— goldenboy

The cow seemed to have her own chores today as she walked away and I literally had to go after her just to carry out my everyday ritual of touching her and then my heart center. Before somebody would dismiss me as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder patient, that is a Hindu rite to sanctify oneself, the cows being Holy.

My friend Sachin, who is an animal-lover, says each cow has her own nature, and some may not like you touching them. So people, if you ever try to imitate my religious ritual do so at your own risk.

Meanwhile, after I had touched the sacred animal today, I somehow felt that I was on the verge of breaking the secret behind this ritual formulated by the ancient Hindus. For, as I touched the cow I felt my hand heavy with energy. To understand how I felt it would suffice to imagine how you would feel when you are holding a costly crystal bowl in your hands, something that you treasure. When you hold something very precious in your hands, the hand becomes very cautious… even a bit too sensitive to what you are holding.

It is the same here. When you are touching the cow, somehow you are focusing all your attention to the contact between your hand and the body of the cow. Your mind has already told you that the object is Sacred, so you are extra vigilant as you touch the sacred animal. And as you touch that animal, the touch becomes a very sacred, very important gesture with lots of attention… that somehow transforms the simple action to one of cosmic proportions. At that moment the action is The most important thing.

Perhaps that is the spirit that somehow needs to be infused in everything that we do. With all our mind, soul and heart. And the ancients found a way to teach this spirit of action by a ritual, not words. Hindus consider a lot many things sacred. Books, cows, the cooking place, fire, the plants and trees and even the institution of marriage. Terming it as sacred is a way to instruct the mind, “Handle with special care”.

-x-

Perhaps that’s one thing that is becoming too scarce in the modern world today… the sense of sacredness. So we no longer think twice before putting a relationship in the waste bin, nor do we nurture things with the care that they deserve.

Sacredness is a mental attitude with which we handle the things close to our heart, to give them the extra respect, attention and love that they deserve.

It is a matter of feeling and emotion, of respect and a sense of responsibility.

You reach the realms of sacredness pulled by the strings of your heart, only to find yourself in reverence of the object of adoration. When reverence is thus bonded with love, you are in the realms of the soul. That is Sacredness.

All too easy to lose in a world where Mind’s greed is called Practicality, and its recklessness Freedom.

For my friends: I have this impulse that tells me I should put down these two paragraphs from Eckhart Tolle’s Book The Power of Now, which I am reading at present.

“You are cut off from Being as long as your mind takes up all your attention. When this happens- and it happens continuously for most people- you are not in your body. The mind absorbs all your consciousness and transforms it into mind stuff. You cannot stop thinking. Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease. Your whole identity, as it is no longer rooted in Being, becomes a vulnerable and ever-needy mental construct, which creates fear as the predominant underlying emotion. The one thing that truly matters is then missing from your life: awareness of your deeper self- your invisible and indestructible reality.

To become conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey. It will free vast amounts of consciousness that previously had been trapped in useless and compulsive thinking. A very effective way of doing this is simply to take the focus of your attention away from thinking and direct it into the body, where Being can be felt in the first instance as the invisible energy field that gives life to what you perceive as the physical body.”

For more check out the article at: http://members.surfeu.fi/wpk/links/Tolle/prac5.htm

The ‘Clever Northern Winds’… say the Movie Chocolat.

And I found today that the Clever North Wind spoke to me of Love, acceptance of the world, of the people on the streets; as I asked it to tell me about fear and freedom from fear.

It said that I belonged to no one family, or one set of people. For that way I was only constricting myself, shrinking my space, arresting my freedom.

As a teenager, I found that when I used to be very scared, visualizing the big vast sea helped somehow.

Perhaps when I thought of the Sea, its grandness, its expanse, and its no human-barrier characteristic; I could really enter into the true essence of freedom. Even freedom from fear.

Perhaps fear sets in in narrow confines of our Minds. What I mean is, when we constrict ourselves to my house, my family, my town, my locality, my people, even my body- fear sets in. We assume we are responsible for what changes or happens; we hold on to our concepts of how things should be and how people should act, what would be better and worse. So much so, that when things don’t go our way, or when people don’t behave as we would want them to, we are upset and our ‘narrow abodes of fantasy’ are threatened with collapse. That sets us ticking in fear.

Freedom comes from letting things take their course and knowing that one cannot control everything. Allowing things and people to change and have their own course and not being attached to a particular idea of how things/men should be, can set us free from fear.

Again, it is our Mind that is responsible for clinging to the limited, which is the seat of fear.

It is interesting to note the Vedantin point of view in this: You are not the Body, you are not a mere son, friend or lover. You are the vast oceans, the vast seas, the all-pervading Brahma, the decayless and the deathless.

When we can free our minds of constricted identities of the body, family, relations, world and possessions; when we can see ourselves as being a part of the larger whole, we can set ourselves free from fear.

Forget that you are Suresh, forget you are a son, forget you are a lover. They just constrict you. Walk the streets knowing you are not the perishable body. Be with the knowledge that the whole world, universe is your abode, that you are a free spirit. Know that you as a free spirit have no expectation from the world or people. No one is responsible for your happiness and you are not responsible for others. You are free. You are the One (the Brahma). Like the free ocean, the free Northern Wind…

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According to me, when Sivananda advises us to contemplate on the all-pervading Brahma (the Hindu concept of Lord), it is quite different from the Western/Christian concept of God.

