thoughts – Parwatisingari's Weblog

Must have been love

Rushing through to catch the flight she realized was early, and sat down for the much needed cup of coffee, the man before her definitely a has been, fifty going on fifteen. Something very familiar about him. He looked up at her, there seem to be an anticipation of recognition.

“Aren’t you, Jojo’s sister?”

“yes,” the voice the face they were familiar like a fading echo, at 50 she had got used being called her professional designation, and madam, “jojo’s sister heavens !!” she thought she had overcome it years ago.

“Okay you don’t recognize me,”

“Sorry”

“Ozzie..Machado”

Ozzie..Oswald Machado the youngest of the Machado brothers the only one who did not invoke a deep crush and puppy eyes. Maybe because he was the youngest, maybe because he was so every day, we met him at school, at the classroom, at the playground. He was the fall guy we handed to the teachers; he was guy who copied our homework.

“You know Olli don’t you” of she knew Oliver the lead singer in the band, every matchmaking mama shook her head in despair, he was spending too much time with Seema Andrade, and rehearsals than his studies he was already two grades lower than his peers, but Oliver brought home the laurel’s from every cultural meet. Looking at him, she thought,”uh! Teenage crushes, it’s like flu, you find a remedy for it, and it lasts for a couple of days. If you don’t then it still lasts for a couple of days.”

Funny she thought there is always that one guy who gets a hold on you. Not like your best friend’s bother who gets you in a headlock the kind of hold. Or the little kid you’re busy babysitting who attaches himself to your leg kind of hold. She was thinking epic here, life changing, the can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t do homework, can’t stop giggling, can’t remember anything but his smile kind of hold. Like Elizabeth Bennet and Mr.Darcy … like the song one sang into the hairbrush-microphone in the hostel on top of your lung with your roommates on a Saturday night… oh! Yes, the eighties chart busters, the songs that Olli and Seema sang, only we thought it was us instead of Seema, the Eternal Flame’s the Must Have Been Love’s and the Take My Breath Away’s.

Funny she thought, if one looked up the dictionary, for the meaning of the word crush, it says, to break into powder or very small pieces by pressing, pounding, or grinding it. It could also be press or squeeze something so hard that it breaks or loses its share. That’s what happens with a crush, one literally saw stars, and every ragged breathe one took felt like one was trying to breathe through the broken glass. There is something about first love that defies duplication. Before it the heart is blank, unwritten, afterwards the walls are left inscribed and graffitied. When it ends no amount of scrubbing will purge the scrawled oaths and sketched images. But sooner or later one finds that there’s space for someone else, between the words and in the margin.

Voice of silence

Silence… thought Amba was amazing and versatile, like the wonderful silence just before dawn, or the quiet and calm just as the storm ends. There was the silence when we haven’t the answer to a question we have been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or most beautiful of all the moments after the door closes and we’re alone in the whole house…each one different, and all very beautiful if one took the trouble of listening to them.

She was all of 13yrs, when Transcendental meditation had become famous, and she was initiated into it. It began with closing her eyes for a minute and experiencing the sound around her, there were so many of them the hush tones of the gossiping hospital nurses, phone ringing of course it was as rampant as it was now.

Later when resumed practising TM, she realized that the voices in head were louder and more deafening than the sounds on the road, or pounding keyboard. She had felt the need to be alone, a need to ponder her shame and her despair in seclusion, she needed the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversations, face to face with herself, with only the music of her heart for company, and she thought she was most powerful then.

Silence was never expected from her, they expect words, motions, defence, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words handing leaping from the mouths but silence…No!

Words could be twisted into any shape, promises could be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul, in the final analysis worlds mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures when ninety nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast.

But was the silent man really the wisest man? He could just passive aggressive.

In that state that she was now Amba knew she was going to die, sooner or later, whether she had spoken or not. She realized her silences had not always protected her, actually no one’s silence had protected them…what are the words we do not have yet? What are the tyrannies we swallow day by day and attempt to make our own until we sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.

Amba began to ask each time that:” what’s the worst could happen to me if I tell this truth?” it could get her called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner party…fine, but it would also permit others to speak things may change.

Each time she asked herself, what the worse that will happen is and pushed her herself a little further than she dared. Once she start to speak, people did yell at her, they interrupted her, put her down and suggested that it was personal but the world did not come to an end.

