Monday, January 29, 2007

Don't carry the past with you

“How are you doing?” I asked a friend of mine whom I met after a long time.

“Fine” He said in a matter-of-the-fact tone, and for the sake of courtesy he asked me back. I, as usual said, “I am doing just great!”

His face had a grin and a raised eyebrow. “Well, even I am trying to be great. It seems it’s going to take some time.”

I was left thinking over his trailing optimism. I asked, “What do you mean you are trying. One doesn’t have to try to feel great. You just feel so.”

“Well, maybe it’s in your case. On my mind, I have got many things, which demand my constant attention and resources,” he said in a you-wouldn’t-understand manner.

I understood what his problem was; it is the same as everyone has every day. It is the problem of all those people who feel just fine and not great. It is the same tricky situation that many people find themselves lost in.

So, I said to him, “Then, why don’t you tear off the papers in your book as soon as you read them. Why do you carry the whole book with you?”

He gave me an amusing look and said, “What?”

“Well, let me explain to you clearly. Every day in your life is a page in the book called Life. This book is tied to your body and it cannot be untied. It is mandatory that you carry it with you. And unfortunately, many people carry it with them without realizing that that book is stopping them from walking fast.

Since your birth, there must have been thousands of pages added to it and the weight of the book keeps on increasing day by day. As it is tied to your body, you will not be able to run, jump, or walk fast on your Path. You get yourself set in a slow pace of life which becomes routine and dull. Even when you come across situations and experiences you want to run with excitement or jump with joy, you cannot do it due to the burden of the book.

And needless to say, the burden is just going to increase as you grow older and you will miss many opportunities to hop and jump. If by any chance you manage to take off that burden at a later stage in life, you will be upset to realize that the moments of joy have come and gone and you were just a mere spectator. Time is the most precious commodity and will not come back once you miss it.”

He was more confused by all this and asked, “What is the book and what are the pages? Can you be a bit explanatory?”

“Yes, my dear”, I said in a caring voice and continued my explanation.

“The book is your life and the pages are the experiences you have encountered thus far. And the content in those pages are the lessons that those experiences brought with them.

Now, the trap everyone falls into is that they don’t read the pages. They just carry the book as a reference guide rather than a text book. For instance, if you want to become a surgeon, you have to read some books and gain some knowledge from them. Some books are text books from which you have to learn everything before you pass the course. There are other books that work as reference guides and need not be mugged up; you can refer to them only when necessary.

Unfortunately, people handle the Book of Life as a reference book. But it is NOT! You have to read, understand, and remember the essence of every page before you go to the next one. Otherwise, you will be just carrying the every increasing burden with you. However, since it is not a book of reference, when you try to go back to some pages for seeking some solution or an answer for a question, you will find that the text seems complex and incomprehensible. It seems because you did not read the previous lesson but are trying to go randomly.

Therefore, the best thing to do is to read every day’s lesson at the end of that day and tear off that page from the book. You might argue that tearing off pages is not a good thing to do. But you need to know that such paradigms will just let you fall while carrying the burden.

Nothing in the world was given to you to be stored or saved with you. Whatever you get in life, you have to savor it for the moment, enjoy its presence, capture its essence, give it back and move on.

Every page in the Book of Life is a problematic situation. If you have solved that problem and learned the lesson it carries with it, you will not need that page again as you already have digested the spirit of that lesson.

It is very important to know that you must not carry the past memories with you; but only the lessons from them. If at any point in time, you are being haunted by any memory from past, understand that you have not enjoyed that moment in the past when you should have completely appreciated it. A memory haunts you only if you did not give it its share of attention or appreciation when you faced that situation.

The best way to walk the Path is to live in the present moment, appreciate what is in front of you, solve today’s problems today itself, learn the lessons from today, and enter tomorrow with only a rejuvenated spirit instead of a stinky, dirty, heavy baggage of old, cold, haunting lessons.

As long as you are tied to the heavy book of life with all the pages that you should have shed off, you will falter to walk with your spirits high.”

Now he understood what I was telling but he still was caught up in the pessimistic habit of escapism. He asked, “Okay, I will learn the lessons of the day that day hereafter. What about the pages that are already accumulated? I will have to carry that, what say?”

