Stop This Parenting!

Stop! Stop parenting your kids! Stop telling them what to do, what not to do. Stop telling them what to think, how to think and what NOT to think!

Let the child lead you with their open minds and naked souls. Trust them. They do not judge with generations of preconceived notions. They do not jump to conclusions based on prejudices. On the contrary, they look at each event for itself. So their judgement is pure, unbiased.

The child wants a candy. Do not refuse her a candy. A candy does not kill a child. But keep denying that one candy and it becomes a sugar rush so insatiable that when you are not looking, she gorges on candies. And then that would kill her. Not that one candy, but the candy rush you bestowed upon her.

The child asks why. Why do we pray? Why do we have to be polite? Why do we have to wear clothes? Lead him to reason for himself. Lead him not to answers, to your answers. But rather let her get to her own answers.

We are all under the mistaken notion that the older we are, the better we know. How untrue. Why bestow our jaded and rusty old views on a sparklingly clean young generation?

It takes courage to unparent. But unparent, we must. Treat your kids as an equal, if not more. Listen to them first, before thrusting your views upon them. They will teach you to be free. To be naked. To be euphorically liberated.

Of Perceptions

We need to find the essence of life, mired as we are in the mundane, the daily commute, the rise and fall of the stock market, the cacophony on the streets, the emotional humdrum of everyday life. Perhaps it is all not so humdrum after all.

The world we perceive is not the world that really is. We ‘see’ colors and almost attribute a material characteristic to it. In our minds colors are solid and vibrant, an emulsion if you will, draped on all things. However, all colors are primarily mere reflections of the same photon…each just travelling towards us in slightly different ways or wavelengths. You see a friend running towards you. Now you see the same friend walking towards you and then you see the friend just standing. It is still the same friend, however, if this friend were to be a ray of light then you would ascribe a different identity to it at those three different times. Obviously color is an illusion, so are textures and weights. Even if the scientific mind recognizes color for what is it, it still describes the telescope as white, not as a conglomeration of subatomic particles reflecting all the light that falls on it. Our brains are tuned into our senses to comprehend in a certain way and yet, can snap away and look at everything in their subliminal form once in a while.

It so appears that even if we have an innate ability to perceive the illusions for what they are, we are still limited by our senses in those perceptions. We may chose a green ball over a red one, knowing very well, the green and red have nothing to do with the ball itself, but yet we persist for thats the way we are wired. We are aware and unaware at the same time.

And like the photon, we too oscillate between dual identities of the world, and of ourselves.

TIME

Time exists because of the intrinsic dynamism of matter. Electrons revolve around the nucleus. Planets revolve around the sun. Movement and time are intertwined. Remove motion, time stands still. But still exists as matter exists. Remove matter and time is erased. Matter is but energy personified. Electron protons neutrons, all oscillating between their elemental energy and physical forms. Pulsating between being and non being. When matter bursts forth from energy as an entity with mass, time is created. Time is but an entity, a manifestation.

Time is what makes this life seem like what it is. This perception of our minds that sees life as a passage through time.

Is time an illusion? Is time exclusive to this span between birth and death?

The past, present and the future are all singular at an instant. It is just our perception that stretches them out on a timeline, into the known and the yet unknown. Imagine consciousness as the pull of a zipper. As it runs along the two strands, experiences are locked into consciousness and the point of the zipper’s tag is perceived as the present moment, the zipped or intertwined part, the past and the free strands, the unknown future.

After all, the conscious brain started developing only a few million years ago and is evolutionarily still young, compared to other life functions. Consciousness seems to be limited to animals with brains. Are plants conscious? Or is their subconscious blissfully taking care of all the functions of living. Is consciousness even necessary to live? After all, all of our most important life sustaining functions are done unconsciously – breathing, blood flow, immunity..

