I wonder if I simply alternate between Intense seeking and a contentment phase where I just flow timelessly doing things by habit. Can all action be classified under seeking? It is said that even at attempt to be desireless is a very strong desire. Probably, there are just 2 states, desire/seeking and desirelessness/non-seeking. I think this state of desirelessness can be attained through a deep enough understanding of yourself. But however, it is sort of a plunge into the unknown. So all fears need to purged out one by one first.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Knife analogy, Drug addiction?: Its not a separate world
Everything in nature is like a knife. It can be used for constructive or destructive purposes. Its possible to get addicted to anything: sex, passion, chocolate, food, crushes, attachment to physical possessions, workaholism, television, movies, some behavioral patterns, virtually any experience. Its not just drugs that are addictive. People treat drugs like a separate world. In some ways its not. Infact it may give you deeper insight into your own motivations. What matters is the level of self development and understanding in the person consuming them? Anything pleasurable is addicting and there is no reason to stop pursuing it besides your beliefs on what is supposed to be done in life.
If you ingest a huge amount of cocaine that fires up all your reward centers in your brain and body, it becomes extremely clear that all that we do ultimately causes the release of dopamine and what we really want is that. All our mental activities, beliefs, actions etc. may just be performed in a illusory world to ultimately get something real which is the experience. So if you are directly getting the experience, why would you choose to go through all the hardship through conventional socially accepted means only to get 1/100th of the reward say?. That is probably the reason for instant addiction and its potential for it.
So the questions you could ask yourself are:
What are your current addictions? - they could even be mental states: like staying in fantasy or absorbed etc., reflection, physical activity etc.
What are your current beliefs? - Have you really examined them? Are there really valid? How deeply have you questioned them?
What are the things that you fear the most? Why? - Drill down to the real reason, like the fear of ghosts is the psychological fear of the unknown. Then ask, why are you scared of the unknown? What experiences in life are supporting these views? (don't settle for something like "All humans are inherently scared of the unknown", that is just a blanket unexamined belief).
Analyze all these aspects and contemplate on what kind of experiences the drug you wish to take might induce, read well on accounts of others experiences and then try to make accurate conjectures of their beliefs, states of mind and conditions.
A completely strange experience that you are unable to integrate will leave you extremely disoriented and confused till you manage to integrate it. You may either take the time to integrate it or decide to bury it if its too alien etc. So be aware of these aspects too.
If you ingest a huge amount of cocaine that fires up all your reward centers in your brain and body, it becomes extremely clear that all that we do ultimately causes the release of dopamine and what we really want is that. All our mental activities, beliefs, actions etc. may just be performed in a illusory world to ultimately get something real which is the experience. So if you are directly getting the experience, why would you choose to go through all the hardship through conventional socially accepted means only to get 1/100th of the reward say?. That is probably the reason for instant addiction and its potential for it.
So the questions you could ask yourself are:
What are your current addictions? - they could even be mental states: like staying in fantasy or absorbed etc., reflection, physical activity etc.
What are your current beliefs? - Have you really examined them? Are there really valid? How deeply have you questioned them?
What are the things that you fear the most? Why? - Drill down to the real reason, like the fear of ghosts is the psychological fear of the unknown. Then ask, why are you scared of the unknown? What experiences in life are supporting these views? (don't settle for something like "All humans are inherently scared of the unknown", that is just a blanket unexamined belief).
Analyze all these aspects and contemplate on what kind of experiences the drug you wish to take might induce, read well on accounts of others experiences and then try to make accurate conjectures of their beliefs, states of mind and conditions.
A completely strange experience that you are unable to integrate will leave you extremely disoriented and confused till you manage to integrate it. You may either take the time to integrate it or decide to bury it if its too alien etc. So be aware of these aspects too.
Sex Appeal characteristics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA6nBS-KHEc
Some of the basic stuff we observe:
Walk
Symmetry
Body Shape
Pheromones/Copulance (changes depending on cycles)
Voice (changes depending on cycles)
Anatomical adornments (or cars, gadgets, possessions today - influenced by advertising)
Patterns in choosing: Choosing similar ratings
Women might be wired to aim for the top of the relative status rung - social/financial
Testosterone and Estrogen - genetic base (can probably change due to other factors)
Being with another person is like a merging of your matrix world with another. Each matrix has its expectations and expectations create probability equations. Also, each matrix is dynamic and may change expectations from time to time.
