Category: Musings

The clock is ticking

On By Anita SatyajitIn learning, Life, Musings, PersonalLeave a comment

Past few days, I have been feeling like I am on a countdown. As though the clock is ticking and I can hear it inside me, around me, everywhere. And I am left wondering – I don’t know how much time is left for this countdown to end. I sat for days watching the clock tick away. Watching regrets rise, watching fears take misshapen forms. Feeling the urge to fix things, repair things. Feeling the need to rush to loved ones. Feeling isolation, feeling separated, feeling desperation and the pain of not knowing.

And then I stopped watching. I can still hear the clock ticking away in the background. But, from anxiety the thoughts are moving to living. From fear it is moving to gratitude. From worry it is moving to action. From restlessness it is moving to stillness. No two moments are the same. And as different as it is, as unsettling as it feels, it also feels grounding. Like it is time to grow my roots deeper into myself. Into the things that really matter.

It is time to grow from being a helpless child, unwilling to step outside her cocoon, still wanting someone to take care of her, to a person who is ok not knowing things. From being a fearful, anxious, self-judgmental spiritual seeker to a being who is beginning to understand that though she knows a lot, she understands little and practices even lesser.

Now, this ticking moment, is a moment to do what I have never done before. What I have avoided, felt uncomfortable doing. It is a ticking reminder to be silent, to be still, to look inside and accept who I am. Flaws and all. But it is also time to give up useless conversations, useless thoughts, useless memories, a time to empty all the knowledge and create space inside for God. Or rather to remove the clutter, so I can find the real Self inside.

It is time to give away freely all that I have. A time to stop hoarding what I feel is ‘me’ and ‘mine.’ A time to break barriers. A time to strip myself of all adjectives, synonyms, similes and metaphors, to see what remains.

And the clocks ticks. Tells me there is really not that much to do. Stop doing. Be here now. Stay in the present. There is really nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. Join with the ever-present stillness, peace and joy. If an action or emotion emerges, honour it. And that is all there is to life. Living it with a honesty. Living it with a simplicity. Living it without frills and fanfare because the clock is ticking.

The clock is ticking and I can see the Oneness in all there is. People coming together, universe sending support in unexpected ways. So much good and gracious in what could be the dark hours. All we really need is light. Inside us, if we can hold it. Or someone near us who holds it for us when we aren’t able to shine ours.

Red said it very wisely in Shawshank Redemption – Get busy living or get busy dying. I think I chose the former.

Poetry – On writing

On By Anita SatyajitIn Life, Musings, Poems, timepass, WritingLeave a comment

Always I have waited, for words to be wise
before they are permitted on paper,
evaluated, judged and criticized for accuracy
lest they be decried as mere crap.

A mask of intelligence seemed necessary,
vulnerability was deemed un-necessary,
always it felt more important to hide,
all that actually needed to be shown.

Moments rare are embellished and decorated
with the fanciest, choicest of words,
but we judge most about ourselves,
are hidden, deleted and cleaned up from verse.

Now I feel a freedom, an irrelevance,
about all the things that I once wanted to hide,
parts of me are just that – thoughts, beliefs and stored,
bits and pieces of a complex “personality.”

I now want to write the truth
choose honesty, ease, peace and simplicity,
the words I pen are mere words, after-all,
why make it something that defines me.

This is just a simple exploration,
an playful adventure with words and verse.
how can it mean more than what it is,
for hidden meanings it has no more.

It matters not now what others may think,
each interprets them with their own stories in mind,
if you want to seek, look for the joy of freedom
that seems to be lurking behind these words.

I set myself free to write as I may,
I urge you to now do the same,
remembering what someone once told me –
write to write  and not to read.

 

 

The quest for perfection

On By Anita SatyajitIn Indian Society, Life, Musings, Personal, society, spiritualityLeave a comment

For a few days now, I have been restless about judging my dad for something. Spirituality brings with it the awareness that judgements we have about others is usually something we judge ourselves for. But it is never easy to look at the things that make you uncomfortable, and so, for a few days now I have been avoiding doing some clearing work on this.

But as I prayed today morning, I felt ready to release this judgement. I am learning to honour guidance and started tapping. I usually use a combination of EFT, Clearing questions and forgiveness when I work on something. I find it works really well for me.

Aware that I needed to be honest and non-judgemental, I acknowledged all the judgements I had about my dad. It was tough to vocalize or say what I really feel, but as I tapped, I was able to release all these judgements. Remembering that these were just thoughts in the head and to not engage in guilt, made it easier to be honest.

