Initial Feelings of Transition from Korea to India!

It takes a great deal of courage for you to be receptive to yourself while being ready for the exploration, which is a common underlying property of all existing souls. It desires to be explored in all aspects- professional, emotional and spiritual. Every mind has a life of its own. At any point of time, it does carry a positive or negative charge of thoughts, or it may not have any charge at all. You just traverse with them and reach a point when you are accompanied by another set of thoughts and mind moves on. These thoughts drive our mind to be on an incessant path towards fulfillment in all possible dimensions, leads to conducive space for self assessment and introspection and this fulfillment is not characterized merely by the Booleans of success and failure, but by the process that helped to refine our thought process. It unveils certain traits of our personality and helps to learn ourselves better and later remains with us in the form of experiences. And is it really necessary to weigh everything with a balance of success and failure and to impart imbalances to our mind, which looks for learning, to get better with experiences and most importantly seeks for the spiritual connection with higher self!

I moved to Korea few years back on a journey of exploration, which imparted a beautiful profound portrayal of thoughts and emotions. I feel the grace that it happened. After a very enriching stint in Korea, I am back to India, the place I was born, the place I really belong to! It feels great to be back. It was a feeling of being in heaven (if one calls it the place of most happiness), as long as I was in home with my parents. Just few days back, I came to Bangalore, started working and what I felt in these first few days came to me as a surprise disguised in the form of shock.

It’s even more surprising to state that I am really not in the best of mood after coming to Bangalore. Of course, there is immense positivity about coming back to India even as there is anguish over the deteriorated condition of almost everything. Then you tend to ask how much we care. How much we care about what is happening around. Few years back, Bangalore used to be called a paradise in terms of weather and climate conditions, but unfortunately my experience has not been very positive till date. It’s good and better than many of other states, but no longer as good as it used to be. I feel as if we have put ourselves for an incessant dual with Nature. It creates everything for us to have a healthy and enriching life, but we do almost everything possible to make our living environment and atmosphere worse and don’t really bother much to help Mother Nature in the process of nourishment of world. Then we face natural calamities as angered natural consequences and then we cry over what transpires. And the bigger fact is that we don’t learn from those our mistakes and soon we get back to our usual nature of being against Nature. Over the time we human beings have matured into such hopelessly shameless creatures that we won’t stop until it’s all over! So even if 2012 doesn’t bring the doom’s day, we are doing enough to let it come soon!

There is always loathing whenever such feelings crowd in. If we had devoted our energies to relationships rather than absolute consumerism, we’d have all been much happier and contended. Whenever we listen to the music of 70’s, most of us love it, instantly connect with it, so there is something in it, something in us in common that we tend to like it so much. We love the simplicity. We love natural aspects fused with innocence and civility in innovation. We are originally emotional beings. But slowly Serenity is lost in our relationships. There is so much noise that the voice of love is lost somewhere. We are losing out on the connection with a world within us. We don’t often want to face our consciousness which questions us repeatedly that you were not born like this, you were much better, what have you done to yourself! We have lost the dare to be honest with ourselves. In fact, the problem with human psychology is that long term threats don’t affect us much. We have this ingrained tendency to find immediate gratification, no matter if in that process, we might be digging a definite doom for ourselves. Yesterday was Mother’s day and the Mother who needs care the most is our Mother Nature. She is really suffering a lot. May God bless us with intelligence to at least inculcate few habits in our daily lives, which can help Nature to be able to nourish us for long!

Moving back to India: A constructive end and A fresher beginning

Next week I am moving back to India. There is immense pleasure about going back even as I do feel subtle uneasiness about separation from this place which surely would remain an enriching chapter of my life for numerous reasons. Nature extends its benevolence beyond limits and even when I was here in Korea far away from my own country, it took care of me and I feel the gratitude for what I learnt here, the love and affection I got from the people I met here. In such moments, I completely turn inward, within my dense introversion. This is not something I deliberately choose to do, but I feel so fragile psychologically that I perhaps live with this fear that something would definitely go wrong for everything seems to have been taken over by heart! And I know it would remain so till I leave. So effectively I don’t happen to do anything much during these days and get carried along with this emotional experience. It’s very instinctual. It just happens. Subtle weakness about the fact that soon I would be far away from this place, which was so conducive in its own way for my growth as a person and definitely as a professional, has shifted me back and I am going through the flashback of my two and a half years in Korea. I behold. I am confined within this. 

