You smiled but your acquaintance just walked past !

What happens in us when somebody we know doesn't acknowledge our smile or a shakehand but just ignores and walks past ?

The first inner reaction is my ego gets hurt. In this situation what happens to him/her who didn’t smile is less important. S/he may be in his/her own world of bliss or mess. Why that should put me in a mess? Mind starts wandering. It thinks, is it that somebody told her something against me and that’s why she didn’t smile? Is she under some pressure and hence she ignored me or doesn’t want to share something with me? Is something wrong in my face, my clothes today? Is she ignoring me? Our ego-factory can produce a lot of such crap. That’s by design. What happens to me with all these thoughts is more important. WHICH specific output of my ego-factory have I latched myself on to and HOW MUCH have I latched on to? These 2 factors will decide if we can be free even if you smile and the known person ignores. Last time this happened to me I got latched to a thought that the other person is ignoring me but he seems to be in his world of problems that’s why he’s doing so. That evening I just walked to him and said hi! We got onto regular talking terms, cracked jokes and departed. I learned a lot with this experience about the functioning of my mind, its unbeatable ability to create nonsense in my head even when everything was really fine.

In another incident the problem began when I smiled at an unknown lady misunderstanding her as an acquaintance and she smiled back with a question in her eyes. Now I’m thinking hard ;)

Selection, Rejection and Dejection in a Job Interview.

My interview was going great. I was almost sure I’m in. The final question from the interviewer was, “Do you want to go for higher education?” I said “Yes” and was disqualified. This is somebody’s true incident.

How does our flow of thoughts operate from now on hearing this incident is very important? We will easily conclude that we will say “No” if we are asked such a question. I want you to understand the dynamics of the situation and of the mind. You will find an exact negative story where person said “No” and he was still disqualified. Now where does your thought flow take you? We always feel that we are opening a gate by learning from someone else’s experience but remember that by trying to open one gate you have actually closed many other gates. With a knee jerk reaction we concluded that “Yes” created the problem. Can we look at the situation deeper than that, free of what we think is right?

The result of not getting a job is a function of both, the interviewer and the one who was interviewed. Why are we deciding beforehand what’s going to be our reaction if we encounter such a situation. Any small noise around and we immediately have a conclusion ready how I am going to behave and how everybody else should behave in that situation if s/he faces it. With these conclusions we fail to see the situation in totality because 100 such situations happen and we have 200 walls built around us. If your true answer was “Yes” then what’s wrong if you got rejected? We always love the outside result and fail to nurture the inside growth. Do we see the inside growth at all? We want best from everything, job from an interview and higher education from studying and there's nothing right or wrong about it. Problem is not with rejection, it’s with dejection of having lost control of the situation which I thought was earlier under my control. Somewhere the interviewer doesn’t believe that she can influence you to change your decision of going for higher studies and you don’t believe that you can change her decision to get you in. If you go beyond your belief only then there are higher possibilities. Then thoughts will happen to you, you don’t have to think. Can you allow things to happen to you..? Can you still win the interviewer's heart if not a job ?

The Yes-Yes fun!

One evening at 6:00pm I declared in my home that till the end of day I am not going to say “NO”. Whatever you tell me I will do it. Friends, it was an amazing experience to realize how much conscious was I about everything then on, how much no’s are a part of my being. When my 9yr and 5yr children understood what it meant they made me play all that they wanted. My wife and dad played small tricks in their sentences and made me say “yes” to everything. In spite of all this I pronounced “NO” 6 times in 5hrs. I also learned many positive ways of saying “NO”.

Just close your eyes and say “Don’t climb a tree.” The picture that the mind creates is “climb a tree” and then deny it. As students, teachers or parents if we can find clever ways of telling the other “what to do” than “what not to do” we are veeery differently empowering that person. Moreover, if you convert it into a question for right situations then you are not only empowering him/her but also giving a freedom of choice.

If we play yes-yes with self then we move into a different paradigm. Lets see how this evolves when we talk about concentration. One definition of concentration is “If I am reading something, I should be lost in the world of reading. I should not know what is going on around me.” We tend to deny everything that stops me from concentrating in my studies e.g. sexuality, TV, internet, SMS. We are stuck to this definition because we have borrowed it from elders, neighbours, books and maybe, previous experience. The other definition could be “If I am reading something, I may or may not get lost in the world of words. Am I aware of every thought (we call it distraction) that happens when reading?” There are two types of thoughts viz. those which are created because of reading the subject and those which are just coming to me without asking. Can you find your definition of ‘concentration’ and question it to the core? There are thoughts that happen to us, don’t deny them. Have Yes-Yes fun with them. They are not the voluntary ones as they seem to be.