As I tapped it the thoughts turned from the judgements about dad to judgements about other family members. Events and incidents of the past came up and led to memories of feeling judged when I was younger. As I tapped, I was also able to acknowledge hidden anger at him and others.

Interestingly, as it was ending it led to the quest for perfection, competing with God (who I believe is perfect), guilt for choosing separation from God and living as a “I”, and mostly about never really feeling perfect, good enough, or worthy. I ended it by doing forgiveness. Forgiving my dad, forgiving family, asking for forgiveness for judging them, forgiveness for indulging in this useless quest for perfection, and for believing in something called perfection.

All my life I have seen people around me struggle with their thoughts and beliefs about perfection. I have seen my mom live a life which would receive the approval of all and I in turn grew up believing that I had to be perfect too. I had to cook perfectly, be the perfect mom, daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, friend, acquaintance. As I tapped today, I experienced immense anger at how I have been believing in the wrong word and its wrong meaning all my life.

I want my dad to be a perfect dad, family wanted me to behave in a way they felt perfect, others in turn had the same expectation from those family members. It turns out the whole world is trying to live up to either their notion or someone’s notion of being perfect! This led me to question – if everyone wanted perfection, then is the meaning of perfect the same for everyone? No! For someone being perfect could mean giving more importance to helping others than cleaning their home, for others being perfect could mean choosing family over helping neighbours… And yet, we spend lifetimes in this quest for perfection.

As I tapped, it became clear to me that in my eyes God is perfect. That it is only God whom I can associate the word perfect with. But that didn’t meant that God had a standardized behavior. Because each of us has our own unique relationship with God. Then what does perfect mean!

If God meant perfection, it means perfection is allowance. Perfection is being accepting of differences, perfection is being flexible, perfection is being forgiving. Perfection means allowing others to be fragile, foolish, fearful. But most of all perfection is forgiving.

As I ended the clearing, I felt lighter because I had my own flexible definition of perfection. We all need to find our own definitions sometimes, because when we attribute inflexible meanings to words, we are limiting ourselves and others. And what I still need to remember is this is still not about finding the right meaning. There is no right and no wrong. Just remembering that allows me to be human as I look for the Divine.

Water as an entity

On By Anita SatyajitIn Conservation, Environment, Musings, nature, spirituality1 Comment

A few days ago, a river in New Zealand was granted the status of a person. Soon, Ganga and Yamuna were granted the status of people. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/21/ganges-and-yamuna-rivers-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-beings

While it remains to be seen what this decision will mean in terms of protecting the rivers, it feels like a step in the right direction. But what I am going to say here, is completely against so called social thought.

A few days ago, while I was washing dishes and felt guilty about the running tap, I felt the water ask me what I was guilty about. What it told me was not what I was ready to hear. Since forever the relationship between water and human beings has been an existential one. Human beings simply cannot survive without water. But we have evolved in a way that rather than treating water , air and everything that we need for our survival , as a sacred and precious resource, we use everything as though it has been created just for us.

While there are fabulous people, conscious of how indebted we are to nature, working to save, protect it from destruction, there is something we have all overlooked. As I washed the dishes that day, I felt the water ask me why it was dammed. Why was it wrong for it to flow to the ocean? That it was as necessary for the birds and animals in the oceans and earth to have this fresh influx of water every year and that water belong to all and not just humans. I felt the water ask me to speak about this and write about this. I didn’t. Not till now, a year later.

I was disturbed by what I heard. For much part of my life, I have been saving water, protecting water, conserving water, talking to family and others about using less water. Use buckets, don’t shower, don’t waste water, soon we won’t have water. Everything that was used in popular environmental discourse was part of my vocabulary. Till I realized that there were things I didn’t understand. When I looked it was all scientific and confusing. But from the little I understood, it is as intricate as the connection between life and water. Increasing salinity in ocean water, global warming and meting icecaps which reduce salinity in some parts of the ocean, climate change, temperature, … there are so many facets to this. What really happens when there is an increase or decrease of fresh water into the oceans? Have you thought about that?

Humans need water to survive. But rivers and rain don’t exist solely for mankind. The creation of large dams is not just about displacing humans, it is about believing that water is just a resource for humans, and not meant for earth and all its inhabitants. We can drink water and store it but we can’t damm water, one way or the other. The issue of conserve water because we humans need it is not the right mindset.

