There have been more than a few occasions when self-doubt has overwhelmed me and repeatedly questioned me if I can or should even write blogs . There are many things in life, where you can't pinpoint an exact cause or an exact effect . All the content in Ghazals , Poetry , Music and Spiritual texts seem to be all so synonymous to me . Since they all seem so perfectly connected , I jot down the essence of what I feel , absorb and reflect, in the blogs . There are times when you to go see a movie and you feel that this idea of the character on-screen is actually your own self or you relate another character to someone you know . I realise that, as humans we keep finding opportunities whatever makes our personalities highlighted . "Grand standing" is a drug , affection has that "grand standing" factor . Over last few weeks, I had a lot of time to think however the constant introspection doesn't lead to blogs . It's a trigger , which hopefully , will be understood one day .....
Today's Blog is about the five phases of life , in my view. But before I narrate those five phases , a confession . In every decision we make , there is a hidden matrix , some part of this matrix is pure whim and fancy , pure conviction , but a large part is unwritten and vague . Someone asked me this question on how I find people to connect with for the rest of my life . My answer was that you must see how they handle anger, See how they treat ones who wronged them, See them in power and how they treat people who can't help them back....Travel with them...see who rules them , desires , hormones or values . Once you find the right ones . Love them , irrespective of fact that they may cause temporary disgust . Love them irrespective of everything and make that connect indefatigable .
Phase 1 - Life Happens to you
There is a blog I read a few months back and like a good book, I read every post and every tweet of the author . One thing stood out in each one of her writings that she was in denial of her feminine existence . Despite a fairly evolved level of consciousness evident in her writings, I couldn't understand on why she was constantly fighting a basic fact that she was born a woman . Life happens to us , by someone's design . We are assigned a set of situations , a gender , a mother tongue , a height and body type , a skin complexion and a set of DNA imprints which partly decide who we will be . Some people are born just to follow a natural existence path based on their DNA , their influences and eventually die in same , passing on the baton to the next one . A lot of times I see people around me to whom life happened and they follow the path with extremely minimal deviations . A path is set for you the moment you are born, you could be an elder daughter , who will have two female siblings later or you could be an elder son or sometimes , just a child , by accident . How many times you hear the expression "I am the eldest of three daughters of a conservative family " or "I am the youngest hence spoilt brat" , we just push ourselves to such driving lanes .
For a good deal of your life, you have probably lived like most human beings, feeling that Life is happening to you. Life is so big and if you are honest with yourself, you never really know what is going to happen next. You wake up one morning and your heart is light and happy and the next day you’re unsettled. Things go wrong , you fall sick , feel dejected and undervalued , every day you get a little older and death is always lurking around the corner.
So it is understandable that the more unconscious you are, the more often you feel like a CD in the CD player called life . You are playing the tracks burnt in you , but do you need to....
Phase 2 - Life Happens within you
This is the phase where the infant, becomes a child , a child becomes a teenager and finally a young person . Life evolves very fast , every year , they way you eat, look, think and work changes . Education is assumed to be the main focus of these years but not necessarily. The bad news is everything still moves on the same route as Phase 1, the same set of parents decide what you eat, learn, speak and study . This is also an improvised version of how animals are being brought up , what makes a difference is an education and a whiff of a higher level of consciousness . At this stage , one also starts to plan what life will do for you and through you .
When it becomes too uncomfortable to live with the fact that life just happened to us , we start to be the rebel against the powerlessness, you evolve into the belief that Life is happening by you. Rather than being a victim to Life, you believe you can control it. There can be a great feeling of personal power in this level of consciousness. This is where control is unleashed the most . The control of religion , social rituals and ethnic practises . Men try to control women and vice versa. Religions try to control the masses. Countries try to control other countries. The majority of people try to control others who are not like them ( different skin colour, dissimilar religions). The strongest control the society unleashes in this phase is categorised as "Morality" , the rule book of what's right and wrong . Most of all, we try to control everything but ourselves, hoping to make ourselves be what we think we should be.
