slowing down

Everyone is walking fast, everyone is overtaking me.. everyone is doing things so fast.Everyone is in a hurry. I want to keep my slowness. I want to wash my glass easily, I dont like the fast thing
am I more yin than yang
my natural speed is slow and relaxed, even if I want to do somethign fast I want to do it relaxed not hurriedly. 

LOL! not after starting insanity workout, These workouts are so aggressive and yang. Now I want to kick the asses of laid back peoples like me on the day I do Insanity and I am the laid back on the days I do yoga :D

autistic people cant figure out emotions in others but do feel empathy.
psychopaths are charming and able to read and manipulate emotions in others exceedingly well but dont actually feel empathy.
kind of opposites.

Beautiful underarms are a sign of inner beauty :D

Beautiful underarms are a sign of inner beauty :D

ask Dove - and their very successful marketing campaign.

How companies are scrambling to get on the socially progressive bandwagon.

some are crude and some are very subtle and quite impressive in hiding their hungry fangs trying to dip into ur purse.

crude
This ad thinks it promotes women empowerment - Heavy gold plated woman/bride with a proud expression - "I didnt choose my Husband but I can chose my jewellery" If it was being sarcastic, It would have been very funny. 

Mom! I dont want to get married, Mom takes daughter jewellery shopping, daughter is so excited about gold jewellery, she agrees to gets married.Aiyo no Its not trivializing women, this actually is supposed to  be women's empowerment.

Subtle ones which take you at first glance

Kellogs - All they are saying is - try to fit into the ideal of a slim woman defined by us, by  eating 3 bowls of corn shit each day! and for doing that u get the title of real empowered woman who has control of her life or  something like that. 

Dove - Dove actually makes some really sensible ads about women empowerment,  like dove run like a girl campaign which was all right, but what has that got to do with dove? They are just nice and promoting a social cause?  what dove really wants is for u to be beautiful overall, like by having beautiful under arms!!!! with 1/4 moisturiser in their deo to keep your under arms wriknkle free! They are trying NLP to make u associate Dove with the current it-thing social cause but Thats as superficial as beautiful underarms for you!

Advertisers are sly manipulative lowly worms.

love spray

ha ha not like that, english is very limited in words for love,  It is overloaded like crazy to mean sex to affection to casual liking (i love icecream) and is the only powerful word to describe such emotions at that.( words that i know of anyway)  I mean it in the sense of affection/heart melted by looking at sunset, universal love kind of way. not passion or romantic love.

so sydney hostage crisis, instead of trying  to use a snipper or trying to kill the man with bullets, cant they pump some gas to make him fall unconscious? some harmful, quick acting gas? it may act ofn other people before acting on him and he may get a que and start shooting ( in some cases trigger a bomb) Or may be hallucinogenic gas, which makes the terrorists really confused but then it could go really un predictable!

what about love gas( eeks ! ppl always use word love in kinky way x-( , love gas sounds dirty) i meant like oxytocin or something, which promotes affection in the terrorists heart. 

lioness adopts deer, cat adopts chicks , under the influence of oxytocin n in case of cat , it was for life ,that bond.  so you pump oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins one and all into the room, terroriat starts feeling affectionate and loving towards his victims, feels remorse, surrenders and  happy ending. Ta da!!! 

same with  other violenent peopele, instead of using pepper spray how bout love spray? taxi driver is trying to rape. affection spray!  starts feeling this tugging in his heart, suddenly want to nurture and protect the victim, feels like shit about himself commits suicide!. hope that spray doesnt affect you and you wont call the police because u felt sorry for that bastard and rescue him! 

Anyway worth a shot!!

For that matter take it one step further - chemical warfare - Spray on entire ISIS territory! what will happen? Pump prozac through water lines, every body will be giddy with happiness, even tho temporarily. Will it work? What hasnt anyone done it yet?  too expensive or is arms industry lobby  against this for obvious reasons.
Well wars are not fought by angry young men ( well on the ground may be ) but its the cold calculating power hungry men sitting at the top who are doing wars...so Dont think oxytocin or prozac will cut it with those Bushes and Putins..

random

When do we help people by telling them things and when are we being stupid by assuming other people dont know anything   when they probably know more than us.
When I say stupid people follow tradition, give mandatory gift etc... I m probably doing the same, they probably know things I dont, how to maintain relationships etc and I m being a fool?
Things should change may be - but One way it is not gonna happen is by calling other people - bad names.

