Relationships die to bring love alive.

Relationships die to bring love alive.

I have learnt to celebrate death of relationships. Every time a relationship dies the post-mortem report reveals the cause of death as asphyxiation. Asphyxiated, or what we commonly call as, choked by the structures, meanings, definitions and rituals that got dumped on the relationship. You or me may not have done it deliberately yet we cannot absolve ourselves from being responsible for the death.

After a brief mourning, some guilt trip and a short bout of self-pity, from behind the clouds of remorse, I see rays of hope shine. Hope of re-creating a bond of relatedness with the same person. After all, it's the relationship that died, not Love on which it was founded. And with the death of this relationship the immortal, immutable Love has come alive. Bringing with it the hope of building a living, breathing eternal bond of relatedness.

I am willing to release my past. And with it I am willing to release my need to be needed, to make you happy at any cost, even if it means feeling taken for granted by you. This way I would have made you look up to me as a source of happiness and come to me whenever you needed it, only for me to do whatever it takes to make you feel happy and make me feel needed.

I am now willing to also release my need to be understood and valued, my need to play "poor me" and helpless and my need to be gullible and feel unfortunate.

I am grateful to you and many others who have come close to me in the name of love, ending up looking and behaving alike. I am grateful to all those who have come close to me and very mysteriously behaved almost identically in relationships with me. I am grateful to them for, in the ways they have come across, they have actually held a mirror for me to see some of my chronic patterns (obviously driven by the needs that I am now willing to release) that not only limited my growth and freedom but also locked them in some kind of a toxic dependency.

I am now ready to renew my bonds of relatedness with you. A bond that will allow enough space for us to make choices and be responsible for the outcomes, as individuals. A bond that will trust and respect our individual abilities and wisdom to be or not to be self-respecting, sensitive, spontaneous, committed and authentic. If you choose to be unhappy, I shall uphold your choice with the same love with which I shall also uphold your choice to be happy. If I choose to feel taken for granted, I shall uphold my choice as my choice and will not make you responsible for it.

It's the same you, the same me, the same space, the same chores being done together and yet I know you are finding me and my behavior kind of strange. If I seem to be aloof, I have stepped back with contentment to create more space us to play. If I seem to be cold, I am actually being compassionate for you to look, listen and live more consciously. If I seem abrupt, I am responding; if I seem intense, I am baring myself. I am holding you in an embrace that is strong enough for you and me to feel the warmth of togetherness and loose enough of us to breathe. I am suddenly seeing, besides you and me, another complete entity surfacing. Us. A sublime, joyful entity made of Love and relatedness. An entity that was never born and shall never die. Free to grow and evolve, as time flies.

"Every human being has been conditioned to think and behave in certain ways - conditioned genetically as well as by their childhood experiences and their cultural environment.

That is not who they are, but that is who they appear to be. When you pronounce judgment upon someone, you confuse those conditioned mind patterns with who they are. To do that is in itself a deeply conditioned and unconscious pattern. You give them a conceptual identity, and that false identity becomes a prison not only for the other person but also for yourself." 

~ Eckhart Tolle in Stillness Speaks

This blog is dedicated to you ... the ones who have come close and related to me, in some way or the other. 

This is also dedicated to you ... the ones who are finding themselves stuck in relationships - neither being able to come out not take it forward. As a Transformational Coach and practitioner of Conscious Healing, I shall be glad to accompany you in your struggle and enable you to heal your lives and relationships. Please feel free to write to indroneil@iprodigy.net if you feel like reaching out to me.

Five ways to practicing Conscious Living

In Japan, there was once an old monk who lived alone in a small meditation hermitage in the mountains. He went about his daily chores with a careful grace that reflected his inner peace and clarity. He had, however, one peculiarity. Every now and then, for no apparent reason, he called out his own name. By this simple action, it is taught, he brought himself back into the present moment, re-establishing awareness whenever he noticed that his mind had drifted him into forgetfulness.

