An Ounce of Love Tilts the Scale in your Favor

 

Contradiction is inherent in nature. Positive–negative, acidity–alkalinity, dark–light, etc., etc., these are all manifestations of a homeostatic balance.

You know stars are held by this same dual, contradictory force of nature. Gravitational force pulls the molecules to the core; at the same time super-temperatures force the molecules to stay away from the core at a feasible length.

The stars smile and shine just because of the contradictory chemistry of these two opposing forces. Remove either of them and the star meets its end. Remove gravitational pull, the star will explode as a supernova. Remove the escaping force born of high temperature, the star will suck into its own core as a black hole.

So survival means a fine zone in the twilight of creation and destruction. Natural laws apply to humans as well; they hold the same validity if we treat an individual as a system. The human life is a wonderful phenomena sizzling like a shiny star in the twilight of humility and pride, altruism and selfishness, good and bad, faith and atheism, etc. So greatness lies not in casting off one side of this undercurrent. It lies in tilting your balance just a bit to the side of the so-called good aspects in the pair. Why? Because we are social phenomena as well, apart from being the natural ones. Our conscious sense of loving kindness sets us apart. It’s the hallmark of humanity. This is the best carat authenticity for the human self.

Just add a teaspoon of loving kindness to your forte of skills and belief. And see how wonderfully the overall taste of life gets changed. Our consciousness equips us to shine and survive like a star–but with a definite purpose. The purpose of general well-being; of helping others in maintaining the same balance of survival leading to definite evolution; of contributing proactively to the overall balance hung between the two contradictory frames.

We can contribute more than what our natural states have defined for us. Believe me! It works. Walk ahead to be a social phenomenon and not just stay a natural incident you are born as. Just help someone in need. It can be a tiny deed. As tiny as an unconditional smile! You will feel yourself elongating your natural self a bit to the positive side. This is what it takes to be human in the social sense, which is a degree higher than existing just as a natural phenomenon.

This is the alchemy of love. Make it an essential ingredient of your thoughts, feelings and actions. You will be minting gold I tell you.

Love: The True Destiny

 

If you define yourself by the external factors around you, you surrender your destiny to the outside forces. If you identify yourself with your true self, your soul, you instantly take charge of your destiny.

God was hammering down nails into my wooden being to shape the box of my destiny. I but kept on crying with pain and cursed Him for his mercilessness. My prayers egging Him on to toil more on my behalf and all this while I thought He was deaf.

Making is a bit painful buddy, but believe me every nail writes the script of many-many pleasant moments in future. Pain is never futile. It’s always a box in the making. And was creation ever devoid of pain, sweat, labor and suffering? Ask a mother who gave birth and brought up children if you need further explanation.

The storms that strike against the planking of your ship are just simply elements of ‘making’. They are the ones that define the journey. They are as important as the steam in the engine.

Now I see the beautiful artwork of the box and come to realize why those nails were hammered. It was all meant to see me home.

So love your struggles and efforts buddies. That is when you actually get ‘made’ into something substantial. During the so called smooth phase when the life is safely on autopilot, you just trundle ahead carrying your old self cocooned in the make-believe sense of being happy and content. But in reality you hardly move ahead during this phase. The routine just plods you ahead like an impassive dummy.

So be willing to accept your pain, suffering and struggle. It’s one of the best investments I know about. When you come out of the last dark hours of the night, believe me the sun shines resplendently like never before. After coming from the dark, you realize the importance of light. After tears, a smile acquires its sweetness. After pain you come to have a real taste of joy and comfort.

The so called rough phase is nothing but a passage to a better self at a better destination. There, if nothing else, your kind and compassionate self awaits. It dissolves all the previous bitterness. Bitterness gone, your regrets and anguish vaporize. You are then left with crystals of love. There cannot be a bigger reward.

The worldly replicas, which we presume to be achievements, will stay here on earth and will be recycled to five primal elements and so will the image that they defined in other’s eyes. But the footprints of love on your karmic DNA engrained in your consciousness will go with you in your further march to evolve supremely to submerge in the sea of ultimate bliss.

Accepting the fact of your loving self is simply acknowledging the march of your soul. Any conscious effort to continuously remind yourself of your inherent loving nature is as good as removing the road-blocks from the path of your evolution.

Happiness is the Water in the Well of Love

 

Yes you can cut your butter knife through the lump of iron. For a person suffused with unconditional love, all this and more is the simplest of a task.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

There is a fountain of happiness inside. It lies dormant under the self-imposed crust of fears, illusions, assumptions and ignorance. You have to unearth it. You have to remove the burdensome layer that weighs you down like a beast of burden. You just pull ahead like a coal and soot laden steam engine, lifelessly, mechanically. You have to realize you are more than a beast of burden and a steam engine.

