Self Worth

How does one measure their worthiness? 

In terms of the roles they play? Child, spouse, sibling, friend, colleague, parent, grandparent, boss, employee? 

The activities they do? Or don't do?

The things (material and otherwise) they receive or amass?

An interconnection of all of the above to make a delicate web of worthy, meaningful existence?

And what if, at one or point or another, stuff happens in life, and all of the above crumble? 

You are unable to play the roles you want to. Unable to do the things you want to. Incapable of receiving that which you want.

What then?

How does one measure their worthiness then? Where would one begin? And where would one end? How does it end? Does it end at all?

How does one search within oneself to find that speck of innate worthiness, if at all there is such a thing. Cloistered within oneself, in an island of our own, with no roles to play, no meaningful activities to contribute, and nothing to receive, what does it mean to feel worthy of one's existence?

To resurrect sanity and confidence, does one then reinvent new roles, search within our depths for activities to do, and hope to receive something in return? 

Does self-worth always revolve around such external dependencies - on other people, activities that affect the external environment, materials that come from the external space, and love, approval and validation that come from the roles we play?

Is there no way to find any other measure of worthiness about who we are, by just seeking and searching within ourselves, for ourselves, with no reliance on anything external?

Is it possible to do so even when one's life skitters and jogs out of control like slippery globes of marbles that scatter everywhere, yet again? 

As you watch the pieces of your life regressing and you focus on holding onto wisps of your worthiness, how do you hush these incessant questions: How did you slip? Where did you slip? When did you slip, when you thought you walked with such measured caution, placing each foot behind the other and reigning as much control as you could?

I don't have any answers. Only questions...and more questions that clamor and cry and squeal inside me.  The more the questions, the lesser my worthiness of who I am and what I ought to be doing. Are my answers hidden within my definition of my own self-worth? Is it possible to pick one form of worthiness over the other? Ah, miserable choices.

I ought to have answers. I ought to have plans that shape up and come to fruition because I worked hard at them. I truly did. But it was not enough. Every plan needs a stroke of good luck. And luck and me... haha, we never get along.

So I stand like a foolish person who didn't pay attention to where she was heading, who is forced to take the turns that life imposes, because life is always what happens to her when she is busy planning for it. Do I hop, skip, and run to a safe place, or weather this rough road ahead hoping to find a destination that promises to nurse my dying self-worth back to health? I choose the bumpy turn, and I watch as chunks of my self-worth fade and die as I make the turn. Is it ironical that I always lose something in order to gain the same thing?

Reflections: The Death of Vishnu

Vishnu is a homeless man taking refuge in the first-floor landing of a middle-class apartment in Bombay. Thanks to the odd-jobs he does for the people in the apartment, he scrapes his way through life, barely living, but surviving. Now, he lies dying on the stairs. As the families in the apartment steadfastly neglect and wish him away from the stairs, Vishnu’s life flashes past him as a series of delirious visions that mingle and move in and out of the happenings in the apartment. Reality and delusion often thread in and out, and that’s a major theme of the novel. What’s an illusion, what’s reality, what’s faith, what’s reason, what’s ideal, what’s foolish etc. It’s a novel that brings out several different facets of middle-class life in Bombay with all the communal unison and rifts, disparities and equalities, cooperation and tension, prejudices and biases, superstitions and myths. Weaved into all this is a thread of spirituality and mythology that evokes questions on the bigger significance of life, and how we make sense of it. Is God, the powerful energy of creation, really within each of us? Even within a homeless, hopeless, miserable, pitiable man like Vishnu? What does it mean for this energy to be indestructible?

Too many themes, too many words, too many contradictory terms? True. There’s a lot going on. But it is a compelling and easy read that slips into several layers of meaning, if one is inclined to go into such depths. I love Manil Suri’s writing. It is one of the most captivating and beautiful styles that I have read. I gushed quite a bit on his other novel (Age of Shiva), and the same sentiments hold true with this book. I read it in two sittings, foregoing sleep and everything else because I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the words. It’s haunting, alluring, and incredibly sensitive. With his words, Suri touches on just the right notes of his characters’ emotions, and accurately taps on the pulse of their psyche. He hits the right chords deep within you to be able to recognize and understand all the flaws, the absurdities, and sentiments of his characters from. It’s his ability to evoke that deep lingering feeling of poignancy and even nostalgia, that makes his writing special to me.

None of his characters are particularly likeable, but the details and idiosyncrasies of his characters, even if they be unsympathetic, lend so much flavor and realism. All that said,  the story by itself is made to hang in an ambiguous, unfinished state. That’s probably because this is not meant to be a story with an ending. Just like all stories and experiences in life, the story never really ends or begins at a certain point, because there is always a past and always a future until time ceases to exist. So, Suri subtly gets into these philosophical, meta-spiritual levels and leaves the interpretations and symbolism to the reader (examples: the apartment could be seen as the human spirit. The lowest floor signifies baser instincts, the intermediate floor shows the ascent of the spirit through its tussle between faith and reason/intellect, and finally the highest floor marks the graduation of the soul to renunciate, self-actualize, and self-realize. And what awaits in the terrace/roof? That’s up to you). This sometimes makes the novel vague, because most of the social themes just float alongside the spiritual symbols, and the two don’t always come together. Besides, if one is not an Indian, I doubt if some of the social (or mythological) elements would make sense without much elaboration. For example, I thought the characters were developed realistically and thoughtfully, but I can understand how some would find them to be abominable caricatures, because there isn’t enough context to explain their motivations. Too many things are deep-rooted in India. The complexities aren’t always brought to the surface for a non-Indian to understand and appreciate.

