Love Reflects in the Mirror of Pause

 

Albert Einstein: “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

Most of the time we feel that only moving and running define the journey. Wait. It's a great mirage. It's generally the pause that resets new choices, fresh options and possibilities to define the path. It allows the chaos to sink in and give you clarity of perspective. Hitting the pause button is often more paying than the start button. Simply because such pauses are really creative. In pause you simply rest on the seat of soul, the real you, the essentially loving, compassionate, kind and generous being. All these are always in us, but we tend to forget as we huff and puff without rest and respite.

Bruce Feiler said, “Take a walk with a turtle and behold the world in a pause.”

Pause is the pathway for your heart to map out its route. It draws you closer to the soul. You listen to the unified notes of the ultimate song and the melody of love.

When things are spinning out of control, pause, the basic building block of patience, is the remedy. You just see things more clearly. So leave the chaotic scene for some time. Soak in silence and solitude. Most of the times, things simply get along just because we are no longer poking our nose like a futile struggle in quagmire.

Life is full of crazy, ugly and complicated things. These create the so-called crisis. But pause button is always in our hands. The bugs of disorderliness lose the oxygen they thrive upon. It's a great button in your hands, I tell you. Not that I am asking you to put yourself into pause in front of a train. That is foolishness. To jump out of the tracks will be normal precautionary reaction. Pause applies to so many unnecessary mental webs that hardly leave any effect on your situation. It saves energy. Pause is the silence when you hear the voice of your real self, your closest buddy, your craziest lover who never betrays you.

Jerzy Kosinski: “The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.”

Why do you think nature has given us sleep? It's the most rewarding time for your physical and mental being. Your damaged cells get repaired. You get rejuvenated for the next day's wear and tear. Well, that is what pause does to you in your life's struggle.

You must have observed that in a turbulent pond, beautiful interplay of white domes of cloud in the sky doesn’t reflect clearly. Well, same is the condition with our minds and on a larger scale in society and civilizations. Just like the sky shines clearly in the calm waters of a pond, truth shines in a well-paused, restful moment.

We have to understand the value of rest and pause because it’s the mute button that helps us in realizing our essentially loving nature. In stampede we forget and the fight or flight instincts bring out animalistic reactions, which over a period become habits, almost first nature, and we start identifying ourselves with these reactions only. But let me tell you, reactions never define your essential being. They are mere flimsy waves on the surface. 

You run after a thing, struggle and toil for it to the chronic pain of your bones, and much deservedly you land up at the destination. You have achieved your thing. It’s the time to cherish its worth, its value for you. It’s time to celebrate and pause and allow the feeling to sink in. What value the victory carries if you cannot even spare the time and pause to allow the feeling to seep into the perspiring pores of your skin, allowing cool calmness to kiss the limits of your soul. But it almost never happens. The pause, the rest is ever elusive.

You achieve your target and the thing turns out to be valueless. The things, goals and destinations that you get, achieve and reach become almost insignificant the moment you nail it. It’s always a struggle for more in future. The dream value, which was earlier carried by the things and destinations where you stand now, shifts again to some another milestone in future. So again we drop our present and run after future. Consequently, it’s never living in the present.

Only living in present can provide spontaneity to your compassionate instincts to curb down the customary reactions born of hate, hurt, jealousy and anger.

So much so for the futile chase! The mirage keeps on shifting on the hot sands of our bloodied battle. And we run, madly, trampling the things and the moments that are the only possessions we have in reality and could have enjoyed, and rush for future, for virtual things in mind, in the form of ever-escaping criteria of values, goals and destinations. No wonder, we never live our present. We hardly enjoy the victories and rewards our sweat has fetched us. We abandon the real rewards. We trample the true trophies of the present.

You get the thing and it loses its value. No surprise that we feel so deprived, poor, cheated, underachieved and unhappy at the end of the journey when we fall. We hate any talk of pause in life. Little do we realize, a restless run results in a fatigued, huffing fall at a time when legs cannot carry the weight anymore, eyes fail to see the light any further and heart gives up even the last hope. There can’t be a bigger, more painful defeat.

A run or a walk is well managed with intervals of pause and rest at the milestones we cross. It reinvigorates you for the next leg of the journey.

Pause is blissful. It gives you the beautiful gift of accepting your present. A man, an animal, a vehicle, a civilization or for that matter anything, all need pause at intervals to maintain the journey, to save a fatigue and burnout. Unfortunately that is what we are not doing. Individually and collectively, we are headed down the precipice. The mad onslaught of modern civilization, with its plunder of natural resources and unchecked technological growth, needs a pause, for survival, for continuation of the journey.

