— goldenboy

I am workingt at my cubicle, taking calls, looking around and watching people between calls, when I have nothing much to do.

And I see walking & talking work-machines, the so-called supervisors… who work more, around 12 hours a day, and flare at you in anger at the slightest instance. Overstressed, over-worked, they won’t care to speak rudely to you for some error.

There are days, when I wake up (mid-day 12pm) to find myself lamenting in my heart about having to go to work and face these people. Tamas (I will start using such words to bring them out of the pages of philosophical treatises and apply them to define instances in our everyday life), seemed to hold me in a cocoon, not wishing to let me go.  Yogesh, my dearest friend, calls up and wants me to pull myself out of bed. I struggle against the inertia, and throw away my covers… splash water on my face at the bathroom sink….

-x-

At the workplace, between calls I also see the Stressed-up walking talking machines falling in love, cooing to their lovers over the phone with such a gracious smile on their faces… that all their stress seems to fade away lighting up their faces..

I also see frequent jokes being cracked that adds some lightness to the atmosphere. I see the dedication by eager Customer Executives and the Supervisors to give the best of Customer Service to our Customers.

I see people smiling at each other, lovers holding hands and teasing each other,, friends exchanging gossip and tidbits about the day.. and all of a sudden I feel it is not that bad a world anyways..


21^st May, 2006 Sunday night

Hectic week, when I’m just counting down days to the weekend. 

Weekend, when I wonder how to make the best use of my two-days holiday.

As I write this, there are tremors in my neck and shoulder muscles. My body is in the grip of anxiety. I pop in the night pill for anxiety so that I can have a good sleep and face the day afresh tomorrow.

At work, a few senior colleagues have made life hell for me in the team, they try to order me around or provoke my ire. Having to face them tomorrow works-up my nerves, makes me anxious. And my inexperienced self cannot avoid them at work, will need to consult them and be at their mercy. 

-x-

I had been to the Ashram in the morning. I met the presiding Guru at the Ashram, today. Felt good while I sat in his company amongst the disciples. And as I sat to listen to his pravachan (preaching) from the Ramayana, I became aware of a heaviness that I carried within my body. My body listened to his words, while I listened to my body’s pain, or shall I call it sorrow, grief?

What am I grieving about? Father? Or am I just missing my elder sis? Or is it guilt that translates into anger against myself? Anger for not being able to control things in my favour… 

Or is it fear?

-x-

On my journey back from the Ashram in the evening, I weigh the heaviness of my feelings that I carry, and wonder if it is only my duties towards my mother (financial, emotional) that keeps me back from taking up full-fledged Sanyas. Or if its just depression and anxiety that makes me thinks of Sanyas in the first place? 

-x-

I speak to Yogesh, my closest friend over the phone and pour out my anxiety, and my angst regarding having to go to work tomorrow. 

He points out that if I just concentrate on my work and not worry much about revenge or other’s, ‘Truth’ shall win me over my overdeal.

The Brahmin in him has spoken (though I always tease him he’s not a real Brahmin), and my mind is at peace. 

And the world is again a peaceful place.

-x- 

Tantra

Today I  had been to the Ashram, Devatma Shakti Society, that has a tradition of gurus who awaken kundalini (the serpent coil of energy in our spine) by Shaktipat (transfer of energy) so that one’s kundalini gradually rises up toward the head and one’s conditioning/ conditioned reflexes/ karma is burnt, taking one nearer to God-realisation. It is a tradition rooted in Tantra and in Tantra Guru is given prime Importance.

“Delusion stretches itself to the limits of your own Mind. Where the realm of the Mind ends, Delusion ceases to exist,” said my Guru sweetly. 

“And the Sansar (the world of attachments) is one made of lust (Raag) i.e. passions and desires, and disdain (Dvesh). Every happiness will some day turn into sadness,” he said, “just like youth will give-way to infirmity of the body.”

