Wanted: A Life Purpose (*conditions apply)

Since I let go of my full-time corporate job, every few months, I used to feel dejected that life/god/existence was not showing me my calling, the grand and glorious purpose in life that I had heard and read so much about.

On one such gloomy, rainy day, my mentor GD sat me down and asked me: “What will it look like when you find your calling?” Despite my past experience with his seemingly innocent-sounding questions, I answered that one.

I replied it should be something worthy, inspiring and larger-than-life. “What you are seeking is not your calling,” GD pointed out, “but a new path of ego-gratification.”

Wow. I hadn’t seen that coming.

With just one sentence, my new age/light-worker/eco-warrior ego was crushed like a recycled coca-cola can. So my oh-so-righteous rants to God were just an employee haranguing his boss for a promotion? As I recovered my composure, I asked GD if there was such a thing as a calling or life purpose then?

The way I see it, he said, one’s calling is something that feels simple, natural and spontaneous in this moment. It is not that Existence doesn’t show you your calling, but the mind rejects it insisting that it should look a certain way — that it should be spectacular right from the start. So you are asking God to show you your purpose, but you have a huge asterisk with “CONDITIONS APPLY” below it. And even if tomorrow morning it happened in the spectacular, sudden way you imagine it, it would only create stress and pressure, because it is not a natural flowering.

In every moment, I realized, our calling comes to us like a gentle birdcall, while we wait for the fanfare of a Republic Day Parade.

“We dismiss that little voice because we don’t know where it is leading,” GD added. “Otherwise, this process is already silently in motion. All we need to do is to trust the Universal Flow. Our calling is simply to honor the impulse that is ‘calling’ in this moment.”

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Thank You For Nothing

As my blog completes one year today, I would like to offer a thank-you for the one who inspired me (and kicked my scared butt initially) into starting it: my brother and spiritual mentor GD. Of course, his contribution in my life goes far beyond this blog. Here’s a little poem I wrote for him.

thank you for nothing
thank you for the silence

thank you for never giving me
any ground to stand upon

for the kindness of pretending
that my problems exist

and then for the kindness of
showing me they don’t

thank you for the emptiness of meditation
thank you for the fullness of heart

without you, my life would be
asentencewithoutspaces

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It’s Cool To Be Good Again

Last week, on a whim, I met up with two former colleagues for coffee. When we had first met a decade ago, we were charging full-speed ahead in our corporate careers. Today, all three of us are at very different places, but answering the same call.

One of them had been the patron saint of the macho hedonistic life. Today, as he bit into his salad, he said he had given up drinking and smoking. He now volunteers as a sports coach at St Catherine’s Orphanage every weekend. Once a collector of $200 Diesel jeans, he said he hadn’t bought new clothes for six months. His face looked radiant as he spoke, his eyes clearer than I ever remember them when he spoke: “I go home from work at 5:00 pm these days. My old dreams of success are still around. If they work out it will be great – but they don’t define me anymore.”

The other colleague at the table was a former marketing head honcho. He recently founded a company to innovatively use media and technology for education. His first project would reach a million poor children soon. “I pay myself much less than what I could have earned as an MBA at the age of 34,” he said to us, “but I feel good at the end of the day. I have everything in life – a house, food, clothes, dog, car, computer – and a beautiful woman to spend it with. I could have had a bigger car and a bigger house and two more Plasma TVs but I feel good about my life right now.”

When I look at my Facebook timeline, I see that more and more friends around the world, young and old, are waking up to something. My 70something dad has begun a water conservation campaign that has saved 5.5m litres of water and a pretty 20something hypnotherapist I know has begun an NGO for slum children. Not everyone is quitting & serving society – some are just beginning yoga, some are reconnecting with creativity, some are finding themselves drawn to spirituality or alternative healing, some are beginning to question whether their lifestyle is worth it and some are simply forwarding positivity daily. Old beliefs, thought patterns, persons, things and situations are exiting – sometimes creating temporary chaos and confusion as people grapple with ‘what-next?’