It was indeed ambitious of the author to tackle so many disparate and few interconnected themes through one novel. If you expect to find a “tapestry” that arranges and hems all these themes into patterns, you would be disappointed. Everything is sown in subtle stitches that barely hold together. The reader is expected to feel the stitches and decide how the pattern should be. It would have been so much better if Suri had focused on a few themes, particularly through the lens of spirituality/mythology that dominates the book. I’m also not convinced if so many mythological elements juxtaposed alongside social themes add any value to his novels. Regardless, being an Indian who could perfectly understand the underpinnings and roots of these themes, I enjoyed reading the book. The writing was my hook. I’m addicted to the words, and perhaps biased because of it. If you think sentences such as this: “Perfumes perch along the periphery of his perception, flitting away at his approach”, is interesting and even beautiful, you would appreciate the book. If not, I’m not sure the book would sustain your interest. 

 

Self-full

Youtube recommended this video to me...ha, go figure! And wow, I really did have an "Aha" moment! I don't know what prompted me to casually click the link to watch the video, but I'm so grateful to my impulse.

I obsess over this tussle between being true to myself whilst being altruistic and doing my duty to others around me. It means that I tend to put others in front of me, when duty and inner-need don't align together. I go back and forth on this topic, never really believing that it is indeed okay to put myself in front of others. But Iyanla explains it so beautifully. I like the way she puts it. Her metaphors bring balance and clarity, with or without the spiritual connotation. 

My favorite lines (if and when the video is removed some day):

"It's inauthentic that you always put other people before you.  How you treat yourself is how you treat God. So, you're putting God last. Because you are the representative of God in your life. 

In your life, you've got to be as good to you as you want to be to God, in order to be of service to others in the world. 

It's self-full (not selfish) to be first, to be as good as possible to you, to take care of you, to keep you whole and healthy. That doesn't mean that you disregard everything and everyone; but you want to come with your cup full. 

My cup runneth over. What comes out of the cup is for you all, what's in the cup is mine. But I got to keep my cup full.

So many of us think that we're going to get brownie points in heaven, like we're going to get to sit in the box-seats section if we just give and give and give and give. The course of miracle says, when you give to others to the degree that you sacrifice yourself, you make the other person a thief. When you start sacrificing yourself for other people, you make them a thief, because they are stealing from you what you need and they don't even know it."

Reflections: Siddhartha

Siddhartha is a classic book that needs little introduction. This book has been recommended to me countless times, but I got around to reading it only now. Siddhartha is a young precocious Brahmin, astute in his knowledge of the vedic scriptures. He is deeply driven by the spiritual quest to comprehend the Atman - the soul and the definition of Life that exists in every species and unites them all in the causal sphere of the Cosmos. He hence leaves home to be trained by the Samanas, the ascetics who wander in the forests trying to conquer their minds and their Self through rigorous meditative techniques. But his sharp intellect still doesn’t derive any answers. He encounters Buddha, but he argues against the idea of following a set of teachings to reach the path of enlightenment, and so he sets out on his own journey led by his inner voice. He sinks himself in the material world (Samsara), allows his senses to take control over his body, experiences a rich array of emotions, and finally realizes for himself the design of all living species, and the answers to his questions.

I’m sure each person who reads this book will have something different to take away from it. To me, the book was a beautiful synthesis of the Eastern and Western philosophical ideals. The eastern philosophy preaches that one should suppress their sensory indulgences (for they are transitory experiences, often leading to discontentment) and focus on refining their intellect and gaining mastery over their minds. It prescribes detachment from materialistic pleasures to realize the Self - the Atman. To me, this has always sounded a bit extreme. I could never understand how the intellect could develop holistically, completely devoid of our senses. I understand that over-indulgence in our sensory experiences is shallow, but our senses do contribute to the growth of our intellect. I think this aspect is brought out well by Hesse. If someone who has never tasted or experienced the feeling of sweetness is stipulated against eating anything sweet because too much sweetness results in cloying nausea and bad teeth, the person’s limited experience and knowledge of sweetness bars his mind from understanding the complete meaning behind satiation or feeling repulsed. And it’s unrealistic for a teacher to translate the experience of sweetness or feeling cloyed through words and preachings. This is especially  true for something as abstract as spiritual awareness and realization, which are exceptionally hard to convey through words. It is for us to experience. The western ideology lets us wander, choose our experiences, and then judge for ourselves through our mistakes and lessons. The lessons learned, the “awakening” of wisdom then is much higher, profound and complete. Buddha himself was born in materialistic luxury and having indulged in them and realizing the shallowness and illusion of it all, he relinquished his ties to the material world with a deeper consciousness and awareness.

Our journey and different experiences help us grow. Most of the time, our focus is too narrowed in on the goal itself, that we miss experiencing the journey. The more value we derive out of the journey, the more we benefit. As an ascetic, Siddhartha was looking at the world and his questions through a narrow peep-hole, heavily constrained and tightened by his austere teachings. When he learned to see the world as is, without any filter, he appreciated it more and grew.