Just like our perception of color and texture makes things seem so different than they really are, our perception of time is also an illusion Our conscious brain which is dependent on our senses is probably only capable of awareness at specific points and comes into awareness much as the zipper going through the teeth on the strands, the awareness and perception of present is defined as awareness of the conscious mind. The past present and future are always there like the teeth of the zipper. Its our awareness of those that moves, not our lives.

The Knowing Brain

To be is to know. We know what we are, why we are and how we are. We may not know that we know, but know, we do.

We limit ‘knowing’ to the senses we sense. To sight, smell, sound, taste or touch. These are the modes by which we ‘learn’ or gain knowledge. Once we perceive, it becomes a thought. We feel something, or see something …such as the feel of the wind or color of the sky and this leads to formulation of thoughts, say “oh, the sky is blue” or “the wind is gentle”. We then relegate these thoughts to the memory bank in our brain and this becomes part of the ‘conscious knowledge’ that it carries.

But there is a knowing that is beyond the realm of our senses that we need to try and bring to the forefront of our senses. We are so attuned to sensory perceptions that we ignore the non sensory perceptions of intuition or internal knowledge. The non-sensory perceptions have to be brought to the sensory bandwidth in order to be recognized and integrated into ‘knowledge’.

We ask questions because we perceive an anomaly. However, to perceive an anomaly we need some knowledge of normalcy. For how can we perceive discordance if we have no idea of harmony? When we see a jigsaw puzzle with a wrong piece, or a missing one, our brain knows it does not fit there because it has an idea of what would fit there. It is just a matter of finding that piece.

So it is with life.

Life is a jigsaw we try to comprehend. We seem to know some pieces, some seem obscure. But we sense what does not fit. Theories and philosophies try to fill in the gaps. The mind questions, parses, broods. We question paradigms that do not seem to fit or seem to have missing links. This is because our subconscious has an idea or knowledge of what should be there. It is just not in our conscious knowledge bank as of yet. So we try to bring the subconscious into the realm of thought, to decode if you will. This entire effort is just to be conscious of all that we already know. To find those missing jigsaw pieces. So the conscious brain continuously tugs at the subconscious, trying to open it out into the conscious.

Therefore, it is not that there are questions that we will never know or that the world is so complex that we do not have the capacity to decode it, it is just a matter of reaching deep into our subconscious and bringing the submerged knowledge onto the surface, of merging our conscious into our subconscious until there is no more need of perceived knowledge. The subconscious and conscious become one.

Fear Fear

Fear defines us. Fear defines all that we do. It could be some subtle, subconscious fear or a phobic fathomable fear. Fear binds and chains us into doing what we do.

Fear keeps us from naked thought.

As toddlers, we are at times fearless, wanting to touch the proverbial fire. However we are taught to fear fire, and to fear not only the dark, and the unknown, but a plethora of other ‘undesirable’ objects and behaviors. We are taught to do things the ‘right’ way, the ‘right’ way to be, to think.

And as we grow, our thoughts get tunneled for fear that we may intrude upon some set moralistic, cultural or social boundary. Even if we did want to venture out, our fear of disapproving glances from those around us keep us in check. We do not want to be ‘the’ transgressor. The fear of being a moral or social outcast keeps us in. Fear becomes a habit.

What if we had no fear, or shed the fears we have? One tiny fear at a time.

Fear fear. It takes courage to be naked…..until it becomes the new habit.

Why a ‘naked’ soul?

A blog of musings of a naked soul. A soul that sheds all external influences and looks at life, at existence, at consciousness, from within and from without…. as an insider and as an outsider. A soul, shorn of beliefs, traditions, learnings, and ultimately knowledge itself. Preexisting knowledge that is. When the soul, in its most ethereal form involutes and reflects upon itself or perhaps realizes there is nothing to reflect upon, then comes true knowledge. Pure, simple knowledge.

I am and I am not. I am neither man nor woman. Neither boxed into a belief, nor am I defined by my body. I am insane and intellectual. I am materialistic and esoteric. I am narcissist and humble. I am mundane and spiritual. I am simple and incomprehensible. Defined by my mind, by my thoughts, a breaker of tags, I am abstract.”