Psychics, channels and spiritual teachers say these are all effects of the rigid patriarchal Old Energy making way for a free-flowing New Energy: effects that we will see more clearly in hindsight decades from now. Whether you believe in this spiritual perspective (like I do) or have never heard of it (like my two friends), it doesn’t seem to matter. The change is happening anyway.

Much as I dislike most advertising, especially cola advertising, they do capture the zeitgeist. The recent global Coke ‘Crazy For Good’ campaign features random acts of kindness from London, Cape Town & Buenos Aires. “People call me ‘crazy’ and ‘weird’ and ‘strange,’” the young do-gooder in the Coke commercial says. “But it’s cool. I like it.” Right message, wrong spokesperson.

Speaking of wrong spokespersons, last February, even the arch-icon of ‘80s excess, Gordon Gekko, has a new mantra. In a new FBI ad, Michael Douglas denounced corporate greed and says his Gordon Gekko character was wrong — greed is not good after all.

If you can smell it all around, it has become cool to be good again.

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Specialness ~ An extra-ordinary talk by GD

Deepti Gujar’s “extra-ordinary” post on Specialness includes a free audio download of GD speaking on the subject. Where all do you still try to maintain your specialness? Where have you become imprisoned by your talent and cut off from life? A worthy exploration…

Flowering of eternity

This is one of the best talks I’ve ever heard. It is one of those group sessions where GD opens to a page in A Course In Miracles, starts reading it, and opens up a discussion in the group based on the lines. This is a talk I kept visiting once…twice…thrice and every time I did, I became more aware of acting out from specialness. Eventually I just sat down with my journal and started making a note of all the places where I play out this specialness, pausing it at very intervals. GD has so incisively pulled out the many different angles to this subject that it is one hell of an ego buster! Though of course, he does it with his characteristic humour that softens some of the blow 🙂

I invite you to hear it with this context – Are you aware of the many ways in…

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Six Tips for Empaths Coping With Disasters

One day in October 2012, my brother and mentor GD experienced a strong sense of exhaustion without any cause. He slept five hours during the day and went to bed at 9:30 pm. During the waking hours, he said he felt so tired he ‘could barely stand’. “It was like my energy is being drained away,” he said, “and going somewhere else.” It was then that I informed him that the East Coast of the US had been hit by the worst storm in its history.

This was not the first time it had happened. Sometimes, during such times, he sensed a cloud of sadness and tears coming to his eyes. In 2011, I learned from author-psychic Penney Peirce that GD has always been what is known as an empath: a human tuning fork. Such people can directly ‘feel’ into others with X-Ray sensitivity. My mom has been a lifelong empath and my wife and I have been discovering our empathic abilities in the last one year too. I suspect more and more people out there are finding proof their natural empathic abilities without being consciously aware of it. (Not sure if you are an empath? Read this: 30 Traits of an Empath)

In the wake of the Oklahoma Tornado, I felt strongly about writing a blog post as an internet record for empaths to help them to deal with such natural disasters at an energetic level. I asked GD how he had learned to cope over the years with this powerful energetic outage. These were his suggestions:

1)   AVOID SELF-JUDGMENT: The biggest tip, according to GD, is to avoid self-judgment at times like this. And avoid being around people who do not understand what is happening. It is bad enough that you feel helpless lying flat on the bed without a reason, it is worse to be around someone who thinks you are shirking work or ‘just imagining’ things.

2)   NATURE: Being outdoors and in nature can help. Trees are powerful holders of positive energy and touching – or even hugging – a tree has been recommended by certain psychics. Being barefoot in the park is a great idea too.

3)   GROUNDING: Grounding your energy is said to one of the most useful things during this situation. In simple terms, keeping your bare feet touching the floor. If you have a grounding mat, this is a good time to use it. Another way to ground your energy is to visualize a cord connecting your feet with the crystalline core of the earth. Another way to clean your energy is with water – take a shower.

