“Mon Tuley nao” – The arts of managing hurts

whom the arms cannot tear
the fire cannot burn

Enlightenment is the state where you can stop the running stream of thoughts in your mind and attain the absolute inner stillness, to look inward and merge with your own being. Since my first Guru, Sanjay Salooja, had opened the beautiful windows of life for me, I have always been in hot pursuit of the nectar of life, the true enlightenment that provides one with the real and complete enrichment for the soul. In the last eight years, the journey has changed my destiny and everything else. It culminated into leaving my job, industry, profession and career and I am running on the way of true fulfillment. The transformational whirlpool has tied me down the gutter at days, the emotional and financial roller-coaster have drained us on nights, the uncertainty of life without the fat check we got used to has pushed my wife to the brink of the edge at times, but being of the “never surrender” type, I know I have the strength to achieve any impossible and many times in the past, I have literally survived the hurricanes with the strength of will. Insh allah – be it to your wish.

But the journey does not leave aside the relationships, in fact, it solidifies them to a more enriched state that provides the meaning of the nectar itself. And, like for the one-eyed stag, there remains the risk of pain, of being hurt. It calls for a deep personal strategy of defense - of pain management.

While our mind is completely logical and selfish, in it’s truest form, and does not recognize the need for anyone in your life except for the fleeting moments when you need someone for something, our soul lives on the relationships – with yourself and all others. Here lies the real source of the pain, the slights that can emerge from the lovely fountains – often unexpectedly – sometimes so deep that they are almost palpable, you can almost touch them, embrace them, sleep with them – like your lover, or an enemy – that is only a viewpoint. The ultimate test of a lover is not where she stands at the time of glory and comfort, it is where she stands at the time of the challenge, controversy, pains and the sufferings – the bonfire of the hearts, honeymoon of the fire, blood and death. The most severe pains can often emanate from the place from where you get so much of the magic of fulfillment.

Pain is a vague word and doesn’t really mean anything. While we are pained by a shocking picture of a ghostly Ethiopian child skeleton in search of some water to drink, or the news of a small child being crushed by a speeding bus – even without having the verdict of being cruel and heartless - these are truly superficial. They are transient thoughts taking the form of noise over our stream of communications between our mind and the sub-conscious. A very few of them sometimes manage to leave a mark, which too get obliterated with time. The real pain is always personal, a personal hurt that leaves a wound but that needs more than a medicine to cure. A word of encouragement, a hug, a sorry, a gentle stroke on the arm or a charming smile can do wonders in most times when the hurt is small. Sometime even they fail when the hurt is deep, the wound is grievous and coming from the quarters where you forgetfully left your soul the last time you hugged her, we bleed internally and often silently.

The level of attachment and the level of expectations are the key factors for these intense feelings of hurts. The more we attach ourselves to others, the more we expect from others - be it love, be it kindness, understanding, sacrifice – the more we empower others with the power and the force to hurt us, to disturb us. Only when we go for the extreme “self-care”, love ourselves deeply and truly, we can gain the freedom from the external needs - emotional, physical and psychological, that tries to tie us to the external with a strong bond. And once we get that freedom, you will find it much easier to come to a dialogue with their past behaviour.

You must be responsible for your own feelings and hurts, not only the acts. So long you will put the responsibility of your problems and lacking on others, as long as you will blame others for whatever happen to you, you will remain a victim of the victimisation syndrome and get stuck at that point of your life, unable to ascend or move forward. After years of living through the dark tunnels that used to whisper about never getting out of there alive, after a failed teenage affair that turned sour and nasty, I finally accepted that my hurts have nothing to do with the other. It has all to do with myself. You must release yourself from being angry with others. You must be very inside the bloodbath yet without a spot of the sticky red jelly on your soul.

The love of self has a great part to play in our forgiveness journey. For it is only when we truly love ourselves that we can find an inner sanctuary that gives us the strength and stability to engage with the world without being affected by it. On forgiving, the flow of love within us quickens leading to further growth. Unless we flush out the toxin, run away from that sunset boulevard, an act beautifully portrayed in the film “Jab we met”, we do not get back the freedom, joy and peace as we want them.

It is the curse of human that we are constantly carrying our own crosses on our shoulders. We are born tender and fragile, with a crystal –like disposition that allows the cuts and slashes, bruises and gashes. A physical pain is much easier to manage, because of their tangible character, but not an emotional or psychic one. At first, any pain is acute and without the healing touch or bad management, it may become chronic.

Forgiveness helps us emerge whole from our wounded past, and return to the business of our lives with renewed energy, focus, wisdom and peace. It is the bottleneck, the hell’s crossing, through which we must pass. You must heal yourself, you must let go of the past at a certain point, you must cut the rope when there is no meaning anymore. Freedom demands that you also must be free from the dead. “When you hold resentment toward another you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel”. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.