Speaking she realized not talking or conversing mundanely mind you, she found got easier and easier, somewhere she had fallen in love with her own vision, and conviction and she had not even realized it, she did lose some friends, a husband and she realized she did not miss them. there were new people in space who cherished her. With all certainty she knew the only thing that was more frightening than speaking her truth, was not speaking it. Staying silent is like a slow growing cancer to the soul and the trait of a true coward. There is nothing intelligent about not standing for you. You may or may not win every battle. However everyone at least know what you stood for, YOU… when the truth is replaced by silence then silence is a lie.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Thoughts– the creation ground of experience

The creation ground of experience.

Venugopal from the Landmark curriculum for living came up with an excellent experiment which he requested a few of us to try. It was just putting on reminders at key places stating “Yes! I am in the present” and then observe what happened.

Just by being present to this and many a times having to bring myself to the present i realized, that I could monitor my thoughts and see if I was really investing my energy where it is useful, or was I depleting it where it was not necessary.

Our thoughts are extremely forces in the creation of our experience of life. Many of us experienced that when frustration based on a misunderstanding completely evaporates when we change our understanding. Essentially because this because our interpretation defines our experience, and it can change in an instant.

The only reality though is what is happening to us, now; this acceptance helps us harness the power of our thoughts to actively create a positive reality. My aunt Ellen, had this great technique when we travelled she would point small things to us, and that sensitized us to the vast wonders of the world and we travelled with enthusiasm instead of cribbing about the heat or the traffic.

What the experiment brought to me is by choosing to interpret and define each moment with our thoughts we can truly create our reality.

Throughout the day, I could monitor my thoughts to catch myself in the middle of investing my energy elsewhere such as into belief limitations — once I was aware of that I would pull my focus back to the infinite possibilities of the present. It was rather an effort, to take a deep breathe and centre my thoughts on being in my body right now. I found that morning pages and meditation allowed me to handle this better. I realized I spent too much time in past so I was not in the present. That was the baggage I had to let go.

I always had issues with the visual goals, or writing futures, but in the last three weeks, of this exercise, I created a visual goal, which got transformed to a working project and began happening. I created a vision board for only an year. So my visions came to the current.

Our minds are truly powerful toots that we can harness to create our reality. Through them we can move the unformed energy of the universe into form. This gives us direction for our words and actions. Each thought is like a stone dropped into the lake. Sending ripples out into our world to affect all they touch, we can choose our focus and how we invest our energy, which gives us the power to design our lives to be whatever we choose in each and every moment.

Taking a Walk

Yesterday when i was sharing my experience in finding stuff in a new town, I realized what I missed was walking.

Growing up on the hills of Manipal, I loved walking and I liked to walking alone. Somewhere I have lost that simple pleasure. Of course the traffic less roads or the roads with trees on either sides are missing too. Still when I was in turmoil, when I can’t think, when I was exhausted and afraid feeling very very alone I sent for a walk. It was just of those things I did. Sooner or later something comes to me, something that made me feel less liske jumping off a building.

Sometimes I went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, what I discovered was going out was really going in. truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

Just look at us these days, we live in a series of interiors… disconnected from each other, when we are on foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors jus the way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.

These days, when I walk it is not to connect to myself or to feel part of nature, but to get to someplace, a “goal” a “target” so is the vast ocean of human beings rushing, jostling, oblivious to the other person, even getting home is to shut ones self out from other creatures.

These days I have begun to wonder if, things like, home, village, hometown, country are all places that we make up in our own mind. something we dream about and sing about. Maybe it’s not really a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people we meet and places we visit, full of books and films we’ve been to. Maybe that’s why people are no more homesick, there are no languages anymore, so the stories and memories that link also are vanished. Yet, I do not want to be like anyone else, I am walking on the wall, nobody can stop.

Mindful Walking

When I’m in turmoil, when I can’t think, when I’m exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It’s just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like jumping off a building.”
― Jim Butcher, Storm Front

This was something i did too. The other a day, a friend of mine said try walking with awareness, and not with random thoughts going through your head. Well I have been thinking about that too.

Her point was meditation is a simple way to connect with our spirit and mother earth in a very grounded way.

This was a very interesting way of looking at things, I mean, have been taking the benefits of walking for granted. I realize from walking 7kms to work, the number of steps I take have reduced to seven steps on the stair case. But walking yes does connect us with earth along with connecting us with ourselves and all the other health benefits.

Walking on the concrete does upset because I feel we have imprisoned mother earth, but this friend of mine told me focus on the simpler pleasures when you walked barefoot on the hillside, though it did take a while slowly I began connecting with the earth beneath. The grass erupting on the pavement despite the concrete began smiling at me. the experience was amazing. It was one of existing in this moment, without worrying of a past perceived incompetence or hurt, or planning to optimize my 24 hrs.