Another concept that Hesse brings out is the totality and constancy of everything around us. Just as how the concept of temperature cannot exist without the two extremes - hot and cold, good and bad, sorrow and pleasure, joy and pain exist with one another. Our universe is tightly coupled because of opposite polarities. It makes everything complete and unified.

Finally, I liked how he brings in the theory that we are all bundles of energy that neither get created nor destroyed but only get constantly transformed from one form to another. The whole universe exists due to this delicate chain of energy transfer. We are all then part of the whole. Self-realization should lead to this all encompassing feeling of unison with the world.

As with most books on spirituality, this has to be reread over the course of our life’s varied phases and experiences to extract our own nuggets of wisdom. I should add that the writing is simple and precise, making it conducive to ingest and mull on the heavy themes.

Reflections: Autobiography of a Yogi

This classic spiritual book unfolds the autobiography of the renowned spiritualist, Paramahansa Yogananda. Born into a pious Bengali family, he realized quite early in life that his true purpose was to tread the spiritual path of self-realization and renunciation. Amidst the understandable disapproval of his family members, Yogananda rebelled to seek his true purpose. Education from schools and universities seemed futile to him in his ultimate quest to seek a Guru who would help him comprehend the fundamental existential questions on the Universe and humanity, which continue to elude scholars and scientists. His adolescent years were filled with angst,frustration, impatience and the beginnings of meta-physical experiences with numerous saints. In his early teenage, as his destiny had ordained, he met his guru - Sri Yukteshwar Giri, and started his formal training in spirituality. At the behest of his Guru he forced himself to get a bachelors degree, for his guru was pragmatic to instate the truth that education, a worldly degree, was important if he wished to be taken seriously. His Guru held him grounded to his worldly duties, while ensuring that his true purpose was unwaveringly held in mind. After his education, Yogananda was advised to travel to the West to spread the philosophy of Kriya Yoga, a specialized technique of meditation, to help people attain self-realization and understand the true purpose of their lives. Through remarkable prose, Yoganda expounds the importance of meditation and the scientific truths underlying the metaphysics of spirituality.

It takes a while to truly get into the book... the chapters grow on you. The first half of the book is weaved with implicit, unquestioned assumptions on God and existence. To a skeptic, the questions of how, why, and why not, need to be proved by addressing each individual hypothesis. If the mind cannot comprehend them all at once, everything is trashed altogether. I'm such a skeptic too. But before I started reading the book, I convinced myself that I will keep my mind open, read through every word, reflect on every thought, while realizing that I may not understand them all, and that I, as a human being, have serious limitations on my rationality and the extent of my consciousness. If I were a 14th century woman who was given a glimpse of what the 21st century would look like, I would have likely ridiculed all of them. Humans flying? People talking across continents through some device? Ridiculous! And if someone tried to explain to me that everything was scientific, and went onto write equations of Bernoulli's principle and talked about theories on vibrations and electrons, I still wouldn't be capable of following any of it. To me, my senses, and my limited state of intellect, it would never make sense that sound travels as waves and can be tuned, packaged and sent through air, without pigeons. But after a few hundred years, like children slowly discovering the world around them, we have evolved, studied and stumbled on many scientific laws. We still have a long way to go to unearth the meaning of everything.

From time immemorial, human society has always ridiculed that which cannot be understood by the collective rationality of society. We have this pride that being on top of the food chain as the most evolved creature on the planet, our intelligence is boundless. Cognitive psychologists and researchers in Human Decision Making have churned out innumerable empirical evidences on our serious cognitive limitations of memory and rational thought. Scientists will also affirm that the brain and intelligence evolve, and have been evolving. I'm not asserting that everyone should therefore choose to believe everything in the metaphysics realm with a broken humility that we have limitations, and that we may understand them some day into the future. All I'm emphasizing is the need for an open, analytical mind.

Evolution of the consciousness
The idea of  evolution of human intelligence has always resonated with my comprehension of the world around me. I'm quite open to the possibility that there are dimensions around us which we haven't yet conceived or understood, and will do so as our intelligence and consciousness evolve. They escape the perception of our 5 senses, but our intellect keeps bumping against an invisible wall that seems to lock out the answers to many mysteries. Books such as this, embraces the notion that science will get us past that wall and will help us understand more about the nature of the tiniest particles that created us, that constitute us, the other dimensions around us, and eventually the laws of metaphysics. This is where Science and Spirituality will eventually intersect, or so is my understanding. For this to happen, with each successive generation, humanity's mind evolves until it is fit enough to make sense of the Universe. In a metaphorical sense, this is what the principle of re-birth is... at least to me. We start ignorant, and after multiple births we eventually get to a state of realization, after which we escape the urge of evolution, birth and death.

At its core, the book claims that we can accelerate the rate of evolution of our intelligence/consciousness through meditation techniques, such as Kriya Yoga. According to the principle of meditation, the body and mind are closely tied together, their harmony swelling us with wellness, health, clarity and intuition. The body is seen to contain different pockets of energy, each responsible for a unique function. The aim of meditation is to align all the energy centres in our body such that they harmonize one another and eventually the entire body and mind. Aligning the energy centers across the body's mid-line can be perceived as trying to harmonize ourselves with the philosophy of the Golden Mean - learning to be balanced and living with equanimity. When spiritualists claim that God and answers are within us, they imply that when the body and mind are recharged, consciousness and intelligence grow (or evolve) and the energized clarity yields us wisdom and understanding. According to Yogananda, recharging our mind for a few hours by sparking the energy centers along our spine is equivalent to going through a few hundred years of evolution - in terms of our intelligence and wisdom.