Although it is not necessary for us to adopt that monk's method of practice, this story illustrates the obstacle we face when we try to arouse awareness in daily life. Though we may sincerely aspire to be awake in every moment, doing so is difficult because of the power of habit and forgetfulness. Therefore, rather than expecting to achieve continuous awareness immediately, we begin by developing awareness around a small number of routine tasks. Then, as we become more skilled at maintaining awareness, we gradually incorporate more aspects of daily life into the practice of Conscious Living.

It is important to understand that to develop awareness in daily life we do not need to go around with an empty mind. Rather, we strive to be awake and centered in the present, clearly knowing at each moment what we are doing / thinking. For instance, if you are walking down the street to the bus stop, know that the body is walking. If thoughts, plans, or memories come into the mind, be aware of them. When you come to an intersection, you know it and can decide whether or not it is safe to cross.

Naturally, thoughts, plans, and memories may come up while we are engaged in an activity, but these need not be an obstacle to awareness. The obstacle of forgetfulness arises from our habitual tendency to get lost in a jungle of thoughts, one leading to another without conscious direction or purpose. If it is necessary to plan for the future, then by all means we should do so, and make the best plan possible. But we should plan for the future with awareness and clarity, rather than just by daydreaming.

Through the practice of Conscious Living, you come to realize that a good portion of thinking is habitual. The restless mind fills with idle chatter to keep it occupied because it does not know how to be at rest. Unfortunately, all this clutter stifles the mind, keeping it from developing important and meaningful insights. Through awareness, we can thin out the jungle of thoughts, discarding a lot of the trivial and useless chatter so that we can experience greater clarity.

When we are practicing Conscious Living, we still experience thinking, seeing, hearing, feeling, and other mental and physical activities, but we remain centered on whatever main activity we are involved in at that moment. When trivial thoughts come into the mind, we let them go, because there is something more important and meaningful for the mind to be involved in - the present experience. If something important comes up that needs to be thought about and it is a suitable time to be thinking about such things, then we can, of course, think about it. When we do, this new thought becomes the present activity for the light of awareness. Like sunshine, the light of awareness shines on each thing so that it becomes clear.

It's a good idea to begin your practice of Conscious Living by choosing to shine the light of awareness on four or five routine daily activities. Performing these simple tasks with awareness helps you develop a better appreciation for what the practice is trying to achieve. Here are a few suggestions for how to get started:

Breathing

The rhythm of our breathing changes with our momentary state of being. When we are lost in the maze of thoughts, depending on the nature of thoughts, the breathing takes up a pattern. In order to restore conscious awareness it is advisable to, as often as possible:

1.       Take in three deep breaths, filling the space up to your shoulder and gently release your breath.

2.       Experience / feel your in-breath and out-breath at the tip of the nostril as you breathe naturally.

3.       Watch your breathing slow down.

4.       Slow deep breathing slows down your ageing process. The elephant, which is believed to have a long life span, breathes seven times only in a minute!

Brushing Your Teeth

How can you make the act of brushing your teeth a practice of meditation? There is no need for you to brush your teeth in a stylized manner using some special technique. You need only center yourself and bring the mind into the present by thinking, "What am I doing?" Rather than just moving the brush back and forth mechanically, you encourage the mind to be fully involved in the act of brushing.

So begin by intentionally deciding that you want to transform this routine activity of brushing your teeth into a practice of meditation. For these few minutes, relax into the present moment and brush your teeth in a natural way but with awareness.

1.       Pick up your toothbrush ... is it your toothbrush?

2.       Apply the toothpaste ... how much toothpaste do you use?

3.       Begin to brush your teeth ... which teeth do you brush first?

4.       Continue to brush your teeth with this sort of interest, being aware of how much pressure you are applying and what area you are brushing, making sure that you actually brush all the teeth.