This is where the curry begins to cook .
Phase 3 - Life happens for you
This is the "Return on Investment" phase , one becomes young and steps out , starts to taste the wind. You eventually begin to see that all of your reacting and controlling hasn’t brought you the ease and joy you long for. Instead of being the victim of your life and or needing to make it be any particular way, which is the endless game of struggle, you begin to get an inkling that Life is something to be listened to, opened to. This is where you also seeing the reality of the fairy tales and the moral rule book .
At this level of consciousness you begin to realise something very startling: most of the time, rather than experiencing Life, you think about it, seeing only the thoughts in your head! When you experience Life through your thoughts, you stop experiencing it as it is. Or, as the well-known French author Anais Nin once said, “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” You project your spells onto yourself and others rather than really seeing what is. When was the last time you truly saw a loved one’s face? If you are honest with yourself, it has probably been a long time.
It is in this phase of higher consciousness that you also realize that your suffering doesn’t come from the experiences of your life. Instead, it comes from your stories about what is happening around you and to you . It comes from inside of you! There could be a gray day and you’re just fine. Then on another gray day you could be miserable. You may say it is because the day is gray, but it comes from your story about the day, not the day itself.
This is where you begin to live what I have called the you-turn. You become interested in consumption, you buy cars , houses , you live for food, scotch , curtain drapes and big apartments but the void inside just keeps getting becoming deeper and deeper . You want youth to pause , you need every hormonal thirst to be quenched in an unprecedented fashion every time, you seek new mountains , new dresses and new evenings .
Life is now either merging with the crowd or just falling off it .
Phase 4 - Life happens through you
Oh, we forget that all animals need to reproduce , so you must give life , you must life happen for others . You must procreate and create one or a few more of you . This is where you begin to exceed what your earlier generation did . You buy bigger houses , earn even more , procreate smarter and live healthier , try new poisons and demolish every argument of phase 1 . Often Middle age , retirement to death, happens in this phase . You become curious about what is happening rather than reacting and controlling, the more you come to a wonderful realisation that your life is for you. Rather than Life being something that is happening to you that you must control, you realise the helplessness and hence you become a control freak.
Life is not a random series of events. It is a highly intelligent unfolding that is putting you in the exact situations you need in order to see and unhook from the spells that keep you separate from its flow. No matter what is happening in your life, you finally understand that Life knows what it is doing.
At this level of consciousness, rather than Life being something you relish , you do "crowd management " and "crowd pleasing " . Remember there are always younger lives happening after you . My example on this is like , visually impaired people walking on a railway track , they can hear people behind them , so they make follow them , they can hear people in front of them so they try to stay on track . The track is "repetition" , You stay a good Hindu or a devout Muslim , you stay in social norms . Aliveness stays trapped in the spells, your energy , your hope and your zeal to live diminishes .
Phase 5 - Life is YOU ...
One of my simple and stupid conclusions in life is that life is what you make others feel and what impact you leave on others lives. I often hear people say , I will die a happy man or woman , that because they have consumed and seen all the rides in the amusement park . NO, I disagree , what difference I make to the life of the very very few I touch , love and connect with, is what's important . Life is what you taste in the wind , what new rules you make , what myths you bust , new values and convictions you give birth to , the new poetry you write .
I had recently made a statement in a spiritual discussion group online , that a woman should bear 2 kids from men of different religions (say a Muslim and a Hindu) and let her bring them up in her own religion , that's what will show what real spiritual life will evolve to be like .
Spirituality or religion isn't carried in the sperm , spirituality is an individual evolution . Sadly , I see very few evolving , everyone is busy producing, consuming and reproducing . On this planet, Live like a good tenant but leave a happier place behind , Don't leave a "will" depicting things , leave memories which can make hearts warm on a winter evening and eyes moist on a rainy day .
Today a Ghazal , a new one . One for the day ...for the week rather ...