4)   FOLLOW YOUR INTUITION: You may be guided to certain meditations or to listen to certain podcasts. Or you may just be too tired to even read. The main thing is not to force anything – not even meditation or doing ‘spiritual’ things.

5)   AVOID WATCHING NEWS: Watching disaster news obsessively can suck you into a powerful morphic field of suffering, panic and helplessness. This is not helpful to yourself or others. If you must see the news for practical reasons, tune into it at specific times for a limited period. Don’t feed on the energy of drama.

6)   SEND BLESSINGS: Though it may not seem like during disaster time, realize that being an empath is a gift. Send blessings to people affected by the disaster if you feel moved to, or use the simple ho’oponopono declaration.

I hope these tips are useful to all the ‘sensitives’ out there in dealing with crises. If you feel your children are empaths, do guide them through this too. And remember that the energetic impact of a disaster can affect you a few hours before the disaster actually strikes. Finally, do pass this on to anyone else in your life who you feel may be an empath. Thank you.

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Image Used Under Creative Commons via E8 Album

A Timeless Little Reminder

For all those out there who may be feeling temporarily
lost and uncertain about their direction in life…

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Behind The Mind: The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin

One of the most beautiful and unknown gems in Eastern non-duality, whom I recently discovered thanks to my mentor GD, is Wu Hsin. Born a hundred years after Confucius, his name literally means ‘no-mind’. And true to his name, there is no trace of him available – no profile, no wikipedia entry, one single image. This is just how he would have liked it I suppose – after all, what is the value in deliberating over the life story of someone who says our life story is a dream?

‘Behind The Mind’ is a collection of his short daily discourses, some of them literally just a few sentences long, at the end of which he tells students to ponder over the words till the next day. Like the recent and better-known Nisargadatta Maharaj, Wu Hsin’s words are stark, unsentimental and powerful. “Listen to Wu Hsin,” he says, “but do not expect to benefit in any way. Who is there to be benefitted? Any seeming benefit is only another stitch in the tapestry of the personal narrative.”

A few timeless pointers from this must-read collection: 

An imagined entity desires to become an enlightened imagined entity. What’s the point? It is like trying to measure space. Yet, this will continue until such time as the distinction is made between this that I am and that that I appear to be.

Dismount the pendulum of fear and desire. That ground beneath you is the Source and Support.

See that you create the space in which the world moves, the time in which it lasts. Come to realize that the world is only sand. You may play with it, you may walk on it, but don’t build your house there. There is no journey, as such. It may not seem so, but we are always back where we started. What we were in essence, and what we will be in essence, is what we are in essence.

All thinking is imaginary because the person talking to you is imaginary. There is no self talking to yourself; in fact, there also is no “yourself”. Stay a time in silence. Do not accept these words; look for yourself for “yourself”.

The two great delusions are that life is controllable and that there is an entity, me, who can exercise said control. But if we cannot even control the thoughts that appear to us, how can we possibly believe we can control what occurs to us?

Wherever you go, you carry with you the sense of here and now. This is what distinguishes any present experience from memory. It reveals that space and time are in you and not the other way around. Most people are not acquainted with the sense of their being but only with the knowledge of their doing.

Enlightenment is one more concept to add to your collection, yet another idea regarding improving yourself, discovering yourself, or obtaining peace and happiness.

Don’t take life personally. The sun has no care for what passes through the sky.

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Image used under creative commons via Avard Woolaver

It’s Liebster Time, My Beloveds!

Have been busy with two film releases for the past week and missing the quiet company of bloggers within the excitement of the film world. Will be back with new insights & cartoons from GD & me this week! In the meantime, happy to have been conferred a Liebster Award from lovely Pavithra of secondattemptinblogging. The name of this award comes from a German word “Liebster” which means ‘Dearest’, ‘Favorite’ or ‘Beloved’ and has been going around since 2010. Sweet!