Being alone gives a space to introspect ourselves and it can be an amazing learning experience of self discovery if we set our mind to it. It becomes an integral part of our scheme of evolution, but as a normal human being would be, I used to be sad at times. As we all know, there is nothing wrong with it. It’s possible once in a while, but again you can’t feel excused for this if you keep feeling that for a long time and there is one aspect to it which becomes important as we grow. We have to be responsible even for our thoughts if they can start affecting things adversely. We can’t lose the hold on what such situation has to offer even if it is extended beyond a limit. There exists an appropriate response for us to take, more because how much we can assimilate, how much we are capable to grasp the learning’s is mainly defined by our degree of awareness and as it expands, instead of adopting the ways of passivity, we begin to react in a constructive way. And in fact, whenever we tend to categorize something as “sadness”, it is most likely the outcome of unnecessary abstraction in our own thoughts or disconnect with our inner self. This revelation unearthed the layers of spiritual beauty, which says that when the possible horizons are pushed and inability to learn more about what transpires within the spheres of discernible world of thoughts knocks the door of your mind, which started feeling what it never felt before, it’s time to alter the set points of your personality, augment the ability to grasp learning’s of life and that’s where the power of spirituality and meditation soothes us and shows us a way to follow.

On the other hand, I met some really amazing people here, amazing in the way they live their lives, the way they set forth examples for others to follow. I really learnt a lot. Since there are no Indians around the place I stay, I used to be traversing alone during weekdays and mostly during weekends, I used to meet these friends. So there was this very intriguing transition that I used to experience, as if I used to gather immense positivity from them and then use it constructively over the weekdays, sinking in the learning’s galore that aloneness offer, being a wonderful teacher through self contemplation and introspection. And as I am ready to go back now, so many beautiful feelings crown in on my mind and I wish to thank everyone who was the reason for so many beautiful moments. 

But you just feel running out of words. You feel astonished about the fact where your vocabulary goes in such moments, you switch from English to Hindi, Hindi to English, but the best you can do is to splutter! That’s what happened when some of my close friends and families recently organized a get-together before my departure. I don’t remember really what I spoke. The fact that they are gathered just for me to wish me luck for my future completely overwhelmed me and it took some good time to come back in rather normal state to comprehend what transpired. I was very touched. May God bless them all with all the happiness and with power and patience to go through all inevitabilities of life!

Keeping in mind my decision of going back, I think we all should try to be specific and clear about what we want, based on how we learn the intricacies of life and understand life as the journey of self discovery. By being specific, we can’t mean being rigid. So specificity in desire is important but not with this thought that if it doesn’t happen, life would be hell because if we do so, we are trying to constrain Nature and even suspecting the infinite intelligence that it works with. We must free our desire to let it acquire its actual content and even the package it would come in. Thus specificity in desire serves two purposes: it gives our desire a framework to manifest into and secondly, it shows that at least we are doing our job fine. There is a lot in our hand for having the power to choose and for owning a thinking mind. It’s nice to specify desire based on what we have learnt about ourselves and then let Nature decide what is good for us. We should be happy about that fact that end result would come from somewhere, someone, characterized by the highest intelligence. It eases up our work and in fact, we would completely mess up our life if we are allowed to decide everything whatever happens in our lives. So we should be grateful to God who blessed each one of us with a destiny that is not limited to our limited intelligence and it keeps fascination of journey alive. 