This requires us to understand and be more tuned into people??
or better tuned to ourself? Am I giving gyan to help or to show that I know better? is it a ego deal or a genuine concern?
sometimes ego is hidden behind genuine concern?

empathy is what causes irritation in us when we see someone wearing uncomfortable clothes or have piercings which we feel are uncomfortable, empathy makes us feel like we have them ourselves.
embarrassment especially we feel embarrassed for others
empathy BTW is our reaction to their situation may not be in tune with what they are feeling in their situation?
do we try to change other and be controlling sometimes because of empathy?

value of life

value of 1 European/American life = 10 Asian lives = 100 African lives.

Ferry capsizes in South Korean, Its PM resigns, people all over the world cry for the drowned people. People in my office followed the news and cried. After a month a ferry capsized in Bangladesh - hardly made any news. Nobody cried for Bangladeshis. 200 girls kidnapped in Nigeria makes news after 3 weeks, 1 girl missing in Britain causes news the next day.
Thats the way the world is. Its not others who value us like that, Its how we value ourselves. Bangladeshis or Indians wouldnt even dream that any minister would resign because of a few 1000 deaths. But Koreans did. People cried because people themselves values themselves. We dont value our life,especially poor/rural life. I think 1 urban indian life = 5-10 rural lives.
Even the burden on earth is like wise. 1 UK person is as much a burden on earth as 100 Indians. Heating, Elecricity, food , waste - everything. 1 UK person sucks out 100 times more out of this earth than Indian in everyway. Population of India is alarming! but I think even a slight increase in population in developed nations should be seen with alarm.   Population should be balanced with weights like this from now on.

When people say girls are not good at maths I get wild!
but when people say most of the criminal/terrorist and socially disruptive are young males. I nod and agree
Am I sexist?
just like I am good at maths A,S and V are perfectly sane and not prone to aggression/criminal-terrorist activity :D . Why dont I object to the second meme?

answer: Thats because they are not stereotyping young men as aggressive, they are stereotyping agressive people as young men. Got it? 
Its like saying all those who didnt do well in maths are girls, that's  different from saying all girls are bad at maths. 

Is it helping

What is the use of it
what benefit are u getting
Is it helping

Grrrr Really irritating! Ok not spiritual, this  getting irritated. I know but I not there yet ok?
When ever I do something - like Yoga or meditation or something fun
People ask me such questions, especially with meditation. did it help? with what?
Why should we do everything with this kind of attitude? It really annoys me because I am trying to get away from it and when people ask, that plants a worm in my head and I start thinking did it help? what is the use of this and then something that was so fun and wonderful becomes a chore. It rots and dies ;-) (Dramatics :P just because :P )
Cant we do something just because? Why? Just because.
people even sometimes say , if it doesnot "help" .... isnt it a waste of time! :-S 
coursera course.. just for fun, psychology - yeah just for fun ,why not? When u can drink - just for fun? and meet people - just for fun?
I went to a dance class - Is it good? Yeah it was great fun... then the other questions . Did u lose weight? Are u thinner? how many calories does it burn? :-(
no no no dont think like that... when walking to the station dont think its so far how much time it will take. just concentrate on this step and then this one and then this one...
No external motivators, internal ones.. no need or progress bars, no need of carrots - all those steal away from us the joy of being. just be!

ps: This exercise thing -  I am enjoying doing yoga, makes me feel wonderful, endorphins and being able to do head stand and all.. cool! but the moment I weight myself - All this falls apart. what all I did becomes "waste". Didnt I enjoy it? yes, hasn't it made me healthy, stronger, stretchier - Yeah, but No matter - Its all waste!!! because you didnt meat the objective. This goal setting and progress measuring is soul sapping, Our new culture based exclusive on this is the one that is WASTE! It takes away everything  and leaves me with an emtpy score - Pass/Fail. Even the happiness of pass is short lived and insecure :-( I hate this.

Ursula Le Guin

Ursula Leguin is a science fiction writer!
Duh! how could I have missed that?
I read her earth sea series which is fantasy, zenish. I really liked it. I must have stereotyped her as fantasy writer...I love Sci-fi I have been looking for Sci-fi all over the world, I love Ursula.. How come I never looked to see what all she has written? I believe that I do look up authors, tho I dont remember their names. I milk them for all content. apparently I dont. 
strange.
anyway really enjoyed reading left hand of darkness. yeah It does not really feel like sci-fi but it is.Gonna lap it out!

