Visarjan

It’s the 3rd day of Ganesh Chaturthi..and Mumbai is on high Alert due to torrential rains since morning, many places in the city are flooding..nothing new...and there is no connection between the two, ..that I know of .

And I think of the irony of people, letting god idols into water...

Anyway I digress.

Amidst torrential Rains..and Ganpati Visarjan.. The cacophony of celebration Drum and the visarjan procession is something, as a Mumbaikar I have resigned myself to..But even then ..when its less than 20 feet away from you and one is under the weather (pun intended), its still TOO much.

My ears were ringing, the frown on my forehead deepening, and a headache about to creep up… I was tired, annoyed and…judgmental about ‘such’ things’

Nevertheless.

I realized that even when I went up to my house and shut the doors and windows I could not drown the noise.

So.. deep breath.

As a recent me-2-me practice, I decided to walk towards, what was causing me this ‘suffering’. The procession with 9-10 large drums and some large brass plates colliding, much like my inner world, being enthusiastically beaten with FULL force by drenched, strong dancing men and women, was oblivious to all that was going on inside me.

Back to my practice.. which is by the way called ..”Larger than....”

The practice is not just walking towards but also being larger than, that which is causing the suffering, so I moved my focus from just the ears and head to ..receive the ‘noise’ with my full body. I went and stood a couple of feet away, almost becoming part of the procession and closed my eyes and let my whole being receive this....noise!!

Something magical happened..

My whole body and cells started reverberating ….to the rhythm..and I started to smile involuntarily. It felt like ALL my cells joined the procession and celebration for those 7-10 minutes. I could FEEL the beats inside my body. I had become the drum, the drum beats, and the drummers…

..and as I closed my eyes..surrendering to the drums..no longer resisting… in the MIDDLE of the procession, dancing people, loud singing of “ganpati bappa moray” …

Everything just fell into a spontaneous silence ..

I could have been underwater… everything was so still !!!

I had immersed and merged.

And, just as spontaneously..after what, in my mind was a long time ..

I opened my eyes and felt content, peaceful, cleansed … and grateful !!...

And.. I bowed to Ganapati and took the prasad and the gift of this amazing experience and left..

The Suffering transformed to Celebration.

The Experience may not always be in your control..but the space in which the experience is experienced.. can be.

Visarjan:

The english meaning of this word : Immersion and Letting Go !!! -

Just What I am learning to do.

Weakness

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I am not naturally strong or quick,

and I am certainly not the smartest person around

I had to learn those thing to survive.

I have many many weaknesses

I get emotional over stupid things

I don't sleep enough

I don't stick to any routine

I procrastinate and waste time

I start but not follow through

I have difficulty asking for help, but expecting it- nonetheless

I loose temper and patience

I play the victim and feel sorry for myself

I take the low road when convenient

I say mean things that I don't mean

I hold back strong emotions till they burst out

I care too much about meaningless things and not

Enough about the important things

I take pride in being Alice in wonderland
and sometimes refuse to grow up

I put people on pedestal and not qualities

I get disappointed in myself quickly

My ego is too big and my mind too small

Often trapped inside itself

But – I don't accept that I am what I am 
and that I am doomed to be all this only

No.

I cannot accept this version of me.

I’m fighting – I am always fighting.

I struggle and I am scrapping

and kicking and clawing at those weaknesses

To change them.

To change me

To stop them

To not let them get the better of me
To be free

Some days I win. 
But some days I lose the battle

And lie bruised and bleeding and empty and lost

But, after the dust and blood settles

And through the tears that have washed the blood away

I can see in the distant horizon -  
the hazy image of the person I can be someday

A person certainly better than me today
Pulled by a purpose 

And that gives me new hope and energy to get back up

Own my shit and take responsibility, 
love myself a little more - again.

And I move forward.

With my fists clenched and tight,

head a little lower in humility -not shame

and heart bruised open and tender

Towards the battle – toward the struggles – Towards freedom

From the shackles of my mind

To take small steps with big determination

To strive to be just a little bit better today

Than I was yesterday

I try to grow –

That is all I know.

Emergency for Emergence ?

The recent Pulwana terror attack in India on February 14th 2019 is bone chilling, and somehow feels more real as we see pictures and videos everywhere. 

I don't watch TV or read news, now with good reason too. And so I was suddenly jolted into the tangible reality and magnitude of this incident when I received a whats-app message from my mother-in-law, of a prayer chain for the soldiers who died trying to keep others safe.