Personal growth in the field of consciousness should extend towards our family, our friends, our surroundings to impart an effect with views, with our demeanor having a consciously pragmatic approach fused with simplicity, that helps to play all your roles in life with more passion, with ecstasy of giving and expand in the service of people who were not so fortunate enough, who struggle for even the basic necessities of life, who remain devoid of comforts and luxuries that our parents could give us. It’s a responsibility and such awareness forms a vision to lead a meaningful life and being with this quest of keep living a meaningful life, I hopefully add more meaning to it.

I feel the grace. I am grateful to the force which orchestrated and made this happen. I am going back to India and this inception more than specificity in desire, is driven by the infinite intelligence of cosmos, marked by destiny. God endowed everyone with it and life moves on, for next objectives.

An Insight of Extended Aloneness

Sometimes I notice something different within me and even hours of contemplation doesn’t end up anywhere! What ignites this quest of finding answers! Which part of my emotional being is willing to contemplate new horizons! There are always activities that get transformed into thoughts and turn into the vision of life. And aloneness for sure is one beauty in disguise that allows different aspects of our being to go deeper into the journey of self discovery. When the process is on its way, there is no more fascinating phenomenon taking place within the vicinities of personal psychological world full of emotions and beliefs.

Giving ourselves time for self introspection and self assessment is one good thing that we can do for us. It not only makes us audacious enough to question ourselves, but prepares us to learn what we could do better, what can be done better, where we lack, what kind of learning’s our character is eagerly asking for. In fact, we owe a lot to this aloneness because the best of the learning’s we ever had, were the outcome of this space when we tend introspect our actions and responses and dare to be honest with ourselves. And it’s quite a revelation to comprehend that once we set out on the path of self exploration, life unveils the ultimate growth process to make us a more elaborated individual who is gradually gaining a wider space of thoughts, nurturing a relaxed approach to understand the intricacies of life and turning into a better human being. Moreover, to be able to even manage all those seemingly small things related to setting up home is surely an addition to overall growth for it makes us feel responsible for every single thing happening to us as it forms daily regime and the habits inculcated in daily life form the basic elements of overall character and well being.
But what if it seems to be prolonged beyond a certain limit? Am I no longer able to grasp the teachings such lonesome environment in the form of solitude exposes us to? Is there some radical change needed in the whole ambience? The mistake we are vulnerable to in this situation is that we adopt the ways of passivity. Probably that’s an ingrained tendency with human behavior and instead of closely experiencing those, we often opt to get away from them and seek for some immediate gratification, but being with it and letting our consciousness realize the essence of it can unveil a new paradigm of altering old conditioning and belief if they are supposed to be. It’s opening up of a new dimension of understanding which defies all pre-existing notions and even gives rise to undesired emotional responses. So it surely asks for some careful assessment.
There are few immediate and obvious responses like getting married, going back to India etc. In fact, these are two beautiful possibilities, which have certainly got the strength to change psyche, but since they are time and fate-dependent too, there is definitely something else as well where the answers of such anxiety lie. There could be few possibilities as far as I can understand. Nature doesn’t work that way. It can’t let dwell in despair for some time-dependent features to appear and merely waiting for the time to heal is of little help, so there exists an appropriate response for us to take. We have got the spiritual dimension in our being, which is nourished by healthy anxiety of the mind to look for the poetry that resides beyond the usual aspects of dull prose. Where does it lead to? I contemplate, I behold.