Is there a way to move beyond all expectations or see through them completely?
Sometimes I think, that's the reason why we have created this fixed values and other societal systems to escape the complexity that is inherent, the fire of reality. No matter what we choose, its after all a decision and every decision is inherently a trade off.
If I were to choose a partner, I would look for traits in her that resonate with traits in myself which I find most desirable. Sometimes I wonder, is our inner knowledge already complete and when we see some trait that agrees with our own inner knowledge it immediately resonates and is felt like an intuition.
All these sexual attractiveness factors maybe true, but I think there is a force acting at literally a higher dimension which controls our entire experienced reality and all these sexual aspects may be a small subset of it. The force is "beliefs". This is the most profoundly interesting topic I have ever come across.
Some of the basic stuff we observe:
Walk
Symmetry
Body Shape
Pheromones/Copulance (changes depending on cycles)
Voice (changes depending on cycles)
Anatomical adornments (or cars, gadgets, possessions today - influenced by advertising)
Patterns in choosing: Choosing similar ratings
Women might be wired to aim for the top of the relative status rung - social/financial
Testosterone and Estrogen - genetic base (can probably change due to other factors)
Being with another person is like a merging of your matrix world with another. Each matrix has its expectations and expectations create probability equations. Also, each matrix is dynamic and may change expectations from time to time.
Is there a way to move beyond all expectations or see through them completely?
Sometimes I think, that's the reason why we have created this fixed values and other societal systems to escape the complexity that is inherent, the fire of reality. No matter what we choose, its after all a decision and every decision is inherently a trade off.
If I were to choose a partner, I would look for traits in her that resonate with traits in myself which I find most desirable. Sometimes I wonder, is our inner knowledge already complete and when we see some trait that agrees with our own inner knowledge it immediately resonates and is felt like an intuition.
All these sexual attractiveness factors maybe true, but I think there is a force acting at literally a higher dimension which controls our entire experienced reality and all these sexual aspects may be a small subset of it. The force is "beliefs". This is the most profoundly interesting topic I have ever come across.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Dissociation - Rebounds to old thinking patterns
In spite of all this reflection, analysis, synthesis etc, after watching 1000's of videos and tons of articles that talk about the absolute frontiers, I find that this state of satori or clear insight comes and goes. When I'm talking to someone who understands the flow and background of what I say, I can be extremely fluent and creative. Its like my brain performs at 9/10 creating complex metaphors, finding links between seemingly unrelated stuff and the stuff I say even surprises me. Even for all that I have written in this blog, sometimes when I go back and read some of my old articles, it almost seems like a pleasant surprise. Kind of like, if you go back and look at your engineering math books, you would be a surprised to find how you learned and applied complex formulas of derivatives and integration.
When I am in a passive silent mind state, I feel like I know nothing. Knowledge/Understanding seems like a state that requires effort and maintenance. My whole mind/self is at times completely blank and I would be shaken and might even hesitantly buy into any ordinary belief thrown at me confidently by an person who has never examined or even thought along these lines even once. For example: I was telling a friend that "Its not the brain before the doer, its the doer who determines how the brain grows and the brain networks are just a physical manifestation of the non-physical entity that's you. And the example of Einstein's brain and the myth of using brain network to prove intelligence instead of vice versa". Now this friend knew nothing about anything metaphysical and was a person with very rigid beliefs about everything. She was like "How can that be? There is stuff known as genes that controls who you are etc.". I abandoned the conversation but at that moment, I was in no position to prove my point or prove hers. When I am alone, I can think of a 2 page summary explaining how beliefs are everything but somehow at that time I was lost, I almost felt like believing her since she was so confidently throwing it at me. My open mindedness makes me so vulnerable.
I am still finding this dissociation a mystery. What does it really mean? It almost seems like I really dont know anything and this state of mind of insight itself is temporary The passive accepting state of mind is probably equally likely. Does it mean whatever I know isn't really true? and I just put effort in constructing complex intellectual manipulations to explain everything?
If I truly knew something, I should absolutely not be affected by another person's views on that subject. Maybe they are all just concepts and a concept is as real as any other concept. So there are 1000's of concept kinds in this world. They may dehumanize, put you to shame, induce guilt or make you feel connected with love, beauty, joy etc. In other words, they may empower or dis-empower you. All are equally real so you just need to choose.