Let the naked journey begin……

Death.

Death stares at me in the eye. I watch the last of my father’s bated breaths, Yet, it is not frightening. No horror, no grief, no sadness. There is an aura of calmness, a sense of serenity. Death itself is the ultimate peace. It is the living that rides on a roller-coaster. It is the living that bounces between singularity and multiplicity, forever in flux….death is oneness. A singular singularity.

We were ‘dead’ before we are born. Yet, we never give thought to this fact. We never wring our hands and wail over it. We seldom give thought to what were we before we were born or even conceived. The fact that we just did not exist before we lived does not seem to faze us as much as the realization that we might cease to exist after we have lived.

Death is shrouded not only in mystery, but in macabre and tragedy. We have absolutely no knowledge of what happens after we die – do we just shut off or does a part of us live on? We have absolutely no frigging clue. Yet, we are afraid.

Afraid of what? Why is there a basic pessimistic tragic assumption. Why do we assume its gotta be bad?

Birth and death are but the same in reverse. The body comes into being for a period of time and then ceases to be. If consciousness were to pervade beyond death, then it is logical to presume, that it preceded the body before birth as well. however, we are not conscious of anything before birth or after death. Therefore any state of consciousness that is relevant is unique to this span of life.

Are we more than our body? Is there a so-called soul? If there was a soul and it existed before birth, and exists after death, there must be a state of being-ness we are unaware of, before and after life. However, no one has ever known it. Therefore it is quite inconsequential to our current life span. therefore its quite futile and unnecessary to brood over it.

Anyway, coming back to the original premise, why is death considered so morose and frightening? Death and dying are not the same. The process of dying itself, could definitely be painful, morose, and frightening. However death itself isn’t so.

Just as the massive energy of a dying star involutes and implodes within itself to become a black hole out of which no energy can escape, so do we involute and implode within ourselves when we die, shedding our skin and physical being just as the star shatters its core and mass. Our quantum consciousness dissolves and concentrates into its primordial abstractness. Nothing matters then for matter is nothing then.

Consciousness toggles from the state of being to a state of nothingness

Life is but a quanta of existence just as the photon is a quanta of light. There is but one blueprint for all that is. Infinite fractals all just the same.

No one in this realm that we call life, has ever known what lies beyond, and therefore it is quite inane to assume that it would be something unpleasant. In fact what lies beyond is probably beyond the realm of pleasant or unpleasant, of anything we experience in this life. It is not really worth brooding about for we will never know and do we even need to know?

For this life that we live has no bearing on death and death and thereafter has no bearing on this life.

RIP.

The Chasm of Chaos

There is this chasm of the mind that has very slippery slopes. No matter how much the mind tries, it keeps slithering back down…no matter what it grasps onto, it keeps falling back, down into the chasm, into the dark valley of the void.

There are those, who, restless with intellectual inertia turn inward and seek within themselves. And then there are those, whose quests lead them to replace one deity with another, living or otherwise, one religion with another. These are the inhabitants of that intellectual chasm, of that mindless limbo land.

The chasm is indeed a world onto itself. There are many in this chasm that have forgotten or were never aware of a world beyond. They bicker among themselves in this chasm, fighting over whose god is greater. They build shiny shrines, break the ones that others have built. They hurl physical and verbal grenades, trying to gain sole supremacy. They fail to see that they are but throwing stones at their own reflections, each tinted a different hue, similar all the same.

Meanwhile, the lone ladder waits for that lone brave soul. For there lies a whole new world up there, lighted and lighter. A world where the mind, breaking free of its own confines harmonizes one with all. A mind that breaks free of norms and rituals, of ethos and morals. A world of naked souls with naked minds, whose life paths are in sync with the before and after.

