclean pot, and just adding to the stinking broth that never gives happiness and satisfaction.

A clean empty house is a magnet. It pulls positive forces by itself. It's natural like gravitational force. It invites fullness. Complete emptiness invites complete fullness. Put your house in order. Set up your invitation to fullness on the door. Forget about the rest. Very soon, you will hear the knock of fortune and love on your door. Like water flows to pits and hollows in earth, good luck naturally flows to clean, emptied and tidied containers. Come on, let your share flow in! Love will be its major proportion, don’t worry!

Love your Duties to Retain your Footing

 

Our duties, responsibilities and commitment are the roots that keep the tree of freedom and rights standing. The tree of rights falls without the roots of duties. Read the constitutions anywhere in the world and you will realize what I mean.

Loving one's job and many other duties is a huge step in self improvement. You hardly realize when you step over from the small stage of individual duties to general to universal responsibility. I call this sprout of love. Love sprouts.

The weeds of hate and anger are growing too rapidly. Don't we need more and more love sprouts? Once you start loving your commitments, gone is the discontent, brighter turns the light inside, and happier you are. Love is the destination where one can enter from so many alleys open on all sides.

Phillips Brooks says, “Happiness is the natural flower of duty.” Even George Washington found happiness and moral duty inseparably connected.

Your sense of responsibility fuels your flight of independence. The ability to respond (responsibility) is the price you have to pay to achieve your own type of grand greatness. The more your sense of responsibility, the lesser you are prone to blame others. With less blame in your heart, and lesser grudges, there will be more reasons to smile and accept others as they are.

All the talk of universal brotherhood, love and sense of responsibility are incomplete without your own contribution, your love for your responsibilities. And mind you, privileges, responsibility and opportunity are part of the same system. They sustain each other. You just cannot have one of them and stay happy. Not sustainable man. 

Seen the fate of a free kite? It falls man. A stringed kite is better than a free flier. Any day.

We can fly and rise higher only if we are tied to certain responsibilities and commitments; our freedom-lorn spirit tamed to an extent by tolerable social conventions, individual values, family setup, the sweet-sour tides in our offices, etc. But most of the time we find it as a drag on our real enjoyment of life. We just feel how great life would be without all such irritating stuff of the mundane life. But guys tell me, can a stringless kite fly? The kite flies because there is a string pulling it down to help it rise higher in the sky. It also tries to negate the limitations set up by the string. It shakes its head in negation. OK! No issues. It has every right to create a scene. But tell me, what happens when its dream to be string-free become true? It just takes a few ecstatic circles in air and falls onto the ground. Those free swirls of its dreams prove to be its death dives.

We are the stringed kites fella. We fly and rise high only because our destructive passions and straying traits are tamed and tied to a string. So love your commitments, your responsibilities, and your struggles for small-small things in life. The moment you love and like the stage on which you slog out to carve out the things that define your life, everything turns loveable. Try it. A very simple cause and effect phenomenon.

Love and liking go a long way together on the synonym path. Increase you quota of likings for the things that define your personal and professional lives. You will be free to harvest your love crop under the beneficent sun of your heartfelt likings. All the best!

Give an Ear to the Melody Inside

 

There is a voice inside, soft and musical but with biggest nuggets of sanity.

A.R. Rahman: “Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.”

So, guys take a step away from the busy pavement. And listen to the voice of your best guide.

Even a thief knows someone is watching. It’s his inner self, the conscience, the real observer. It catches him long before law and society seize and condemn him. He knows, he is being watched by the real objective self. This real self is detached enough to mutely observe everything done by the carrier body in the folds of ignorance and darkness. Just that the thief shouts over the inner voice and makes off with the illegality. It's hard to have a thief who was in fine tuning with his inner voice and still carried out the misdeed.

No man killed, or injured, or committed crimes born of hate while listening to the soft inner voice. These are exceptions when the unfortunate person totally forgot the inner voice, and the door to his compassionate self bolted temporarily. Even the feeble-most rays from the real compassionate self are strong enough to remove the last traces of shadows under which one could have done some wrong. The alchemy of love is too strong to allow any poisonous traces remain in the cauldron.

So don't allow that little reminder to be drowned in the drama of life where we try to imitate others' lives, where we get trapped in stereotypes, enabling prejudices to subdue the real us. If you want to be the best version of yourself, you have to give an ear to the little best friend. It is your pathway to realize the most genuine self, the loving you, the compassionate and considerate you. It needs no repeating that it brings the best you have to offer on the basis of your inborn talents and skills.  