Before someone gets this wrong, this is not about leaving taps open and letting water run. This is about looking at water pollution, this is about looking at water conservation in a way that begins to understand that every river is an entity, with her right to go where she wants and help whom she wants, without us dumping our crap on her, without us damming her. And, we shouldn’t have had to wait for courts to tell us that.

 …..
For those interested in deepening their connection to water, a simple thing would be to say the H’o’ ponopono . You simply say, ” I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. I thank you. ” Do this before you drink water. Before you bathe. While you do dishes. When you water plants.

For work on how water affects our internal energies look up Masaru Emoto’s work.

Forgiving yourself

On By Anita SatyajitIn learning, Life, Musings, Oblique, spirituality, Writing3 Comments

Most of us live in the past. Our wrong choices are reminders of our incompetence and we would rather stay in the comfort of failure than to step beyond it and risk failure again. And so guilt becomes our friend. It is easier to choose guilt than change. Why? Because it is easier to live in the shadow of past regrets, memories and experiences, than to step into the sunlight, face the harsh light of bad choices and move onto newer experiences.

But in the past few months, I have systematically chosen to release myself of guilt that I had been carrying since years. When I look back I see that I chose unwisely, trusted too easily and hurt very readily. I always assumed in my ability to awaken the inherent good in people and ended up hurting. But those experiences remain just that.

I have grown to realize that by choosing to stay stuck with those experiences, I still gave those memories immense power over me. I still gave people who hurt me immense power over me by continuing to remember the emotions, the memories still evoked in my mind and body. Guilt is a great way to stay stuck and I knew it was time to shake myself free of it and move on. Life was too full of possibilities to stay stuck.

And so, slowly and steadily I have been clearing myself of all the past garbage I still carry inside. First by forgiving others ( dear me its tough!) and then by forgiving myself ( even more tougher) for making those choices. By doing this not only do I feel much much much lighter inside but I am also opening myself up to newer and better experiences.

There is little joy to be found in the familiarity of pain while the fear of newness can usher in great happiness. I chose to forgive myself and I hope you do the same too.

Happy New Possibilities

On By Anita SatyajitIn learning, Life, Musings, Personal1 Comment

Why is that on one day at the end of a calender year, we are compelled to recap on the previous 365 days? Why is it that we are consumed with a desire to judge, evaluate and decide what should have been and what should have not the year ago?

The promise of newness probably feels freshest on account of change. And change never seems as inevitable seeing an old calender go and new one appear. The promise of change brings with it hope. Hope that is lighter than winter’s snowflakes; hope that brings with it the fragrance of possibilities that might blossom.

And that is why the New Year is such a wake-up slap for many. It brings with it a reminder to set right that which ails you, and what your have fabulously ignored for long. And so in keeping with current much exaggerated traditions, here is some things I hope for in the year ahead.

– More courage to follow my heart.
– To shut my ears to doubts, others’ words and listen more faithfully to my intuition.
– To be creative in whatever I do and not just fixate upon writing.
– To follow the spiritual path with more dedication and determination.
– To stay healthy

I have much to be grateful for this past year, It changed my life in ways that I can’t even explain. Thank you Universe and GD and keep it all coming…

Staying on course

On By Anita SatyajitIn learning, Life, Musings, spiritualityLeave a comment

Whenever I step away from my truth, Illness draws me back inside. It makes me re-connect with the fragility of my body and take a good hard look at what I consider real life. Being sick is my body’s not-so-sly way of banging my head against a wall and telling me to relook the direction I am headed in. It took me long to wise up to my body’s way of keeping me on my spiritual path. But I now have begun to see that every time I have fallen sick are the times when I have been extremely connected to the mind, living from a space of ego and have been disconnected with my true spiritual nature. And my body does not like that. Thank you for not keeping up pretenses.

Most of us live these unreal lives chasing our thoughts round and round believing everything that happens in our lives is as meaningful and lasting as the moment we are in. Blink and your moment has passed, life has passed, lifetime has passed and your soul is presented another new chance to grow. Growth is what takes me back to the source. Shows me the reality of life, which is impermanence.

It is so easy to get lured back into egos, choices, unfulfilled desires and blame games that I keep falling into the trap again and again. I am glad I fell ill and out of the trap. It is time to learn and practice and stay on the journey.  Spirituality is a long-long-long road, tiring, confusing and extremely satisfying. I just need to put on my blinkers and stay on course.