Why does the mind not want to think deeper, to take that thought one step further, to analyze? Perhaps there is a plateau of comfort. The thought process finds this equilibrium where the inherent curiosity is sated just enough, and some minds, tired of thinking, settle at that level. For most, its an abject belief in a religious tenet, that precludes them from any thinking so they can focus on the more mundane aspects of life. For others it might be a synthesis of a religious philosophy they have been brought up with and their own analysis. And then for few, it could be some point on their own original inward journey.

As the human mind traverses along this evolutionary path, the conscious and the sub conscious close in on each other, settling on a higher and higher plateau every time the neurons connect. The full potential of this incredible journey reaching its zenith when the mind is able to take its thoughts to the finish line – when thinking is no longer a linear sequence along time, but a burst of absolute knowing.

Think. Evolve.

Nothing

From nothing we come…. to nothing we go…..

Nothing matters….

Nothing matters!!

Yes, nothing does matter!

For between nothing and nothing

lies everything!

So carry on!

Future Imperfect

What if we stopped thinking about the future…about consequences…about what ifs…..

We revel in futuristic forward thinking. A lion hunts when it is hungry. Once it has eaten, does it worry about its next meal? Does it ponder if there would be any more watering holes left due to global warming and therefore would there be anymore deer left to hunt? It eats and then digests that meal. It acts on the next meal plan when it get hungry again. The key word here is ‘acts’, not ‘thinks’.

Does forward thinking actually change the way we behave or even our decisions? For every point we stand on in the present there are infinite possible out-spokes. Myriad possibilities of which our own decisions and behaviour play but a very small part.

As an extreme example, take the case of a terminal disease diagnosis either for oneself or someone close. The mind immediately spins of various scenarios. Scenarios of the person suffering to various levels, scenarios of the person dying in these many days or months. Scenarios of how the person dies, where the subject is when that happens and infinite scenarios of life after the loved one passes. However, at least in this extreme example, the subject has absolutely no control over one suffers or when one dies. Which is true even if one decides on the level of treatment. Even if the treatment is terminated, the process and timeline of the process is completely out of one’s control. So what was the point of the brain’s exercise on coming up with all the possible scenarios?

At times as these, the brain seems to be obviously on an auto-pilot mode. How much of this thinking is voluntary or conscious? Is there a subconscious engine that drives the thoughts and we are but aware of the tip of the iceberg?

The human mind entwines itself with possibilities and outcomes. It gravitates towards what if scenarios, Towards increased tangential thinking, towards extrapolation. towards stress. How is this adaptation? What evolutionary advantage can this possibly have?

Or has our tangential forward thinking mind detached us from the evolutionary process?

What if….

What if….

A child born was left untethered…

What if…

No right or wrong, no sin or virtue, no morals or norms touched it’s mind……

What if….

It was not led to be this or that….to think this or that…..to believe this or that….

What if…..

It’s naked thoughts ran their course…..

What if……

We could all shed our layers and be that child…

The Duality Dilemma

Light. Is it a wave? Or a particle? Electrons, are they energy? Or matter? The duality that is apparently ingrained in all things material pervades the ethereal as well. We live in a constant dilemma of duality. Consciously or subconsciously. The soul tries to free itself of its physical coordinates, succeeds, but slips again….as if tethered to the coordinates by gossamer strands…like a snake slithering out of its old skin but never quite getting out.

The duality of the self as manifested physically and the identity of self as a formless singular idea within, coexist in all of us at all times, consciously or otherwise.

We react to events, to ideas, mostly as we have been preordained genetically and trained environmentally. What if we never had any external influences shaping our thoughts? What would then our reaction be? Is it even possible to be so untethered? It is hard to answer that question since even imagining such a situation ultimately relies on our pre-existing thoughts. A predicament much like Schrodinger’s cat.

As one keeps up with the thought processes, the strands of duality do seem to disappear, albeit for few staggered moments and then snap back. This cosmic dance of duality and singularity will go on, as long as we inhabit this body, and as long as our brain is doing the thinking.