The "Science" of Energies
Hmmm... energy centers, harmony, recharge, clarity... huh? Fret not, there are explanations offered in a much more coherent and intelligent manner in the book than my attempts. I am not sure of the math of few hours of true meditation = x years of evolution, but the theory makes sense. The underlying philosophy that the book tries to communicate is that our bodies and minds have immense potential by virtue of their stored up energy. Yogananda explains this through Einstein's theories. If all matter is compacted with energy that even a teeny tiny atom has the power to explode with intense power, what about the human brain abounding with rich thoughts? How much energy must lay packed in us? If we have so much energy coiled up inside us, our true purpose seems to be to release that energy for the betterment of ourselves, humanity and the universe.

Each thought and brain activity sends out energies and vibrations that can be caught and translated into quantitative forms through EEG techniques. The EEG signals translated from thoughts and brain activity can now be interpreted to execute the action/s they are issuing, through machines and devices. Games and accessible tools for the physically challenged are being developed now with this technology. Advances in neuroscience have now made it possible for us to wear a device that will sense our thoughts and execute actions on the screen without us moving a finger. The ability to move things just by thinking about moving them was previously termed as clairvoyance. Science has now made it possible. Telepathy doesn't seem so far-fetched now, does it?

When this book was written in the 1940s, Yogananda confidently talks of brain waves and thought signals being tuned in like radio frequencies. Aren't we close to such a phase now? Slowly, the meaning of prayers now makes sense. What are prayers, but concentrated thoughts on something we wish for. If there is a device that can now push keyboard controls by sensing our thoughts, it doesn't seem totally impossible for the vibrations of our prayer signals from our thoughts to act on the universe to create at least a ripple somewhere, resulting in a cause-effect chain. Science has defined the butterfly effect and chaos theory, hasn't it? The power of positive thinking can now be scientifically presented. This theory has many parallels with String Theory - and it may very well be the key to understanding the nature and creation of this Universe. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about String Theory to critically analyze this theory, which just goes to show that I have so much more to learn even in the realm of Science, before I can pass any judgment in the metaphysical arena.

"Let there be light"
Scientists have all been stumped with the question of how to reconcile the infinite regression that accompanies the question of which is the simplest, basic element of matter. Even the tiniest particle must be made of something, which will be made of something, which will be made of something...and so on. Where does it end? What are we eventually made of then? At one point, everything must have been created out of nothing. What is nothing? Isn't it also something? Physicists have been struggling to discern how light/energy was created out of nothing. Yogananda therefore expounds that Light is the only absolute in our creation (part of the "Let there be Light", theory). And that everything in this universe is ultimately made of particles of light. A person with an evolved consciousness understands this; to them, the knowledge and awareness of such aspects are as intuitive as most of the simple scientific laws are to us. The craving for materialism disappears with this awareness, for we realize that we are all made of the same basic elements. This is what the Bhagavad Gita also tries to explain - the eventual blending of our consciousness and awareness with the cosmos due to our realization that God (light) is within all of us and that we (light) are also part of everything else. Other complex aspects of metaphysics, such as materializing the physical body in two different places etc., are supposed to stem from this basic theory.

The Illusion of Materialism
The more we try to delineate materials around us, the more we are said to be trapped in the cycle of Maya or illusion. The more we realize the transience and similarity of every material around us, we (hopefully) stop attaching any significance to materialistic possessions. The principles of duality slowly dissolve. There are accounts of real saints who have lived hale and hearty without eating a single morsel of food for more than 50 years. They recharge themselves through the energy of the Universe - the Light. If the body is viewed as an amalgamation of chemicals, running chemical processes that help us function, it seems plausible that there exist techniques of meditation that try to alter the breathing pattern such that the body is supplied with more oxygen (more energy), while depleting the concentration of carbon (retarding the rate of decay of the body). The meaning that surfaces is that man can sustain without depending on anything material around him.

So the answers eventually have been simplified to - 1) first ardently practice meditation, 2) expand your consciousness, 3) realize about yourself and your integration within the whole. But meditation is hard. True meditation takes more than closing one's eyes and trying to think about nothing. The technique of Kriya Yoga is methodical and takes years of practice to reach that one true state of harmony. The path towards self-realization is long and hard, but no doubt seems worthy of the effort.

As always, I was impressed and heartened that religion was not a topic of concentration in the book, despite drawing on the messages from the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. The discussions are holistic, tightly integrating the unity between all religions and scriptures. Bhakti is definitely one aspect, one path toward self-realization, but without us fervently asking the fundamental questions on the Universe and about who we are, Bhakti is fruitless - so confirms Yogananda, all his Gurus, and the Gurus' Guru.