back to De'mello

Anotny DeMello is brutal :-D
I read Awareness couple of years ago, I just loved it. I recommended it to one and all. I forwarded the pdf, asked them to buy the book, shared the videos etc etc.
I am back to Anthony again after 2 years, Offcourse he is awesome, he is totally worth all the fuss I made about it. He is a wakeup call,  but of the kick in the butt types :D Only this time I am seeing it. He is brutal, He is cutting you to pieces :D I offcourse still love it, but I can see others less objective(less cynical ;)  may be offended. I m somewhat thankful lot of people - actually no one except P read it. P didnt like him one bit and I wondered why.
What we read and what impact it has on us is totally dependent on the state of mind at that point of  time . brain state = past experiences, mental patterns and blocks. I  saw a very loving and uplifting book,  I had a pdf which didnt even have a name on it. I had no clue when I started reading what It was, but as I read it, I could feel that floating feeling you get with some spiritual books which banish the darkness temporarily. atleast a two month high I must have got.
Dont trust anyone he says, everyone is selfish, Just like you are. You dont love anyone he says, u love only the glorified image of that person in your heart! so true so true.  He doesnt mean to be insulting or hurtful, he is just saying it objectively, like in social psychology - Those bystanders who watched and let a girl be stabbed to death ,they say are just like me, they are not cowards or bad people, they are just normal asleep people just like me. same to same.
You dont want to wake up he says, but wake up wake up wake up. How loving he is, in being so brutal. :-D I love that book :D

Well at this point in life, I know what all I need to know, Ive read what all I have to read, psychology, brain stuff, spiritual stuff,artistic stuff, meditation stuff. I am actually saturated. not much else to read without it being repetitive. So..  enough stalling, Now there is not much else to do..but to do! TO DO! hmmm... but do I want to do? :D

bedrooms

Is the idea of having a room solely for sleeping stupid?
we are a bunch of sheep, arent we? we all have bedrooms fancy bathrooms. Bathrooms have to be really nice. Why? because some western company saw a way to make money sometimes after WW2?
Do you remember the bathrooms and houses in early 80's? not more than 3X5 feet. Clean and neat yes but fancy.. why? just because we have money no?
Who had the luxury of bedrooms? There were big halls which were used for living in the day and sleeping in the night. and as for bathrooms?
at least bedroom is 8 hours per day but bathroom - 15 mins per person (if you spending more, u are vain or a pervert).  We are a crazy sheep civilisation. we are cutting down forests and heating up earth and we are wasting rooms by keep a permanent bed in it which we use just at the night!
 Most of our houses itself are empty most of the time and rest of the time we are sleeping. so may be it makes sense to have rooms for bed but why have a living room ;-)

changes since meditation course

5 days exersice
food logging
meditation
waking up early
checking phone once an hour

After a month, you guys better still be with me!  

after 15 days
food logging
5 days exercise
meditation are with me, other 2 are gone :)

Arrrgh!

Oh shit oh shit! What all

Technological advances are being made in neurobiology. Inject a gene, so  brain areas can be switched on and off by using light (in a rat as of now). Infecting the brain with genes by using a virus. 

Studies about how hormones affect our decisions. (Oxytocin makes us really trusting). How certain gene can determine if you will be successful or not in the stock market ie gene determines how risky you will be. Scary scary scary !

There is an urgent need to develop ethics and morals and to basically get enlightened. Our science has reached such a level that there is serious chance of bad guys being able to screw us (means humanity) royally. Super Villian governments, super Villian organisations - controlling whole world. Distopia!!!! Marketing and advertising is already doing lot of such things but this can go to whole new levels of invasive ness. Paranoid? I think I've got a right to be!!  It is possible for this to happen in my lifetime. We are still stick in narrow greed mindsets and we are discovering tools like this. Enlightenment where are u? Un enlightened souls can't handle this much science? :O Consciousnesss WAKEUP!!!! NOW!!! TRinggggggggggg!!!!

 

Ok panic attack over :-) 

The teachings are teachings but different people see it differently.
One monk said, the teachings were not really assertion of reality but a tool used to direct the monks into enlightenment.  Another says we should not think about this but use it in meditative state to examine what self is.

The concept of atma - is different in Hindu and Buddhist ... These are all just concepts, theories - like trying to explain red to blind person. different people do it differently but there is no absolute way to do it? The concept is like a map or a finger pointing in a direction or something. its not the real thing.  self exists /doesnot exist may both make sense, may be different ways of looking at a reality. we will know what red means only when we actually get sight... now after all these lectures dont u feel - if you dont trust your self then waht is? then again self is perceptions emotions and thoughts are all misguiding and wrong :D It seems like a paradox intellectually but may be when we experience it , it isnt.

[Some maps are totally wrong -- Like you have a map of Delhi and you are actually in New york.  I think Kuran and Bible with angry Jealous punishing god are like that. :D ]

"This too shall pass!"  Loving this cliché :)

2 questions

Can I access the stillness? even in this?
What is causing this suffering?

Question 1- we(I) are always thinking, I need a vacation/ I need a break, does that break ever come? we need to relax now. because there is nothing else really. we have to vacation in the midst of whatever - calm, serenity may be, or confusion and stress, or pain and anguish, or excitement and happiness( Ironically most difficult to find the stillness when we are happy :) )  Seek stillness this moment, Its always there.

