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.