Burn Baby, Burn.

She said, "May I come Close? I have many demons inside". 

I answered, "Don't come any closer, there is already a hell inside of me, created by unwelcome gifts from others like you". 

I want to tell you a secret

For the frivolous and trivial minded, gossip is an important currency. Such people trade so called secrets with one another until nothing is secret and everything is naked. All useless but extremely entertaining. The small and idle minded can be forgiven for that is all they can indulge in.

I do not want people to tell me their secrets, though I am good at keeping other people's secrets. It is a terrible quality to possess for I am burdened by carrying someone else demons.The burden of these secrets were burning in others now they burn inside me.

Many a times we are told, "I am going to tell you a secret, but you have to promise not to tell anyone else". Is it not foolish for people to expect someone else to keep your secret which you yourself cannot keep?

It is believed that the profession with the highest suicide rates are psychiatrists,  and why not? They are constantly overloaded with other people's treachery, complaints, secrets, guilts and problems. 

“If you have a secret that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” - Eric Schmidt

Empathy, is certainly a desirable trait in people. It is the ability to place oneself in someone else's shoes, and to be compassionate. Empathy however, is different from allowing people possession of your mind and filling it up with useless gossip and often malicious information.

Next time someone wants to bare their soul to you or tell you a secret, maybe you should reconsider whether you should be listening to it.

Savouring Life

We all need challenges to enjoy life. 
Challenge gets our adrenaline flowing to either fight or take flight, and this in turn creates stress. Some level of stress is in fact healthy and even essential for  us to live exciting and interesting lives. However stress can often become addictive, and as with all addictions we need greater and greater doses of excitement to get the same high.

One of the greatest stress creators is modern man's, need for speed. Our lives are running faster and faster, yet rarely do we arrive anywhere meaningful. 

Time is money we are told, money for whom and what will you do with that money if you have lost your health, your sanity, and your self. We often have no time to enjoy life, nature, our families, our friends and precious moments we live. If we ever do realise our folly, it is often too late in life to do anything about it.

Life is not only to be lived, it has to be savoured. Unfortunately we have come to believe that only through money and power, can we enjoy life and be happy. That too if we have lots of it.

Many things in life can be enjoyed which money cannot afford to buy,  The love and company of family, friendship, sound sleep, good health, mother's cooking, wisdom, etc. etc. 

The sounds and smell of nature, the sun, rain, the breeze, the song of birds and the mischief of youth, the joy of play, music and dance, all these and many other things we increasingly miss in our lives.

When we travel fast we hardly ever notice and therefore can never admire the scenery. When we zip through life we journey from cradle to the funeral pyre or grave, we hardly get to live. Mere existence is not living.

Many years ago I went through a catastrophic personal and business setback. I struggled and I struggled and I struggled, until there was nothing more I could do. 
When all worldly doors close we seek a higher self within our own being. Through the doorway of our soul we seek to find answers and solutions. Eventually, exhausted, I surrendered to God's will. I stopped struggling and that led an awakening.

Now I had time to look within. I now had time to do all the things I should have done all my life and somehow forgotten to do because I was too busy.

I found I had time to reflect, meditate, go for walks,  spend time with my loved ones. I learnt to chew rather than swallow my food. Help with the children and home, read listen to music, tell and listen to stories, etc. I had done many of these things before but grudgingly or almost robotically, now I savoured them.

I do not regret the years I spent in discovering my potential and to achieving  spectacular results. I had a wonderful relationship with my colleagues and the immense learning I obtained. Many liked me and some even loved me but I was too busy and oblivious of their affection.

I still work hard, and do many things, but all with greater meaning. No issue is too minor, nor is any relationship too demanding. A joy fills my being for I no longer live life but savour it.

A word is worth a billion pictures

A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, but how many pictures is a word worth?

_______________________

A word when read or heard will form an image in the mind of the listener or reader. Rarely do we find two people sharing the same image.

This is because each individual has his or her own unique perspective on everything. These perspectives exist within the reality they have created for themselves.  For example take the word 'love', it will form a different image in each individual's mind because of their own unique reality.

We share this planet with billions of people, therefore each word can potentially translate into billions of images. Harmony between people can only be achieved if people are willing to accept that different people and communities have different realities. Openness and  engagement 
allows us to broaden, deepen and makes vibrant our individual perspectives.

Wise and evolved individuals are dangerous for exploitive leaders. They want just obedient zombies. Smart enough to work hard and stupid enough to willingly accept orders and norms blindly. 

So leaders and exploiters depend on authority, so that their brand of reality is imposed on the mind of followers and potential followers. Thus the individual's natural or original reality is distorted or suppressed.

That is why the first phase of creating followers is generating mass discipline by indoctrination. This is used by priests, social leaders and parents. They give each one of us our prime reality. Subsequently formal school and college teachers impose on us our secondary reality. This is why all political parties and organised religions have such a keen interest in mass education. The younger the mind the more virgin it will be, and easier to implant their preferred perspectives on pure minds.

This is why Albert Einstein observed, "Few are those that think with their own minds and feel with their own hearts."