5.       Of course, thoughts will come into the mind, but because there is awareness, you will notice the thinking. If what arises in the mind is just trivial chatter, let it go, and come back to brushing your teeth, keeping your mind and body together throughout the activity.

Showering

Showering is a most pleasant and relaxing daily activity, but most of the time we do not really experience it. While the body is in the shower, the mind is busily someplace else. But not any longer! Next time you take a shower, make sure that the mind is taking a shower with the body.

1.       Bring your attention into the present moment and notice the pleasant feeling of the water on your body.

2.       Allow the warmth of the water to soothe and relax the muscles, relieving all the built up tension.

3.       Keep the mind with the body as you soap up, enjoying the fragrance of the soap and the smooth feeling of it on your body.

4.       When you rinse off, let all the cares of life fall away, just like the soap that is being rinsed away.

5.       While drying the body, encourage the mind to be there, experiencing and enjoying the feel of the towel on the skin.

6.       Whatever thoughts, memories, or plans pass through the mind, simply know them and deal with them as seems appropriate. Again, you may find that most of the mental activity is just habitual chatter. Let it go, and continue to enjoy these pleasant moments.

7.       After showering in this way, not only will you be physically cleansed and refreshed, but you will also feel mentally refreshed, centered, and clear.

Walking

Many people take up walking for health reasons, but all too often, the result is "mindless bodies" walking for exercise. Why not make better use of this activity? It is also possible to develop awareness during an ordinary daily walk. Going for a pleasant stroll in the park can be an excellent opportunity for developing Conscious Living.

1.       To make your stroll a meditation, simply walk in your usual way, but encourage the mind to walk with the body.

2.       Relax into the present moment, allowing the mind to become quiet and to enjoy the pleasure of rhythmic movement.

3.       Your mind and body are together, peacefully walking, enjoying the walk.

4.       If you are walking in a park with trees and flowers, notice the beauty of nature by staying fully present to what's around you in each moment.

5.       Whatever goes through the mind, just know it as mental "stuff." Is it really worth bothering about? Is it important enough to take you away from what is right here, right now? If there is something really important that you need to think about, then do so with awareness. But if what's running through the mind is just trivial, leave it behind and continue to enjoy the walk.

When the mind and body walk together in this way, not only do we benefit physically, but we realize how wonderful it is to be awake.

Washing Dishes

Most people do not like washing dishes and do so with a lot of negative thoughts and feelings that make the chore a miserable experience. Other people wash dishes in a half-hearted way, mainly daydreaming, which results in many chipped and broken dishes. One meditation teacher told me that he could assess the general quality of meditation among the students by the number of chipped cups in the kitchen!

Since we need to wash dishes, why not transform this mundane task into an opportunity for meditation? Again, center yourself, and bring the mind into the present by being aware of what you are doing now:

1.         Feel the temperature of the water in the sink ... is it hot enough?

2.         Add detergent ... how much are you using?

3.         Wash each dish ... have you scrubbed every surface?

4.         Rinse each dish ... how clean is it?

5.         Since the mind has also been washing the dishes, the dishes get washed more carefully.

6.           When you have finished, clean the sink and enjoy the feeling of having completed a task and done it well.

Many of the chores you do around the house can be used in a similar way to practice Conscious Living. Doing so takes no extra time and requires no special conditions. Washing the car, gardening, sweeping, vacuuming, painting, and many other activities can become part of your meditation practice. All you need to do to transform these chores into meditation is to establish and maintain awareness while doing them.

Driving

I once saw a cartoon strip that illustrates the habits of today's drivers perfectly. A man is driving a car along the highway. In each consecutive panel, the man is doing one extra thing in addition to driving. First, the man is just driving; then he is driving and listening to the radio; next he is driving, listening to the radio, and eating a sandwich. Finally, he is driving, listening to the radio, eating a sandwich, and talking on a cellular phone!

Perhaps we're not as dangerously busy as this man when we drive, but how often are we really aware of what we're doing at each moment? Next time you drive your car, try practicing Conscious Living for a little while.