If you are filled with a lot of questions after the read, be with them.

(please go through the article that triggered the above thought process at: http://www.citehr.com/863-toxic-thinking.html)

Zero and Infinity

• 0/1 = zero; 1/0 = infinity
• We are infinite when we are born and zero when we die. Can we be zero when we are alive and infinite when we are dead ?
• Sometimes we think time doesn’t pass and sometimes we think years fly by so fast.
• Sometimes we feel each thing around me is just for me and sometimes we feel each thing around me is just because of me.
• When we go to Himalayas we feel we are so minuscule, when alone at home we feel ‘I am Himalaya’, ‘I’m the king.’
• When my body is free of any pain I don’t feel it. It just exists. When there is toothache or any pain the whole existence just becomes pain.
• The space between written words is zero and the words are infinite, the silence between the spoken words are zero and the sounds are infinite. Are the thoughts infinite and is there a zero between 2 thoughts ?
• Husband is zero, wife is infinite ;)
• Inhaling is becoming infinite, exhaling is becoming zero.
• Sometimes we think everything is under my control and sometimes we feel there’s nothing that is under my control. Not even my voluntary decision to go and drink a glass of water.
• I ‘think’ therefore I am OR I ‘think’ therefore I am not what I am ?
• Sometimes I feel zero and infinity are poles apart but sometimes I feel they are just next to each other, merging in each other like 2 ends of a same circle.

Are zero and infinity really merging in each other ? Is there a clarity in duality ?

Slowdown

We wake up in the morning, go to loo, brush teeth, have coffee/tea, bath, travel, go to college/office, attend lectures/meetings, work, come back home, spend time with friends/family, dine and sleep. There are a lot of things that we do physically which are voluntary and lot of things which happen involuntarily. Lets keep aside involuntary things for a while and look at voluntary actions. Say, brushing teeth, having coffee, bathing and similar ones. Can we slowdown the voluntary activities? Can we brush the teeth carefully, slowly, enjoy the whole process consciously, and feel each splash of water on the face? Thoughts are involuntary; they come to us like waves in an ocean. They just keep coming, endlessly. They might rule over your slowed down actions, its ok. When conscious again put your heart in your slow down. Can you wait and observe the sensations in your mouth just after brushing your teeth and before you sip a hot cup of tea and kill the earlier sensation for a new one?

We enjoyed school recess, we don’t like recession! We don’t like market slowdown, it hurts. But this slowing down of daily actions can be a different experience. It can be done now, while reading this. Slow down, just sloooow down!

In computers there are debuggers to debug(weed out bugs from) computer programs. I use to work on a debugger called SoftICE. It was an amazing tool for debugging Windows BSOD’s (you know Blue Screens?). Instead of causing Blue-Screen this tool grabs the CPU and halt the whole process. When the system was halted I was able to see the state in which CPU is, what were the RAM memory contents etc. After seeing ‘what-is’ and knowing ‘what-should-be’ debugging became easier. It was all possible because the system was halted (slowed down to 0 speed.)

Notice here that seeing ‘what-is’ is extremely important. A slowed down action or a thought helps us see ‘what-is’ really is. But, our whole thought process seems to be interested in looking at destinations, goals and what-should-be. Can you slowdown a few activities daily, say, taking 5 breaths slowly or chewing 5 bites of you dinner with your eyes closed without hurrying up for getting the next bite ready, or 5 times you blink your eyes or taking 5 mugs of hot water on your body when you take your bath?

Enjoy the slowdown only then going fast will be a fun, fun with more clarity than what it was!

RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM

When we are children we have all the freedom and no responsibility. As we become school students and then college students our freedom seems to decrease and responsibility increase slightly. As we pass out from the college and hunt for a job the responsibility increases. On job there are deadlines which we courageously fight out and win over. There are no lifelines there, only deadlines! Then we marry (or don’t) the responsibility increases by the day. Freedom is restricted to weekends. And when we try to exercise our freedom, responsibility seems to take away the pleasure. Moreover, when there are some moments when there is no responsibility, its unfortunate that we adults cannot enjoy the freedom.