Third Dimension

Happiness of being a couple lies in maintaining personal autonomy, but at the same time allowing both dispositions to sink in on its own, what it takes a lifelong relationship to work. Actually being successful in this quest of happiness largely depends on how you have been able to maintain two individualities fruitfully alive as two dimensions, which share a space on the path of exploration and nourishing the Third Dimension that comes into existence when two people come together for this beautiful relationship to share. They tend to create a common being of thoughts and feelings, filling gaps and holes in each other’s psyche. They cultivate it, live it, nourish it and share the joy out of it! In other words, a third dimension is developing out of interaction between two different combinations of soul, heart and mind. Each has its own shortcomings, traits and history of fears and understandings. But once they get ready to nourish it with love and affection with the perspective of constructiveness, they start getting into the grove of taking it to another level of consciousness, an intrinsic component of which is playfulness. Playfulness comes mostly from the interaction between layers of innocence, residing in a corner of heart that feels nothing but love and affection within the field of spontaneity. They enjoy each other’s company. They just simply love it! And this is what engenders out of this togetherness in the form of emotional intimacy and essentially is one of the characteristics of Third Dimension. Definitely, it has inherited the properties from both persons engaged in the relationship, but its sheer existence lies in this third dimension, third dimension because this form of playfulness was absent when they were not together.

It’s fruition of pure sense of togetherness, entirely governed by the spiritual connect they find between them. At some point of time in the process of nurturing their relationship, a beautiful realization comes that suddenly you are finding your expressions falling short in portraying what you actually have in your heart. You find it ineffable to replicate what your heart is feeling. That’s when this enchanting beauty of spiritual connect colors your expressions and just a glimpse of those emotions would narrate the entire story. In fact, there exists no other way of growing into this level of awareness since two unknown souls can only interact through the domain of spirituality. The idea of soul mates is not about having someone over whom you can place the burden for your happiness, but it finds its definition and achieves another level when they tend to create space where they can do mistakes and still remain lovable and adorable to each other with same intensity as before. Acceptance is the key and it begins with a promise, “No matter what happens, you are mine! We may not be best of the teachers for each other; we surely can become the better students!” and that’s how the scheme of evolution gets unveiled. When one falls out of step with the other, other has to carry the relationship with love, faith and trust until the one catches up again. Let the question “It never happens. There is something really wrong. He needs my help” arise in your consciousness instead of “I didn’t expect this from him. How could he do this to me?” [used masculine gender just for the purpose of ease, but it obviously applies to both genders! :)] but again the fact is that relationships are meant to be mutual, i.e., one has to accept the mistake, come to terms with it and learn and other gives space and helps in this process.  Giving yourself opportunity and others enough space to do mistakes and thereby learn is what makes relationships going forever. So obviously, this becomes so very significant for a relationship which is sanctified to transcend beyond the limits of lifetime. Though there may exist uniquely profound connection between two souls, to develop it into full bloom, it takes a lot of work and commitment from both. It starts with acceptance and nurtures into the world of unbound ecstasy where everything has culminated to be on a path of constructiveness with a beautiful touch of love.

P.S: Dedicated to two of my most amazing friends, an adorable couple Vijeta and Virender. They are two very intelligent and refined individuals with beautifully decorated spiritual lives and as I got to know them closely, I certainly sensed a beautiful manifestation of Third dimension between them! I mean one can distinctly see three dimensional growth of their togetherness in the form of Vijeta, Virender and their beautiful relationship! :) Next month, they celebrate their second wedding anniversary and I wish for them all the happiness, God’s kindness and blessings and they always remain the source of inspiration for each other and keep growing in all aspects of life.