Turn off the radio and relax into driving in a wakeful manner.

Driving requires that you remain aware of many things in a continuously flowing way, so you need to stay in the moment. If you are driving with awareness:

1.              You will know your speed ... are you within the speed limit?

2.              You will notice the car ahead of you . . . are you too close?

3.              You will keep an eye on the rearview mirror ... what is behind you?

4.              If there are traffic lights coming up, you will see them . . . are they red or green?

5.              Many thoughts will pass through the mind, but you'll continually bring your attention back to the present and drive with awareness. Even if the thoughts seem very important, this is not the time to practice awareness of thinking! It is too dangerous. When driving, it is best just to drive.

Eating

Most of us like food, talk a lot about food, and sometimes spend a lot of money to eat in expensive restaurants. But how often are we actually present to the full experience of eating? Part of the reason we do not pay much attention to eating is because it often takes place in a social setting with conversation and other activity going on. If you are having dinner with a friend who wants to discuss something important, it certainly would not be appropriate for you to be overly interested in the taste of your food. There is a time and place for everything.

However, when you have an opportunity, try this exercise in mindfully eating.

1.       Choose an apple or some other fruit of your liking and sit down comfortably so that you can enjoy eating this apple.

2.       Begin by peeling the apple with a knife, going around carefully so that the peel comes off in one long, continuous strip.

3.       You will quickly discover that if your mind is too busy or distracted, the peel will not form one single strip. So bring awareness into the activity of peeling.

4.       Having peeled the apple, slice it and eat one slice at a time.

5.       Feel the texture of the apple as you chew, savor the flavor, and swallow each mouthful before eating the next slice.

6.       No need for a running commentary; simply discard the unnecessary chatter and be fully present to the experience of eating this wonderful apple.

Wither corruption

There used to live in a village a old woman, all by herself.

One evening, a villager, as he was passing by her house, saw this old woman searching for something frantically underneath the lamp post, next to her house. Curious, he inquired of the woman what was she looking for. “My needle, son”, replied the woman. The man, with an intention to help asked her, “But where did you lose it.”  The old woman thoughtfully mumbled, “Inside my house, when I was sewing.” This time the man was perplexed. “Why are you looking for something that you lost inside, on the street”, asked the man with astonishment. “The sun has set, my child, and it is dark inside. So I thought, I will come out and take help of the light coming from the lamp post to search for it.”

Such is the state of man today. Looking for the innocence and integrity that he lost inside, all around, except within. And because he knows he can never find it, he is looking for the enemies out there to prosecute.

You cannot fight corruption. It is not a thing. It is the absence of integrity and innocence. How can you fight the absence of something? How can you fight a shadow?

The only way it can be dealt with is by awakening the innocence and integrity we all were born with.

Integrity is not just about being fair and honest. In the true sense it means integration of the warring elements inside of us. It means coming to terms with those parts of our persona that we have shied away from, acknowledging them as integral parts of the whole in-divi-dual and accepting them with compassion towards one’s own self.

And when this happens, it virally infects those around us. To start with the smallest institution that we belong to, spreading out to infect the entire country or may be the world itself.

How do we become aware of the disintegration? How do we get to see them, know them and then acknowledge and accept them?

STEP 1 – Readiness to believe that the enemy is NOT out there and that I am a part of the problem. Rather I am the problem.

STEP 2 – Watch how you behave in so-called corrupt ways in your own personal contexts, albeit, with not so harmful outcomes. Watch like a by-stander, a mute neutral witness.

STEP 3 – Inquire where is it coming from. Keeping asking ‘why’ to the behavior and look for responses pointing towards causes in you, till you reach the small, neglected self, craving for more.

STEP 4 – Hold this self of yours by hugging yourself tightly, assuring that you are ready to acknowledge his / her existence and keep in touch, with all compassion.