A smile came on my face knowing that at least that he is ready to take in the insights I gave him instead of striking them off as some silly stuff. So, I carried on with my analogies.

“Of course, you have already stuffed your rucksack with lots of a huge book containing lots of pages from the past. Perhaps, it’s time to stop for a while the mundane tasks of your life and complete the pending work. So that you can clear off all the worries from yesterday and enter tomorrow afresh.

It’s never too late. No matter how long you go on a wrong road, turn back. Otherwise, you are just going to end up nowhere. I suggest that you take some time off from your routine life, go on some vacation, spend some time lonely, reflect on your past, introspect in retrospection, read the pending lessons, learn them, and once you feel that the pages can be left behind, do so and come back to your routine schedule.

I guess that’s the best piece of advice I can give you. Beyond that you will have to make choices and take turns; whether it is a right turn or left one, or even a U turn.”

With that we had a good laugh and he seemed to have already shed some pages and his spirit was able to jump a little bit.

On a final note, I told him, “With spirits that are heavy you are going to crawl on the ground. With spirits that are as light as wind, you are going to fly. Make a Choice!”

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Walk the Path & Live in the Moment

Yesterday, I was watching cricket match between India and West Indies. As many Indians know, due to a row between Nimbus sports and DD, the match was telecast on DD 7 minutes delayed. Since Nimbus was not made available to us via our cable operators, we were watching it on DD even though we were watching 7 minutes into the past.

At the same time, we also had a sense of peeking into the future since all news channels were updating the score ball-by-ball without any delay. We were watching the scores on the news channels and then switching to the game on DD. It was some kind of a thrill to know that in the next over the batsmen will get out or that the batsmen will hit a six on the next ball.

I continued with that shuffling for almost 2 hours enjoying the strange excitement which resembled a feeling of ‘knowing the future’. But when the match entered a tensed phase, into crucial deciding last overs, where it was neck-to-neck fight between the teams, I could not go to the news channel to see what actually happened. I was tensed and anxious as to what will happen; but I did not feel like switching to the news channel to ‘know the future,’ so to say. I continued all through the final overs on DD till India won the game.

After the match, I was struck with an insight about the series of feelings I experienced during the whole match. Initially I was excited and thrilled to know the future but then when the match reached tensed situations, I preferred to stay with that tension rather than relieve myself by peeking into the other channel.

Perhaps, this is what happens to us in life. The more intellectual we become the more access we get to the happenings of future. At least, we will start estimating the most probable events and somehow start seeing the future. In the beginning such knowledge might be exhilarating, but soon you would lose interest in the match that’s in front of you if you know what’s about to happen.

Many philosophers have advocated that mind is your enemy. When I first heard such sayings, I felt that they are some kind of losers and hate people who are gifted with intelligence to know and understand the future. However, luckily, I understood the ill effects of being intelligent soon: You cannot anymore live in the moment!

Mind demands security and security comes with certainty. Certainty comes with logic and logic peeks into future. In the end, mind feels Secure and your heart will feel lost.

So the moral of the story and the insight I had is: Mind is a good servant but a very bad master. Use your intelligence to achieve your dreams; don’t let your dreams be determined by your intelligence.

If you let that happen, all your dreams will become nothing but logical analysis of what you possibly can do or cannot do. This evaluation of possibilities is limited and restricted by your acquired learning, which we call mind. Mind is just as old as your age is, whereas your dreams and intuition are much older; perhaps, they have been there since the origin of the universe in one form or the other.

The balancing act has to be learnt! Mind should enter the picture only after you know and realize what your Dreams are. Then, after you know, take the help of your mind to follow the Path. Mind has to just make things easy and comfortable for you to walk your Path. It should not be deciding what your Path is.

When Mind is trying to decide your Path, it sees the opportunities, probabilities, abilities, capabilities, and many such parameters. The result is that you start to live in the future.

When mind is trying to analyze or judge about your Path, it draws incidents, experiences, lessons, pains and pleasures from your memories. In such a case, you live in the past.

But if you let your heart decide the Path, then, Mind has only on task; and that is to make sure that your journey is joyous and purposeful. Hurray! Here, you are living in the moment.

This whole insight might seem silly initially, but once you learn how to talk to and listen to your Intuition, you will wonder how good its wisdom is when compared to the knowledge of your mind. Trust me, walk this walk and you will relish every moment of it and also cherish it when you reach the destination.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Is it Freewill or Fate?