Then the question of what is the truth becomes even more pressing since you have lost your basis for believing.
When I am in a passive silent mind state, I feel like I know nothing. Knowledge/Understanding seems like a state that requires effort and maintenance. My whole mind/self is at times completely blank and I would be shaken and might even hesitantly buy into any ordinary belief thrown at me confidently by an person who has never examined or even thought along these lines even once. For example: I was telling a friend that "Its not the brain before the doer, its the doer who determines how the brain grows and the brain networks are just a physical manifestation of the non-physical entity that's you. And the example of Einstein's brain and the myth of using brain network to prove intelligence instead of vice versa". Now this friend knew nothing about anything metaphysical and was a person with very rigid beliefs about everything. She was like "How can that be? There is stuff known as genes that controls who you are etc.". I abandoned the conversation but at that moment, I was in no position to prove my point or prove hers. When I am alone, I can think of a 2 page summary explaining how beliefs are everything but somehow at that time I was lost, I almost felt like believing her since she was so confidently throwing it at me. My open mindedness makes me so vulnerable.
I am still finding this dissociation a mystery. What does it really mean? It almost seems like I really dont know anything and this state of mind of insight itself is temporary The passive accepting state of mind is probably equally likely. Does it mean whatever I know isn't really true? and I just put effort in constructing complex intellectual manipulations to explain everything?
If I truly knew something, I should absolutely not be affected by another person's views on that subject. Maybe they are all just concepts and a concept is as real as any other concept. So there are 1000's of concept kinds in this world. They may dehumanize, put you to shame, induce guilt or make you feel connected with love, beauty, joy etc. In other words, they may empower or dis-empower you. All are equally real so you just need to choose.
Then the question of what is the truth becomes even more pressing since you have lost your basis for believing.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Excellent movies
LimitlessTree of life
Groundhog day
Life in a day (sort of predictable tho)
Lost in Translation
Being John Malcovich
Mr Nobody
Travelers and Magicians
Siddharta 1974
Seven years in Tibet
Documentaries:
Surviving progress
Global Brain
Zeitegist - Moving Forward
The Freedom Movie 2
Ambition to meaning - Wayne Dyer
Global Brain
Primacy of consciousness
Groundhog day
Life in a day (sort of predictable tho)
Lost in Translation
Being John Malcovich
Mr Nobody
Travelers and Magicians
Siddharta 1974
Seven years in Tibet
Documentaries:
Surviving progress
Global Brain
Zeitegist - Moving Forward
The Freedom Movie 2
Ambition to meaning - Wayne Dyer
Global Brain
Primacy of consciousness
Short articles
Society and Specialization:
Society rewards specialization. It would encourage you to do what you do better than anyone else. Even the people who are a jack of many traits are only respected when those traits fit into some role that society has created. So say, you play the piano, guitar, synth, flute, drums etc. for fun, it might be appreciated a bit because we appreciate exploration but you would not gain any real respect unless you play all or any one instrument extremely well.
Now the next question would be, what is "Extremely well". This is where it can get a bit mysterious. What I am interested in investigating is if this is defined by our conditioning or something beyond. What strikes me is that, some people would literally extol a classical piece, for another person it may simply be non stimulating. The next difference that might come up might be the person's level of concentration and ability to appreciate music, associations, musical background and exposure to variety etc. In other words, even our capacity to appreciate anything requires a certain neural wiring. There may also exist specific neural wiring for peak experiences. What creates this neural wiring?
How much is conditioned and unconditioned? Are our unconditioned selves different/hardware with which we are born? How much free will and control do we really have?
OK back to the topic, the reason I digressed was to show that the premise can be easily questioned and there is no definite answer. The attempt to answer it takes us back to the mystery which we have been pondering over for eons as human beings. The basic question is who defines "well"? Its an individual concept and a societal concept, the latter we treat as gospel whenever in doubt. And on further pondering its pretty clear, its no gospel. Different cultures too have a different idea about what's good, bad, beautiful, ugly etc. But another mysterious question, is there anything universal and what is that?
I would assume that there might be some patterns that are universally present. Like some kinds of music or beauty may invoke the same pleasurable feelings in all. I'm not sure if some core morals get included in that like not stealing, killing, lieing and sexual violation etc.
