Simplify life - 1

The way life has become in this age of fast change, in spite of so many comforts, we feel some kind of pain, discontentment. This is an attempt to analyze and help myself to come out of it with the help of sister Shivani. I try my hand at reproducing what sister Shivani has to offer in her self help management series.

What actually happens in our day to day life is- we face different situations, small/big in both professional and personal life. It may be as small as your house help not arriving without notice, getting stuck in a traffic jam or much more serious as separation, relationship breaking, loosing a job or worst death of a loved one !

What is common in all these situation? It is the change, change from the state we get so used to !

Our general response to any of the situation is - discomfort, pain, to a different extent for different situations. Our ability to handle the situation dwindles down when we are in pain. The situation appears much more serious and big than the actual when we are in pain.

Why this happens? Because we focus too much on the problem/situation, which most of the times, is out of our control !! Instead,  if we focus our attention on the solution or even better our own response to the situation, we shall fare much better. This is where, we need to work mostly on.      

My response to the situation is the key point to ponder over and start with !
 
A nice thought I read this morning

Life is really simple but we insist on making it complicated- Confucius

My beacon of light !

Being a female by gender of species homo sapiens, I play several roles- a daughter, a sister, a friend, a wife, a mother, a daughter in law , a student top the list. Being all of these simultaneously often leaves me in difficult situations which make me wonder actually 'what really is the meaning of all this?'

Sometimes I feel it is better to be numb to all this and just be lost in the flow of life even if it is all materialistic(something that makes me uncomfortable, not that I am a saint with no wishes, but I do have my limits) ! One thing is obvious to me certainly I am not the one born with this clarity but I am one who wish to have this ! This implies pain to some extent but worth undergoing !

On my way to find myself and my purpose following are the people, resources which have been of help at the various levels. I would be happy if someone else also finds his or her way through one of them.

1.) This is the latest but something which is teaching me the real way to be kinder to myself and gives me explicit method of healing and helping myself and in turn others. This just reinforced my belief that to heal others first heal yourself.
 It is in Hindi but you can find some other videos on youtube in English and some videos of this series with English subtitles.

http://www.awakeningwithbrahmakumaris.org/self-management

2.)The great ones whose teachings I can understand and appreciate to some extent-

A.) Swami Vivekananda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivekananda)

If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

Swami Vivekananda

B.) J Krishnamurti(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti)

Among the legends what Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

3.) It makes sense to me what Dr. Marshall Rosenberg has to say.

http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/aboutnvc/aboutnvc.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dpk5Z7GIFs

Shouldn't peace, love and harmony be also included in the list of our basic needs and we all should  strive to achieve these? They are a priority on my list and hopefully on yours too :)

Being human !

One of our serious lacking as human beings is our inability to accept others as the sum total of good and bad together. We label people as good or bad. Being judgemental comes very naturally to us.

Probably this has to do with the way we are brought up. Our culture thrives on the basic principle of win of good over evil ! I have nothing against this but I am certainly against the idea of labeling someone as God/good and the other as devil/evil ! I believe no one is either. Everyone is a mix of the two and we act under the influence of dark and light under difference circumstances of life. Sum total of that constitute our lives. What varies for different people is the number of times we stray into the dark or the light side.

What we need to acknowledge is this, what makes our lives, is our behavior, our way of being. How I live, how I behave certainly gets affected by the society around me but if you see the society behaves like I do. It is a circle. It comes to you and it goes from you. Let us focus on the part that goes from us. The other part which comes to us will automatically change. 

I end this one of my favorite dialogue from one of my favorite movie-Harry Potter. Albus Dumbledore puts it very nicely for me -

We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act upon. That 's who we really are.
 
and I add to it- And to stray into the dark side sometimes is very much part of being human !

Happy New Year !

Let all beings be happy; let all beings be peaceful; let all beings be blissful- Swami Vivekanand.

This says beautifully my new year wish. Wish you all a very Happy and prosperous new year.

The year ended with a visit to a museum, Ice House, Chennai. (http://www.vivekanandahouse.org)where Swami Vivekananda stayed for sometime in 1897. It is a small museum in size but surely much much larger in leaving the impact on you. I wonder where and how did we lost track of the vision Swami Vivekanada had at that time ! The vision which is as much relevant today as it was then !!  Of course, without doubt the loss is ours as humanity not only as a nation !!

My humble suggestion- to be a better human being try following these two Gurus(teachers)-Swami Vivekananda and Dr. Marshall Rosenberg(a glimpse-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dpk5Z7GIFs).  You will not be disappointed :)

My take on the tide called AAP.