This debate has been there for centuries and it was never satisfactorily concluded. Here, I argue that life is a complex combination of both freewill and fate, and that this complex calculation is all taken care of in a dimension that cannot be depicted in a two-dimensional or three-dimensional space system.

Perhaps, this is where Einstein’s space-time concept is useful in philosophy. However, I will try to explain my theory with an analogy to the way computer networking and database administration works.

Imagine this universe as a huge network of computers and you are one of the Client computers connected to the Server called “God” (Please note that there is no religious inclination in this theory. “God” is used just for my convenience.)

Also, imagine that all the data related to the client computers (that is people) are stored in the server database in the form of “desires.”

Whenever, you desire for something—consciously or subconsciously—a query is sent to the server database asking to send the relevant result into your life. For example, let’s say, subconsciously I ask for a pizza. Then, a query is sent to the server database and the computer called God will send me the result of Pizza into my life.

This query is pretty simple because the object of the query is clearly mentioned. However, let’s say, I ask for “some delicious food”. Now the server database has so many results related to this query that the computer called God will send me the top 5 results for this query into my life.

But these top-5 results for a query will be different from computer to computer (person to person) depending on its preferences and personal settings. So, the results I get for “delicious food” will be different from what you might get.

Even this example is simple when compared to the jumbled, confused, entangled and tortuous queries (desires) that we, humans, make in our day-to-day life (God bless God, I wonder how he handles this mess). So, naturally, as a consequence of such a complexity, the results also tend to get more irrelevant.

It is very important to note that it is not that God doesn’t know what you want. But God will not give anything that you did not ask for. God wants you to make a choice because it is your computer after all.

However, the two examples above do not take time into consideration. That is, it is assumed that the query and the result happen in sequence one after the other. However, fortunately or unfortunately, we humans are not that stable and focused in life with the choices we make.

Taking my example again, let’s say at 10:45 p.m. and 4124504 pico-seconds, I ask for delicious food and naturally it will take at least 10 pico-second (let’s say) to execute that query. But within 2 pico-seconds from the instance of the query sent for delicious food, I will change my thoughts and say, “I want delicious Chinese food.” Here comes the eternal problem of human mind that is as predictable as a cat on the wall jumping on to one side rathern than the other!

Now God (poor fellow) has to stop its current process’ execution, change the parameters and search for a different parameter. The problem does not end here. Within the next 2 or 3 pico-seconds, my thoughts change again and this oscillation continues until a combination occurs where the God computer reaches a default setting and sends that result. This can be understood just like the “Switch case” in C language or Java. Within a particular time, you change so many options, that God will send the default one.

But I (the query sender) will be wondering, “Why did I get this food when I asked for that food?” See, God does not function accurately. Then, we start cursing our fate, “What is there in our hands? Everything is fate. It is written on your face, it is written on your palms, it is defined by your stars, it is that and it is this.”

Now, any sane person will understand that the fault was not with God computer but with the syntax or frequency of the query sent from Client Computer!

I wonder how the God computer will tackle such ridiculous queries in millions and millions of numbers from across the world (and perhaps the aliens are like us too. Who knows?)

So, the debate of freewill over fate ends here with the conclusion that you have got freewill for a certain amount of time, before which if you do not utilize it, you will get the Default result that you might as well prefer to call Fate.

From birth to death, every organism is given choices to make. The range of these choices is very large. They range from a choice like blinking your eye when a strong wind blows in front of your face to a choice like choosing your career or life partner.

The key point to understand is all of them are equally important even though some appear to be insignificant issues superficially. They are equally vital for the existence of living beings.

When we are presented with a decision-making situation in front of us, we make decisions or choices based on two things: 1) our biological drive and 2) our acquired learning.

Whatever the psychology behind this decision-making is, we make choices on our own. However, the universe runs on the cause-effect principle. So, if you come across a situation in which you are to make a choice, it is quite apparent that that situation is the effect of a choice that someone else had made in the past. Also, your current choice is going to affect the future.

That being said, the margins of freewill and fate are to be drawn with a great care. I can understand that this might seem very confusing to many people.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: Be specific about what you want. Then, stick to it until you get it. Otherwise, you will just end up blaming your fate.