Even walking through a city is an experience. To walk is to lack a place. The indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper. Walking about a city multiplies and concentrates makes the city itself an immense social experience of lacking a place.—an experience that is to be sure, broken up into countless deportations, compensated for by the relationships and intersections of these exoduses that intertwine and create an urban fabric, and placed under the sign of what ought to be, ultimately the place but is only a name, the city… a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed of places.

each step taken either in the urban space, or the woods made me aware of myself and my feelings. Walking slowed me enough to pay attention to where I was in my body and my breathe. I began noticing my breathe as I walked through the inhales and exhales and became more attuned to the way in I breathe was taking a step towards mindfulness. As i became more mindful, my awareness of the environment gradually increased, I began recognizing the normal flow of thoughts and feelings, and recognized they were not always related to where I was at the present moment.

Whether this had anything to do with the earth connect I do not know. But friend says it is she says connecting with earth makes us secure, and this sense of being secure, makes us calm and tranquil. Being in now, fades the troubles of the day.

The simplicity and ease of walking practise allows us to create time and space, it makes us aware of our surroundings and the wonders of that lie within, taking a few moments to walk each day and become more aware our breathe will in turn open the door for the beauty of the world around us to filter in, it would allow us conceive truly great thoughts.

Pure thought.

“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert
“aunt Agatha how dare she this about me.”, “my mother in law she is a nasty women” this person said that, all these negative thoughts would occupy my brain each time I did mundane jobs like washing dishes or kneading the dough at the end of the task I would so angry and that triggered off another whole lot of actions.

Sometime along the way, I began chanting Tara mantra, and gradually I realized the negative thought went out, all long with that things started moving for the better. I have always credited this to the Tara Mantra.

Of late I have started feeling more than the mantra, it was the reduction of negative energy and that thoughts are dynamic. The longer we hold a thought the stronger energy field it creates around us.

When I made no effort to be conscious of permitting thoughts, my thoughts scattered in a vast array of directions. They start and move in surprising way from one second to the next. But as I tried to follow my thoughts without controlling them, I was amazed at how truly inconsistent they were. But as I applied my mind to a specific task particularly the one that interests me, it kind of gathered and harnessed into creating great power and energy. This I understand from my reading is pure thought that is uninstructed.

I figure our thoughts becomes potent because they have a frequency, so it does gives out energy and blends in harmony with other energies. When we harness pure and productive thoughts it becomes dynamic and fuels growth. We need not focus on action and controlling the action. It happens on its own. We simply respond to the opportunities that come our way. When this is the essence of our experience we can go with the flow knowing that we will be okay.

Pure thought to me like a body, no a kind of power that manifests through the emotions. So emotions and thoughts kind of have a symbiotic existence. To be frank to me it visually appears like the covalent bonds we learn in chemistry, thoughts and emotions communicate and empower each other. When we hold a thought without being distracted we have achieved pure thought. When we have a positive a positive emotional response to that thought we enable it dance move and breathe itself into existence.ve a positive emotional response to that thought we enable it dance move and breathe itself into existence.

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Mind over matter.

Yesterday i was at a workshop conducted by NSD, and I caught myself, listening to experts not really paying attention t what they had to share, but how was I going to reply to their words. I also became aware that I was listening to them with this filter that okay these young turks from NSD and cannot think beyond Delhi and Hindi. Its only when I caught my thoughts I realized that I had closed my mind to learning.

On my path to self healing the first thing I realized both in the Lousie Hay workshop, and the Landmark is the barking dog. In the Lousie Hay workshop I became aware of the constant chatter that was going on in my mind, and how I constant beat myself up in it.

In the landmark forum, in addition to this self whipping I became aware of various other conversations that happened. Like I was listening to this friend as “she complains” everything she said sounded like a complaint..

Its always mind over matter, we can improve our over all physical well-being first starting to notice our thoughts and our reactions to those thoughts.

When started this journey I realized how powerful the mind was and how difficult it was to control it. we know we are in a pattern, yet we are unable to alter it, worse ,the more we try to alter the pattern the more it persists.

I have had three major accidents and each time, my life took a different turn, it is almost as if that I needed to have the accident to process something or move something through our bodies. Very often I know and i can observe myself getting into a migraine state, the intellect knows it fully well that it is a psychosomatic entity. Yet I consider the mind and body as different entities, and that they have little to do with each other.

Somewhere along the lines I realized the power to create physical health, mental health was within us, and the clue and cue were both available if we listened to the tape that we constantly ran in our minds. Thoughts can be created to navigate ourselves to a destination.