Your hurts have nothing to do with other, they have to do with you. Your poor boundaries and self-esteem can give others a force over you where they can occupy your inordinate mindscape and control your feelings. And when others can hold your strings and make you dance in a puppet show, you are not free, you are a puppet. J Krishnamurti once told a follower that as long as she was capable of being hurt she was not free of the mind. Eckhart Tolle, my another Guru towards enlightenment, has written “Forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life – to allow life to live through you. The alternatives are pain and suffering. The moment you truly forgive, you have reclaimed your power from the mind. Non-forgiveness is the very nature of the mind.”

When you will cry for more freedom, when you cannot be your best self with others, the dark forces will multiply in a cancerous growth and the power over you will rise, enough to decide your actions, leading to a complete surrender to the forces. Look at it as the will of the almighty, look at it as another test of Him for your strength. If you can win it, you will be rewarded with even more strength. Accept the act and the person, accept the past. Gain strength of mind through patient exercises and snatch back the control of your mind. Then you can stop that stream of thoughts, which is mostly reactive thinking. Then, you will gain back the peace, with the external losing the power to disturb it. Then you get you’re your complete freedom.

Communicate – with your trusted ones. It can tear the shackles and let go of you the crippling paradigm that is tearing into your heart. Find inspiration in the unconditional love you get from some people, particularly your parents and maybe your siblings, spouse, children, relatives, friends etc. This will enable you to transcend the anger that will inevitably rise in the journey of life. A disciple wrote about Swami Chidananda, “Swamiji Maharaj never, ever judged us or found us lacking; never, ever withheld His love from us. He simply radiated blessings towards all, all the time, everywhere, in all conditions”. This is unconditional love. It provides a strength and stability that is rarely found from other sources.

If you give a dying plant the care, water and the sun, life will flourish into that. Forgiving somebody is nurturing yourself. As we grow and embrace the journey towards enlightenment, the growth in consciousness provides us more freedom from the subconscious stream of crippling thoughts. Life is essentially a process and a dialogue with our own inner consciousness allows us to rise and forgive, to let go. Einstein said one cannot solve a problem at the same level of consciousness which gave rise to the problem itself. The inner strength give us the light.

Do not try to escape the pain. It comes through the natural laws of humanity and is like a lighthouse which you can disobey, to your own peril, but cannot break down with your ship. Running away from suffering is in itself suffering, probably to a higher degree as that will take over the subconscious and will drive you from that point. The wiser course is to experience the hurt and the suffering. Then you detach yourself, “Mon Tula nao”, and become your own Lord.

P.S. : I dedicate this piece to Sanjoy Dutta, a dearest friend for nearly three decades, who showed me the light long ago with a phrase “ Mon tuley nao” (trans – detach your soul), in a letter in reply to an emotionally charged description of my life at that time. It means at that point of time, he was ahead of me by those two decades and a lot of pains that I have taken to truly understand it

Koli .. I mean.. Cattle-Yuga – Survive from the holy politicians

In a republic, public is the most important thing and regard them so highly that you constantly tell lies to them to garner the votes. This is the motto of our beloved leaders. Some prefer to call them jokers, but I will stick to their original status. What sins did we commit to not deserve them?

On a perfect back-handed volley by one of the most colorful characters of our times, a man with exceptional talent and intelligence, on his twitter account is attracting daily fire-smacking and mudslinging by our big leaders, small people of all hues - complainer, bootlicker, saboteur, bully, backstabber, wheeler-dealer, muckraker, mudslinger, swamp dweller, life-hater and what-not ! They are throwing up daily fits in trying to fit in some of their runaway ambitions and in the bargain raised a big question mark over the basic integrity of a whole bloodied nation. All in the indirect blessing of the low-integrity high-command or in a desperate bid to please that ubiquitous and cunning supreme power called Lady.

A bona-fide sharp wit has thrown up the golden half-chance. Sharp knifes are out, cold as a razor blade, tight as a tourniquet, dry as a funeral drum, blood-hungry like the Casius dagger. The victim is running around in search of some nook and it is an ex-parte, open field for the very small people to make the goals.

Ipso facto, by the very fact that the remark was made to answer a diabolical question which used the word “cattle class” – which is oh so T R U E by any view and standard, the return volley included the “holy cow” which, to any witty person, is appropriate answer and a respectable wit. But that is being used as the body of crime, Corpus delicti, goes to point to the deep rot in our political system and not a fallacy on the commentator.

In the middle of this macabre theater of the absurd, it’s a cold comfort that The Lady or his even more holy son are silent till now – as no one dare disturb the sound of silence.
("Fools," said I, "you do not know Silence like a cancer grows” – courtesy Paul Simon – “And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made”). This has given even more ammunition to the power-hungry scums to shout louder and suggest more and more punishment ? Punishment ? I am laughing so hard that a health disaster is imminent. This is cattle-yug, Supreme Lord, make me blind, and don’t forget deaf and dumb and do it NOW.