To me, the book was a major stepping stone to bolstering faith in my thoughts and prayers. To my immense surprise, the book doesn't take on a fatalistic approach to explain our existence and lives. Yes, there are many deterministic factors that we are born with, but the great saints weigh the power of human-will above our Karmic patterns and the constellations of stars and planets. I can now at least consider the possibility of miracles, if not truly believe in them yet. As much as it has assuaged some of my nagging questions, there are still many that lie raw and stinging - Is our purpose self-realization, renunciation of everything that is worldly and material? Then what am I doing here? How do we define duties? How can "worldly duties" balanced with such a quest? Why is it important to renounce the ego in this whole experience? Shouldn't ego be a part of self-realization? Or is it because we cannot truly understand the uniformity of things around us  if we continued to focus on the ego, "I", as being separate from everything else around? How exactly do our Karmic influence and free-will interact with each other? Where do the two draw lines, confining one from influencing the other?

It is unrealistic for one book, a little dabble in the pool of metaphysics and spirituality to unravel every single mystery to me. So I will persist, but perhaps now with a little more confidence that the universe isn't as elusive and ambiguous as it looked a couple of weeks back.

Reflections: Eat Pray Love

Elizabeth Gilbert is a journalist and writer from New York. She went through an emotionally draining period in her life when she was forced to confront the problems in her marriage. With a messy divorce and a rash and complicated love-affair twining against each other, her heart was crushed, and her will was broken. Swallowed by depression, she struggled to get her life back on track. A saving grace from her tempestuous love-affair was an introduction to a spiritual Indian Guru. Gilbert found solace through the power and calmness of Meditation and Yoga. But she needed more spiritual guidance to heal herself. She was fortunate enough to take a break and embark on a year-long expedition around the globe to discover herself. She chose three countries to visit, all of which coincidentally begin with "I", boding a good omen for her voyage of self-discovery. The first stop was Italy, due to her passion for the Italian language and anything Italian related. Her next stop was at her Swamiji's ashram in India. Finally, she reached Bali, Indonesia to meet an ancient medicine man who had accurately predicted parts of her life. In this memoir, Gilbert shares her experiences, challenges, revelations and lessons learned from her journey - both spiritual and personal.

Most women can relate to Gilbert. Her frank confessions of her innermost thoughts and emotions are sure to ring true with most readers. For the average practical, career woman, spirituality is often a skeptical subject. For many spiritual practices, personal heartfelt experiences are the highest testimonials. When a fun-loving, rational, modern, ambitious New-Yorker testifies the value of meditation, one can positively hope that people will pause and reflect on it seriously. I also enjoyed her writing - it was fluid and witty, liberally sprinkled with humor. Her candid recounts of her fumbling episodes are both funny and endearing.

What hooked my interest in the book was the underlying philosophical significance of Gilbert visiting each country. Italy was a place to experiment and drown herself in absolute pleasure - the pleasure of learning the Italian language, despite it not serving any "practical" purpose, and indulging in their exquisite gourmet treats. After a physically and mentally exhausting phase, nourishment and the pursuit of rejuvenation often begin with recharging the body and mind with pleasure. Gilbert treated her body with succulent pastas and pizzas, and her mind was stimulated with the challenge and enjoyment of learning the language she had always wanted to. This is very similar to Bertrand Russell's take on happiness - engaging the mind with constructive activities that provide simple pleasures and contentment. Psychologically speaking, it makes a lot of sense for it to be the first step towards healing.

India was for spiritual awakening and acceptance. Her purpose was to subject her nourished, pleasure-pumped self to four months of austerity, wherein she solely focused on controlling, disciplining and communicating with her mind - or her self. Achieving an inner-balance of harmony among the waging negative thoughts is essential to gain acceptance and wisdom. This is logically the second most important step in healing, aside being the vital step towards self-realization. Her experiences in India were my most favorite. I appreciated her honest accounts - her doubts, her frustrations and her perseverance to keep trying harder. She motivates those of us who have encountered similar stumbling blocks to keep trying harder. Some tips are also useful. I was quite envious and sad that I, as an Indian, had never availed of such an opportunity to experience a spiritual retreat. Her vivid and powerful spiritual experiences are quite inspiring and intriguing. I am glad that she found these experiences to be beneficial to gain wisdom and move on with her life.

Finally, she visited Indonesia to understand how to balance pleasure with devotion/spirituality. As much as I looked forward to reading this section, I was unfortunately equally disappointed upon reading it. Now I have to make it very clear that I am in no way criticizing the author's life. I have no right or wisdom to judge another person's life. But I have certain curious thoughts that I still want to share. I expected a more holistic perspective on the term "pleasure", but Gilbert's accounts in Bali seemed to primarily revolve around carnal pleasure. Gilbert openly shares the vow of celibacy that she took for that entire year of globe-trotting. But in Bali, she confesses that her profuse, unabated desires consumed her to the point where she had to relent. I'm not against sex, nor am I associating it with sin, but somehow it was disconcerting to me that a person who had just come out of an intense spiritual journey would still crave for a bodily pleasure. I am not advocating a saintly chaste life of penance for anybody. Marriage and spirituality can go hand in hand. But I view the balance of pleasure and spirituality to be much more encompassing (and perhaps on a higher plane), than indulging in the heat of the moment and then inserting a morning-after meditation session.