दिल तो खुद अपनी कुछ खबर ना लगे , कोई अच्छा भी इस क़दर ना लगे
मैं जिसे दिल से प्यार करता हूँ , चाहता हूँ उसे , खबर ना लगे
बस तुझे उस नज़र से देखा है , जिस नज़र से तुझे नज़र ना लगे
वह मेरा दोस्त भी है, दुश्मन भी , बद्दुआ दूँ अगर उसे , मगर ना लगे
Today's Blog is about the five phases of life , in my view. But before I narrate those five phases , a confession . In every decision we make , there is a hidden matrix , some part of this matrix is pure whim and fancy , pure conviction , but a large part is unwritten and vague . Someone asked me this question on how I find people to connect with for the rest of my life . My answer was that you must see how they handle anger, See how they treat ones who wronged them, See them in power and how they treat people who can't help them back....Travel with them...see who rules them , desires , hormones or values . Once you find the right ones . Love them , irrespective of fact that they may cause temporary disgust . Love them irrespective of everything and make that connect indefatigable .
Phase 1 - Life Happens to you
There is a blog I read a few months back and like a good book, I read every post and every tweet of the author . One thing stood out in each one of her writings that she was in denial of her feminine existence . Despite a fairly evolved level of consciousness evident in her writings, I couldn't understand on why she was constantly fighting a basic fact that she was born a woman . Life happens to us , by someone's design . We are assigned a set of situations , a gender , a mother tongue , a height and body type , a skin complexion and a set of DNA imprints which partly decide who we will be . Some people are born just to follow a natural existence path based on their DNA , their influences and eventually die in same , passing on the baton to the next one . A lot of times I see people around me to whom life happened and they follow the path with extremely minimal deviations . A path is set for you the moment you are born, you could be an elder daughter , who will have two female siblings later or you could be an elder son or sometimes , just a child , by accident . How many times you hear the expression "I am the eldest of three daughters of a conservative family " or "I am the youngest hence spoilt brat" , we just push ourselves to such driving lanes .
For a good deal of your life, you have probably lived like most human beings, feeling that Life is happening to you. Life is so big and if you are honest with yourself, you never really know what is going to happen next. You wake up one morning and your heart is light and happy and the next day you’re unsettled. Things go wrong , you fall sick , feel dejected and undervalued , every day you get a little older and death is always lurking around the corner.
So it is understandable that the more unconscious you are, the more often you feel like a CD in the CD player called life . You are playing the tracks burnt in you , but do you need to....
Phase 2 - Life Happens within you
This is the phase where the infant, becomes a child , a child becomes a teenager and finally a young person . Life evolves very fast , every year , they way you eat, look, think and work changes . Education is assumed to be the main focus of these years but not necessarily. The bad news is everything still moves on the same route as Phase 1, the same set of parents decide what you eat, learn, speak and study . This is also an improvised version of how animals are being brought up , what makes a difference is an education and a whiff of a higher level of consciousness . At this stage , one also starts to plan what life will do for you and through you .
When it becomes too uncomfortable to live with the fact that life just happened to us , we start to be the rebel against the powerlessness, you evolve into the belief that Life is happening by you. Rather than being a victim to Life, you believe you can control it. There can be a great feeling of personal power in this level of consciousness. This is where control is unleashed the most . The control of religion , social rituals and ethnic practises . Men try to control women and vice versa. Religions try to control the masses. Countries try to control other countries. The majority of people try to control others who are not like them ( different skin colour, dissimilar religions). The strongest control the society unleashes in this phase is categorised as "Morality" , the rule book of what's right and wrong . Most of all, we try to control everything but ourselves, hoping to make ourselves be what we think we should be.
This is where the curry begins to cook .
Phase 3 - Life happens for you
This is the "Return on Investment" phase , one becomes young and steps out , starts to taste the wind. You eventually begin to see that all of your reacting and controlling hasn’t brought you the ease and joy you long for. Instead of being the victim of your life and or needing to make it be any particular way, which is the endless game of struggle, you begin to get an inkling that Life is something to be listened to, opened to. This is where you also seeing the reality of the fairy tales and the moral rule book .