Pierce through the crust’s increasing thickness. You have to dig deeper. Stop, take rest and get a sense of what you are doing. Again you have to pick up your pickaxe. You cannot afford too much rest. Rest lies at the destination. There it is a factor of eternity. Once you reach there, running and resting will become the same.

Hit hard. Let its iron run deep into the earthen wall that separates you from your real potential, your destiny, your destination for which Mother Nature has shaped and nurtured you. Dig deep. Look within. Life isn’t worth living just as a series of accidental occurrences bobbing you like a wooden wreck tossed by stormy waves. It’s about calculated, well planned steps and moves.

Steer the ship well. You were born to master it, just keep it in mind. With knowledge and information you can move on the crust only. It’s just living accidentally. Wisdom helps you dig deep. There is a source of your real happiness. It doesn’t require a sprint on the outer crust. You will just head-butt other runners, fall in the dust and grind your bloody teeth. After all, it’s just a stampede.

Break through the outer shell. It needs some guts to begin with, but then at later stages it is like you are cutting butter with a knife. You will have the passage to your real self. It will be an escape route from the mindless race.

Just dive into it. Below lies the tranquil sea, your own unchartered waters. You are the owner of its infinite depths and cool currents spreading in countless directions. You can drift anywhere. Just imagine the freedom. Claim your freedom. You were not born to be a slave to your fears. Freedom is just unadulterated love. Go, do it!

Love is a Lotus in the Pond of a Calm Mind

 

Buddha says to enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline one's own mind.

Well, the great soul just nails it. A disciplined mind lays the stage for love to blossom. With discipline, mind turns calm, resulting in inner strength and health. In the silent waters you get a clear picture, which minimizes the risks of misunderstanding and miscalculation. No wonder you just turn out to be more loving than ever, simply because the agents of hate and anger vanish under the lucid rays of the sun of truth. An irked mind, on the other hand, is the stone that topples the love cart.

As all of us know, we shape our destiny with the chisel of our thoughts. To carve out a beautiful statue your chisel has to be well-maintained. Keep it sharpened, keep it under control, manage it, and you will have a beautiful image of your true self surfacing in your thoughts and actions as you move on life's path.

As Joyce Meyer says, “You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.”

So brothers and sisters, pull up the reins. The real you is kind, loving and joyful. Only that the load of a freely straying mind makes you feel otherwise.

Love sprouts from a pure and peaceful mind. To have a pure and peaceful mind, practice forgiveness. Forgiveness simply stills the mind in an instant. And you just cannot have a restful mind in a hateful body. Restful mind and love are synonymous. Compassion is the real elegance of mind.

The biggest challenge to love is from an ever-suspicious, insecure mind. It is up to you to flip the coin and be the best from the worst by training the mind. Nail down the affirmations into the mind. It obeys, believe me! But it needs to be told repeatedly. It’s after all an obstinate child.

O my mind: —

Be the seat of my strength, not weakness.

Be the seat of kindness, not cruelty.

Be the source of light, not darkness.

Be the source of energy, not idleness.

Be the source of creativity, not limited vision.

Be the source of love, not hate.

Be the source of smiles, not tears.

Be the source of happiness, not suffering.

Be the seat of optimism, not pessimism.

Be the seat of gain, not loss.

Be the source of help, not obstruction.

Be the seat of leadership, not just sheep-walk.

Be the seat of a better human being.

Be the source of a more loving person.

O my mind,

My seat of limitless potential,

Take my journey further,

Please choose the better half of all the dualities for me.

 

Keep reminding your mind. Repeatedly. Daily. With eyes closed and a fervent request on your lips. It’s a very nice, nutritious pre-breakfast food.

Choosing the better side of the pair of our actions and feelings is as easy as flipping a coin in our fingers from head to tail. It's a very short journey from the worst to the best. As short as the flip of a coin. A mere realization. Acceptance. Simple awareness. And a pledge to remember. Thanks to the flawed model of upbringing, we get almost pre-conditioned for the negative end of dualities. The instinct can be broken. Just a simple early morning practice is sufficient. It needs only as much as reminding the self. Repeatedly. And the vast avenue of care, share, love, compassion, happiness, joy and bliss open up.

The Natural State of Existence: Love

 

Have a deep grasp of the vast scheme of things and you will find logic an insufficient model of cause and effect. There is a sense of naturality in most of the phenomenon around. At the core of our existence is the point of effortless, attributeless and choiceless being. Move away from it and you have the spinning phantoms created by mind. The farther we are from the centre of our being, the more are the illusions. Hate, jealousy, greed and prejudices are the thundering clouds in these outer orbits. They keep the sun of our true being hidden under the cloudy veil.

Try to be near the centre. Move inside. It's a meditative state of deep relaxation like you have in sleep with the added faculty of full alertness. From here you can see the tragedy of fighting in the shadows away from the shiny centre-pole of your all-loving self.