Freedom makes us light whereas responsibility puts a burden. Freedom attracts us to Himalayas and responsibility keeps us on plains. Freedom allows us to open a water tap to drink the water and responsibility enables us to close it. Freedom allows us to cover our body with clothes of our choice and responsibility takes care of how much and where we expose what. Freedom is about ‘how we want to do what we want to do’ and responsibility is about ‘how much we want to do what we want to do and don’t want to do’. Freedom is to live and responsibility is to let live. Letting lose a thought is freedom, holding back a certain action is responsibility. When we were children our parents had responsibility and we had freedom, when they become old they should have freedom and we take responsibility. Freedom belongs to mind, responsibility to heart. What food you take in your plate is your freedom, what you waste is your responsibility. Your responsibility gives you freedom to take action; your freedom gives you responsibility to prevent certain actions.

Can freedom and responsibility coexist? Or, do they contradict? Or is there an optimum point where weight of responsibility and lightness of freedom balance each other where life just “is?” I don’t have an answer, do you have it?

While you are on a job hunt….

My Dear Students,
While you are on a job hunt you will definitely work on your ‘altitude’ i.e. brushing up your technical skills required for the job. Following are some helpful tips for keeping a close watch on your ‘attitude’.
- Weekly, at least once, spend time talking with a close friend (could be your parent, lecturer, non teaching staff or a friend whom you confide in) about job hunt efforts, your thought process then, confidence level, your emotions and your feelings. The environment should be judgment-free for good. Writing your thought process also helps. Basically, allow the thoughts to come out of your head and let them dissipate into a careful listener or on a piece of paper.
- Get in a mode to stay with questions, especially psychology related e.g.why was I extra-nervous today before an interview? You can’t stay with a question on: What is currency of Switzerland? You have to know answer for that. Your psychological questions will trigger the thought process like doing scuba diving. You will discover the ocean of your thoughts. Many a times the surface of the ocean seems quiet. We are interested in the activity inside the depths of the mind which are hidden under years of accumulations of self and societal enforcements of beliefs e.g. I want to stay in Bombay for my job, come what may : is your self belief. Be aware and break free from your beliefs. Life is about increasing possibilities, not about cutting them down. Is your belief system fighting between words ‘Bombay’ and ‘Mumbai’?
- Be, feel and experience 100% self responsibility that you are still jobless. Don’t push the responsibility on your time or any outside factor. When the experience of responsibility sinks deep in you you will notice the change in your thought process and notice the mind and incidents going in directions that you had never even thought of.
- Envision yourself with a smile on your face appearing for an interview, shaking your hand warmly with the interviewer.
- Document your professional and emotional learnings from disqualification from each of the previous interviews (in a document like feedback.doc or so). This document will come handy to sharpen yourself for some inter-personal questions from the interviewer. This document will also give you motivation to open books to a specific page and refresh your technical concepts.
- For an interview go with an attitude that “if I am late for the train, the train will stop for me at the railway station and it will leave only after I catch it.”
- In addition to your resume.doc create a document called justify.doc in which write justification of each word and each line in your resume. I found doing this exercise very insightful, it modified my resume a lot.
- My approach of answering questions in an interview was as follows,: Knowing the answer for the question asked by the interviewer has 5 shades from ‘I know’ to ‘I don’t know.’ Device your own words for each shade when you answer the question.
o When you know the answer: You know how to deal with this.
o When ques is worth trying : You say ‘let me try’ or something like that so that even if the flow goes in wrong direction it will not put you in uncomfortable zone.
o When dicey : Say, ‘I’m not sure, but will like to give it a shot’
o When not sure : Say, “I don’t know”
o When you don’t know : Say, “I don’t know”
You are the best judge, choose words carefully. You find what your approach is.
- There may be many companies who will not respond to you after your interview. That’s their problem. For you, if you were selected and you are not satisfied with the job offer please close the loop by saying ‘thanks’ or whatever good words you find to say ‘no’. Being decisive instead of confused and letting the company know about your decision keeps you in their good books. Remember, your attitude is watched every microsecond by the peon to an interviewer, by your employer, your wife and then your children. Don’t keep the employer in a 'guessing' mode after a certain timeout. Send an email to them followed by a phone call and be done with it. You carry the responsibility of your own self, your batchmates and your college with every action that you take during an interview. Its good to be re-enterable than being one-time-types, always. You dont know who will be your boss and your reportee at which juncture of your career.

Sooner or later you will realize that job hunt was not about the ‘job’ but it was about ‘you’, your own experiential journey of your state of mind, of your hunger. Guys and gals, go for a kill! Wish you all the best for the hunt!!