At this level of consciousness you begin to realise something very startling: most of the time, rather than experiencing Life, you think about it, seeing only the thoughts in your head! When you experience Life through your thoughts, you stop experiencing it as it is. Or, as the well-known French author Anais Nin once said, “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” You project your spells onto yourself and others rather than really seeing what is. When was the last time you truly saw a loved one’s face? If you are honest with yourself, it has probably been a long time.
It is in this phase of higher consciousness that you also realize that your suffering doesn’t come from the experiences of your life. Instead, it comes from your stories about what is happening around you and to you . It comes from inside of you! There could be a gray day and you’re just fine. Then on another gray day you could be miserable. You may say it is because the day is gray, but it comes from your story about the day, not the day itself.
This is where you begin to live what I have called the you-turn. You become interested in consumption, you buy cars , houses , you live for food, scotch , curtain drapes and big apartments but the void inside just keeps getting becoming deeper and deeper . You want youth to pause , you need every hormonal thirst to be quenched in an unprecedented fashion every time, you seek new mountains , new dresses and new evenings .
Life is now either merging with the crowd or just falling off it .
Phase 4 - Life happens through you
Oh, we forget that all animals need to reproduce , so you must give life , you must life happen for others . You must procreate and create one or a few more of you . This is where you begin to exceed what your earlier generation did . You buy bigger houses , earn even more , procreate smarter and live healthier , try new poisons and demolish every argument of phase 1 . Often Middle age , retirement to death, happens in this phase . You become curious about what is happening rather than reacting and controlling, the more you come to a wonderful realisation that your life is for you. Rather than Life being something that is happening to you that you must control, you realise the helplessness and hence you become a control freak.
Life is not a random series of events. It is a highly intelligent unfolding that is putting you in the exact situations you need in order to see and unhook from the spells that keep you separate from its flow. No matter what is happening in your life, you finally understand that Life knows what it is doing.
At this level of consciousness, rather than Life being something you relish , you do "crowd management " and "crowd pleasing " . Remember there are always younger lives happening after you . My example on this is like , visually impaired people walking on a railway track , they can hear people behind them , so they make follow them , they can hear people in front of them so they try to stay on track . The track is "repetition" , You stay a good Hindu or a devout Muslim , you stay in social norms . Aliveness stays trapped in the spells, your energy , your hope and your zeal to live diminishes .
Phase 5 - Life is YOU ...
One of my simple and stupid conclusions in life is that life is what you make others feel and what impact you leave on others lives. I often hear people say , I will die a happy man or woman , that because they have consumed and seen all the rides in the amusement park . NO, I disagree , what difference I make to the life of the very very few I touch , love and connect with, is what's important . Life is what you taste in the wind , what new rules you make , what myths you bust , new values and convictions you give birth to , the new poetry you write .
I had recently made a statement in a spiritual discussion group online , that a woman should bear 2 kids from men of different religions (say a Muslim and a Hindu) and let her bring them up in her own religion , that's what will show what real spiritual life will evolve to be like .
Spirituality or religion isn't carried in the sperm , spirituality is an individual evolution . Sadly , I see very few evolving , everyone is busy producing, consuming and reproducing . On this planet, Live like a good tenant but leave a happier place behind , Don't leave a "will" depicting things , leave memories which can make hearts warm on a winter evening and eyes moist on a rainy day .
Today a Ghazal , a new one . One for the day ...for the week rather ...
दिल तो खुद अपनी कुछ खबर ना लगे , कोई अच्छा भी इस क़दर ना लगे
मैं जिसे दिल से प्यार करता हूँ , चाहता हूँ उसे , खबर ना लगे
बस तुझे उस नज़र से देखा है , जिस नज़र से तुझे नज़र ना लगे
वह मेरा दोस्त भी है, दुश्मन भी , बद्दुआ दूँ अगर उसे , मगर ना लगे
Comments
Post a Comment