Don’t you think that our mad rush has given cancer and tumors to mother earth? Human ailments are simply a spillover of the disease we have been giving to Mother Nature. We are far advanced down the technological lane. Let’s pause now. First allow the horizontal spread of the utilities and benefits to the poorest of the poor. Let’s put a pause on population growth rates, exploitation of natural resources, scientific spurts and industrial productions. The modern civilization has gone too far with its unchecked growth. Unchecked growth is self-destructive. It’s nothing but cancer. The planet is carrying a cancer now. It needs to be checked. Let there be a pause, please! 

Love the Art of Simply doing Things

 

Long before you try to be a champion in others’ eyes, try to be a superwoman and world-beater in your own ways. Well, it holds the key to real success. Recognition by those around is simply a natural outcome, a mere side-reward like you have visibility as a flame throws light in the dark. 

Don’t do everything just for money, rewards, recognition, name and fame. As we feel, most of our doings are just blind pursuits for something more important expected at the end of doing. Doing thus becomes secondary, the outcome. The reward takes the centre stage, and everything before that turns a stale, perspiring and frustrating struggle. The process of doing becomes traumatic.

By subjugating the process of doing to some unknown outcome in future, we pawn happiness and intrinsic satisfaction, which simply doing could have been, against the shifting, blinding mirage on the hot sands in future. Try to make doing primary. Love simply the process of doing. It holds the key to your most lovable self. It’s like casting the chains away. It lightens your burden. Not only it will light up your soul, the outcomes, whether you care about them or not, will just follow with a bang.

If you do something just for some specific outcomes, it’s not doing, rather it’s some barter against the drops of your sweat. It’s labor, a menial work, mere slogging. You are not the master. Just try to do a few things without caring for the material and social rewards. You will know that you own the act of doing. It becomes pure and unadulterated. You own it and you are the master of it. Once you master something, given the potential human soul has, the byproducts will drop like sweat autumn windfalls, fully ripe, without any effort. That is the cascading effect of pure doing.

There are hundreds of posts on my blogs apart from a few books that I have authored. I write not for viewership stats or adsense money. My reward is the numerous trophies I gather while simply writing. I write because I love doing it. There is no bigger reward than being able to do something you really love and like doing.

A small publisher trusts me and publishes my books. He likes my writing and invests some money to publish my books. I help him to the little extent that I don’t take any royalties. My books sell in just hundreds of copies, rarely touching the four-figure mark. And even for that I don’t expect any royalty. Still I write for months to complete a book. Simple thing is, I just love doing it. As I work on my books, without any restraints on publisher- and commerce-ordained limitations, I feel like flying in an open sky. It’s like being a painter having a completely empty canvas and possessing all the options to experiment with colors and shapes. This is what you get, the rewards, your breath of freedom, your space and your happiness.

Every moment is like holding a big trophy. And believe me, if you immerse in doing something just for the sake of doing it to the core, you warp space-time continuum to the tune and frequency of your doing, and rewards follow, whether you accept these or not is another matter. Most importantly, the doings that bring an instant soul-sweetening sensation rarely give you money and material rewards. They carry the intangible rewards of nourishing the soul.

Just try any of these and see how does it feel: Helping a stranger, who has lost her wallet on a crowded platform, with a hundred rupee bill that can help her out of a hell lot of trouble; stopping to take an old hand and help her to cross the road; taking a stranded stray puppy out of the drain; a smile from an unknown face just because you did only this much to keep the elevator door open, helping her to catch onto the precious moment, etc., etc.

The feeling you get instantly is sufficient to overpower any vanity of earning millions and getting gold medals. Most importantly, such small, small doings help you hone the art of humanity in you. Just like you pump iron in gym to harden your muscles, such little, little acts of just doing without expecting any rewards will hone the muscles of your conscience.

Goodness can be practiced. It can be made a habit. Start with such small things where your egoistic, self-driven workflow won’t revolt to begin with. Very soon you will turn out to be the best of a human being. And who is a good human being? Well, basically she is happy. And at the top of it all, she is love and care personified.

It will also surely help you in honing the art of perfect 'doing': smart, suave and marketable.

Looking forward to learn the art of balanced "doing"? Do you find yourself falling off the rope usually? Well, you might be lacking in the art of doing. Most of the time you find it's underdone, and the consequent target misses, falling off the mark, and more importantly, the rumbling shadow of self-doubt, reproach, frustration, helplessness and even cynicism. Other times, it gets overdone, and its precipitous after effects, falling off the cliff with the overdrive, giving more despair than not doing at all, and resultant efforts to undo, to chip down the extra, and getting into a zone totally crazy beyond the extremes of overdoing and underdoing, landing in a zone where you no longer know whether it's a tragedy or a comedy.