Believe you me, if you can do this right in full earnest, you will be strengthening the hands of that man who is fighting for you a lonely battle and make his mission successful, with less effort and strife.

Remember, however, the first, as always, is the defining step. If you are not authentic with it, subsequent steps will not work.

And if you feel you need help to initiate the process, need someone to help you find the Master Key to transformation, please click here

http://thenewagefoundation.org/events/the-master-key-workshop-by 

I will be there in person to guide you back to the world of innocence and integrity.

The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder,

And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed.

The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked,

And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.

Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured.

And still more often the condemned is the burden bearer for the guiltless and unblamed.

You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked;

For they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together.

~ The Prophet

Nothing much has changed

Nothing much has changed.

In the year 2001 I started my first entrepreneurial initiative - iProdigy - with a commitment to enable business bottom lines by engendering evolution in organizations.

Amongst other things, what had inspired me the most in creating iProdigy was this epochal work of Seth Godin that was published the same year -Survival is not enough -  something which I believed would bring in a revolution of sorts in the way organizations conduct themselves and their business.

Yet, even after ten years and two massive down turns, nothing much has changed. 

Barring a few innovators, as Seth had bluntly stated, even today, "---most managers and CEOs do everything they can, to keep their companies from evolving. They deny that evolution is a powerful force for change and rarely consider how it might actually help them compete."

To be able to qualify this resistance to evolution, I had carried a research to arrive at what could be some of the symptoms of such self-defeating behaviors amongst the CXOs and came out with what I call as 10-O-O syndrome.

You still get to see management teams glossing over governance and not even stopping to reflect on value guardianship. In fact, values are hardly ever considered to be of significance in creating value. 
 

You will still get to see elaborate exercises on org structuring being done without involving those who are going to operate within those structures – their preferences, potentials and perceptions – as demonstrated, not as claimed - in a process of co-creation. More often than not leading to gross structural dis-engagement, bureaucracy and may be even toxic political dynamics.

You will still see wise business owners dictating the organization vision, mission and values to those down below hoping with naivety that they will, with all their servility, soak themselves in this context and start operating in a well aligned manner from the very next moment. There is hardly any respect demonstrated to these members, as stakeholders, in terms of giving them an opportunity to collectively cull out from their experiential engagement with the business, common recurring themes for achievement. Nor is there any investment made in enrolling them to co-create a context. Policies are still preferred to dialog, transactions to transformation and strategies to instincts.

Nothing much has changed and perhaps nothing much will ever change.

Despite several wake up calls and umpteen cases of evolving organizations having displayed miraculous resilience and recovery, most businesses prefer to dismiss this as another theory and bask in the illusion of control and a false sense of predictability. To continue dissipating energy in squabbles amongst stakeholder working with cross-purposes and report sub-optimal performance. They will continue to play a game of fooling themselves and others reporting the five mythical figures of growth - size, strength, spread, share of market and stocks - underneath which will be sleeping a bonsai which could have grown into a formidable icon.

Maybe, there is something in the systemic design which inherently makes business owners ignore the invitation to go for organization discovery and alignment and call upon themselves miseries which they would attribute to the economy. Maybe, this is a conspiracy of sorts which will lead to wiping off of non-evolving, non-living business entities for more alive institutions to thrive in the space. Maybe this is a part of the scheme of things as, inlaid in the design of enterprise evolution. 

I have been a wandering witness and the purpose of writing this blog is to report my observation, just in case someone is listening.

Cosmic induction: you are still going through it!

Your cosmic induction has been very simple. From the day you have arrived you have been exposed to terminality of life. Preparations for departure have been all around you. Getting you a good schooling, family guidance, nurturance & protection – these came to you unasked for because you were meant to be secure. Secure from the uncertain juncture of departure.

During your induction you were also exposed to the natural world around you, hoping that you will engage with it and draw from its resources in terms of learning and living. What you chose to pick up however was the fear, uncertainty & doubt that you saw around you and not the abundant love that you were meant to uncover, from within and around.