Now back to the topic, why does society reward specialization? I guess society is like a big machine with plenty of cogs and gears. A person is like a cog, if it does not have a defined shape, it cannot perform a defined function in which case it would not be so valuable to the machine. Society is the super structure, the largest machine and we are so involved in its roles, we may forget who we really are. We are an amorphous entity and we try to make ourselves into one of the cog shapes so that we can fit into the machine. The more responsibility you take, the less freedom you can have in terms of changing your form. Its like you allow yourself to become a giant wheel with many grooves (say an executive of a big company) then you cannot change your shape drastically without affecting many others. So the idea is you learn to take a rigid form and perform a function which is dispensable by nature. So one should never derive full identity from the function, else when its term is done, it would mean a huge re-identification and might trigger a crisis.
The word 'improve':
Sometimes I read about some really profound techniques and exercises and in the benefits section they would merely quote that it "improves" IQ. It seems to be such a trivial gain. A mere improvement? I would expect something like, it'll make you the smartest guy on earth. On thinking over it I also thought about the aspect of the hardware we are born with. A lion can never become a crow and vice versa no matter how hard they try. Would a similar story apply here? Do some people have an inherent disadvantage rendering it very difficult to survive in society? Every disabled person might have felt this. Like say a huge portion of our face gets burnt. Who would marry us? OR if we are extremely fat and obese, isn't that an inherent disadvantage for being attractive? But on probing deeper I can also see that nothing really lasts. Physical beauty, intelligence, personality everything and ultimately even life is taken away from us. What we fear the most is probably our personality being taken away because that is the only thing that survives until the last moment(except in cases of brain diseases). If everything is so temporary, why are we struggling by identification with these temporary phenomena.
Even my mood/experience everyday is subject to a lot of factors outside my conscious control. We are obsessed and keep chasing all these temporary experiences and then try to preserve them with our memory. I always wonder to myself. How would I live if I had no memory or if it were to get refreshed every night on sleeping? I would be born again every day. On the flip side, I would need to relearn everything: language, walking. Memory maintains the continuity of our experience. Another way of looking at it might be, stronger the memory, stronger the illusion of continuity of our experiences.
Ok lets assume we have to live in this cog system for 70yrs. Even here, its much more complex than it looks. Would the ultimate gift to fit in well here be intelligence? since it would allow you to take up multiple roles and find it easy to fit into the system anywhere. But I don't think the most intelligent necessarily have the most freedom. Beliefs can cripple the most intelligent like people in IIT committing suicide because of being unable to match their peers. I think the ultimate gift would really be freedom from all our beliefs OR the direct truth of everything.
Identity is like clothes:
Our identities are like clothes. They are a put on and we can change it. Our personality is simply our conditioning and patterns that we or environment has encouraged. In fact what we are really are seeds of potential. Depending upon the environment and our free will choices, different seeds get nourishment and grow and the others remain dormant waiting for the stimulus. So even our day to day identity is actually a dynamic where the unborn seeds grow whenever they get an opportunity.
How powerful we are in that regard, I have no clue. We may be incredibly powerful if you can reach a level to really see all your seeds - born and unborn. But there is something beyond this too. What is the essence of us? What is the innermost untainted pure entity that we really are once we strip ourselves of everything. People might think stripping is just clothes. But you can strip yourself to a much greater extent mainly all your beliefs/concepts/expectations/memories/thoughts and simply be alive and see things for what they really are.
US education as an experience:
I invested around 25 lakhs for my MS. Should I consider an investment not worth if I cannot work here after 2 years? The overall set of experiences I have had here are HUGE. If I think back and remember the time I left Accenture, it seems like such a long time ago. There have been tons of memories creating a rich tapestry which I am grateful for. My identity too in many ways has undergone giant shifts and I have been relieved from innumerable things which were a problem in India. There are things like marriage where 25 lakhs is spent in 2 days and the number of experiences in that time frame is maybe 1/10000th of this 2 yr US trip. This is a huge experience for me that has created rich memories and a huge expansion in my mindset and perspectives about things.
Even if I have to go back after 2 years I am totally fine and thankful for this immense gift.
The origin of corporate race is power game
I don't know in how many areas survival of the fittest applies today. Haven't we bent nature and its rules to make survival easy? But I guess the concept is much wider than that. The corporate race is a kind of artificial game we have created for ourselves just like all the other competitive sports around. There are rules which need to be mastered and the person has room to be creative, improvise and use strategies within the boundaries of these rules. So its only creativity/mastery within the bounds.