I come out with my take on various factors associated with the latest political party of the country-Aam Aadmi Party.  Why it should interest to other readers of the blog can be a very legitimate question though :) but then I doubt if it would not also, because of the common factor- being humans we tend to behave almost identically under the given circumstances, may be with some degree of variation depending upon our upbringing in the diverse cultures of the world.

I am way too excited for many reasons related to this event and am unable to decide where to begin. The reason being very simple- it gave the much needed boost to the whole nation specially the common man walking on the street, irrespective of the religion, state, language or every other division which generally plays a role in our lives being Indians otherwise !!

Let me try. The event is emergence of AAP-Aam(Common) Aadmi(Man) Party, their recent win in Delhi Assembly elections. A rather common name and an even simpler symbol- a broom!!

Let me first start with a little history. This is just an year old political party formed by some of the brightest minds in the country who finally could overcome the taboo associated with politics and jumped into this dirty muddle with a broom(their symbol). They might not be the first such collection or attempt in the history but then they are surely the first one in my lifetime and their ideology resonate with the common sense of a common man. To their credit they showed a remarkable performance(28 seats out of 70) in their debut elections in the capital state of the country-Delhi.

The other two big political parties are- the Congress and the BJP(Bhartiya Janta Party). To say the least they have been hit rather hard by this tide. The reason being- their total disconnect with the  common man. They got way too busy in making money and forgot the very basic reason they got the positions in the first place.( But honestly this is the problem of humans in general !! We have become too much money centric and politics probably tops the list of professions affected by this, given the opportunities and the scale of money involved !! let me not get distracted !)

The existing bigwigs not only ridiculed the AAP and the people who formed it, they did the ghastly mistake of ridiculing the concept !!! They got their calculations completely messed up in not realizing that Arvind Kejriwal(the leader of the party) is just the face of the resentment which has been harboring inside the nation of millions for quite long time.

What made them fall flat on their face, in spite, of having the muscle and money is their complete lack of trust in the ability of a common man. But then one shouldn't blame them for this attitude !! After all the common man did ignore them for so long and preferred to look in an orthogonal direction while these people changed the scale of misdeeds they were doing by many factors of magnitude ! No wonder we were taken for granted ! The game of division of the country into three classes- super rich, middle class and the poor(rich class overlaps with the middle and the super rich ) and the subsequent manipulations led to their atrocious scale of roguery and wrongdoings. The richness of rich increased while the big chunk of population remained poor (rather are kept poor !) and the upcoming and struggling middle class's existence hardly mattered for the political class. Or rather both the political class and the middle class neglected each other's presence in the scenario !! As a result of this mutual ignorance the middle class lost its voice and say in the country completely.  It became so bad that it led to the emergence of this class as a political party - the AAP ! Not bad to start with as one says 'late is better than never' so here we are !!

In today 's times there can't be a debate on the role of media in such movements. In this particular case the media has been very cautious on being the side of the common man and the impact of the major political forces on their conduct can't be ignored. In spite of the power of media there still are a  large number of people who conduct their duties with the uprightness. I really hope and wish that media just reports the happenings in a genuine way rather than trying to play the role of a moralistic  teacher.

I must show my sincere gratitude to the team of people who made this possible, for being able to direct the anger and helplessness of the nation of the flustered people into a concrete phenomena called AAP.  Kindly continue to follow what you started with, keeping your feet firmly on the ground.

Now the common man( that includes me)- the one responsible for all this tamasha !! Let us all understand and appreciate this -to bring the change in the society and the nation under the leadership of AAP, implement "be the change you want to see in others" in our day to day life. AAP does not has a magic wand in its hand that can cleanse the system without our contribution to it. Let us not waste the chance we got of having an honest leadership by not doing our bit !

Be the change you want to see in others !!

Every time I  feel the need of changing the world around for a better life for myself and others, now a days, I get back to this- the only way is change myself ! Trying to look for qualities of honesty, integrity, empathy, compassion in others I realize that it gets much easier, in case I try to attain these rather than wishing  others to do the same.

The point I want to make is very simple/easy and difficult at the same time to achieve.

Easy - because the solution is you, yourself, nothing outside you.

Difficult -  on account of the same reason. The change has to come from within you and mind it, it is not easy at all.  Otherwise things would have been rather different by now !

In a nut shell the change will not come by demanding others to change and has to be in you ! And unfortunately we are not trained to think like this and hence the chance of getting a solution goes tumbling down.  Every time I feel overwhelmed by this thought I try to bring myself to normal level and focus only on how to change myself.

Pearls from Star Wars.

But beware of the Dark Side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever it dominate you destiny, consume you it will. 

Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.

Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

Do or do not; there is no try.

These are few of the profound statements made by Master Yoda in different parts of the Star Wars , one of the very entertaining series and loaded with pearls of wisdom to guide us through the journey of life.