I was reminded of the story of Vishwamitra. Vishwamitra set out on an intense penance to become Vasishtar's equal - a Brahma Rishi to take revenge on him. But when he reached the stage of Raja Rishi, the wisdom that he gained from his penance informed him of his lowly pursuit to submit to an emotion such as revenge, and he decided to remain a Raja Rishi and gave Vasishtar the respect of being a Brahma Rishi. After reaching intense harmony with the self and the Universe, having reveled in the pleasure of being one with the Universe, with mere eucalyptus trees in moonlight enrapturing her, I was curious as to why Gilbert didn't choose to calm her body. I don't understand why one wouldn't invoke their insight when they were blessed with the potential to find happiness and harmony from within. Again, I am not judging her decisions or her life as being "wrong". There is absolutely nothing wrong. It just didn't fit my mental-model or expectations of how radically one's life, thoughts and views will reform with spirituality. It seemed like pleasure was being interpreted through a peep-hole and I was disappointed with it. Maybe I'm just being an unrealistic prude.

But I guess her experiences in Bali helped her ease back into normalcy, which I think was the overall goal of the journey. She connected with herself, learned from her insights, healed her wounds, accepted herself and her life and was ready to start getting back to her life in New-York. Probably that was the crucial balance she was searching for and I'm just being phenomenally prudish and idealistic. In all, the book is an interesting read which promises to inspire and provide some down-to-earth insights.

What about you? How would you define the balance of pleasure and spirituality?

Reflections: Princess Ben

We are often intrigued with the question of whether each of us are born to suit the roles we play in life, or we merely adopt and act our parts on stage, as the scenes of life shift. Till this day, the dynasties of Kings and the lineages of Sages and Rishis have formed an important aspect in defining our clan and our origins. These are used as measures to evaluate the worthiness of the genetic pool we carry. Starting from castes and religions, one is apt to get branded. As my grandparents have often intoned, do we carry such an indelible, all too obvious brand of genetic make-up that dictates the roles we are destined to play? Is a child in a royal family implicitly born as a prince/King/princess/Queen, ready to slip into the shoes and act their part?

My grandma often used to say that I must have descended from some Royal blood, for I've always vehemently insisted on having our traditional sweet porridge (Paayasam), only at the very end of a meal. According to her, only royalty could afford to exercise such a luxury, while the common Brahman gulped his Paayasam right smack during the middle of the meal. As a little girl, any flattery from a favorite grandma is delightful. But it didn't take me long enough to discover that most of the world practised this norm and such metrics are all but superficial in our definitions of what makes Royalty. Murdock's book explores what the true meaning of being a princess is.

In this enchanted book of fantasy and magic, Ben is a young girl who wakes up one evening to realize that her world has been rudely pulled from beneath her feet, and she has been pushed into playing the role of a princess and the next heir to the throne. For a fifteen year old girl who is all but orphaned at the mercy of her aunt, a frigid and uptight Queen, such a change is bound to be drastically jarring. Ben comes across as a belligerent young teen who copes with her emotional losses through an insatiable appetite and temper tantrums. Try as she might, she seems to pitifully fail in her feeble attempts to be groomed as a princess, and instead spends much of her time learning magical spells to escape the tyranny of her aunt and unearth the secrets of her parent's demise. Ben's rebellious opposition to be married off to the prince of the neighboring country, deemed as a political ruse to save her land, throws her in a series of adventures, testing her strength of character, exposing her to the brutalities of the world, and the realities of life. As a coming of age story, Ben transforms from a plump little stubborn kitten into an intelligent and mature lady, suitable enough to pass all the qualifications of a real princess - not in terms of waistline size, or abilities to dance and embroider, but in terms of real calibre portraying bravery, mettle, intelligence, compassion and virtues befitting a Queen.

In many levels the book quite surprised and impressed me. As a book primarily for young adults, the author not just builds up an interesting tale of enchantment, but also suffuses good measures of morals and themes that are quite necessary for young teens to think about. Through a pleasant touch of humor, Murdock emphasizes that external parameters of beauty that are so highly valued when we are young, do not count a whit when it comes to realizing our true potentials and executing them. Ben personifies the sturdy young girl who is balanced and tough enough to not let herself be weighed down by others' insults and insinuations against her and sets out to prove them wrong. In many ways the story is inspirational as Ben decides to redeem herself in a positive manner, and in the process blossoms into a self-aware and conscientious person. I also appreciate the fact that the author tries to retain a sense of grounded reality, however fairy-tale like the tale is woven. She makes a concerted attempt to explicate that there are no happily-ever-after-fairy-tales, and that life is a lot of hard-work and bitter realizations, even with the help of magic and spells. Despite lacking the primary traits of being born into a Royal family, Ben gets in touch with herself, identifies her strengths and cultures her best qualities to turn herself into a princess. Ben's fumbling escapades, angst and hard-work are sure to resonate with many young girls. As always, I wish I had read this book when I was ten years old :)

In all, this is a charming book. Of special mention is Murdock's prose - I was highly impressed with the quality of prose in this novel, that the book elevates to the ranks of literary fiction. The writing is stellar! Murdock is beautifully expressive - the words hold deep insight, as well as delightful humor, making the book a realistic fantasy tale sure to hearten and inspire young girls.

