The teaching tree

If mother nature were a school, the tree would be the greatest teacher of all times. Since we're all familiar with the significance of trees so am not here to reiterate them. Rather, I'd like to draw your attention to another great importance of trees with respect to our spiritual domain.

The other day, a mango tree in my backyard caught the attention of my spiralling mind. It's a huge tree of almost 20 yrs of age. It bears sweet mangoes every year. However, to my surprise I noticed that the tree had a lopsided growth. It appeared to grow towards our neighbours house instead of spreading its branches into our backyard.So what's the reason behind it? Well you might have already guessed the answer. It's simple, plants need sunlight to manufacture their food, so it got all the required sunlight from the direction of my neighbours house which our three storeyed house blocked.

And this gave rise to my next question that when plants that are not known to possess any intelligence, instinctively grow in the direction of brightness then why do humans despite possessing the intelligence of the highest order prefer to stay in darkness and ignorance while they are constantly surrounded by brightness all the time? Why do humans deliberately choose to be unaware when awareness is only a step around?

It's just a matter of choice. For humans darkness must be comforting. Its cold in there and you don't get to see clearly the greatest and the hardest realities or truths. We stumble in the darkness and blame it on the obstacle instead of removing it. The fall might be fatal but people around us wouldn't observe it either and they too stumble upon the same obstacle.

So let's all come out of the dark. Challenge our our beliefs. Let's face the scorching sun and the hardest truths. Let's learn to be just while delivering our responsibilities in our respective roles as a root, stem, branch,fruit, flower or a leaf. Life will be difficult in its own way for each, and each one of them will find the life of other one better than its own. But as the tree, we all need to understand that the way all of them together constitute the tree, each one of us together constitute this beautiful life form. We're all a part of it no matter how different we look or how different roles we play. We're different from each other, but our objective is common..to sustain and continue the Life form !

So, let's remove barriers and cynicism, let's remove differences and accept each other. Our goal is the same. Let's make this world a better place to live in..

The Corporate Worm Box

Lately I've noticed that a particular phrase is being used more frequently than ever.."Think out of the box" the expected output of which is supposedly an "Out of the box idea" which every client, boss and creatures of similar genetic structure demand.. Now, my spiralling mind wonders what do these men & women have in their minds every time they hurl this phrase at someone..Do they mean that they want others to think more as they are already at their wits end or is it their acknowledge of the fact that in reality they, including others live inside a box..

Yes, a box that was a until couple of years back, an unfussy place known as 'the office'where people worked.However as lives got complicated so did this box until one day when they started being known as corporates.

More and more people started filling into these boxes..there was much more to produce and much more compensation..and along came a lot of clutter and confusion until one day when this box got full of waste. Wait..doesn't this sound a bit famliar? I remember, as kids we learnt how to recycle & turn our kitchen wastes into something more useful..'the compost'..all we needed was a 'Worm Box'..hundreds of worms were kept inside a box in a cold dark room and were made to feed on waste..And in due course the worms got fatter and thicker, some failed to survive and all the waste got converted into a much useful manure..

Every morning I find the same scene at office..inconclusive meetings, performance reviews, bosses yelling at sub-ordinates for not being able to achieve the obnoxious sales targets and by the time noon sets each one of us is a party to the mayhem..

Then it looks no different than a worm box..Probably because there are some people who are smarter than us and they devised an idea to have the trash converted into something more useful.. They keep forth us the trash of their own insatiable greed for riches and power and we keep converting them into monetary worth so that they become richer and more powerful. And here we fail to realise that all the while we sweated blood for extracting gold for someone else's adornment, we lost on something much more valuable rather invaluable.. Happiness

Can we just stop living as worms. As individuals each one of us is capable of creating distinctive value. All we need to do is realise our own potential, create an environment of co-operation rather than just satisfying our own greed.. Expand our thought process ..Listen to what others have to say..Feel the pain that's not yours..See that's not visible..Hear that's yet unspoken..Try and Break free from the box..
Try and make this place a better place to live in!!