Wishing you all the best in mastering the suave art of just doing, finely balanced, perfectly nailed and expertly nuanced!

A Simple Test to Understand the Value of your Softness

 

In this universe, there is delightful softness, a charming pliability and sweet-flowing malleability that allows this cosmic game of interactive transformations to the limit of infinity. We are cast in the image of that pliability. Love courses through the soft tissues of our being. Love is soul's blood. Softness has a mystical innocence and cozy vulnerability that sustains the consciousness unlike a stone. Well, that is what makes us humans. Don't mistake your softness for weakness. It's the seat of your sensitivities and loving kindness.

Softness has its mystical sublimity and grandeur. It's the medium through which love spreads. Rigidities hit a roadblock in the medium. So feel proud of your softness and sensitivities. It only proves your liveliness. Mind you, many a time feminine fragility is simply a camouflage for the inherent strength and vitality. So don’t commit the mistake of discarding it only on its face value.

All those who have lost faith somehow along the bruising path (including many who get into self-reproach for being too soft and thus invite punishment), I invite you all such suffering rabbits to try faking a lion for some time! Well, this is to create a visible contrast between the soft you and the hard you. So bury your softness and turn hard.

It is a bit of iron talk to test whether it stands or not in comparison to the butter soft approach to life. So to start with the tough tasking.

Impose the belief that life is to be won by wearing the battle shields and arms of cold hard logic and point blank reasoning. You become a soldier. Keep your emotions and sensitivities safely cradled deep in your heart. Don’t wear them on your chest, firmly convinced that some arrow will easily pierce you. So always be predatorily alert to the risks to your interests. Kindly handle the extra strain at your own cost. Ha Ha!

A lot many of you might be thinking that life is screwing you up from many angles, and despite best of your efforts, the softer you becomes the cause of your fall. So despite all the humanly possible tries, you find the situation unchanging, the same pliable you letting you down time and again. As the self-assigned practice to get hardened up, you can now fight for a change. Force the change in your vulnerable self, the carrier of this entire unjustified shitty load! Turn stone hard as we said earlier.

Get into the steely mode to turn yourself physically stronger. And forget about the psychological variants of strength. Believe that it is like a person suffering under 100 kg weight. And come whatever may, she cannot unburden herself of this load. What is the option left now? It is just to get physically stronger so that it is possible to carry the load.

I am talking of plain physical strength. Forget about all other versions of power. Simply believe that physical strength is the prelude to all other concepts of strength. So all you guys and girls, who feel that they are undeservedly carrying extra load in life on their softer self, just sweat it out. Grow strong physically. Let us see if you will be able to laugh at the weight on you? Only you can find the answer. Hope the fighting spirit gives you permanent peace.

Much as you carry on with the hardening exercise, never forget to be cautious though. The effort should not be an alert soldier type all the way. You may break. Soft and loving you are essentially at the core. And you are just trying to be what you are not. So take little breaks also. You deserve your airy moments—little-little somersaults, froggy jumps over life's grounded roadblocks, and tiny ballooned flights above the sandy realities on the surface. But still keep it somewhere in the heart that you are terrestrial beings not the airy angels. So guys ensure that you land rightly on your feet after airy jaunts and not crash-land on your ass.

 

One month is a suitable time to test the effects of this changed approach. If living like an iron-masked alert soldier gives you sustained peace, well and good, you may carry on like a hard-fisted maniac. All the best to you for your worldly laurels!

However, if you find something missing, you will automatically realize the significance of the mellow posturing of your softer self. All I can do is to turn your attention to one simple fact in nature: A huge tree breaks in the storm; a blade of grass meanwhile survives to kiss the warm sunrays after the storm is over.  

Awareness: The Bulwark to Safe-keep your Love Pond

 

Nathaniel Branden: “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”

No wonder, adding to your awareness takes you to greater dimensions of consciousness, which in turn opens limitless possibilities for you. In fact, awareness and the resultant contemplation provide a meaning to the infinite interplay of random forces around you. It simply helps you in getting your footing. The moment you get your footing, you get a huge dose of hitherto untasted confidence and then you just cannot help a smile full of love for each and everything around you.

This awareness boosts your conscience that in turn empowers free will and creativity. You make better choices. You respond well to situations instead of reacting. And all these are nothing but tiny rivulets unloading their majestic waters into the pool of your loving being.