But I wonder to myself, what is creativity/mastery really? Do these terms require bounds and constraints in their very definition? Even in my personal experience I can see that this competitive nature is deeply embedded in me too. I may dissect this society and corporate world because I do not fit in well but ultimately I realize that even I secretly enjoy being competitive and gaining an upper hand. Maybe I win in some situation-games and I lose in others.
God related stuff is surrender to the magical dimension
Certain people have deep faith in God and feel that God is this super powerful, all knowing entity. Whatever their conception or image of what God is, it encourages them to surrender to a more powerful force and act more selflessly with more love. In other words they simply surrender to the unknown or magical dimension. However this also makes them vulnerable to delusions. Their faith in God can be greatly misused to make them believe in just about anything. Be it rituals, moral beliefs and ideas etc.
Ultimate point of Companies
More than the ultimate point of companies I would think about the question of what are we are a human race heading towards in aggregate. Since this recent phenomenon of the corporate world and jobs can be traced back to the industrial revolution, gold and barter system before that. The whole system has been evolving and has reached this juncture today. But what is the essence driving this system or behavioral pattern itself. What is the deepest benefit that we are trying to derive. Are we moving towards that overall? Are we treating everyone equally with respect and love? The idea is if society is ultimately a system or a fabricated creation we may as well tweak it to serve us the best rather than us being slaves to it.
Sacrificing goal for the means (changing perspectives)
I saw career as a means to getting free time for creativity, leisure and things I am truly passionate about. But it seems to be getting more and more demanding. The amount of commitment and effort required seems enormous to plug in my cog into one of the companies. Not only that, there are so many companies and so many roles, each with a different set of stressors and uncertainties. What shape should I choose? Right now I have chosen the 'User Experience' role and I plan on sticking with that. The role is hard and there is subjectivity. But it is something I believe in and I feel it would really make a difference. What I am ultimately aiming for is freedom of time and a job for something I really believe in. But the corporate world is much more than the job itself. There are so many constraints, competitive environment, time commitment and people factors that have to be accepted.
Only resistance is painful:
I have slowly started to see the real import of Buddha's quotes"All suffering comes from resistance". When I get an injection in the hospital, it is painful but I do not resist it and therefore it is not suffering. But if there is something I resist, even a simple thought that keeps recurring it results in a lot of suffering. All thoughts and experiences simply come and go. When my mood is terrible, everything I project on the past and future seems terrible. When its great, everything I project seems positive. So I have learnt that I cannot trust my projections. All I can do is simply experience the moment and let the uncomfortable feelings pass away and savor ths good ones.
Want to escape fixed thinking patterns imposed by surroundings
The thing that I am usually really wary of is me getting locked into rigid thinking patterns because of an unchanging situation around me. The first thing I try to do in such a case is extricate myself from the situation.
There are so many instances when I have faced this. It could be my college group, office group etc. I think the bottom-line here is I cannot stay with people who have very different beliefs compared to me for a long time. I can stay for a short while with a desire to explore and experience what they feel and think but after that I feel like moving out and looking for a place where I might really belong. Another factor is that, I change a lot esp. in recent times, my perspectives have been drastically widening. So at every stage there is a new place where I would really belong unless the people I am with share the "dynamic" itself which I presume might be very rare.
Society rewards specialization. It would encourage you to do what you do better than anyone else. Even the people who are a jack of many traits are only respected when those traits fit into some role that society has created. So say, you play the piano, guitar, synth, flute, drums etc. for fun, it might be appreciated a bit because we appreciate exploration but you would not gain any real respect unless you play all or any one instrument extremely well.
Now the next question would be, what is "Extremely well". This is where it can get a bit mysterious. What I am interested in investigating is if this is defined by our conditioning or something beyond. What strikes me is that, some people would literally extol a classical piece, for another person it may simply be non stimulating. The next difference that might come up might be the person's level of concentration and ability to appreciate music, associations, musical background and exposure to variety etc. In other words, even our capacity to appreciate anything requires a certain neural wiring. There may also exist specific neural wiring for peak experiences. What creates this neural wiring?
How much is conditioned and unconditioned? Are our unconditioned selves different/hardware with which we are born? How much free will and control do we really have?
