Of monsters and demons.

I had a Halloween bash at my place last weekend. It was a costume party and the theme was to dress up in the most horrific way one could. Fright, horror, nightmare were the highlights of the party.

Why? Don’t know. It just seemed like a good idea to go beyond merry pumpkin carving and cute Caspers hanging from the doorstep. Plus my girls were far beyond the Adams Family saga and were on to typical teenage scary movies. Nothing is ‘cooler’ than a good scare.

What is this fascination with the darker world? Why this need to indulge in their worst nightmares with so much of gusto and anticipation? Little kids pretending to be slain spirits, adults dressed in their vilest form. Research indicates that cases of murder and torture are reportedly high on the night of Halloween. A night when some are not able to distinguish between make believe and reality. Given the apparent sense of wrongness and evil associated with this night, why then do we celebrate it?
The answer came from a close friend who suggested that there is a significance why Halloween, the night of darkness is closely followed by Diwali, the festival of lights. Therein is the answer for Halloween revelry.

There is darkness and light in all of us. The fight of good over evil is a daily battle fought in the inner corridors and crevices of our mind. Every day the inherent goodness triumphs in most of us. The darkness buried further below nursing its ego and plotting revenge. Bubbling, seething and frothing with a surge to fight back. Anything bottled up can explode in the most unpredictable and disastrous of ways. On this one night we give sanction to our deprived imagination and thoughts. All carefully monitored and guided under the guise of an innocent celebration of customs. Thoughts of torture and murder, fascination with Satan and his evil ways are all given expression through role play and dressing the part. On this one day balance is sought between the good and evil within you. The more gruesome the dress and more dark the ambience, the more of the inner darkness is released.

It is also a call to accept and celebrate the darkness in us. To befriend it and understand it. When you know your demons, then they are demons no more. They become your allies or partners in fighting the darkness.

And after an evening of being demonic, when the clock strikes 12 on 31st October, when the background score of a woman screaming, bats and wolves moaning is switched of, the last of the vampires and witches are bid goodnight I feel exorcised. As I wash off the bloody face paint, I marvel at the natural beauty of my face. I appreciate the rap song playing on FM which I always argued was thrash and not music. And as I switch on the light….I feel unburdened. Light. Free.

This one night in hell makes me realise how tortured such a life must be. This one night I renew my vow for the next 364 nights. A vow to choose light. To be the light and to share the light. In everything I think, say or do.

Because now I know that the alternate is no choice at all.

What am I?

The self is an activity, It’s a process, It’s a verb. Bodhipaksa(wildmind.org) 

“What am I?”

I am the crisp clear dawn

The cool breeze that teases the rising sun,

I am the blazing summer heat

that mercilessly lays to waste all that’s down,

The flirting rain soothing a troubled mind

The bitter cold that reminds of the joyous sun.

 

I am the glance exchanged

between a nursing mother and her suckling child,

The love that pours when you watch your man slogging hard,

The tenderness that feeds once a parent, now a child.

 

I am the smile awakened by a long forgotten melody,

The pangs of a friend lost through twists of destiny,

I am the roots that hold you strong

Helps you find your way around this life and time,

I am the force that lifts you up

That helps you reach for the stars and the power beyond.

 

I am all that you see and don’t

All that you feel and won’t.

I am all and nothing at all

I am you and you are I.

 

And yet, you poor soul,

You ask “What am I?”

Love changes everything

I came across this amazing video on youtube of Kevin Richardson, a lion whisperer. Though trained as a human psychologist, he found his vocation as an animal behaviourist working with the lions of South Africa. Convinced that it was the result of some high tech computer manipulation, I researched Kevin Richardson and found to my disbelief that the video was genuine. A man and the King of the jungle rolling in the grass and playing together… I watched this video again and again truly fascinated. If all the brutality, the violence and slaughter associated with these animals can be channelized to so much love and happiness, is it impossible to do the same for us, humans?