When I think of Mahavishnu (my favorite image of the God, meant for concentrating the restless mind) when I chant His name (om namo narayanaya) and focus on His beautiful Divine form, I am reminding myself that ‘That am I’ (the central Hindu Concept that I am not the limited mind or body but the Infinite Spirit). It helps me to rise above the narrow ego-identifications of body, family and relationships and visualize myself in that perfect Infinite form (something like when I visualized the sea as a Teenager)

That sets me free.

-x-

And as I found the fear dissipating and felt my tense muscles relaxing and my heart opening up, as I walked embracing the wind, greenery and form of the trees, the expanse of the Universe, I found myself breathing deep into my lower belly and then exhaling from my mouth. Repeatedly breathing so helped me relax.

-x-

Any idea what is the most dangerous thing on this planet? No, its not the Nuclear bomb. It’s the Human Mind.

Ofcourse it’s a genius. It’s the most sophisticated piece of equipment with Man. It can take us to the Moon, and discover electricity for light.

However it’s the one thing that we need to keep in control. And perhaps Awareness, stillness, and determination to find our way can help us do that.

Its amazing how Khushboo worked up a fury amongst the Dravidan populace, by advocating pre-marital sex, when the populace at one time had itself branded chastity as an Aryan idea for enslavement! Times change, and so does the rules of proper behavior. The only thing that has remained constant though is Mind and its fear, and its desperate clinging to the Known.

-x-

I’m amazed to see how our minds work against us.

When our land gives us plenty, we try to hide our passions in modesty. For modesty by popular standards is a virtue. I have nothing against modesty as a virtue, but everything against a virtue that’s hammered into our hearts by fear. Fear of God, fear of the devil, fear of Hell, fear of Societal reprisal.

So as women are asked to wear longer skirts and bigger veils to keep a check on the “sins” of the flesh, people try to seek comfort in the popular virtues of yore- modesty, and the modern virtues of career and money… yet find guilt and fear following them everywhere.

Just like our minds love security of the familiar things around us, it sorts to reinforce that sense of security by enforcing laws of Uniformity. Uniformity finds many expressions, in the form of decrees and rules of conduct and lifestyle… virtues, culture, religion, etiquettes. All leading to intolerance, prejudice, discrimination, dishonesty… also to what society terms as decadence- a society rebelling against itself, in a kind of self-indulgent reckless binge, a disoriented ill-guided rebellion to the extremes.

Fear defines virtually everything in our ways of living. This fear for the Unknown forms and defines our social lifestyles.

We get so very caught up in the web of rules of conduct & the standards of right and wrong, that we lose touch with our inner-self, the core that connects us to Earth. We end up playing either the roles of the victim or the rebel. And roles are all that we play, never to find our true self.

-x- 

In fear we take flights of fancy to the after-life, heaven and even Nothingness (Moksha), all the time scared of the passions that tempt our hearts and rouse our bodies. So much so, we find the perfect excuses to refuse our bodies the indulgence of touch (sex), taste (food and drink), smell (natural body scents), sight (beauty of the naked human body), and hearing (sounds of nature, the sound of silence).

Yes, we are the lost sons and daughters of Mother Earth, wandering Her plains and valleys and mountains in search of that one thing that would redeem us, redeem us of the fear that haunts our human hearts and the dullness that disfigure our human lives.

The “Wise” amongst us, the “Enlightened” often guide us to tougher austerities, to escape into a land that our minds carve out for itself, as a final refuge… a delusional land where the temptations of life and the earth has ceased to exist. We find solace in this “perfect land”, to ignore the callings of a wishful heart. To die a martyr, a saint. The Moslems embrace their graves to Paradise. Hindus practise austerities to gain Moksha. Christians suffer for an after-life. We are a people who live death each day of our lives.

-x-

But perhaps the virgin land of true Realization can be reached only through the dark “sinful” forests of Mother Earth… And the only guide we have on our journey would be our own Core, which we better listen to, than to fear-stricken Evangelists speaking of a Heaven on the other side.

For fear can get ghosts talking to us, in the guise of angels… ghosts that are just our fears personified in delusions, and we are led to write holy books and term those as revelations from God? It is fear that perhaps dictates our religious texts. Fear of our own body, fear of mother Earth. The fear that separates our Core from Her Body. The fear that separates us from Nature.

How do you regain back this connection with the Earth? How do you gain freedom from fear? How do you reclaim your life?

-x-

A few of us find the task of finding our true selves quite necessary, and set out in search of the True Living…beckoned by something quite extra ordinary… call it the Call of Life, but am sure it is an arduous journey. One finds fellow travelers, people before you who are familiar with the terrains, however you got your own learning to do and you may lose your way. Things learnt all our lives have to be unlearnt as we find nuggets of Truth. Relationships, habits and attachments of a lifetime have to be overhauled. And the pain of growing-up endured.