Question 2 - Buddha said life is suffering, I used to be offended by this statement, now I know - life is dis-satisfaction.  Attachments to past, to ego, to status, to status quo, to our happiness and to our suffering, is always causing some kind of Dukha. If we find ourselves unable
to access stillness - question 2 may help. Beware of attachment to stillness itself. Dissatisfaction due to lack of stillness, Ego can also attach shame and sense of failure to lack of stillness.  A good Tshirt would be "I m not ashamed of my Dukha" :)

These 2 questions will help in the path towards more mindfulness.

santa banta

A story by Antony Demello.
2 zen masters - Santa n Banta were friends. Santa was a poor man and Banta was the Zen master at the Kings court. Poor Santa always ate daal roti(lentils) , Banta ate chicken every day.
Banta tells Santa - You know, If you learnt to praise the king a little, you wont have to eat dal roti everyday like this,  you can also eat chicken like me.
Banta says - Psst! You know,If you learnt to like dal roti, you wont have to praise the king any more!!! :-) :-) :-)

This stuck a chord with me.. make contacts - talk to people, keep connections with "important" people.
May be you cant not praise the king and expect to eat chicken :)
I make the choice consciously - I'll like my dal roti thank u very much!

relax now

was thinking - I need a vacation to unwind, I am feeling so tired, so stressed, ah when will the weekend come? need the weekend to relax and unwind myself. Then I remembered this weekend I wont have free time, shifting karni hai! Argh!!!!!!!!!!!  Also how many vacations I have taken, as soon as vacation is over, the state is worse than before going to vacation. It takes a long time to stabilize after vacation. No unwinding happens after vacation...
The solution..
Gyan (seriously its not mine, it comes to me from some place else :-p) Relax, destress, unwind should happen at the current moment, learn to relax now, find the peace now, find the calm/silence now - in this moment, on the go...

my posts

I keep reading my blog.. a lot
I noticed, there are three kinds of posts
1) loving/compassionate heart felt posts - like everything has an after glow and warmth.
2) objective head posts - like pseudo science and analytical posts - very neutral, even if something nice/bad is said in these, they are mostly emotionless. I like these two, I enjoy them
3) hate filled posts/angry ... hmmm..
(mostly about the past and they are slowly resolving - anger about vegetarians is resolved, feminist anger is almost resolved, except in some cases, new angers are coming actually

The same person is writing them. How come? A person wise enough to write beautiful posts is stupid enough to indulge in hatred and anger? One day writing beautiful things about river and light shining on water and love and next day about effing america and all...

Aisa hi hota hai. To be human is like this only.

Benevolent sexism

http://www.prevention.com/health/emotional-health/both-women-and-men-display-attitudes-benevolent-sexism

I m proud to say that I m one of the very few people I know who are aware of this kind of sexism ( even tho I didnt know what it was called) and that it was damaging.
I find not only men but girls mostly are benevolently sexists.
This girl made this statement - we women are soooo lucky, we dont have the pressure to take up a job, men have to take a job and support their family. Err I can punch you and break your nose?
My brother is sooo caring and protective, He never lets me go out alone.
My uncle saying women of my family dont travel alone. ( What a row I created then! hahaha :-) being slightly socially dim is kind of nice at times )
Raksha bandhan - When a girl says protect me, clearly seeing herself as weak.
"Mom, You are getting old and You work too hard.! You should rest.. so (offcourse I wont help you but ... ) I will get married and get you a Daughter in law to do the work! :-D "
Sacrificing mother stereo type - Sacrificial goat is also worshipped, so is the mother. Nobody demands a mother to sacrifice for the family, but Its a subtle teaching passed on from mother to daughter, who believes that it is the best for her daughter.
Even in reasonably rich times like today, Do you know who eats the burnt pooris, rice sticking to the bottom of the pot, yesterdays palya?  my mum and yours. and do you argue they are happy doing it, so should continue? then you must also believe that terrorist who die in blast go to heaven and meet 40 virgins. :-P

There is a thin line between caring and benevolent sexism, When we make a case for benevolent sexism- people go to the other extreme. they say  I will punch a woman, but excuse me- punching anyone man woman child dog cat is all wrong no?
People dont give up seats to women on buses which is fine, but they dont give up seats to pregnant women or old women (or old men ) and blame it on feminists :) LOL!
Helping a woman carry her heavy bags up the stairs is not benevolent sexism! yeah may be women sometimes over compensate and refuse all help - that is kind of stupid. me is guilty of that.

Offcourse, There are many women who use benevolent sexism to their advantage. The clever women who get men to do their bidding, but then thats another story.