The thinking mind oscillates between the two entities, the boundary between them but a hazy mist. To categorize the visible, palpable present as mundane and the unseen and/or theoretical as profound is a tempting fallacy. Pondering over the present, this world, these surroundings is just as profound as pondering over the before and after, over the infinite.

Even as the mind grapples with the fact that we are not dissimilar to the person sitting next to us on the bus, or the bus itself, all but manifestations of the same energy, in various forms and energy levels, and strives to imbibe this oneness into the core of one’s being, the mind still snaps back to being who we are, a passenger on the bus, distinct from the next person on the bus and the bus itself. For as long as we live this life.

This blog is an ode to this cosmic dance. The dance between one’s journeys of the mind and journeys of the body. It acknowledges that the present is always here, either in plain sight or in essence, even when we have travelled far in our thoughts. For it is this life we are trying to decipher, the here and now.

Life as a Continuum

Many plants can be propagated by grafting. Carefully break off a branch, rebury part of it in soil and voila, it sprouts roots, then shoots into a being of its own! Or is it? Had it stayed where it was, it would have been a part of the parent life form. However, now it is assumed to be distinct, a unique plant. Or could it just be called a transplant in space of the parent?

In essence so are we all, derivatives of our parents, transplanted in space and time. We grew from a cell each of our parents, differentiated into a whole. Not much different from the way organs develop from a single cell. Yet, the only difference is that organs remain inside the body while the progeny is expelled into a life form of its own.

We like to think of generations as unique and distinct. But are they? We are all but points on the line. You are but your parents on another plane.

The fractal of life.

Doomsday Phobia

The race is on. Global warming, carbon footprint, ozone depletion… The race is on – to save the earth. There is panic everywhere. Almost as much panic as plastic in a landfill, choking us, as we bleakly look everywhere for a solution. For a miracle cure that would assure us…that no, the earth will NOT change, that we will survive as a species forever, and that all will be well.

The race is on. To cure cancer, to cure chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, to cure that obscure chromosomal abnormality. The race is on, to fight very disease, to live longer, forever.

The race is on, to save every species from extinction, to save every human from annihilation. To make sure every life form, no matter what its shortcomings, survives. Longer. Until unable to bear the burden, the earth, and life itself, implodes.

The very things we do to survive in the short term will more than likely shorten the long term.

The race is on.

One To(o) Many

We are all acutely aware of our bodies, identify ourselves with our bodies. We think of our body as being one. A body. What if it isn’t?
Evolutionarily speaking, the very first multi-cellular organisms were but a colony of individual cells each of which could very well be ‘a’ body. But living together, they all formed ‘a’ new body, each individual unit performing all the functions every other unit did. However, gradually this group of cells started to speciaize so they did not have to do all the work but just some of the work such that if every unit was perfectly coordinated with the others, they could survive perfectly well and in fact better than if the individual units were by themselves. Thus evolved the complex life forms if we were to accept one of evolution’s most basic tenets.
Taking this a step or more further, we could indeed all be just that, a colony of cells cooperating in a perfectly synchronized way. Think about it. What if this were true? So then who are YOU now?

The Identity Crisis

Who are we? No, really, who am I ?? The daughter of so and so, the father of this and that, living in such and such? Did I choose to? Did I decree to whom I would be born, when and where? Afterall that practically decided my entire fate – being born or rather encompassed in those particular coordinates. I am thenceforth jailed in the persona with this name and THAT is my identity. Really?
Is it even possible to break free of the identity you are born with? After all, your very being, your very cells, your very neurons… Your thinking is decreed by your genes and the environment you are encompassed in and the influences you are bombarded with.
So the dilemma of the naked soul. Shedding off of the layers is harder than it seems. There is always that ingrained note from the past, that bigoted view enshrined through generations, that song in the head that just doesn’t go away. But the soul rallies on, to shed them all. To be naked.