During your induction you heard a voice more as a forewarning than as a guideline which said, “be yourself” however what you chose to listen to and abide by was “behave yourself”. You were also given a framework of right and wrong, good and bad; and in your assumed powerlessness and worthlessness adopted those guidelines as what you are meant to follow the rest of your life. Though socially and otherwise it was brought to your cognition that life is terminal, you chose to believe that you will never die. And in the process died even before you lived. Nowhere during your induction it was made known to you that life is living up others’ expectations, yet till date in whatever you do and wherever you are you are carrying the donkey on your back. During induction you were introduced to your feelings -the language of your soul. The idea was that when you experience a certain feeling you will be led to its origin and would thereby be able to be with a part of you which was seeking attention. Yet it became so difficult for you to, forget experience your feelings, be even aware of it.

Painful experiences, right from the time you were born were introduced as a part of the induction process making you realize that all pain is a pre-cursor to growth, yet your investment in pain-killers – those explicit as well as implicit – has grown ever since your induction into the cosmic life.

It is the first time during your cosmic induction that you got an inkling of what your roles and relationships could be. You realized the dependencies and also some of the co-dependencies – those with whom unknown to you, you started playing games. Again the early warnings and symptoms on the dashboard of pain would warn you to get out of them, yet fearful of rejection and abandonment you chose to snub the pain and go along flouting the norms of life inc. by playing those games incessantly. You were right at the beginning exposed to the wonder of having your senses reach out to the world, however you were also guided to reach within to watch the effects of these sensory experiences inside you.

Finally it was during induction that for the first time you were introduced to the magical alchemy of Love. The burst of energy, the transformational nature and the sense of oneness with the cosmic reality that Love brings in was intensely made to be experienced by you. In fact, it is during the induction that while the design was to get you to lead a life which is love-led, your love met its shadowy counterpart fear. And you got a hang of the dyadic reality of life on earth – a certain given playfulness which makes you run from love led reality to fear led reality and vice versa. Somewhere deep inside carrying the knowing that love is who you are.

Cosmic induction: you can't escape !!!

After flying around the room, fretting and flitting, the sparrow tired and exhausted with its endeavor, sat on a window sill. It was looking for an opening unto the freedom of the blue sky. It sat engrossed in despair and despondency, unaware of the open window on the sill of which it was sitting. 

The master was watching this, bemused. He allowed for some minutes to pass by and the bird to become still. And then he suddenly he clapped loudly. 

The sparrow was startled. It was like a gentle shock that broke the reverie. And the moment this happened, it saw the open window and through it flew unto the freedom of the blue sky. Never to come back and get stuck within the confines of the room.

You have also come here to be awakened from your reverie and attain freedom to participate in the cosmic mission.

It is meant for you, you and also you. It is meant for all of us. Not just for a chosen few.

Startling, shocking events are welcome interventions to the process of attaining freedom from limits of your smallness and getting inducted into the cosmic organization of Life Inc.

You may choose to be lost in your endeavors and reveries allowing the interventions to go unheeded. Or you may choose to be restful and reflective, even as you go through the routine business of life, to be able to hear the sound of the clap and notice the gateway unto freedom.

The interventions are a part of the cosmic design to get you inducted. Every time you choose to let the interventions go unheeded, it promises to return with a harder and perhaps more painful shock. Which, if repeatedly ignored, can also be perishing.

Attaining freedom from the limits of small ness and getting inducted into the magnificent cosmic process and purpose is not a function of time. You don't have a road map with milestones. You don't need a learning curve to go through. You cannot 'try' to be there. These are mere excuses for you to skirt around the inevitable cosmic agenda.

Awakening, knowing and responding - it all happens in a moment. An explosion of sorts that launches you in the cosmic orbit. 

Each moment comes with an invitation to get inducted. Including this very moment! Now !!

Are you ready?