Reflections: Notes to Myself

Writing is a process of mental-cleansing for me. It helps me periodically visit all the dungeons and fields of my mind, to dust off the grime, polish a few thoughts, reevaluate a few opinions, rearrange some of them and purge out the rusted clutter. The cleaning process is how I learn to connect with myself. As thoughts are continuously flushed, the old and outdated stand a chance to be tossed out, or to be remedied. Just as how a clean and orderly home is calming and comfortable to snuggle in, so becomes my consciousness and the me inside. Words are those tangible attributes that guide many to assimilate their inner tumble of chaos. A personal journal is indispensable to people like us. We can even survive without a medical kit in an emergency but not without a medium to pour ourselves out.

Hugh Prather is part of my brethren of journal-keepers. This book is a collection of his journal entries; crisp, insightful, analytical and thoughtful. It surprises me that a man (yes, I'm stereotyping) is capable of such lucid articulation about his feelings and gains clarity from them to understand himself better and attempts to interact with people around him by truly connecting with them. This is a little book of self-realization that takes us through Prather's struggle to comprehend and verbalize the tumult of emotions going through him and to express them so as to glean insight, and apply its wisdom in everyday life. To me, the one aspect that seemed to stand out from the pages is Prather's struggle to both acknowledge and accept all feelings - negative and positive. It is more of a realistic approach to acknowledge our negative thoughts, but assume responsibility for the way we choose to act on them. It is futile to attempt to control many aspects of our lives. Perhaps the only reasonable and realistic approach is to live the moment, the present, and try to accept the things thrown at us and make the best of what we can with our actions. One has to know how to realize oneself, for in an eerie way we are all alone, trapped in our little islands into which no one can navigate to and look at the world from our view and make things better. We are the only ones to know what it is like to live the life we are living, and deal with it. The process of this realization is hard, but the first step seems to be to repeatedly get to know the inner-self better by discerning every single feeling, thought and emotion that pulses through us and tracing their journey to figure out their means, if not their ends.

The book is Prather's notes to himself, some of which strike a chord, some of which provoke further thought, and many are left to us to realize about ourselves. One man's notes about himself are tightly tied to his contexts, his life, his emotions, his thoughts and his self, and can't be expected to extend to another individual. But the notes jog the mind, give it a little nudge and the rest is up to us.

With a brand new year having dawned on us, I realize that I need to make some notes to myself to become a better person. Self-realization is a sustained goal, an everyday effort that is sure to last for several more years. Yesterday, my friend shared some of poet Ranier Maria Rilke's letters and quotes. To call them inspirational seems quite trivializing to those words. His words "... that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith..." resonate quite well with my Mantra for this year. To tame the demon of denial and reach the state of acceptance has been my struggle for so long a time. What cannot be cured, has to be endured, and accepted. I need to learn to accept my nightmare and live in it as best as I can, to the point where it turns into mundane normalcy.

For more tangible goals, over which I can exercise more control,

* I hope to rid myself of my bouts of extreme inertia, due to which I procrastinate most things. I'm glad that I started the new year having finally conquered my inertia and accomplishing a certain milestone that has made all my friends and family shed red-hot tears of relief (thanks to those kindred souls for championing me throughout :)). Now they await with their hearts in their mouths, as I set out to execute my skills.

* My second inertial barrier waits to be shattered. Having been blessed with a close circle of people who diligently and rigorously work-out and attempt to sculpt their bodies, I have incurred many silent curses and "evil-eyes" as I, the non-gym escapist, flit atop the fancy-weight-machine and make it spit out 8% of body fat for me. Enough to make the person slogging out on a 200lb dead-lift, suffer a severe blow of disappointment at his readings that he begs me to chomp on French Fries.The "evil-eye" works itself out, as I yelp in pain and exasperation struggling to open and close the measly lid of my car's gas-tank, with the wind chill gnawing a hole in my fingers. A pretty picture as I bend myself into a ball, breathing and puffing vapors of smoke, my fingers trembling with the effort to open the blasted lid, my feet half-clinging to the ground as the wind tries to uproot me. Therefore, enough is enough. My resolution is to build those muscle thingies...lean muscles as I am told. I have plenty of able and eager instructors who can't wait to start training me, and I shall be malleable to all attempts. Oh, as part of my working towards the resolution, I bought a nice pack of chocolate-flavored protein powder, ready to be gobbled up in liberal amounts. And I have been gifted with a couple of 4lb dumbbells :)

* As an extension of the previous goal, I should be able to successfully shovel all the heaping mountains of snow without (well, with some) help. Right now, with the huge and heavy iron shovel standing tall and imposing, measuring almost my height (but weighing much heavier than I), my attempt at helping to shovel the driveway is to jump up and down on the snow to loosen it up, so that it can be picked up easily. Can it be anymore pathetic? No.

* With heaps of several feet of snow lying around, building a gigantic snowman is of utmost priority. Last year, I (we) got around to lumping just the snowman's tummy, within which time I thought my nose would drop off with the biting cold. This year, I (we) may lose toes, fingers and part of my nose, but a snowman shall be erected.

* I hope to read ever more, with a quest for better books.

* I wish to paint even more, especially a fiery, roaring dragon and a serene golden Koi, being my imminent projects. And, I shouldn't cut my fingers while working on glass. At least this year.