Rules:

1.     Write random facts about yourself.

2.     Answer the 11 questions given by the person nominated you.

3.     Fabricate 11 new questions.

4.     Nominate 11 bloggers with under 200 (or 300) followers and mention them in your post. 

5.     Tell the person who nominated you, along with the people whom you have nominated. 

 

Random Facts about me:

1. I used to pretend to read palms in college so I could hold pretty girls’ hands. I had worked out a few stock sentences (“you care for others more than they care for you”) which I realized almost everyone believes are true!
2.  I am a pickle-fanatic. Have around six different types at any given time at home.
3. I love my mac products – ipod, ipad, iphone & macbook pro.
4. I stopped reading fiction for almost 15 years in between.
5. I don’t know how to drive a car. Embarrassing, but true. Fortunately, I have a fantastic driver.  

Here are my answers to Parvathy’s questions:

1.  What is that one thing you will not give up in your life?
   – From teenage to middle-age, it seems that meditation is a constant. Haven’t given up yet!
2. Which is your favorite restaurant?
   – Saravana Bhavan in Chennai. Lucky to have a job that requires me to be in Chennai once a week! 
3. What is the one vegetable you cannot live without?
   – Potato. Potato. Potato. No question about that.
   
4. What is that one recipe you hate the most?
   – Nothing really. Anything with karela (gourd) probably. 
5. What is your favorite movie in the comedy genre?
   – Bruce Almighty. Can watch it ad infinitum.
6. Which is the best city to live in the world?
   – For me and my wife, London has a strong past-life calling. I can find my way around there even to places I have not been to before. Everything feels so familiar. 
   
7. Share a cute or daring memory from your childhood.
   – At age 10, got an adult video tape (…Conan The Barbarian!) telling the library clerk my ‘uncle’ wanted to see it.
8. Do you know how to dance or sing 🙂
   – I break-danced professionally at weddings when I was a teenager. I sing in E Flat so I have stopped by popular demand. 
9. What is that one thing you would want to teach the world?
   – How to go within and find peace.
   
10. Whose name comes to your mind when you think of optimism?
    – My wife.
11. Name a famous personality who is strong, determined & admirable
    – Shah Rukh Khan & Will Smith
    

Here are the lovely blogs I want you all to check out! To my liebster bloggers: if you have over 200 or 300 followers, my bad. I think your blog is amazing so you can do it anyway!

1. Yaz Rooney of Free Your Mind
2. Angela of LA Screenwriter
3. Margaret of Life As Improv
4. Miriam of This Unlit Light
5. Kozo of Everyday Gurus
6. Meg of IStopForSuffering
7. Zen Doe of The Wind Horse Blog
8. Kai of SmallPebbles
9. Howstrait of The Gait
10. Sarah of Through The Looking Glass
11. Katalina of Follow Your Nose

 

And here are my 11 questions:

1. What is your favorite movie which has a spiritual theme or message?
2. Which book has influenced your life the most? 
3. Is there any current line/mantra that works for you whenever you remember it?
4. A childhood friend/lover who you wished you knew where they were now?
5. One quality you wished you had more of?
6. Your single most favorite blog post ever (either your own or another’s) that you feel everyone should read.
7. The spiritual teacher who has inspired you the most?
8. Your escapist fantasy life looks like…?
9. The one addiction you wish you could get rid of.
10. On your last day on earth you would…?
11. Your favourite city in the world is…?

Thank you all for reading and for inspiring me. Your feedback and comments are nourishment for my enthusiasm to create and share even more with you.

A Billion And One Rising

Though statistics shockingly say that a woman is raped in India every 20 minutes, like most Indian men, I was jolted awake only after the Nirbhaya rape case in New Delhi.

I angrily set about making ‘the others’ wrong. Rapists are wrong. Governments are wrong. Judiciary is wrong. Patriarchal society is wrong. Delhi men are wrong. Men are wrong.