Remember this: "Don't flap your wings when you are at high speeds. Otherwise, you will terribly hurt your wings..."

Monday, January 8, 2007

How to find the purpose of life?

Well, this is a million dollar question everyone in the spiritual world is trying to find an answer for. Perhaps, this is the final answer of all the schools of philosophy trying to understand God.

Once you know the purpose, you know the mind of God!

If you have come at a juncture in your life where you asked this question, then, you certainly deserve a clear explanation.

The question of purpose needs to be looked at, and answered from two viewpoints:

  1. From your personal and materialistic viewpoint
  2. From a spiritual and a universal viewpoint

The first one talks about your purpose as a human being and a social being; how you need to lead your life, how should you grow, what should be your targets in life, and finally what is your destination, etc?

These questions answer your materialistic Purpose. More often than not, this purpose is very clear and everyone knows about it. In general terms, these are called Responsibilities.

If you realize, the only thing in our life that we do not have any choice over is the selection of our parents.

You select your friends, you select your spouse, you select your job situations, etc. However, you do not select to which parents you will be born. This is solely decided by a higher force, and this selection automatically tells your materialistic purpose. The set of circumstance in your family will give you some Mandatory Responsibilities, which fall under the domain of Materialistic Purpose.

If you look back in your life, you will see so many events and situations that would not have taken place if you were not born to this particular couple. So, if you clearly understand the nature of your parents, you will understand your materialistic purpose. Well, how to understand your parents is a big concept in itself. Here, understanding does not imply the one that we talk in a general sense. What I mean by Understanding is to understand what actually the DREAMS of your mother and father were (or are)? The mixture of your parents’ dreams tells you what your purpose is.

For example, in my case, my father was a genius and artistic person who wanted to get recognition in life and believed in sharing what he had. My mother is a very simple person who is content with what she has and is very happy giving away what she has to anybody in need. My father never cared for what others would think; my mother is very sensitive about this issue. So, ultimately, as their son, I have inherited both the characteristics in different proportions.

At the same time, my brother also inherits the same characteristics. However, due to the difference in the proportions in what we have inherited from our parents, my brother and I differ in our traits.

Well, the crucial point to understand here is that we also need to understand the spiritual purpose of our parents in order to understand our role in this world. It is not just the behavior of our parents, but what they truly are. This can be understood only if your parents have spiritually evolved to a state where they actually can tell you something about their own purpose. Otherwise, it is not possible to understand your purpose from this method.

There is an easy way to find what your purpose is. That is to ask your Intuition. Intuition is your higher Self that has complete knowledge about your Self.

In order to ask your Intuition, you need to get in touch with your higher levels of consciousness. In our every day life, we are so busy with our mundane tasks that we rarely call our higher-self for any help and so it lays just dormant.

Most of the time we depend on our Logical brain because we want to prove to this world that we are intelligent. But we forget that we have something called Intuition which is beyond Logic, and more powerful in its vision.

In order to get in touch with your Intuition you can follow many methods like regular meditation, taking some time of the day just for your Self, being honest to yourself, and constantly seeking for growth in life.

These things are not something very difficult and are advised only for saints and the like. These methods are very simple and can be followed by everyone if we spend at least 10 minutes of the day just for ourselves. Here, the word ourselves refers to our spiritual self rather than our body.

If you would like to cut the crap and just know what your purpose in life is, just ask some simple questions and the answers will tell you what your materialistic purpose is:

• When are you very happy in your life? That is, which task or job gave you ultimate bliss and happiness? This answer should come from your heart instead of brain.

• What is it in your life that you feel really Passionate about?

• When do you feel suffering in your life? Don’t give vague answers like when people hurt me, or when they cheat me or something like that… answer at your personal level. Remember, nobody can do to you anything unless you allow them to.

So, the three answers will tell you what your purpose is. Whatever makes you happy is your purpose and whatever makes you sad is something that is taking you away from your purpose. It is simple Reward and Punishment system in the laws of Mother Nature. If you are working on your right path, you will be happy; otherwise, you will suffer. Mother Nature is not going to decide whether you are going to be happy or suffer; it is purely your choice to choose the path.

Coming to the second type of purpose (spiritual purpose) which I mentioned as Universal Purpose, it is the question of why this whole, massive, splendid, magnificent, universe exists and what is our status in it?