Highest on the food chain, we always try to reinforce our dominance. Over other species, over our planetary system and most importantly over each other. Debates, discussions, committees, sports are the sophisticated forms we choose to release this instinct. An occasional war or two also helps a great deal towards releasing raw pent up need for dominance. With our loved ones, we try to cajole, reason, or blackmail our point of view. On a larger scale we use the fear of God and of retribution. As our population increases over the years…these pressures increase. Family vs. family, nation vs. nation, religion vs. religion, ideology vs. ideology…the reasons multiply. Increased pressure leads to conviction that certain groups of people cannot be reasoned with anymore. No more talks, no more discussions…it is the time to now act. Act decisively, act forcefully and act towards the final conclusion – whatever this may be. The same thought mirrored on both sides of the fight.

And yet, this video shows us that there is another way.
Love through surrender and acceptance – magic words to change the world.
By surrendering his right to act as a man, Kevin gains acceptance with the lions.
By accepting the right of the lion to be himself, Kevin has the beast surrendering his natural instincts of a predator.

What a different world we could live in, if this was to be practiced by each one of us….towards each other, our other fellow living beings and towards our planet. How ready are you to change yourself? That is the true measure of how badly you want the other to change. And if there seems no end in sight in violence and sorrow and disasters (natural and man made), it is a reflection that deep down we don’t want them to end. Because we know that if the world around us changes for the better or worse…we will change too. Our ego, our sense of self is so strong and unwilling to let go that we continue on the same path….wanting everything around us to be different but everything within intact.

But times are changing….we are running out of choices and if we do not have the courage within, higher energies are taking the decisions for us. Voices will grow stronger, protests will get uglier, mankind will be forced to accept all kinds of existence and surrender his superiority. And with this acceptance and surrender will come peace and unconditional love.

When the man ceases to be…so will the beast cease to exist.

Life is The Truman’s Show.

Truman Burbank: [to an unseen Christof] Who are you?

Christof: [on a speaker] I am the Creator – of a television show that gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions.

Truman Burbank: Then who am I?

Christof: You’re the star.

Remember the movie? In which Jim Carey plays Truman Burbank, an unsuspecting young man whose whole life is one big TV show?  It’s reality TV at its best. The main protagonist, Truman, does not even know that he is on TV and that his whole life is literally a stage. Friends, parents, wife, school, teachers, work place, job ,colleagues, neighbours, …all actors knowingly playing a part. All except Truman. He thinks his life is real. But his ideal world gets shaken up when he starts hearing an inner voice that tells him there is more life to live and more ports to sail. And as this voice gets louder it tears down the walls of this meticulously created life stage.

Thinking of the movie almost 10 years later makes me wonder if real life is any different after all?  We are playing simultaneous parts; of a knowing participant in a TV show scheming and manipulating our ways through life and the innocent participant unaware of the games others are playing, so involved in his own reality of life that the alternative seems impossible. Life is maya, an illusion say the enlightened. The only truth there is, is of love and unification. Unification of oneself with the beauty of the universe, the supreme energy that flows through every living and non living element in this world and others. And this unification leads to the power of creation – of more love, more peace, more beauty and happiness.

Beauty and harmony manifests in many forms, it is evident in the poetry of Roger Federerer’s back hand action, you know that AR Rahman’s gut wrenching composition could only come through his communion with his higher self. And of course Tendulkar could get his double century in one day cricket only with a direct pact with the Unknown. But for other mortals like me , the means of connection is through meditation. Meditation takes me to a higher place of abandonment, where I feel free to be, where there is perfect synchronization with all my energies and I feel at peace with myself and the world. No thoughts, no emotions, just the bliss of eternity attained within a moment of time.

But if you could ask Mother Theresa if she would sit in an hour of meditation? You know what the answer would be. “One  whole hour? So many wounds I can heal, so many hugs and kisses I can give ….too much to do…too little time.” Could there be any woman closer to God and his supreme love than her?

