Self-religion

"Mirror mirror on the wall, which is the righteous religion of all?!?"

Righteous religion? Does it mean what a person/a group thinks is right? But again its all relative. A truth/right for a person might not be the truth/right for another but as far as we have a self religion, collectively we shall continue making this world a humane place.

Self religion could be put as 'the goodness within each one of us'. Something we often experience when put in a situation to choose right from wrong, from moral to immoral.
It allows us to keep ourselves motivated and directed by verification and knowledge. Not by beliefs.
Self religion is infact the oldest and most eternal religion we have; a religion of individual freedom. It is a willingness and an ability to observe oneself and to correct one's own faults.

So how about a date with oneself once in a while!
:)

Mindfulness

If this elephant of mind is bound on all sides by the cord of mindfulness,
All fear disappears and complete happiness comes.

All enemies: all the tigers, lions, elephants, bears, serpents [of our emotions];
And all the keepers of hell; the demons and the horrors,
All of these are bound by the mastery of your mind,
And by the taming of that one mind, all are subdued,
Because from the mind are derived all fears and immeasurable sorrows.

-8th century Buddhist master Shantideva .

---

Yogi & Bhogi

Dawn reveals and another day shines,
And she rises to reach, evoke and energize every life and every thing she can,
She loves to create, she is the Sun-the yogi.

Charmed by her, he echoes,
He takes it all and listens to her dreams with a smile and promises her the stars,
He loves to reflect on her intuitive strokes,
He is the Moon - the bhogi.

- -

Traffic Trance

“Where have you been? Long time!” said five of the six chat-windows on my computer, when I signed in today.

I have been mobile since a month doing some exciting projects for this new client-company. But unlike my smooth pace ‘at’ work, my pace ‘to’ work is apparently 3 miles per hour! And I drive. A good new Toyota Yarris. (Thanks to rental-car-services in the city, I get to have a choice!)

May be driving one of those Flintstone cartoon cars would be more fun instead, I think. Feet breathing freely underneath the car frame. No engine no noise and a good workout indeed. Weights and running. Or to add any practicality to this animated thought; walking. Weights and walking. Aha! Good deal in returns to the time consumed!

Driving is an intention/invention to get us humans onto a faster medium, transferring us from one place to another. To use our travel time in a best possible activity instead.

Drive, means force/ steer/make happen.

Both of these psychosomatically speaking are acts of liberation. Allowing us to free ourselves from a location, a moment, a situation, a thought etc.

“Let’s go for a drive!”

Driving is associated with relaxing, de-stressing, releasing and a happy flying feeling. In simple words, drive or driving adds ‘movement’ to anything that is ‘stagnant’.

Movement.

The very same means of liberation can sometimes leave us feeling overpoweringly sluggish when this movement is interrupted more than often, more than normally.

Traffic congestion.

In UAE (especially Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman), a person on an average spends 3 hrs in traffic jam everyday. Hence, going for a drive would may never mean as a liberating act in this part of the world (unless off road of course). It surely would sound more like a dark joke followed by a few cynical smiles.

Traffic trance.

Just imagine - A life; born to win is bestowed with a healthy up-bringing, education, with aspirations of his/her loved ones. A learned life with x number of degrees, driven with ambitions, is driving 3-4 hours everyday to his/her work place. Can I call it torment for labor on a much “sophisticated” level this time?

Are we bending too much to an extent of going unnoticed?

While the traffic-congestion voluntarily continues to become part of our understandings, almost as reasonable as drinking or eating; I would like to share some facts for us to 'revise' or 're-consider'.

x x x

Negative effects of traffic congestion on daily bases: click here to read more

Waste of time....
>Causing us ‘opportunity cost’ which means the value of the benefits forgone of some other thing which might have been done instead.

>Delays, which may result in late arrival for employment, meetings, and education, resulting in lost business, disciplinary action or other personal losses.

>Inability to forecast travel time accurately, leading to drivers allocating more time to travel "just in case", and less time on productive activities.

Waste of fuel....
>Caused by alternative use of acceleration air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions contributing to global warming.