“And yes, knowledge is important, however the path of knowledge is like walking on the edge of a sword. There is always the risk of pride waiting to blind you, to turn you away from Truth”. So that you would no longer see, but lose way in endless debates and self-created delusions. 

He mentioned “Bhakti” as the best way out. Note that “bhakti” means devotion, not faith (shraddha). It has something of a will, dedication, humbleness, seeking, and love in it. It also has a glint of craze to it.

“Rishis (mystic poets) and munis (ascetics who do severe penance) seek it. And ultimately its not your efforts but God’s/Guru’s grace that grants it. 

As Tulsidas states in these beautiful opening verses of Hanuman Chalisa… (which I try to read daily)

“I clean the mirror of my heart (1) with the dust of the feet of my Guru.” 

“The state of Constant Awareness,” the Guru said, “comes through God’s/ Guru’s grace.”

-x- 

Before reaching this Ashram, I spent several months reading on the Internet about Vedanta and Tantra. Though both the philosophy has its roots in the Vedas, Vedanta considers the physical world as a hindrance to self-realisation and hence recommends forsaking it, while Tantra considers the world as a means toward self-realisation. I wonder how much the Guru of the ashram believes in this. However, the true guru (from what I understand) is one’s own ‘awakened’ Shakti- which is awakened through Shaktipat (Energy-awakening act) which is a form of God’s or Guru’s grace. The Shakti then guides you, as it cleanses the karmas, and you need to let it flow freely to do its work, under the supervision of the Guru.

I can’t wait to receive my Shaktipat diksha. 
 

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -  

(1)     Note that ‘Mun’ is the word, the same as Mind in Sanskrit, which is used by Tulsidas to mean the English synonym for heart.

Sleep-starved eyelids struggling to keep awake, and a body already gone to sleep, fingers still typing, mind still very much awake….

-x-x-

Would be going to the group sessions at Uma’s place today. On and off, this following image keeps flashing in my mind…

The image is related to the American TV series ‘Lost’. It is a story of a few odd survivors of a plane crash, who find themselves isolated on an island far far away from the human civilization.

One is a doctor, another a lady fugitive who is running away from law, a Korean couple deeply in love, a brother and a sister in an incestuous relationship, a drug-addict one-time rock-star, a Pakistani Terrorist, a criminal, a pregnant lady, a fat guy who is stuck with a series of bad luck, a middle-age person who is “following his destiny”, an Afro-American father who is trying to amend a broken relationship with his long-lost young child.

None of the characters have ever imagined that they would end up on an island together with the prospect of spending the rest of their lives with each other. Either each of them start discovering each other, as they would eventually when they start living together… Or break away from the group which would leave them alone and thus most vulnerable to an Unknown Phantom that lurks in the shadows in the day and the darkness of the night.

And in the process of everyday life, when a baby is delivered under the sky and not in the safe hands of a Paramedic or a doctor, and one has to use leaves instead of paper…. there are a few lessons to be learnt. 

Like putting up with each other, when destiny has forced you to live in a community made of individuals you never chose to live with.

The island gives them no choice. There are no defenses and comfort zones and escape-options that the modern world provides. Stuck on a far-away island, each one will have to face the feelings and conflicts in their interpersonal relationships, having nowhere to flee from each other and their own feelings. 

They have to learn to live together, and survive. And in the process, learn more about each other and their own selves…

-x-

At times, I wonder what will happen if a plane carrying our group members were to crash on such a lonely island?

I picture that in Sandra we will find the all-caring woman who will remind us that we may have skipped our lunch and we must take proper sleep etc. And yes, she will ask for us to care for her as well. Or would she change?

Charmayne would perhaps leave early mornings after a cheerful chat with everyone, to discover the secrets that the sea has to tell her… as she would sit on its shores…

Meena would fret and fume for a few days, getting angry at everyone and everything… silently crying for long hours… and then finally start to discover a new life, the beauty of the island etc. and get excited about the island and everyday life of the community…

Sai would perhaps at last find the perfect solitude to meditate or pray… and perhaps he will gel perfectly with everyone.