As they say, awareness is the first step for any type of change. Without proper insight and self-acknowledgement, both born of awareness, it is impossible to even think of any concrete change for the better. You get a spontaneity that gives you a marvelous detachment, taking you on the path of spiritual upliftment even before you realize. Love is simply a natural outcome on this path.

You know the entire concept of kindness is based on the awareness of interdependent co-existence of living and nonliving beings. Limitless is the canvas of awareness. You can simply etch out infinite dimensions of the ultimate truth on it. You become a unique creator because in the realm of raised awareness kindness, love, beauty, truth, insight and intuitions are available to you to help you paint your picture in an entirely original way.

With awareness, you get a clarity where you get sensitivity for other's pains and feelings. A very fine pre-requisite for an all-loving persona. It is a simple journey from particular to the universal. The horizon gets broadened. More space for your soul to spread, and the nagging dots of fears and insecurities vanish in the roofless vaults of the cosmos.

It needs no mathematics to prove that if you see more clearly, you can walk better. If you have better insight, you can make better choices. Only through practiced awareness, you get some clues about the larger picture. Otherwise, we just waste it on a narrow stage, always fighting with hate and prejudices to avoid a fall off the edge. Awareness gives you a whole limitless pasture to roll in fun and be there with a purpose that isn't bound by your insecurity-born prejudices and complexes.

Awareness is the most practical step to self-discipline. It dismantles the self-created walls of an unaware mind, thus setting you free. You see the light. You bathe in it, and smile and love the way things are.

It also sharpens the streak of solitude in you. In the mode of pause, you observe little wonders that are otherwise lost in our mad rush. To put it more simply, in the silence aided with awareness you allow the inner voice, the citadel of your all-pervading goodness, to come up. If not God, at least godliness becomes possible. And the chief trait of godliness is love only, nothing else.

Awareness is a simple remedy for thousand ailments. Raise awareness. Work on it diligently. It gives you a nobler heart and more controlled mind. No better recipe to cook love delicacy, I tell you. It’s a practice much like you build your physical strength through regular workouts. Natural instinct, almost similar to being inclined to be lazy, is to be caught unaware. It’s nothing short of blindness, just like going into a dark tunnel. Once you cannot see, you are no longer responsible for your actions.

Evil has roots in unawareness. Awareness is a disinfectant. A human being, while being fully aware, can’t kill, rape, rob or quarrel. It’s simply impossible to be aware and be at your worst at the same time. Goodness flows from awareness. It’s simply being in the warm light where you feel better and see everything crystal clear.

There is a fountain of happiness inside. It lies dormant under the crust of fears, lies, illusions and ignorance. All these are bred by unawareness. To sharpen your awareness, you need to do the spadework. A lot of unearthing required. You need to dig, stop, take a pause and dig again. It needs a long look within.

With just knowledge, you can walk on the crust only. It makes you simply competitive, wherein you want to win at any cost. It pushes you into a zone of being terribly self-centered. No wonder you become less humane.

Awareness breeds wisdom. You reach the source of happiness. Therein you just don’t run to your destination stampeding over the lesser mortals along the path. You have empathy and you care for the consequences of your actions.  

Unawareness is the root cause of pseudo-illnesses of the mind. In the long term, these even turn into real physical and social ailments, for example Pseudoism. It’s the art and craft of using a positive emotion, picking its hypothetical meaning in letter, and grafting it over the mean spirit. Pseudoism is a suitable device with power aspirants particularly.

Pseudo-secularists copiously cash minority fears. Then pseudo-nationalists take charge of the affairs. The latter create a rhetorical stage, offering people a feeling to contribute to the nation. Little do people realize that by the time they are still enjoying the echo of their slogans, they have already crossed a line to enter a zone of hate. Even before they realize the slightest change, they have already surrendered a part of their good self. They are less loving, less tolerant, and more insecure. They get polarized. The society gets a fracture. It's painful. 

Not that I just crib about it. I offer a solution also. Web soldiers and internet patriots can go to Breakrooms specially designed to allow the spirit of revolution come out. Go there and smash out your hate and frustration on junk TV, microwave, radio, etc. It will soothe the angry man in you. The blood on boil will cool down. An utter sense of heroism will prevail as you smash the screen. It can be a suitable punch bag for the paper tigers of pseudo-nationalism. After pouring out hate and frustration, they will come out happier and more loving beings. They might even go beyond the tools of pseudo-nationalism like temples, mosques, cows and national anthem, and do something more important for this country.

The Anesthesia of Old Age: Loving Kindness

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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