Completed Two Years In Korea

22nd October, 2008 was the day when I first stepped in South Korea, so last Friday marked the completion of my two valuable years in Korea, valuable in the sense that it unveiled numerous traits, potentials, expressions, vulnerabilities that probably even I was not acquainted with. Anyway, that’s how this process of discernment unfolds, isn’t it! As time passes by and the way we get to define a learning process for ourselves and in turn learn to expose ourselves professionally, emotionally, spiritually, it sets us on a journey of awareness and if we set our mind to those cognitive processes, we are aware of the transformations we are going through.
Being away from your family and all the close ones and off from the environment that inherently interacts with the dynamics lying beneath surface static, is not as easy as it sounds. It took a real good time to identify with distinctive vibes this new environment used to generate. At times, it really questioned my state of emotional health. Even now, at times I do experience subtle emotional fragility within myself, or to say, a little aberration in my thought process and perhaps lose unison between heart and mind. But instead of adopting the path of passivity, I prefer to come to terms with it, realize it in its real form and feel the gratitude of having such beautiful people in my life that I tend to love them even beyond my control. So despite being in different sorts of negativities, I find myself closer to blissful state of mind. It helped me to go deeper, farther in the journey within. And as I try to scan through the whole picture, the words and phrases like Appreciation for life’s richness, absence of ego, humility, being receptive to all possibilities, allowing love etc resonate my mind and I feel the sense of gratitude for everything I have, everything I got at various junctures of my life. And I get reminded of the very pure and sacred truth that my parents have been the source of all the positivity’s that embrace me in this moment, with this state of mind because they are the ones who had sowed the seeds for the way I opted to learn!
The decision of coming to Korea happened to be a blessing in disguise since it produced a conducive environment for my overall growth as a human being and hopefully it would help me in taking important decisions later in life. So in a way, something happens in life that marks the beginning of a phase, which has a bundle of experiences stored in and touches upon the elements of growth. Life keeps bringing about new designs even as the old designs start to crumble and giving attention to these transformations along with nourishing them with the process of introspection sets us out on a journey that is there to teach the intricacies of our existence and help us to improve as a human being. Moreover, we need to extend this awareness, that assists constructiveness and in fact, we are living in the age where emergence of a global mind is necessary. We need to keep in mind that wherever we are, we are talking humanity, serving humanity. We all need to grow into a consciousness that helps us to feel universality and a profound context of commonality among all of us. We all wish to see peace, harmony, happiness around and thinking about the well being of Mother Nature is something we can take care of to start with. It is not very difficult to comprehend that if we all devote our energies to relationships and common well being rather than consumerism, we would all wind up much happier. Simple to say, our personal lives have to manifest those values that we wish to see on a global scale and in fact, that is the only way to bring out that never ending happiness and pleasure we all crave for and make our Mother Earth a better place to live.

Happy Teacher's Day!

Through this blog, it’s turning out to be a ritual for me these days to express my gratitude for everyone who has been a source of happiness and inspiration in my life. And today happens to be one of those very special days, which is dedicated to the exceptional people who are an integral entity of the society, who work as a potent catalyst in the growth process of the generations, who come into our life at some important junctures and enlighten us with their noesis, perception and knowledge. It’s Teacher’s day, a day consecrated to celebrate the people who transformed our lives through education, showing a path towards reasoning and knowingness.

In fact, in Sanskrit, there is a better word, Guru and has a deep spiritual meaning. Gu denotes the ignorance that we all human beings are in. Ru represents the radiance of knowledge that dispels this ignorance. Eastern history is just filled with so many great stories of Guru and disciple. Though the definition of deep devotion for a teacher is no longer that pure and untainted as it used to be, but the essence of the beauty in the relationship between a student and a teacher can never die, at least as long as this universe exists when it gets established between a mother and a child even before the life starts to exist in the outside world.

Working as an engineering professional, if I go back to the point when it all started, I remember the day I joined DAIICT in the year 2002 with purely no expectations and was not even ready to embark on this journey. Engulfed in varied forms of negativity fused with loneliness and solitary, I was surely with a blank state of mind and my mind was not even trained to engender thoughts fitting the requirements of that tough time. I was just dropped in the environment which was not at all familiar to my consciousness. Completely detached from the outside world that I was seeing around me, there was a glimpse of hope in the form of a professor having a glittering, sterling career who joined the college in the same year after serving IIT Kanpur for number of years. In the very first semester, He taught us Basic Electronics Circuits, a course supposed to lay the foundation of learning and to ignite the interest in electronics if a student happens to like it as a subject. With his phenomenal style of explanation, he not only sowed the seeds of electronics in minds, but also nurtured them to the extent where students can see it fulfilling their ambitions in the form of a career.