This is the point of unified consciousness, of a massive singularity of love, peace and harmony. Here you love everything with a detached Godly muse. This is the comforting seat of love. Shrieks from our restless, incessantly chattering mind, however, betray and lead us into the maze of meaningless pursuits always leading to the same pain and recurring disappointments.

There is a cosmic law of just being. It drives things and phenomena to float effortlessly in the space-time continuum. In the self-evolving mode of existence, most of the events and occurrences just happen, naturally, effortlessly, without any fuss, needing no pushing, prodding or cajoling. Harmony thrives on such effortlessness. It sustains life, retains the cosmic balance and nurtures the eternity.

You may have a supposition that after taking a pinch of snuff powder, one sneezes. Well, you must have seen many old people doing that, or even experienced yourself. Ok, snuff gives you a sneeze. Agreed. But only as long as a free ‘effect follows the cause’ principle is applied in the natural form. Smallest interjections from mind will topple the scale. This universe loves its harmonious sequence of cause and effect. Tamper it with your conscious meddling, it will repel the transgression.

Charles Darwin did an experiment. He called ten snuff powder users and asked them to take pinch of snuff and then sneeze. He put a gold coin in front of each of them as a reward if they sneezed after taking the snuff. On any other day, snuff and sneeze would follow as natural companions, but not today. Today there was a forced will to win the gold coin in between. The snuff users became extremely eager, and consequently super-conscious, to get the sneeze. The natural balance between the cause and the effect was broken. They won’t get the sneeze. Their faces contorted in all directions at funniest angles, their eyes watered like anything, but the accursed sneeze, which came hurtling down so effortlessly every day, will not come today.

So moral of the story is: Certain natural things are better left alone as simple occurrences without our stone-pelting the sequence born of super-conscious, egoistic meddling. Guys don’t allow the sneeze to topple the snuff.

Sharpen your natural instincts, allow them to guide you, trust in them, and be a follower. It mellows your heart, makes you more tolerant of life’s idiosyncrasies, turns you receptive to differences because you see the ultimate singularity. There are lot many human affairs where we can meddle with our brain games. So learn to leave things as they should be naturally. And once you hone this art, the actual things wherein you have a right to poke your nose will start falling in you grasp. It saves a lot of energy also. With more energy left in your reserves, you feel better and confident. It then becomes a sure shot remedy of happiness and joy.

Once you allow this beautiful aesthetic sense of naturality of things to sink in, you will feel showers of the sun of compassion warming every pore of your being.

Physical Body ̶ Love = Robot

 

Take a deep look into the pools of nature. Mysteries will dissolve. Hardly anything looks improbable or impossible as you come to understand everything better and see more clearly. Beyond all the drama for survival, with apparent self-centered follies and ambitious pursuits, you will find the common stage of love and care. There is a natural propensity for it. Cut away the brief moments of insecurity and fear-driven runs, the rest is peace, repose and harmony.

Delicious dew, lazy blue skies, the sea lost in its own depths, sleepy pastures, dreamy meadows, pathless woods, lonely slopes, solitary groves, refreshing rain, balmy sun, the still beauty of a dawn, languorous dusks, spotless white snow, all these and more are just soft whispers of nature in the language of love. All this loveliness sprouts from the uninterrupted flow of love.

No wonder Michelangelo mused that his soul could find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.

Nature is not with anybody. Neither is it against anyone. It is for us to decide whether we are with it or against it. The onus is on us! Since we are a part of it, it suits our purpose if we go with it. Going against nature means going against ourselves. But that is what we are doing presently.

With its impartiality, nature ensured a competition among the species for survival. Look at the fantastic evolution of organisms and species. But then with the food-chains reaching a dead end with mankind being the master, the nature itself—the cause—will become the casualty.

Humans evolved as inseparable part of nature, just like any other animal species, using their best skills to survive. Humans used brain to master nature. Even now the mankind (biologically) and its institutions stand on nature’s back. But now we are crossing all limits. Possibly the inevitable juggernaut of progress will drive us over the precipice. The more forests we cut, the more species we force into extinction, the more pollutants we release into the air and the seas, the more we are eating into nature’s guts. It’s like killing the hen that lays golden eggs. It’s like cutting the branch on which we are sitting. Can there be a bigger folly? And still we feel so proud of our brains!

Our present biological standing is a sum total of the nature around us. We are a reflection and sum total of the state of the overall natural health. With more natural ecosystems being decimated to get into a more mechanized world, it will be a folly to think that we will be able to survive with the present biological level of human physiology.

In a world with ghastly depleting natural resources, and cement, steel and machines ruling the roost, how will the present human biology—the outcome of the natural phenomena and food-chains—survive? It just will not. So the cut into nature’s guts will require adaptations in human biology and physiology as well.