Prashanta would go about chopping woods etc… I wonder what he will do, he is an enigma…(Prashanta, now atleast you will understand what I mean when I say I hardly know you. No stuff to write about you)

Uma would be perfectly happy, I’m sure. She would laugh and even philosophize a little on evenings… lost in her own Inspirations…

And what would I do? For a few days, I will long for my medical drugs, and then get used to the nature and the birds. And go about doing what is to be my share of work in the community, constantly complaining in my mind… getting angry with everyone…. Perhaps the island will finally cure the brat in me who has still to grow up and learn to take care of his own self.

-x-

And perhaps the plane HAS already crashed… I would be amidst the group this evening.

I liked it when someone in the group told me that she had chosen to stay awake till 3am the previous night reading my blog. (Thanks M for visiting. You are always welcome to read.)

Also I couldn’t stop wondering if my blog was really interesting. I decided to find out and today afternoon, logged in at Qamar’s café.

And all I find at my blog is Gyaan gyaan and useless gyaan. (Gyan = knowledge) .

Knowledge that my curious Mind picked up on the way, to come to terms with the life situation at the moment. Which perhaps helped me then, but which anyways looking back is trash, or “bullshit” as someone else would like to call it. Truly so, it is. Makes not much sense now. 

-x-x-

We all like to make sense of this world. And each one comes up with his own idea of the Reality. It is either a Christian view of the Good and the Bad, or a therapist’s idea of accepting oneself and spreading love, or a devotee’s idea of merging with the divine, or another guy’s view of “just observing…” as he looks at everything with his own glasses of Hindu philosophy in the earnest desire to free himself of all colored glasses!

Or my own game of picking up the perfect theory to suit my situation and try to define it, live it, and expect what is to be expected.

In our own individual worlds, we know what is right and wrong, what is good and bad… We feel so secure in our worlds. The day the certainty goes, the palace comes crumbling down…

 -x-x- 

Now what I write above sounds like Krishnamurti, isn’t it? Lol. See what I mean? So much of conditioning… that I don’t even know where I end and someone else’s perception starts colouring my lenses.

What are my views? What do I want? Where do I want to go? How do I want to live?

-x-x-

So, are feelings, my body sensations my true guide… as Uma says? “The Wisdom of the body that is far more vast than my limited mind’s…” as she puts it. The Wisdom that lies beneath all the layers of conditioning and what we have read and learnt. The Wisdom that was born with us, and not inculcated. The Wisdom you reach in Stillness, and one which owes no allegiance to any religion, philosophy, code of morality, or even common sense.  

-x-x-

Perhaps I could never go beyond all my conditioning and my behaviour-patterns to reach it. Perhaps I never had the guts to follow it. Perhaps I had too many “good” friends who “cared” for me… who wouldn’t allow me to trip and fall. Perhaps I never could bear to live out my life… too burdened by my responsibilities at home, too scared where the Wisdom would lead me, and if I would be able to carry out the responsibilities back at home then. Like the earnest disciple who wanted to follow his Guru, however decided to stay back just for a short while more every time some responsibility showed up so as to carry it out, so that years passed as he carried out one responsibility after another. And the Guru finally left alone.

-x-x

I am standing exactly where I started 2 years ago. And this blog doesn’t mean a thing!

Wanting to go to work, wishing not to go to work.

There is this strange duel inside of me, after one day of uninformed casual leave. What will happen if I skip work today too? They will not chuck me out of the company. The worst thing that will happen is they will make me sit with the Project Manager, who keeps his association with the Agents to a minimum, so that when such occasions present itself when an agent needs counsel for corrective action, the agent is locked in a cabin with him so that the moment seems so self-warranted that someone at such a high position should have had to come down to meet an ordinary agent. The meeting itself seems dreary enough. The drilling and the CAP letter (Corrective Action Plan) are the other weapons that could be employed by the Company to subject an erring employee to utmost humiliation.