To understand this question, let me give you an example of a jigsaw puzzle. Let’ us assume that there is a very, very, very big jigsaw puzzle. Every atom in this universe has some pieces of the puzzle. The only way to know what the answer to the puzzle is to club all the pieces together. This will be possible only if all the atoms in the universe unite.

However, let’s say that I have 10 pieces of the puzzle and you have another 20. We sit together and talk, just like we are doing now, and we start making approximations as to what that ultimate solution to the puzzle could be. Even our best of the best efforts are only the best approximations but can never be proved to be right or wrong. We can just make the best guess.

Now, let’s assume that a million such people with 10 pieces each sit together. Even then, they will get more close to the answer but never will Find the answer because the rest of the pieces of the puzzle are with the non-living objects like the sun and the stars and even in every particle and atom, to which we cannot communicate.

So, the answer to this question remains alluded and we will never know unless we find a way to communicate with the Universal Database—soul of the universe which has information about everything happening at everyplace of the universe.

Again, this communication is possible with methods like meditation and understanding the laws of nature and the concept of Energy as Matter. This requires tremendous amount of practice and discipline; and most importantly the Quest for Knowledge.

If you have ever wondered, all the religions in this world preach only one thing in the end; and that is Unity. They try to bring people under one domain. Take Christianity; Jesus said that everyone should be like brothers and should be a team. The same goes with Allah. Needless to say, the philosophy of Hinduism is completely based on Unity.

That is the reason why Love exits in this universe. Love is a concept that brings people and things together so that they can solve the ultimate puzzle and understand their Purpose. That's why people feel happy to be in love, and feel so sad when they lose it.

However, the biggest question is how to find it. Remember, “Only the one who seeks shall find.”

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Negative Thoughts - the secret of a huge tree

One day a young man with spiritual quest met a Master. He asked the Master, “Master, how do you think I can stop evil thoughts and negative emotions from entering my mind?”

The Master asked the young man, “Where do you think the evil thoughts and negative emotions are generating from? Are they originating from your mind, or are they being induced into you from your surroundings?”

A bit perplexed, the young man replied, “I think they are originating from my mind only.”

The Master gave a smile and asked the young man to come with him into his backyard. There he showed to him a massive tree with huge trunk and branch structure. The tree was magnificent and full of life. The greenery around it was spreading some kind of pleasant energy.

The Master asked the young man, “Does this tree tell you something?”



Confused, the young man nodded his head horizontally.

The Master asked the young man, “Did you ever see the seed of a tree?”

The young man replied, “Yes. I did see. In fact, I have planted some myself.”

“How big are the seeds in size?” asked the Master.

“Well, they aren’t big. They are very small. The biggest of seed I have seen is fistful; that of a mango tree.”

“Then, how do you think that such a small seed has grown into a huge tree you are right now looking at?” “Does it have all the energy in it while it was seed which it is utilizing to grow?”

“No. The seed gets its energy from its surroundings; earth, water and air. Otherwise, it will not be able to grow into a massive tree.”

“Well, then, that means the whole credit for this massive structure should be given to the surroundings, isn’t it?”

Now, the young man was a bit more confused. But he decided to comply with the Master and said, “Perhaps, yes. The credit to this massive structure should go to the environment only.”

To this the Master, with his perennial smile, said, “Oh! Do you think that if the seed did not have the capacity to take in all the energy provided by the surroundings, will just the surroundings be able to build up a tree?”

The young man understood that he was wrong, and he said, “Master, I am confused. Please tell me who is responsible for this structure, then?”

The master brought him back into his house and explained to him the truth about this riddle.

“My dear son, just as a good seed with bad surroundings and a bad seed in good surroundings cannot grow well, good thoughts in evil company and evil thoughts in good company cannot grow.

That does not mean that all the accountability lies with the surroundings. If there is no seed, there can be no tree. But the seed alone cannot decide whether it will grow into a healthy tree or a malnourished one. The seed is a seed. Its purpose is to grow. Now, if you give good light, enough water and fertile soil, it will grow into a healthy tree. If you do not give it all these things, it will either grow into a malnourished tree or it might even die.