As I understand it, He is a person who has a great ability to impart the essence of the knowledge he has, using his eloquence and method of speech to make students understand it in the right context and he gives a pragmatic approach that helps a lot to go closer to complete the understanding of the subject. Everything is a form of information when we are first exposed to it and it turns into knowledge only when it finds a golden touch of such people’s perception and approach.

With his scholarly disposition and serene demeanor, he was the favorite of everyone since the very beginning, and for me, he was much more special because in the first semester, his course was the only one that my little brain was able to find a connection with. He inspired to enjoy the journey while keeping focus intact on the goal. I was a mediocre among the kind of students I used to see around, but still his methods were always helpful for me and I was gradually finding something which I was getting intrigued about. His amazing command over language and speech makes him a blissful speaker and I always love listening to him and in fact, since those initial days of college when It was difficult for me to even understand English, he has been a big force of inspiration behind my increasing inclination towards the language in general and particularly with English being an international language for communication, it motivated me big time to improve myself in that direction as well. I remember when he once philosophically said, “There is space for everyone in this world. So don’t get disheartened by the failures and with increasing competitiveness, they are just bound to come. So there is no need to worry and just be conscious to see whether you are learning or not.” Along with all those virtues and qualities, he is greatly in love with his work and greatly understands his duty and responsibility to catalyze the process of forming not only good professionals but also noble citizens. I can’t forget those college days when he used to be excited about every lab, personally teaching TAs about what they are supposed to teach, carrying out a demo of upcoming lab experiment, preparing write-ups and well thought-out plan about what he wishes to teach and let students learn. He is indefatigable in every context and his passion to make students learn has not faded away even a bit. He has been really instrumental in my growth process as a professional as well as an individual. So was a great pleasure to meet him in person when I was in India last year and since my trip to India is just around the corner, I wish to meet him again, flip those pages of past and receive words of wisdom from his very own experiences.

Thank you Sir. You have been more than a teacher for numerous students like me. Thanks for all your teachings you bestowed upon us. May God bless you good health and eternal prosperity and I wish you keep inspiring everyone around, for the years to come! Happy Teacher’s day.

PS: Dedicated to my beloved Prof. R N Biswas, who taught 3 courses to our batch of 2002, and it’s simply ineffable to describe a magical personality like him.

Gaze at first expression!

From what you were to what you are now, Life has got changed a lot! Your thoughts, your opinions, your perception, your demeanor, but perhaps you remain the same in a corner of your heart where an innocent, naïve child resides! He still loves to be in that childlike ambience, loves those little pleasures, and enjoys those small things which may be of little significance, but titillating and delightful! He keeps the semblance of innocence alive, more like an obscure beauty, which loses its discernible expression in the inevitable process of gaining maturity. At the same time gets scared of number of things, one of those could be this lovely, but extremely strange thing called Love, love for someone with whom life starts sharing itself, while going through the inevitable journey of pleasures and sorrows! All of a sudden, you start feeling very different unique music and tunes altogether, a symphony of gracious emotions, probably as a prelude to something that you have never felt before! It’s complicated! First expression quite unfathomable!
In the process of growing up, we undergo various transformations in our body, heart and mind. We get the ability to become more aware of things around us; we are more exposed to subtle effects and mind gets conditioned depending on the way we opt to learn. Heart turns more heedful to emotional adherences and sooner or later, we find ourselves on the journey, in the quest of attaining happiness, which has a very important component called Emotional health. Actually a time comes when we feel the subtleness of these transformations more than how we ever felt before. There comes the necessity of having someone very close to you, the desire to have someone with whom you can talk about things, which you have started talking to yourself only. As it is said that for your well being, it’s important to have someone whom you can share your passions with!
You are in the process of discernment. It’s natural and you tend to perceive it more clearly if you are spending some time in introspection, allowing yourself to focus on cognitive processes this heart and mind going through! Above all, it’s so lovely and fascinating indeed! You set your mind to it and there you know what I am talking about, more if you have celebrated “Silver Jubilee” of your life, not long ago! ;-)