Control : The greatest seduction

"Every attempt to control which is not voluntary, not with the controller's own mind, is not only disastrous, but it defeats the end" - Swami Vivekananda
Invariably, humans like being in control or least most of us like to believe that we are in control. As a boss, a parent, a spouse, a leader or even as a teacher. Which makes it true that there are some who are being controlled. And needless to say its a viscous circle; an individual may be in a controlling position in one role while he might be the one being controlled in another role and there are some individuals who control others in every role. To me such people are not only dangerous in their own domain but also detrimental to human society.

Yes, there are individuals who do good to others for a time by giving a new trend to their predispositions at the same time they bring ruin to millions by unconscious suggestions they throw around rousing in men and women a passive and hypnotic state that eventually leave them soulless. There numerous people around us who proclaim their mastery over a subject; religion or philosophy being the most common. And in their endless desire for control they spread their biased opinions, amongst people who out of their sheer ignorance blindly allow others to control them.

It's thus important for all individuals to beware of how we unknowingly allow ourselves to be acted upon by others.For example, when we eat we are aware of it but we are not aware of how and when the food gets assimilated by our body to provide it all the strength. It’s not that someone else is assimilating the food for us and providing us energy. We only do it ourselves but we are not aware of it because we are not in control of that organ.

Similarly we are never in control of our own mind. The human mind is forever wandering and wayward. We endlessly search for happiness, success, peace, justice, glory and when we fail to find them, we are confronted with endless questions and that's when we become vulnerable to control. Not realising the fact that we are not in control of our mind the way we are not in control of most of our organs.

We should to first gain control over our own mind and senses and then work towards achieving our goal. The goal of each soul should be freedom - from matter and thought, mastery of internal and external nature. It's only us who can do it for ourselves. We alone can find our own path to freedom and not by walking on trails left by others for we do not know where did people who walked those roads ended up. The answers to our questions lie within us, its only that we are not aware of it. Subscribing to someone else’s opinion dilutes our own goals. We end up giving birth to new communities, sects and religions in our attempt to find answers to our questions. And with so much heterogeneity and lack of acceptance, we thus add to intolerance, dislike, hatred and eventually vanishing a whole era of culture developed by a races of an entire civilization.

So before submitting ourself to someone’s propensities and adding to the bigotry, we should ask ourselves if we are in control of our ownself. Once we learn to control ourselves and accept every existence, we can make this world a much better place to live in and ensure the advancement of humanity..

The Spiralling Mind

Here's a conversation between the famous sage Yajnawalkya and his disciple Gargee, the daughter of Vachaknu (An excerpt from Brihadaranyak Upanishad)

Yajnawalkya since everything in this earth is woven warp and woof on water, what is water woven warp and woof?
Yajnawalkya said, ‘Gargee! It’s woven on wind’
On what is wind woven warp and woof?
“On the region of celestial choir.”
On what is the region of celestial choir woven warp and woof?
“On the sun.”
On what is the sun woven warp and woof?
“On the moon.”
On what is the moon woven warp and woof?
“On the stars.”
On what is the stars woven warp and woof?
“On the region of God.”
On what is the region of God woven warp and woof?
“On the region of light.”
“On what is the region of light woven warp and woof?
“On the region of creator.”
“On what the region of creator woven warp and woof?
“On the region of spirit.”
“On what the region of spirit woven warp and woof?
Yajnawalkya said “Gargee don’t transgress the limit; or you may go crazy.
Gargee became silent.

Yes, since ages the human mind has questioned and searched; only to find itself stuck up over and over again. Stuck amidst questions that have no answers, stuck amidst actions that seem endless; stuck in a journey that that leads nowhere. Every new exploration brings forth a new question and yet again the search continues. The mind thus keeps spiralling forever..

Meetings, targets, presentations, friends, family and the list continues. Trapped in this spiral whose origin and end can’t be distinguished, running back and forth; we are all stuck in the warp of time.

Yeah, I accept that I am spiralling because I know that all the while am spiralling am exploring something new and strengthening my dispositions.And one day I shall be able to detach myself from the spiral; for my journey would've come to its conclusion..Till then I shall keep exploring and unearthing..

So if you feel that you are spiralling, you are invited to join this blog. Caught in an endless spiral of your job,relationships,research or your presentation. And, as we move on, let’s try and define the ‘Spiralling'. Share your experiences here and the thoughts that not everybody may comprehend. Leave questions or answers to our questions.

Happy Spiralling!