The seed is like your mind and the thoughts are the surroundings. If you constantly feed your mind with negative inputs, you are bound to get negative outputs. Moreover, the more you think about those negative thoughts, the more you are feeding them in wrong direction.

It is like having an enemy. You think about your enemy more than you think about your friend. So, indirectly you are contributing most of your valuable time to something that you actually do not want to contribute to.

So, the lesson that the tree taught me, and will teach you as well if you learn, is to be careful about what you take in. Don’t just believe what others say about you. Judge for yourself and only then give those thoughts access into your mind.

Another lesson is to choose your company wisely, because just like a small plant cannot grow in the vicinity of a big tree, positive thoughts cannot survive while you linger with people full of negative emotions.

Of course, your goal should be to become a massive tree of positive thoughts; then, you can give shelter to smaller plants with negative emotions.”

With this explanation, the young man felt relaxed and peaceful. He went home with a satisfied mind and positive thought frame.

You are important-and beautiful things will happen to you too.

The other day I was watching a talent show on MAA TV, hosted by S. P. Balu. It is titled Padutha Theeyaga (even though awkward it may sound, the word-to-word translation in to English comes down to “I will sing sweetly.”)

Every week some renowned personality from the world of music is invited as the judge. That week, they called the music director, Vidya Sagar.

When Vidya Sagar came on screen, I felt some kind of déjà vu and nostalgia struck me slightly and I had goose worms and a chill through my spine.

The memories from an incident almost ten years ago came to my mind’s eye vividly.

***

It was in 1997 when I went to a family trip to Tirupathi with my family: my father, mother and my brother. The number of visitors at this shrine is so high that people have to wait for their turn to get into the temple, and then wait for hours together before they can see the idol of Lord Balaji.

So, we too were waiting for our turn and got ourselves lodged in the temple’s accommodation facility. That day while waiting for dinner time, my brother, who was 12 years of age at that time, and I, one-and-half years elder to him were sitting on a cement bench. I was explaining to him about the galaxies and star formation about which I studied in a science fiction some days ago.

After some time, I realized that somebody was sitting behind us on the bench to our back. Four guys, perhaps in their late 20s, were amusingly listening to what I was telling to my brother.

One of them interrupted me and asked some question from the explanations I was giving, which lead to a conversation with them. So, they asked our details and also introduced themselves. One of them, pointing to another guy told me that he is Vidya Sagar.

I looked at him with a blank face depicting an expression of “So, what?” he asked me, “Don’t you know Vidya Sagar?” “He is a very famous music director.”

Now, I understood that they were trying to pull my leg; or perhaps making fun of that guy. Thereafter, I started giving them satirical replies to the attempts they were making to convince me that he was indeed a famous music director.

After an hour of conversation, we dispersed and had our dinner. They actually invited me to their room which was just in the next block of the accommodation facility we were lodging. So, after dinner I went to their room and conversed for another hour or so, during which time they continued their efforts to convince me that he is a music director for movies.

Finally, after another hour of conversation I came back to my room still unconvinced about what they were telling me.

***

But when I saw the judge on MAA TV’s talent show, I realized that that person was the one whom I met in Tirupathi, implying that that the one I met there was indeed the famous music director!

Somehow, I felt that there is a lesson to be learnt from this whole flashback. After meditating a bit on that, I realized that the lesson is about “not accepting that beautiful and pleasant coincidences happen to us all the time.”

As I meditated on my feelings of that day ten years ago, I understood the reason behind my not believing that the person could be a famous music director. It was because I felt that such a pleasant surprise couldn’t happen to me. I was thinking, “How could a famous music director like Vidya Sagar, come and eavesdrop on my amateur conversation and be impressed with it?”

Somewhere deep down my heart, I did not believe that I deserve such a pleasant surprise. So, I did not accept the possibility of it at all. Of course, this is a very simple act of denying positive possibilities in life. This is what happens to most of us.

However, there are more intense and disastrous denials that people resort to. When we come across something miraculous happening in our lives we start backing off thinking, subconsciously, that we do not deserve what we are getting. There are also instances when people even sabotage success and pleasure just because of this paradigm.

Remember, the first principle of being happy is accepting that You Can Be Happy and that You Need To Be Happy.

If you are in a habit of self-denial, stop it at once. See the beautiful side of your life and tell yourself that everyone is unique and everyone gets their share of pain and pleasure.