The drama that is being enacted by the ruling party for a long time is diabolical enough, now they have suddenly got a new and potent weapon called “austerity”. To re(lease) the public in the pond of lies, every Tom Dick (and even their Mom !!??) are traveling with the cattle class (quite a revelation – I always though they were the pigs – to be slaughtered). While hundreds of crores being spent on their security alone (and hundereds on other facilities), they are saving “Rs. 8000” and flashing it in all the newspapaers at the expense of crores ? What about the lacs. Crores of Indian black money in the foreign secret accounts (of which I won’t be surprised if our Emperor family has 20000 crores) ? What about the thousands of crores of public (I mean of those pigs – I mean cattles) money that is stolen and siphoned off every year ? What about the lacs of crores that the industrialists have not paid back the banks (our banks !) ? What about the lacs of crores that have been raised from the public on the share market and the companies vanished into the blues – have you ever seen even one of those 2000+ companies being punished ? What about the thousands of crores that are shown and agricultural income every year and not a paisa of tax paid on them ? Simple, you buy a fabulous farm house in Mehrauli with 15 crores, show it as 50 Lacs, and then show that every year it produces tomatos and cabbages of Rs. 14 crores – 100% tax-free as agricultural income. I dare Pranab tax the agricultural income at 0.5% (that too above Rs. 5 Lacs) which will force them to declare the return every year. I am ready to bet my wife and daughter that he can’t. He will be lynched by the politicians of all parties together. The theft and the siphoning of money seems to have been systematic and institutionalized under the 50 year rule of the “Party”. It’s party time, folks.

The issue is that it is not a question of saving Rs. 8000/- or 8 lacs or it’s real benefit (The Telegraph showed a few days that by not using the Government plane, our Foreign Minister is spending much more on the commercial planes). The question is to make a Suggestio falsi, present a vicious lie to the cattles (or they think us as pigs ? ) that is the general public. These scums do not do any pro bono social work, they do their own aggrandizement for which we spend thousands of crores of our money. Philosophers say that “Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful”, then why are we still putting up with these scums ?

Manmohan Singh, the only man among the wolves but who still behaves like a boy in front of the Lady, has spoken that the comment was made as a joke but what was missing was the ruthless finality of a fullstop and that obviously did not make much difference to the wolves on the scent of child blood.

The incident is a landmark in the sense that it is making a wrong precedent in the matters of public dealing and honesty of the rare people like Tharoor. The problem of planting a poison tree is that while some trees may not give fruit, a poison tree will always give fruit, one day or the other. If it doesn’t, men will fly across the heavens!

Survive from the Complex people

Every sacrifice is a gift and of course, every gift is a sacrifice. Some people, however rare and near-extinct, have made this their basic nature, alas, to the consternation of the complex people, who are in an unending search of issues, big or small, to pounce on others.

In the macabre theater of the absurd, even a perfectly innocent joke, even in a surrounding which is traditionally and ritually meant for a light atmosphere, is taken up later to stick the “other side”, which is the basic paradigm of complex people. They always try to draw up the sides, notwithstanding the intent of those people or the long-term needs and views. They will twist and turn, cut and slash, trim and slime – almost any words or issues. The issues and events do not necessarily have to be real, even a hint of content is enough, the gentlemanly intent is not required, Thank you.

The biggest victims are generally the people who are the most protected, because in these cases, they are completely out of tune of how to handle these people, who are hostile without any real reasons, they defy all logic to be so. Giving is also not a solution. The more you give, they will make a momentary pause, and attack from that very angle, saying the things could have been even better. They have an insensible urge to dominate, particularly over all people who are weak and meek, as they do not really possess the real power that can sword even the powerful.

Ignoring them is also not another solution, because they usually choose the preys among the people who cannot do that, as most other people who can afford or have enough power on themselves, do just that and do it rudely enough to be excused thence. They should be kept at a distance though, as far as practicable. Because complex people are not necessarily bad, they are complex and love to act mean. This may happen even in a family full of people who do not care for such acts. They enjoy their meanness and the fact that for some people, this comes as a heart-breaking fact, particularly those who try to go beyond their capacity or limits to make these people happy, for some reason or the other, and make a good relationship with them.

The basic strategy should be to bear, and do it silently. No empire, however mighty and ruthless, has been able to go down the history as unchallenged ever. The wheel of time has not stopped for anyone. They should be own over, with time, or vanquished, also with patience. Even a mad person get back his senses sometimes, these are only complex people.

The only times you should react, keeping the standards of weights and measures, sternly - firmly and forcefully, are the times when the complex tend to turn to devious, that is, those things will be uttered not for an immediate gain and fun of running the knife, but with a long term objective of the scalpel. These things are done to establish a ground, which once established by the absentee vote of yours, can lead to an advantage ground in a larger canvas of shrewd political games. the stake can be anything, proving you a semi-despot to a long pending issue about the property division. Here you must break the point and throw the dish. "Deny the allegation and defy the alligator" (Shall we tell the President ?).