I sat upright and began to think how much different this was then, say maybe be 15 years ago. When an incident like that was more a statistic than story of a brother or a son, that we knew, and more importantly mourned for. Even as I did forward the mail, a behavior I don't subscribe to generally –

I wondered at the power of the collective intent to move people they did not even know and lead a movement without even knowing it.
Do we always need an emergency for emergence?
Sometimes the cost of the emergency, just because have we have gotten used to it, may be too high. A heart attack, a death, a broken relationship, an injured foot, a shutdown, a tsunami .. . We don't have to win at a losing game.
Are we going to be a bystander in our own life and the world we live in or are we going to take responsibility and participate?

 How powerful an impulse was that. This also reminded me of the Nirbhaya case few years ago when the whole Nation became united. 

A collective experience of connection with a fellow human being. Pain somehow made the borders porous.

My heart at once felt a deep sense of loss for the lives that went off in a jiff and a sense of profound hope for us as people for allowing the emergence of humanity to express itself. Doesn't matter the medium. 

However - I am left with an uneasy question,

 On further contemplation on the fractal of this phenomena…. I realised this was also true in my personal life. Few years ago I was 20 kgs overweigh, stuck in a situation in my life for close to 10 years unable to move on, even though I wanted to. I then met with an accident on my birthday which then of course made me move. Newtons law of motion certainly held true: Any object will continue to stay in its state of inertia until acted upon by an external force.

Reminder to self - I am not an object.  

As a leadership consultant with organisations, I have also seen this emergency for emergence phenomena play out. The ‘unhealthy’ practices and systems will continue to exists and carry on without realising its higher potential, and the excuse being we are good - Untill the impulse to move from good to great takes over naturally or forcibly. Sometimes it looks like drastic steps, shutting down some bleeding business, make the organization leaner by letting people go -all of this certainly painful, but in the longer view serving the growth impulse.

My question, again – Do we need emergency for emergence?? - If not what else is the other option?

In evolutionary context, as thinking beings, we have the ability to self reflect and connect abstract dots in order to be an intelligent participant in the process consciously. If we don't do this, we are still anyways unconsciously choosing – but this way we cannot be the “designers” we merely become the ‘designed”. Nouns not verbs.

We are currently in times where exponential good and bad are happening simultaneously. Technology is very quickly accelerating the process – in the way information and communication gets organised and broadcast. And the freedom to do so. 

And so, we have two choices

Allow the unconscious pull of the pain, suffering and attachment to the past to continue and keep waiting for emergency after emergency to wake us up and move forward....

Or,

Consciously mindfully and intelligently learn from the past patterns and predict and redesign a more elegant beautiful future.  

Because if we don't do it, the default will happen anyways.

Its time we start the movement. - The choice needs clarity.

The future of our generations may well depend on that answer.

Rhea

Utopia - Fairy tales gone too far?

Is our failing attempt at Uptopia giving rise to Dystopia??

In the book, good to great Jim Collins talked about the Stockdale Paradox ,named after admiral Jim Stockdale, who was a United States military officer held captive for eight years during the Vietnam War.

Stockdale was tortured by his captors for many days, and never had much reason to believe he would survive the prison camp and someday get to see his wife again. And yet, as Stockdale told Collins, he never lost faith during his ordeal:

What  - is the paradox ?

While Jim Stockdale had faith, he noticed that it was always the most optimistic of his prison mates who failed to make it out of there alive.

They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And they died of a broken heart.”

Is Thomas more’s Utopia, the idea of a non existent imaginary place that is Perfect  - creating a shadow that is not allowing us to see what is ?. And maybe its time we think about how can an imperfect people create a perfect place?? Or even define it? 
Have fairy tales gone too far?

The belief that humans are perfectible and can and must strive towards perfection, inevitably leading to the continuation of the idea of utopia?.

So what?

Utopia and therefore utopians are especially vulnerable in a social theory, based on a perfect world view of integrity and collective ownership and discipline which collides with our natural-born desire for autonomy and choice. This gets further complex with the addition of natural differences in capability, motivations and interests within any group of people leading to growing intolerance, disillusionment and eventually disruption- quite synchronistically  creating the exact opposite -  dystopia.

This phenomena is quite evident in our everyday world and may even be the underlying reason for some of the mindless violence in the name of a ‘Perfect’ relationship, society, religion, world, way of life??

Now what?

Going back to Jim Stockdale, the fact that he lived to tell the tale was credited to the fact that while he had faith he was also in acknowledgement of the brutal realities of his surroundings. He did not give in to utopia.  We may often mistake faith for the utopian view.  While faith is the belief in the unknown – The idea of utopia is a belief in an absolute future which is perfect.  His behaviour can be explained with another neologism – protopia – an incremental progress in steps toward improvement, not perfection. A state in which today is better that yesterday. 

Maybe this , protopia is the answer or at least one of the answers to acceptance and peace??