Do not consider pain as negative and pleasure as positive. Pain is just an alarm of wrong-doing and Pleasure is reinforcement of right-doing.

The moral of the story is: Know that you are as important to the universe as anyone else is, no matter what your state of affairs is like.

Monday, January 1, 2007

White Love - the true meaning of love

For centuries, we tried to define love. Why? No appropriate reason can be drawn. But I am sure about one thing: to know the difference between right and wrong, clearly. To know what can be called as love and what cannot be called as love.

Rules have been broken; revolutions have been brought on, kingdoms have been destroyed, people have died and people have been put to death, and all in the name of love. If anyone had to do a statistical analysis, violence would be more accounted to love than peace. Sometime ago, I stopped reading newspaper except for the sports and business sections, because at least one murder, or at least one suicide, or at least one instance of violence is reported on the name of love. Because the religion of boy and girl are different, because the lad is poor, because the parents have other plans for the kids, and because of some reasons that I never seem to understand. Reasons that seem so meaningless before the power of love, yet love seems to lose or at least lovers lose.

The irony is that there are people who are ready to die for love, and there are people ready to kill love itself.

My point is, why? Is it because of the lack of love, or the lack of understanding of the true meaning of love? I strongly believe that it is because the lack of understanding of the true nature of love.

If you mix up all the colors, in equal proportions, you will get white color. So what?

At one point in time, I was about to give up everything. Everything I’ve ever had; everything I loved and everyone that loved me, because of love. At that point, I asked myself "if love is that great, how come there is suffering in it?" I wasted a lot of time asking that question again and again until one day I tumbled upon the answer. And the answer is….

By the way, what was the question? Oh! Got it! "If love is that great, how come there is suffering in it?" Well, it’s because love is like pure white color. It has all the colors in it. Love is a supreme emotion. It has all the emotions in it: pain and pleasure, jealousy and sacrifice, selfishness and selflessness, every emotion of human life. That’s what love is. That’s why people cry in love, laugh in love, and feel as if they own the world and also feel as if the world does not matter to them; all emotions clubbed. But people do not realize that all these emotions are part of love. They think that love means only pleasure. No, it’s not. Again, as I said, love is like pure white color. Another property of white color is that it reflects all that it gets. In the same way, true love has the property to give. People think that love is all about getting some thing. Whenever I asked anyone to tell me their opinion on love, they said it is being cared for, able to trust, et cetera. But the truth is love is all about giving. Just like light, if you get everything and do not give anything back, it turns out to be black. As you start giving more and more out, the colors will become more and more bright. The same with love the more you give the more beautiful it will become. But people know about love in only one form, and they refuse to accept its other forms. Love is everywhere and love is everything. It is not limited or restricted to anything. Only when people understand this, love will win. Only then, people will realize the power of love.

Wow! Did I just define love? No. I did not. Defining is telling that something is this, this, and this. That’s it. If it does not fall into any of the three categories mentioned in the previous line, then, it is something different than the defined thing. Thus, I did not define. I just expanded the meaning of love.

When I came to this conclusion, I felt good. Remind you, I felt good. I did not feel right or wrong. I just felt good. That’s what life is all about. Feeling good about what you do.

Love is not a part of life. Love is life. Let them go to hell who say it is only a part. Tell me one thing in life that does not carry a form of love with it. And remind you, when I say love it is not only the girl-boy love. The love between mom and child, the love between parents and children, the smile that comes on ones face when one sees a little baby smile is also love. Now, tell me is love a part of life?

What will happen if you open the lid of a chilled cool drink bottle? Stupid question, isn’t it? The lid will open. But what will happen if you shake the bottle very much and then open it? All the drink will come out as a fountain. That is the logic of life. If you stand still nothing exciting is going to happen than the opening of a cool drink bottle lid. But if you shake the life a bit, there will be fountain of love. Sometimes, we need to take changes. And sometimes these chances might sound illogical. But let me tell you:

"The heart has its own reasons that reason knows not of."

Believe me, love is what keeps the integrity of life. Love is like the thread in a chain of pearls. No matter how beautiful the pearls are, you need a thread to make it a chain. If you cut that thread off, there will be only pearls and no chain.

In short, if life is the chain, love is the thread binding the pearls.