As you open up the channel to allow the gentle notes to come above, the all-knowing instincts will shake off the dust, leading you to the right path. And no correct path ever bypassed love, compassion, peace, harmony and happiness. These are simply the milestones falling along the right path.

As you dash on the rough and tumble of the outer show of life, keep your ears open for the best advisor, the inner voice. It will lead you over the hurdles that have been so far preventing you from fulfilling your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi says everyone who wills can hear the inner voice that is within everyone.

You just have to learn to listen to it. It's your conscience, the seed of real you. It has all the motherly talks about what is best for you. The moment you start connecting to it, true liberation starts. Happiness, health, love and generosity are some of the simple fruits of this tree. You just have to listen. That's it. Only this much awareness will do. Awareness of this voice itself is the solution. It's like watering the great tree and it flourishes. So guys, keep your ears open. And believe me, it never misguides.

Far away from opinions and criticisms, it will help you discover the real you. Just have a look around, all the so called less-brained species have an innate ability to go intuitively in the game of survival. I think they are in league with the natural intelligence spraying around on the atoms of cosmic energy going round and round in cyclical transformations. No harm in feeling proud of our brainy bulk. But that is to win the war in the matter world. It unfortunately falls short of the real goal to be happy, which is the domain of our spirit.

To nourish your soul, you can hardly depend on the material world that is just one of the means to your real goal, not the end. So guys, amplify the soft notes of the inner voice. They carry the potential to turn you into the luxuriant canopy of a beautiful persona. Love and compassion are the fruits on the tree.

O traveler,

Forget about the hoot and holler

emanating from the world outside,

And give an ear to the soft and murmurous

cooings emanating from the soul,

It has a soft and sympathetic

message for you only, —

Your most personal message,

meant only for you,

Listen to these delicate chimes,

It’ll help you in finding peace in chaos,

In getting a foothold in the stampede,

In feeling rest, repose and respite

in the face of constant buffeting by the world around,

It’ll help you in breaking

the hardest of superficial layers,

which suffocate and limit your identity,

And put you face to face with

your  true self, your real worth,

Listen to it, close your eyes,

And pay attention with all your heart,

Just for a change,

don’t look far, look closest at yourself,

It’ll be as uneventful as looking

at a dust particle around your feet,

But it changes the universe for you,

You will have the biggest message

in the softest of whispering phrases!

And it’ll help you in finding yourself,

You will surprise yourself in being love incarnation.

Reaching the Shrine of Love through the Wooded Path of Happiness

 

Do you find the mythologically grand idea of love and compassion too much for you? No worries. Relax. I would ask you to hold the nose from a more convenient angle. You may find it more lucrative for the self in its direct form. Guys, it’s about happiness. Target happiness. The world is yet to see a happy person who isn’t loving in nature. 

And mind you, happiness can be taken as simple as breathing.

It’s basically we who repel happiness away from us. We don’t allow it to come to us, embrace us, take hold of us. We set it as a goal too far down the line in future. Some house, some power, some position, some accumulation of pleasure, some relationships, etc., etc. We set up goals as the preconditions for our happiness. And the goals keep on piling up, over the years, and set up a wall between us and happiness, pushing it more and more distant from us.

I will set up a home and then be happy. Happiness delayed. Then I work over the years. There is no end. I set a goal to raise a family and then be happy. Again it sets up a wall between happiness and us. Relentlessly we just push on while happiness stays a distant goal never to be achieved. The biggest folly is that we make it conditional on endless goals, which are never met, because it’s the destiny of a goal to merge into another bigger one. They never die, only we perish. Huge immortals as they are. In pushing for them, we die, separated from happiness that could have been the greatest gift of life, had we not pushed it away from us.

We keep on forgetting to celebrate the milestone that we had promised to ourselves to enjoy on reaching it. It happens because the moment we reach there, the mirage shifts further down the line. It’s thus our destiny to be in the journey. Here lies the key. The journey itself is its own reward.

The remedy lies in taking away happiness from the far end of our endless goals and keep it safe in our house, like we store some grains for the harsh winters, near us, in the safest part of our house. It has to be cut away from the trail of endless goals and ambitions and kept with the self, in the present. It has to be set free from any conditions of meeting some goal. It’s a state as good as being healthy. Just being happy and living for a day. We have to learn to separate being from becoming.

