My 'green' terrace

 

And finally, my plants in waiting:

 

About believing, knowing and experiencing: Why we go through what we go through?

“What you believe is what you get.” Sounds like a cliché? Well it is a cliché as it happens to be true. Most clichés are.

Can you remember the last time someone told you to “believe in yourself” and “never listen to the limiting beliefs” and “not to worry about what people tell you about yourself, but rather to trust your heart/God/loved one”? So what are these people talking about? Is it just a pep talk – from employers/coaches/parents to ensure you pick up your performance? The coach wants you to win that swimming trophy for the alma mater so s/he (see how I don’t give into gender biases – Shabana Azmi would be proud of me!) motivates you by telling you all this. Your parents want you to study more so they lay all this on you. So what do all these statements really mean?

I have come to know that really what I believe is what I manifest. Time is of no consequence here. The moment I “know” something, that becomes my reality and I start believing in it. Then everything that pertains to that “belief” manifests, as I deem such an even to be possible. So if I take a slow and steady approach, then it may take 10 years for me to believe something and then I will see it manifest or I can take the shadow of the whip approach and make things manifest right now.

As I grow – older and wiser (I really hope so!) – I feel I need to learn ways to change my belief systems. These comprise of the core beliefs that have already seeped so deep into my consciousness that I am not even aware of them anymore. But they are there, running in the background like programs, and they affect my thinking and my all my conscious effort. Whenever I have a thought that goes again my current belief system, that is, things that I do not “know” as yet, I immediately get another thought, “Hold it! That’s not possible or correct.”

The reason I feel so strongly that I need to access and thereby change or even eliminate completely my belief systems is that if I do not do so, my whole reason for coming here will be lost. I will have no experience to take back, nothing to show for my time here. After all, the reason why any of us are here is for the experience. It does not matter whether you believe in repeated cycle of births or not. If this is the only life I have then I need to have the experiences as they this is what is called living. If I will be born again with another life, I still need have as many experiences as I can so that I go into my next life a richer and wiser soul.

Until now, I have known logically that certain things are possible. I have done some pretty powerful and seemingly impossible manifestations for myself. I have seen amazing synchronicity happening around me all the time. Yet I have always felt that I keep living between two worlds – tangible and intangible. Is this what the Enlightened Ones call living in duality? Probably. For some time now, I have had this feeling that neither world exists. For the first time I realise what the smart people mean when they say “Time is an Illusion”. I feel that really, truly nothing might be happening – I must be creating my own experiences – such as feeling trapped, helpless and the other blahs that go with it (Eight of Swords, Five of Pentacles, Three of Swords, Ten of Swords and even Four of Swords all at once!). I also understand now what Buddha means when he is talking about “desires” being the root cause of all our miseries. He says “maya” (Illusion) in itself is not bad, it’s the attachment to maya that creates all misery. This is the reason we come back here again and keep accumulating “karma”. I feel that he meant, as did the other Enlightened Ones, that we look at something, we hear something, or sense something, and immediately “desire” to have this experience. And sometimes, that experience might be unpleasant as well. I can now feel it in my bones that the meaning of the words of Donald Shimoda (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach) when he compares people choosing a kind of life to going to a movie. We create horrible experiences for ourselves in the same way that some people like to go and watch horror movies. The “desire” to experience the fear, the disgust, and the helplessness is there. We are looking to get scared. It’s like craving for food – we crave a certain experience and then go after it with a club till we get it. But once we are inside the experience, we start the blame game. We forget we were the ones who made the choices. We blame our situation, our parents, our friends, our luck, God and sometimes even our selves for the experience. We forget we asked for it.

But why do we forget? Because this desiring and manifesting happens automatically and we not even aware we have asked for a certain experience! Can you believe that? It’s like going into a video library with a friend and while you are talking with that friend, you absentmindedly pick up a movie whose cover seemed remotely appealing to you for whatever reasons. You go home and play the movie and you realize you have picked up a Z grade horror sleaze fest that you had no intention of watching. Now you blame your friend for talking to you, berate the guy who constructed the shop, condemn the people who made that street, curse the video library owner for being born, curse his mother for having him, and then ultimately you slam your parent for never ever telling you that you should not walk into a video library. Phew! So much emotional attachment to your two hours that were wasted all because you were not paying attention when you were picking up the movie. You made the choice, but you forgot that later!