* I should continue to sing, should find a raagam that A hasn't heard of before (which will take me a good 6 months to figure out), should sing it to him and watch his face contort with disbelief, his eyes rolling with confusion, his mind racing to identify the raagam, and finally whimpering away with defeat. Haha,I already rub my hands with wicked glee, imagining him scuttling around the house, driving himself insane. My evil side seeps out.

* I should hopefully start learning to play my dream instrument, and use it as my ultimate solace.

* I hope to grow twice as many flowers as I grew last Spring. And we should redeem our debilitating failure of growing (killing) vegetables (frost-bitten tomatoes and bunny-devoured cauliflowers), by trying to flourish at least two vegetables this year.

* Bake gingerbread-man cookies...with icing for his eyes, his tie and his buttons. And try at least five recipes from the cook-book I have been so graciously gifted with.

* When it gets slightly warm, get a cutie-pie Oranda baby, who has already been christened as "Flipper", to add to my fishie-clan at home.

That makes a long list by itself, apart from mundane professional goals to accomplish. Those are enough notes to give me an action-item to work on for the whole year. Let's see how well I live up to them.

Speculations on Corruption

I've been diligently keeping up with the everyday marathon, but my ideas are frozen; frozen from the impending deadline making my soul churn with guilt as I race through ideas. So I succumb and decide to recycle yet another writing and will leave the blog-world at peace for a while.

This was yet another idealistic speculation on why people tend to be insincere, immoral -- well, corrupt. At an age when I could only comfortably crib about the career path I'd been flung into, I scribbled something down. Again, idealism at it's hilt.

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From March 2005

Being corrupt is commonly defined as being dishonest, insincere, immoral, rotten or spoiling something. It cant just be yet another common attribute of man because its his tendency to be dishonest and insincere. No, that’s not true. Why then are there "corrupt" people?


Here's my theory:
We always give our best to something we love doing. A sense of commitment, responsibility, accountability and sincerity come with it. If a person loves his job, he enjoys working on it, respects it and is willing to face the hardships it might offer. Most of us in India, stick to a job mainly for survival. It pays money. I need to feed my family. There is no personal and wholesome commitment offered. When you don’t even like your job, don’t recognize its significance, and just orient yourself towards money, insincerity grows.


Apparently India has moved to a stage where all bright boys and girls aspire either for engineering or medicine. The ‘unfortunate half baked’ ones are doomed for other courses. But they’ll be pushed all their life to join the stream taken by the ‘elite cream’. If every one is herded to work as engineers, what happens to the quality of that profession?


The real potentials of an individual are never analyzed. Its true that some courses are difficult to take. It's not easy to reach all the comforts and luxuries that the common path provides. But it’s the amount of enthusiasm, talent, courage and passion you have for it, that takes you to heights. Dignity of labor must be realized.


But most people here are driven to take up a job, just for sustenance. How can they give in their hundred percent? The trodden path is always considered the safest. An ethically conscious man strives to do his best, no matter what job he does. But if a man with a great talent for music is put in a bank, he cant contribute his best. Its not enough that he’s just ethically refined. The working of any system depends on the aptitude of each and every one of its components.


Maslow’s hierarchy can be used here. The needs of man are put into a hierarchy starting with


· Physiological needs---- basic food, water, clothes, shelter.


If a man’s needs are confined to this level, then he looks only for money. The more the better. If he cant afford more, then he finds a way out; even if illegal/immoral. Its not greed, its merely pressure and desperation. He needs to survive and live on.


· Security and safety needs


At this level, sustaining his job is of the greatest importance. How he clings onto it and scrapes his way up to make it permanent and completely secure, is all that he’s concerned about.


· Affiliation, or acceptance needs


Only a man with a job is respected in the society. A man who brings home more money, is loved more by his wife, children, parents, and friends. The man who can afford to send his kids to the best school in the neighborhood, gets an implicit respect. Neighbors ‘accept’ him as their friend. So at this level again, his needs are restricted to how well and how much he is ‘accepted’ and liked by his society, and he feels "justified" to do anything to get there.


· Esteem needs


‘Power’ is a magic word. It commands respect and authority. A man with power, rules. A politician’s main need is to reach for that. The economic status of a man gives him power over the ones below him. Therefore at this stage, his need is to command, rule and be respected.


· Self Actualization


At this stage man has a desire to become what he is capable of becoming—to maximize one’s potentials and to accomplish something which will appease his inner-self.


Most of man's needs are misplaced. Unless man reaches or realizes the stage of self actualization, his needs justify and reflect the insincerity and dishonesty in any work he does. If a politician enters into the field to gain power and not to accomplish anything significant, his activities will only border around how to achieve his need. His means justify his ends and corruption bloats. He has no love, dedication, sincerity in his work. The system slackens and corruption grows.


The quality of any profession is dependent on the people involved in it. Love and commitment towards work, if developed, increases the efficiency of the overall system. I think it would reduce insincerity to a large extent. Of course common tendencies of greed will be present. But if the judiciary had people who loved to do their jobs properly... things will be under control.


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Interesting theory. Now, I only partly agree. Lack of quality cannot be always equated to lack of moral values. This might hold true of general growth and development of a county. But I think it's Utopian to argue that people will continue to be insincere and corrupt unless they look beyond basic needs and search into their soul for their meaning and purpose in life. Basic needs of survival will never leave, and there are very few who can survive without nothing but by being in harmony with their inner-self.