You should be pushing towards yours goals as a happy person, rather than somebody who wants to be happy in future after completing the goals. The goals never come to a halt, only we do, at the moment of our death. So we die unhappily, separated from the natural state of happiness that could have pumped our life with unthinkable contentment and satisfaction, only if we had set it free from the chains of goal-setting and placed it unchained from those unreachable spots in the future.

Let happiness be a precondition for our doings, not a poor outcome of our efforts. Do everything as a happy person; instead of doing the deeds to become a happy person. Happiness is a state of being so, not the specific result of some hot pursuit. There is only one way it can be availed. Either we embrace it in the condition we are in, or it just eludes us. Keep it with you while you fly. It will boost your determination to go far and high.

So the only way to remain happy is just to be happy, instead of slogging it out to become happy later. Fella, kindly decide to keep happiness as a routine, let it take possession of your present, like a monkey eating fruits, the birds flying and the trees standing with stoic muse. All in the present. Now. Just being so. Simply being happy. This is the natural state of each and everything in nature. Had it been otherwise the system would have collapsed under the heat of agitation.

It pays the way to reach a stage when you find it actually possible to become happy without any reasons. Choiceless happiness and loving kindness are same by the way.  

Nurture the Seeds of Goodness

 

The fruit of love is in season forever. It stays there for all irrespective of caste, class, creed and religion. Does air have a choice in deciding to get into selective nostrils? It hasn’t. So is the case with love.  

Want to feel the brace of choiceless love in your life and don’t appear to have a clue about it? Ok, no worries. Just recall a word called forgiveness. It’s your short-cut to the love-pool. Develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. The inability to forgive robs you of your ability to love, in scientifically direct proportions.

The best of us have some bad in us, and so do the worst of us carry some goodness. Just mere realization of this simple fact clears our vision, enables us to be accommodating, receptive and understanding. The latter unavoidably turns us forgiving. Countless situations turn in our favor the moment we lay claim to the soft weapon of forgiveness. Being good in action and thoughts becomes so easy after this.

The things that ought to be simply done, should just be done. Otherwise, their shadows linger in the mind. They grow heavier with the passage of time. This invisible weight is heavier than the stones we see around. Simple, harmless acts of appreciation, of enjoyment, of helping someone cross a stream are better done and closed with a full stop. It’s better for a healthy mind. Otherwise, they linger like conspiring shadows over our conscience.

A missed chance of being good will definitely cast a shadow on our mind. An effort to help the self in being good, on the other hand, will hardly leave any unbecoming imprint on our conscience for pinching reflections later.

Only goodness has a legacy and future. Hypocrisy and meanness are just bad examples and leave repentance most of the time. To do good is instinctive for a human being, it’s however another matter that we stifle the urge most of the time. To be bad, on the other hand, is not intrinsic to our nature. It is wrongly reflective, a miscalculation, a tragic bypass of the instinct of goodness.

Nurture the seeds of the instincts of goodness. It’s a simple practice. It gives peace of mind, clear conscience and makes the journey enjoyable. Avoid it and you carry the burden in your mind. A burdened mind, as a natural corollary, is an easy prey to hate and malice.  A light, well-poised mind, on the other hand, is the glittering throne of love.

Don't be a Pollutant

 

Henry David Thoreau: “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

All of us carry an aura around us. It comprises an electro-magnetic field born of the flow of life energy through our bodies. It exists at the interface of physio-psychological and superior selves. The quality of this aura is a function of our mental, physical and emotional states. Anger, regret, fear, jealousy, desperation, sorrow, rejection and hopelessness create negative energy and consequently a harmful aura. This bad aura, apart from being injurious to us, pollutes the surrounding environment like a heap of garbage.

Now isn’t it our bounden duty to keep the environment clean by remaining positive, happy, smiling, poised, relaxed, sympathetic and compassionate? It's our duty brothers and sisters! It's as good for others’ health as it is for our own. All the steps to the cleaning of all types of pollutants start from the self. Stay happy. Stay clean. Just by doing this we do a social service.

Just this much effort on your part to avoid being a pollutant sets in motion a huge effort by the existential forces to turn you a fragrant flower with its ounce of love, beauty and aroma for the cause of creation. Sounds mystical? Well, that’s how it works. Just that we have got conditioned to see things directly correlated like in physical sciences.

Realign your energy field on a frequency of love and smiles. It goes strictly along the laws of nature because it’s basically about evolution. And you won’t find a bigger proof of your evolution than kind, loving and  considerate elements in your character.