But that was the easy part. I was still the good guy here.

What began to really trouble me came afterwards. It was when I began glimpsing how deeply I am a part of this energy of ‘rape’ too. Haven’t I ever mentally undressed an attractive woman? Haven’t I ever been so angry with a lover that I wanted to hurt her? Haven’t I enjoyed watching sexually charged imagery in movies, on television, in advertising, in fashion? Just because I have never raised a finger on a woman does not mean the same energy was never present within me. Just because the volume is not audible to the world doesn’t mean the twisted ancient song does not sometimes play its awful music inside me also.

When I looked deeper, I sensed that the culture of rape is not only about sex, it is the cult of coercion. Of the powerful controlling the weak through force and humiliation. I have been a part of that too — at work, in my family, as a parent. As I pulled upon this thread, it led me to the sense of masculinity and the adrenalin rush that anger and power give. To the metallic fear that underlies it. And the necessary internal justification that the other ‘deserves’ it.

I am the rapist, I realized. And I am the victim too: it’s been so seductive to make someone else responsible for my suffering. To give away my power and hide behind being the good, noble and wronged victim.

Every time I found more on the subject of violence and rape against women in the months since the Nirbhaya rape case, it reminded me of my responsibility for cleaning this up inside me. It is easier, I realized in hindsight, for me to raise my voice than it is to raise my consciousness. It is undoubtedly hard to slay the demons and monsters outside, but it is harder still to see that they are also inside me.

Yes, I believe tougher laws can deter injustice. But laws also create smarter criminals. I began reading up on the subject and found that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that US states with death penalty laws showed no significant differences in either crime rates or murder rates compared with states that didn’t have them. Yes, I still believe laws will help, but I do not believe they will be enough.

If we create a volatile pressure cooker, asking police and judiciary to hold the lid down tighter can only help so much. If we continue participating in creating a macho, hypersexual culture then beating down on violence and sexuality harder will only make us schizophrenic.

Rape is the fruit of a poisonous tree whose roots are deep within us also. If we don’t see those roots, we can beat each rotten fruit to pulp and new ones will sprout. I’d love to believe violence and rape is committed only by sick, criminal-minded, mentally unstable psychos, but statistics show otherwise: most rapes are carried out by friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances, coworkers – people like you and me. So the march for change must eventually lead to my doorstep also.

This valentine’s day, I quietly committed to rising to the challenge of becoming a little more conscious, a little more loving and a little less violent to others and myself. Moving towards becoming a tiny, little rape-free world in myself is the best gift I can think of to the women I love.

The Fog of Outdated Dreams

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All our lives, our dreams have defined us – and given the promise of grand scale to our little lives. Even in our bleakest hours, they have held out a flickering hope. And yet, the message I am getting from various sources is that the time has come to ask if our dreams are keeping us from the beauty, truth and joy in the now.

Are we being suffocated by the momentum of desires from the past – the outdated passions that don’t let us be steady in the loving, peaceful present? Can we now gather the courage to shake ourselves, look around and ask ourselves honestly in this moment: Are those old dreams valid? Or is it now time to live wide-awake and respond afresh in the present moment?

For anyone else for whom this resonates, I would like to share some questions from GD as a powerful enquiry. You don’t need to answer the questions verbally or even figure out the right answer. Just allow the questions to seep in slowly and see what opens up for you…

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• Which dreams from the past do you still use
  to make yourself feel incomplete and unfulfilled?

 

• What spiritual or material stories are you using
  to keep on ‘running’ all the time?

 

• What desires are you chasing that make you
  blind to the love-peace-joy that is present right-now?

 

• In which areas do you continue to sacrifice
  Consciousness and Peace for the sake of compulsive desires?
  

 

• What wisdom or space can you allow to enter…
  that will allow you the deep-rest you truly desire?
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