>Wear and tear on vehicles as a result of idling in traffic and frequent acceleration and braking, leading to more frequent repairs and replacements.

Waste of mind.... which is one of the most hazardous ones:...
>A non-productive activity for most of the minds than driving in jams, reducing region’s economic health.

>Stress frustration due to inability to forecast travel time, causing road rage, health problems with motorists and passengers.

>Emergencies: blocked traffic may interfere with the passage of emergency vehicles traveling to their destinations where they are urgently needed.

Hope we keep taking good care of ourselves and others, to collectively ease unnecessary elements like traffic jams by using our roles and reach to fullest; to ultimately bring peace ( literally!) within and around.

--

Individualistic Perception Meter: IPM!

I recently had a brief experience being allied with ‘a group’ and as usual found myself analyzing observations & distinguishing my impressions from therein on the ever-loved-subject & one of my deep concerns ~ ‘Individualism vs Groupism’.
(Wow, to my delight! Groupism is not a word in my Microsoft Word dictionary! )

Let’s see. We have two kinds of individuals in general.
One- Individual himself/herself, of course & two- groupies who collectively define one approach which could be an outcome of a naturally-refined-generalized common interest or could be an outcome of one-person-interest for the group or even both.

Out there, I did like focus on the ‘groupie approach’ rather than the ‘individual’s approach’ since former needs our analytical eye & understanding while the later being self-conscious/aware/motivated/driven with information-experience-learning, can surely take good care of itself.

So what do groupies look for, wanting-to-be or being part of a group? Yes, like any other dealings it’s pure give & take!

Give: They render their presence in numbers & recognition to (or ‘have-faith-in’ as said so in) the Guru – their shared icon.
Take: And what they get back is a united base of belonging to a mass. A secure feeling of being associated to a set of already worked-out, existing, popularized-branded & accepted principles, which otherwise being an individual they would have to prove with time/s and action/s. Their one-person inaction can easily be eclipsed by the automated group-action in any case.

It is symbiosis and it is simple. This would reason it being an attractive deal for the takers (followers) and the whole trend of mushrooming Gurus-groups/Guru-brands around the world.

Now most of these groups are non-profit. NPGs (non-profit-groups).

“Being non-profit is neither necessary nor sufficient for an enterprise to be good and useful. I suppose you are for-profit entity and yet I would guess that the work you do adds value to society, just as the work of the corner shopkeeper or the baker who are also in it for profit. Hence it is not necessary to be non-profit to help improve welfare.
Many entities who are non-profit are distinctly harmful to society. For instance, most terrorist organizations are non-profit. Clearly being non-profit is not sufficient for human welfare.” ~ Atanu Dey on India’s development.

This takes us to our next question. How do these NPGs get the ‘fuel’ to fulfill the (spiritual-materialistic-physiological-etc-etc) needs of their benefactors?

Charity!

Surprisingly, yet again we see two kinds inhere. ‘Given charity’ & ‘taken charity’. Former surfaces while the later is recessive and often spelt as ‘goodwill service’ or ‘Seva’.

Most of such NPGs fuel on both kinds. Although the percentage varies depending on the kind of people-gurus in charge & codes/principles they follow. In fact the very ratio can help us with some needful insight on the functioning, purpose/s & reliability of any of these NPGs.

‘Given charity’ comes from the richer lot of the society. While ‘taken charity’ is physical & cerebral services expected from the remaining lot. These include volunteers-usually students & those chosen ones with professions beneficial for the group’s good, followers & their families, their friends, everyone remotely associated with the group & even the curious outsiders who get pulled in right away along with their vulnerabilities.
“We welcome all with open arms & love all as our own! Jai Guru”

To promote the guru-brand, these NPGs efficiently ‘take charity’ in any form possible. Be it manual labor, arranging mass support with being physically present in gatherings, printing thousands of t-shirts, documentary-photography, video-production, post-production, designing campaigns, shooting, editing and studio facilities so on so forth.

“Nothing is impossible! Jai Guru” And everything (everyone) is for free.

A developing city:

Tall skyscrapers well arched roadways, trees implanted in a pattern & fine cut green carpets covering all that once was a desert stretch. Over all, it is said to be a well-planned developing city. It is growing at a pace speedier than any thing comparable.

