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!!

Thank You and Sorry!

When do I thank somebody or apologise? And, when does someone thank me or apologise? There are some people whom you don’t thank, at least I know of in India. They are your parents, your spouse and your children. Language is a very interesting thing. It tries to capture the immense depth of the meaning of the feeling into a word, here its ‘thank you.’ You don’t thank your child who made you a parent. Pause for a while … and see the depth of this feeling called ‘thank you.’ ‘Dhanyavad’ is an Indian equivalent of thank you.

If we commit a mistake we say ‘sorry’. I wonder if my father would have ever said ‘sorry’ or its Indian equivalent to my grandfather. Those days, I guess, thank you and sorry were only felt in hearts and seen in eyes, never expressed in words. In our schooling system ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ are 2 words taught as golden words. It takes different amount of courage to say these 2 golden words depending on various situations.

By thanking somebody sincerely you take the weight off the other person. Somebody encouraged you when it was needed, a doctor who got you well, a teacher who made you understand a concept. In exchange you thanked that person. By thanking her/him you say ‘I am taking the responsibility now on, you don’t worry.’ We also take off the weight from a person when we say ‘I’m sorry.’ Again you take the responsibility and learn to move on. Somebody may argue saying ‘When I am paying for the services I am getting why should I thank somebody?’ Each of us have a ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ threshold. Some say ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ for every small thing and for some it takes a lot of energy to utter these words, they don’t say it at all. They think only they deserve thank you and sorry from people around them. All these attributes of ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry are subtle and our system (our body and mind) knows it so well that an essay is not required to measure the quality of these words when uttered by somebody.

Did you ever notice the body language when we use these words? In both these we slightly bend our back and lean forward. We give in. It’s a surrender.

Can you understand what is your threshold of saying ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’? Can you start being conscious of these two words and enjoy the magic that they hold in the word form and in the form of feeling? Can the sound of these words from our mouth come out with a touch from our heart? Its effect on somebody is secondary. What is its effect on me? Can I fathom the depth of these words and be aware of its effect on me when I utter them or hear them?

Thank you. Yes, thank you for this read!

Sensitivity

Dear Reader,

We normally say that till XII/PUC all teachers were fine, parents were fine but now things have changed for me. All teachers don’t teach that well in higher education colleges, I have to do self-study. All good talent has gone to industry or are in US. A wife/husband says everything was fine before marriage but now things are ‘different’. A daughter-in-law – mother-in-law start more than talking. A parent-child relation takes unknown courses. Let’s all pause for a while and see who we are in the scenes above: a student or a parent or who? I have a sincere question to somebody who say’s, “I was not like this before my marriage/college/parenthood. Because of my mother-in-law I have started behaving like this.” Instead of putting blame on a not-so-good-teaching teacher or mother-in-law or wife/husband is it not that I am responsible for the problems. My mother-in-law is only responsible to show me my face which nobody else has shown to me till now. We are no saints. We are not different from any extremists or terrorists. Am I corrupt? When money is flowing in front of me which is not mine, I really need it but I don’t touch. But if I have not seen that amount of money how can I declare “I am non-corrupt.” Its just that nobody has attempted to open up that faculty of ours hence we show we are ‘cool’. Internally we are all the garbage that is outside, we are just a mirror of outside. We have lost and are fast loosing the sensitivity to the ‘inside’ of ours. We don’t trust anybody because… you will have 101 reasons to tell how your best friend betrayed you. We don’t share anything because that’s what we have seen somebody doing when we were small and we inherited that. Now that we are grown ups is it possible to be sensitive to very small things that keep happening around us? We talk loads about improving the outside world. Let all that activity go on but lets be slightly more conscious about our inner self. For those who are interested, do write down how many time we lied or how many people we hurt at the end of the day. Sensitising ourselves is the beginning of .. I don’t want to name it. You give your own name to it, it’s a journey which will keep you strong in all the storms that come in form of relations and recessions. All above is easily said than done. Its about experimenting with yourself. If you cant do your experiments on yourself then whom are you going to do them on ?

Thanks and regards,
Ashirwad.