Once indoctrination is complete, most people enter a stage of stupor and stay that way. Now their given realities are reinforced by suitable laws, norms and the use of communication media. 
In such a society that we have now come to live in, individuals are generally unhappy but are intellectually and spiritually too weak to dare make or even think of making any changes. They often live frustrated, hypocritical, shallow lives and will one die within these given realities. But who cares? Definitely not the leaders and definitely not the new mass of docile sheep lining up for the slaughter.

This struggle between leaders and individuals goes on. The leaders want to impose reality where as the individual seeks to discover and experience their own reality.

All it needs for an individual soul to break free from these artificial realities, is a trigger. 
Several factors can act as triggers, extreme failure, or success, new information from other non traditional sources from the outside of the controls of leaders who dominate our reality. Stimulus can come from reading, travel, engaging with people who have different perspectives, listening to others, or encountering true and good teachers. All these can jolt people awake from their given realities and they start to see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

This is why so many restrictions are imposed by the power authorities on engaging or mixing with other people, travel, etc. They seek to keep people on the straight and narrow path laid out for people to follow.

The fortunate ones with the help of genuine teachers learn to courageously experience, evolve and create their own true reality.  The true teacher can be a parent or a master or even a stranger. He or she is not is not someone who draws you to them or a dogma, He or she is someone who draws you towards yourself.

These blessed people live fulfilling lives. Rich or poor, successful careers or not, they will be contented, tolerant, friendly, peaceful, and compassionate.

__________

There is another dangerous side of awakening. 
History is full of scientists, artists, teachers, saints, prophets, gurus,  who have been tortured and killed because they dared to espouse new and different ideas and perspectives. Anyone who dares to express a reality other than the commonly accepted reality is sought to be destroyed. The worst offenders who seek to destroy are whose power is challenged by new ideas and perspectives. Most common destroyers being governments, organised religions, and professional organisations, etc. in short all those who are politically structured and govern others.

This is why many people who actually awaken pretend to remain asleep, for they have not the courage to show their own picture, their own reality.

Genuine and happy

When you buy something because you like or love it, then value comes not from the price you pay but from the joy or satisfaction it brings to the heart. However if you obtain something for a commercial reason that essential quality, that joy is missing. You always fret because you always know the cost etc. and rarely realise it's value. 

One day a man looking to make a financial investment bought a painting supposedly made by the famous painter Pablo Picasso.  Since this man had bought it merely as a commercial investment with no attraction towards it, he was a worried man.  "Did I pay too much for it?  What if the value does not increase?  The greatest fear, was it a fake?"

He had spent a lot of money and now felt ill with worry. A few days later a friend met the buyer and remarked, how bad the man looked. The man confided in his friend on what was eating him up.

Unlike many great painters who were recognised only after their death, Picasso was very famous and wealthy even while he was alive. The friend reassured him, "If it worries you so much let me help you. Pablo Picasso happens to be well known to me. We will take your painting to him directly and ask him to verify if it is a fake or not."

The man thanked his friend profusely for his assistance. They set a date and time when they would go to meet Picasso himself after the friend had secured an appointment with Picasso. 

After receiving the visitors Picasso examined the painting. After a brief while in a rather dismissive manner, Picasso declared, "This painting is not genuine."

The buyer clutching his forehead the buyer collapsed onto the floor as his knees buckled under him from the shock. moaning, "I should never have trusted that seller, that cheat. Why did I have to buy it? What have I done? I have bought a fake." 

Picasso helped revive the sobbing buyer and said" I never said it was a fake, I said it was not genuine."

The buyer and the friend were  now thoroughly confused. The man asked, "What is the difference? Fake or not genuine, why play with words, is it not the same thing?"

Picasso said, "No, there is a big difference. A fake is something made by someone else. I actually painted this myself, therefore this painting is not a fake. However when I made this painting, I was not really in a creative mood.  A man had come to buy a painting and I had none to show him. I told him to come back next week.  This man would not take a no, he wanted to buy something and he wanted it right away. So I painted something for him in a few hours. This painting is a copy of another painting I had made much earlier. **I say it is not genuine because, I never put my heart and soul into it, just some physical and memory work. "**

This painting it is not a work of art, it is not genuine. It is just some colours on a piece of canvas which lacks passion and a soul. "
                                              

______________________________________________

This incident probably explains, why people fall out of love with artists and their creations so quickly.  Why does the song or poem fail to create the magic after some time?

When first produced, it is born out of passion, the story, painting, dance or song has a soul, a life. When we repeat or duplicate it which we often do, it becomes just a mere copy. 

Copies lack a soul, and without that a soul art is just noise, a piece of canvas or paper. Every work of art, or creativity is invaluable. The moment we assign a monetary value to art we give birth to a business and in the bargain we destroy both the art and the artist.

Whenever something is created or prayers offered or friendship made, to earn money, it ceases to be genuine, for it lacks that special quality which it possesses when it is born out of passion and love.

This is also why many relationships personal, social or professional last only for a short period of time before disintegrating. Fakes die soon and genuine endures for long.

               ______________________________________

Living genuinely is not difficult, all it requires is integrity, to be honest with oneself. Yes it requires courage to be true to oneself, but it is very worth it.

I have discovered that living genuinely and not as a copy, has enriched my life and made it vibrant. My soul and I are now closer to being one, and nothing can beat that.