Be it one of our buildings of pride, the tallest building in the world. 160 stories! Or the city itself that is onto becoming central-piece - a new world capital & a global attraction, in the period of mere 30 years.

So how is the mental growth coming along while the awestruck physical growth of the city makes itself a globally recognized phenomenon? And, is it right to call a city ‘developed and progressing’ solely on visible-structural developments?

Mental growth of a city is defined by its people who sponge-in its riches of art, culture, knowledge and hence develop a style of their own, further giving a style to the city unlike any other. It’s well known fact that ‘rich minds make a rich society’. And inwards richness reflects and transforms into outward beauty. That would be nothing but a natural process for an over-all growth with everything and anything that exists.

What happens to this natural possibility of over-all growth during a fast growth of physical body of a city? Or say, what happens to the soul when we make a clone?

--

Chaotic Minds

Silence that dominates suppressed questions,
Suppressed attempts to expect,
Expectations of their unique selfish kinds,
That fail to justify once put in words,
That fail to exist- to seed, once out of the minds,
Hence sucked & sulked back in,
Hence… suppressed expecting chaotic minds.

They float alone,
Too deaf to see the next,
Too dumb to learn the rest,
Too occupied to be together,
Hence alone, unique selfish kinds,
Drifting along, chaotic minds.

~ self

Afternoon Nap

Eureka! It was simply unbelievable to get all that night-sleep-refreshing-feeling in a 15-minute afternoon nap. A wonder sleep!
No doubt it’s called ‘Power Nap’ and Lance Armstrong exercised it. It is said to benefit our mental-health, increasing alertness, stamina, motor learning and performance hence improving memory by cleansing the useless built-up information in our brains!

So I wakeup from this power nap or wonder sleep as I call it, with a smile. Smiling on ‘a realization’…. realization from an after-thought on a dream I had during the nap.

Dream was a discussion between me and a close person who is a big part of my life. But to my surprise this person in my dream, acted and spoke in exactly same fashion as she does in real. A dream enacting reality. Was it what we call ‘lucid dreaming’, when the mind stages it all intentionally? Certainly a matter to ponder on, to reason this un-imaginative by-product of the subconscious mind.

I find dreams fascinating. They tell a lot about us. Seeing one-self and relative impressions from a thousands-millions of our day-time experiences, observations and understandings coming together in a well scripted dream, deserves more than a skip.

“Images in the dreams are manufactured by the moving brain. The sensations of strangulation, heat, pressure, fear etc., come from the Instinctive brain. Expressions of despair, rejection, caring, injustice, etc., from Emotional Brain. Dailogue comes from Intellectual Brain and degree of vibrancy comes from the Unifier. Also sexually stimulating dreams are influenced by Unifier.” – Mechanics of God.

Factually, we keep dreaming through out the day and night. And like sound-waves are picked up by radio, dreams are picked up by our awareness of them. I guess this dream was one such awareness that caught my attention.

Thinking about a person could be as wide as their persona and its impression on perceiver’s mind. Depending on the intensity of influence of this persona, the same gets adorned on the perceiver’s subconscious mind as well. And later, it may occur in his/her dreams where often the persona-impressions amplify, reflecting on what the perceiver wants to, or has concluded from it though unaware of it on an sub-conscious level.

“Most realizations of dreaming are a result of unresolved issues from the day overlapping into the night”. – Anonymous

This person I dreamt about is like a predictable book, unevenly spread throughout her years shuttling between herself and her-others. Every talk with her ruffles some more pages from the book - back & forth blurting out some more of the already known facts.

Being predictable is boring.

“We are at every moment of our lives, stimulus-response beings.
Impressions are there every moment to stimulate us. Were they not there our fragile three-dimensional existence would dissolve immediately.” – Mechanics of God.

To influence, to inspire, to impress is bold & beautiful. It takes a lot to be a rich in oneself to stir others.

So when someone close says, “I dreamt about you!”, you know you have touched them by your persona, somewhere-somehow.

Keep (being) cool!