Simple fact is: the present human physiology will be totally redundant in a world where there will be hardly any forests, most of the species extinct, air polluted and weather totally changed. To survive under the new challenge, the mankind will be forced to bring out mechanization in the physiology itself. Genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, artificial organs and many other goddamned things will see a world in which mankind will be a semi-machine managing full machines.

And with the final traces of nature gone, with the environment modified mechanically to survive, the mankind will finally become a full machine. It might be just 200 years away when the last sinews of human blood, ligaments, flesh and skin will be replaced by artificial devices. The cycle of evolution grossly manipulated to reach a point of no return.

It’s unimaginable to guess how will the super-species behave! But one thing seems sure: with only machines all around, you have the inevitable destruction. All because the nectar of humanity, the soul of mankind, love, will come dwindling in proportion to the artificiality in human body, leaving us mere robots.

Do we need further proof about what chiefly stamps our identity as human beings? It is love by the way, if you still missed it. 

Stony Truths Pelted at the Love Flower

 

Siri Hustvedt: “Each person does see the world in a different way. There is not a single, unifying, objective truth. We're all limited by our perspective.”

Miracle of miracles, existence has given us five senses to interpret the inherent unity in our own ways. As Friedrich Nietzsche says, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

All of us are destined to appear different in many ways. On the surface, above the deep sea of commonality, these differences define our specialty in the mass of heaving humanity. And the so called truth, which you hold dear to your self identity, is actually an opinion only. Problem arises when we present our opinion as absolute truth. Holding one's mere opinion as absolute truth panders the mankind's foe, ego. And you will hardly find a more potent enemy of love than an over-bloated ego. Accepting your opinions as mere opinions like any others will make you an amazingly honest person. And love blooms under honesty and humility.

If you are kind enough to allow someone's truth to shine, taking your dazzle away, you show a kindness. Not that you should always allow even ill-found opinions to sail over your head. You have every right to checkmate such misguided shots. All I want to say is that fight an opinion with your opinion only. It's just a scoring game. Outsmart and fox with your argument, but always remember that you are not the omniscient entity having a copyright on truth. And never forget to smile when cutting opinions with opinions.

Ravindranath Tagore says so beautifully and briefly, “Facts are many, but the truth is one.”

Squabble over facts, but never show the attitude that you own the domain of truth. Quite interestingly, truth may be told in millions of ways, and the beauty is all can be true in their own ways. And mind you, biggest truths are incontrovertible. They come in the form of love, honesty, kindness, humility and scores of other beautiful things. Can anyone put up a debate about this?

Don't you think that your firm convictions are laid bare by the sweeping winds of unfolding experiences and new facts and knowledge coming on the way as you move ahead in life? Doesn't it mean that so many of your own self-cherished truths turn out to be mere opinions later on in life as you move with flexibility, wisdom and meaningful search of life? So where is the truth? This much of open-mindedness will avoid so many unnecessary situations in life. As you cut down such chaotic moments from your life, you actually lay down a firm seed-bed for the flowers of love to blossom.

Pick you grains of truth. They are for some frail humanitarian purpose. Don’t take them as the cosmic seeds of the ultimate truth.

With our limited self perception, the universal truth stays out of our grasp. It is pleasantly lost in the infinite cosmic spread. So all we have is the scattered grains of perceived truths. My truth, your truth, his truth, her truth, their truth. Bits and pieces of truth, picked up for convenience, for suitability. Truth, as we seem to know it, is a mundane piece of daily utility, as much suitable as the food we take as per our body types and socio-economic circumstances.

It’s advisable to forget about the most justifiable of truths. The most we can do is to get an average of all truths, a mathematical average, a common truth. This but again is a simplified standard to derive rules, principles and moral code to run society. A mere arrangement to run a bigger household.

I know my truth can be false for someone else, and vice versa. Truth and falsehood, recurring shadow and substance. Sometimes falsehood is the shadow. Oftentimes truth is the shadow. But they are always nearby. Touching each other like the shadow clings to the substance. Both have their suitors simultaneously. Someone holds the substance for support. At the same time someone takes shelter in the shadow to accomplish something that can be managed in a grey zone only.

As Swami Vivekananda says: “Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.”

This much of space for each other leaves the scope for full gardens of understanding and cooperation in our social arrangement. With your leniency, long before you help others in search of their destiny, you primarily help yourself because your own opinions don’t turn stones to checkmate your growth and evolution. And when all and sundry are journeymen on the path of the ultimate truth, there is hardly any time for roadblocks and traffic jams resulting in quarrels and brawls. It happens simply because you aren’t trampling on any fellow foot. All are moving on their own path. This is what we mean by real liberation. And loving kindness is the soul of this quest.