This exactly how we live our lives. I am sure all ancient people understood this and thus told stories and legends of gods who came to Earth to “experience” the transient life of humans. Please note here, the key word is “experience”. We always have choice and we choose to be poor, rich, ugly, abused, stressed, pretty, whatever. In my case, I feel I must have seen people who had everything and every opportunity but were still not happy. Now, I sure I must thought the experience novel! What a paradoxical existence! (By the way, in this life I am thrilled by paradoxes and I find that standing in the ocean and dying of thirst is the most novel of them all!) To have everything and still feel deprived! Oh, the irony! Oh, the drama! Oh, the experience! So now tell me, is this a surprise that I feel like this?

“The superior man resolves to walk along, and is caught in the rain. He becomes bespattered and people murmur against him. Where is the blame in this?” – The I Ching

My current “desire” is to “experience” limitlessness. Life without boundaries…Now let’s see how soon I can manifest this. This will depend on how soon I can demolish all my existing beliefs. And this again is a belief! Imagine that! :)

I call upon my imagination…how about you?

New found health and better connection with Self

For last 8 months or so I have been working towards achieving a body-mind-soul balance. It had started to seem to me as if everything in my life was lop-sided and my conviction that in this journey of life, you need to travel light, was growing stronger and stronger. So what did I do? The same that I always do! I asked for help and understanding from the powers that be and lo and behold, answers were falling in my lap!

Whenever I become aware of anything, situations and people around me adjust themselves and go extra length to ensure that I have understood the reason for this attention and also learn from the experience. My whole focus has gone through a huge paradigm shift and lots of fears have parted ways from my psyche. Only as I bid them good bye do I see that such monstorities used to stay inside me! But now I can be nice to them as they no longer are with me.

I am no longer scared about speaking my mind. People who know me will say that I always do so and that I usually never sugar coat. But that not speaking my mind. There is no need to be rude to people if you are speaking your mind - these two acts are not mutally exchangable. I now say what I feel that I have understtod or my perspective of the situation AND I do not analyse and super analyse and further super analyse what I had said and if it was right to say. I also do not start imagining things that people might be thinking about me after I have finished saying my piece.

I am also a little less greedy :). Fear and greed are two sides of the same coin so by law of synchroniciry, if one part gets affected, the other shall too.

My body is also in sync now and I am more connected. I am more choosey about the food that I put in it. Prioroties seems to have changed and for this I have to thank a lot of people in my life.

I am also more playful and peaceful and happy and laughing and more alive! On the other side, my breathing is more settled. So both roots and shoots are growing and the feeling is amazing. At this stage of my life I am more grounded than I have ever been in my life.

Shortly, I am about to embark on a new journey...A journey that will have me make my final break from the old patterns and old style of living. A new dawn in around the corner and see my long lost love of poetry surface again. Log forgotton snippets of once beloved poems are constantly floating in my mind. Music is in the air...and I am walking on it, or maybe floating....

I have completed my jump and and things have already begun happening. Waiting seems to be over.

Time trouble

We all always lament the fact that we don’t have enough time to do the things we want to do. We have to first finish doing the things that we HAVE to do and then and only then can we move on to the ones that we would love to do or will enjoy doing.

Does it not sound all topsy-turvy? I mean, just think about it – we are willing to do the unnecessary first, and then do the things that give us joy. After willingly adapting this lifestyle, we crib we are not happy or are not living the way we would like to. Wake up!!! What are you saying?????

I have come to gradually understand that our world is exactly what we want it to be. All of us need to look deep inside and see if they are not inviting the cribbing, the pain and the unhappiness. Misery, I feel, is at tomes comforting. At least we have something to cling on to!!!

If we are all given the choice as well as the resources to do what we want how many of will take the world tour that most of us say we will take? How many of us will go ahead and buy that beautiful house by the sea or mountain that we so admired? How many of us will stop working for money and start the business we always wanted to start?

My guess is we will still live the same lives, keep on doing the same things, will crib about the same things, and have the same diseases, only maybe in more expansive surroundings.

I have now started to realize my own resistance to change. Have taken the first step towards a more authentic living...The paradigm has shifted definitely, even though only a little as of now...Wish me luck.