Truth manifests itself in various forms and surely there are various paths to attain the Truth. Meditation works for me, I believe in the promise of the soul’s journey to attain freedom. I believe that just like the above mentioned masters and the incarnation of divinity, I too can find the perfect harmony, the bliss of eternity. Definitely not in the process of living everyday life like they do…but in my own way, through conditioning and training of the mind, learned thorough hours of practice in meditation. Is this the right way for me? Or am I still a part of the grander illusion which feeds on my refusal to accept the finality of death, an urge to believe that I am worth more than this one lifetime? Is there a stage director up there who likes to lead me on this path manipulating and pulling strings of life incidents to steer me on course?

Could be. 

Inception, anyone?                                                                                   

                                                               

Higher Consciousness

What do you mean by higher consciousness? Describe it. What does it feel like? How do I know the message is coming from my higher consciousness? Do we have examples of a normal person like you and me acting from this consciousness?

The word “conscious” is derived from the Latin conscius which means “having joint or common knowledge with another” Over the years the word has taken several connotations varying with the associated subject: philosophy, morality, social responsibility, psychology, religion and spirituality. But the underlying meaning remains unchanged. It is a collective awareness or knowledge, which is equally shared amongst a group, a species , a solar system or a universe.

By this definition, human consciousness is the inherent knowledge that we all have, equally, within ourselves. Most of us would agree that this is most obviously evident and would term it ridiculous to dispute our instinct for survival. We accept that when it comes to efforts to gather food, protect ourselves in times of danger, having sex and our urge to procreate…..these do not have to be taught. There is an inbuilt system that constantly sends out messages and information to help us in this regard. We do not need to spend hours poring over books, taking training lessons and demanding realms of proofs and experiments. When it comes to our grosser and animal like instincts for survival….we are in consensus that a deeper knowledge base exists that guides us forward.

But when it comes to a higher level of intellect, the power of self determination, the knowledge of infinity? We then turn skeptics. We scoff, we ask for scientific proof, we debate and negate and we claim that the possibility of humans having a God consciousness, of ultimate creation, of determining the worlds we live in, of choosing our own destiny, is nothing but the delusions of a few well-meaning people with an impressionable mind. Why is it so easy to believe that every single individual has enough intellect to run from fire, but not enough to anticipate and avoid what we term as unforeseen impediments in our life or on a larger scale affect wars, global warming and so on?

Our consciousness, the collective knowledge of mankind, since its inception, is available to each one of us. How much of it we are able to tap into?  Well that mainly depends on whether you are ready to accept its existence to begin with!  Sitting under the bodhi tree Buddha experienced the creation of the universe, the creation of man and the knowledge infinite. Dozing under the apple tree, Newton grasped the laws of gravity. Not everyone is a saint or a scientist, but everyone who meditates has had experiences which defy the knowledge of their conscious mind. The beauty of weightlessness, the awe of the solar system, the cool energizing air of the Himalayas or the warm embrace of an unidentified loved one. Where did those images, emotions and sensory perceptions come from? Hallucinations – caused from excess oxygen in the body during breathing exercises. Imagination – day dreaming, suppressed desires – explanations given by the non believer.

It is so difficult to believe that we are capable of more than what we can see? So difficult, to believe in the superman/woman hidden inside?  Yes it is true that the earlier grosser instincts or base consciousness is more evident in all of us. We all have experienced it and seen it in playing out in everyday life. But the world is changing. No one will dispute that, and along with it so are we. Our deeper, higher consciousness which has been latent all these generations is now rising to the surface and making itself visible. Look at the number of recent Hollywood releases which depicts this.  As we evolve more of us will be able to tap into this knowledge reserve which will show us a new way of life. A life sustainable under the new earth order. This is inevitable. Bringing a stillness to your mind, letting  go of all the current parameters which define you minus any inhibitions or suppositions is the only way to let the  inner voice communicate with you. Listen to it because it is real – more real than the person you are, the flesh and bones, the intellect and the emotions. It comes from the source of wisdom since the first star in the universe, first life on this planet and the first man that stood upright. And most amazing is that it is all sitting inside you! You are this knowledge, you are this wisdom and you are the beautiful instrument that puts this knowledge in action.

This is your higher consciousness. Bask in it, enjoy it, revel in it. It is you.

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