Perhaps I shall go then?

-x-

But the matter is not the CAP letter. Uma, my therapist says that I have this pattern of behaviour wherein at certain intervals I feel like not working, or avoiding what I need to do to make a living.

As I look back, I find this to be true. I grew bored at every job that I took up, and had to leave, until the company closed or chucked me out, or I decided to pick up my sack and leave.

There were other days during my adolescence when I would stay indoors for weeks together without stepping out of the house. Wishing I would, hoping I wouldn’t have to.

-x-

After two years of giving in to the demon that wants me rebel for freedom from any bondage of time.. I have learnt that it is not too easy to live in agreement with the demon. I either need to annihilate him or rebel against his mighty sway over me.

Annihilation is not possible, since I don’t know in what corner of my psyche he resides. All I can do is rebel and go to work, in which case I feel a sense of being in bondage. My psyche then longs for the vast open space outside the walls of the company, thirsts for the most beautiful of men who can provide pleasure to my body, or longs for the Knowledge that will ultimately set me free entirely.

-x-

When I do succeed in working around the rules and regulations of the company, to win a leave for myself for a day, all I do is… wonder where to go, or where would the beautiful guys and Knowledge come from?

I end up spending my day in stupor, not knowing where to look for all the things that I imagined waited for me outside the walls of the Company, things which begins to look as unattainable as another day-off from the Company….

The other day, I saw somebody reading a book by Osho, titled- Intellect and Intelligence. Perhaps the life in which I participate each day at my place of work is one built around the Intellect. I find my mind buzzing away like a busy bee. And on weekends, I find it so very difficult to unwind, to stop running in the race. However it does earn me my bread and butter. Helps me live on my own.

-x-

I came to my mom’s place for the weekend. Walking outside on the wide roads of Mira Rd under the shady trees on either side, I wonder if this weekend would finally help me unwind. And as I greet the familiar sacred trees on the way, that makes me reverently touch my heart and breathe in, I feel I have finally hit home, and I feel the all-comforting presence of mom around me. I feel like a guy who is visiting home after a long stay at some makeshift refugee camp far away. 

The old Moslem guy who sits on his cart along with the bananas that he sells. The parrot in a cage in a first floor apartment, the colorful fishes at a roadside aquarium-shop, the lady at the lingerie shop, and cute guys hanging out in the market, so easy going and happy, with nothing much to care about in life…

-x-

At times I wonder if I can be alone, so that I will not have to share my space with a million people. When the sun would greet me at the crack of dawn in the morning, inviting me out to the greens… trees, bushes, shrubs and grass, creepers and wet moss… spread as far as the eyes could see… humming bees in the day and fireflies in the night, the sound of silence from which would pierce the song of birds. A river somewhere where I can go swimming naked. The vast blue sky beneath which I could lie, closing my eyes feeling the earth under me and breathe in the fresh air… to hear the gush of blood in my veins, feel the brownness of my skin, the tenderness of my sweat, the heat in my flesh… Till I merge in the silence and space around me…

Nobody else around, but just me… me… and me alone.

-x-

In the past two years, when I did nothing much but idle-away my time, I fancied going crazy. Going crazy as in getting so involved in my self that I would be terribly alone. Anything to escape the ordinary consciousness, which I share with a million wounded people on this planet. Anything to regain my space which I feel has been stolen from me. So that my own existence would be my world, and each moment a communion with my self. No obligations, no people, no games. I wanted to be so thoroughly absorbed in myself that I could discover each cell within my body and nobody outside would be able to disturb me…

Two years ago, I wrote to Uma- “I feel the world has kidnapped my Self and I want to reclaim it.” I still fell the same. Often I feel I am living a rented-life, and I want back my own. I want to feel this body as belonging to me, this soul and these feelings as belonging to me. So that I don’t feel so alienated from my own self anymore. I want to reclaim myself, Uma…