OK back to the topic, the reason I digressed was to show that the premise can be easily questioned and there is no definite answer. The attempt to answer it takes us back to the mystery which we have been pondering over for eons as human beings. The basic question is who defines "well"? Its an individual concept and a societal concept, the latter we treat as gospel whenever in doubt. And on further pondering its pretty clear, its no gospel. Different cultures too have a different idea about what's good, bad, beautiful, ugly etc. But another mysterious question, is there anything universal and what is that?
I would assume that there might be some patterns that are universally present. Like some kinds of music or beauty may invoke the same pleasurable feelings in all. I'm not sure if some core morals get included in that like not stealing, killing, lieing and sexual violation etc.
Now back to the topic, why does society reward specialization? I guess society is like a big machine with plenty of cogs and gears. A person is like a cog, if it does not have a defined shape, it cannot perform a defined function in which case it would not be so valuable to the machine. Society is the super structure, the largest machine and we are so involved in its roles, we may forget who we really are. We are an amorphous entity and we try to make ourselves into one of the cog shapes so that we can fit into the machine. The more responsibility you take, the less freedom you can have in terms of changing your form. Its like you allow yourself to become a giant wheel with many grooves (say an executive of a big company) then you cannot change your shape drastically without affecting many others. So the idea is you learn to take a rigid form and perform a function which is dispensable by nature. So one should never derive full identity from the function, else when its term is done, it would mean a huge re-identification and might trigger a crisis.
The word 'improve':
Sometimes I read about some really profound techniques and exercises and in the benefits section they would merely quote that it "improves" IQ. It seems to be such a trivial gain. A mere improvement? I would expect something like, it'll make you the smartest guy on earth. On thinking over it I also thought about the aspect of the hardware we are born with. A lion can never become a crow and vice versa no matter how hard they try. Would a similar story apply here? Do some people have an inherent disadvantage rendering it very difficult to survive in society? Every disabled person might have felt this. Like say a huge portion of our face gets burnt. Who would marry us? OR if we are extremely fat and obese, isn't that an inherent disadvantage for being attractive? But on probing deeper I can also see that nothing really lasts. Physical beauty, intelligence, personality everything and ultimately even life is taken away from us. What we fear the most is probably our personality being taken away because that is the only thing that survives until the last moment(except in cases of brain diseases). If everything is so temporary, why are we struggling by identification with these temporary phenomena.
Even my mood/experience everyday is subject to a lot of factors outside my conscious control. We are obsessed and keep chasing all these temporary experiences and then try to preserve them with our memory. I always wonder to myself. How would I live if I had no memory or if it were to get refreshed every night on sleeping? I would be born again every day. On the flip side, I would need to relearn everything: language, walking. Memory maintains the continuity of our experience. Another way of looking at it might be, stronger the memory, stronger the illusion of continuity of our experiences.
Ok lets assume we have to live in this cog system for 70yrs. Even here, its much more complex than it looks. Would the ultimate gift to fit in well here be intelligence? since it would allow you to take up multiple roles and find it easy to fit into the system anywhere. But I don't think the most intelligent necessarily have the most freedom. Beliefs can cripple the most intelligent like people in IIT committing suicide because of being unable to match their peers. I think the ultimate gift would really be freedom from all our beliefs OR the direct truth of everything.
Identity is like clothes:
Our identities are like clothes. They are a put on and we can change it. Our personality is simply our conditioning and patterns that we or environment has encouraged. In fact what we are really are seeds of potential. Depending upon the environment and our free will choices, different seeds get nourishment and grow and the others remain dormant waiting for the stimulus. So even our day to day identity is actually a dynamic where the unborn seeds grow whenever they get an opportunity.
How powerful we are in that regard, I have no clue. We may be incredibly powerful if you can reach a level to really see all your seeds - born and unborn. But there is something beyond this too. What is the essence of us? What is the innermost untainted pure entity that we really are once we strip ourselves of everything. People might think stripping is just clothes. But you can strip yourself to a much greater extent mainly all your beliefs/concepts/expectations/memories/thoughts and simply be alive and see things for what they really are.
US education as an experience:
I invested around 25 lakhs for my MS. Should I consider an investment not worth if I cannot work here after 2 years? The overall set of experiences I have had here are HUGE. If I think back and remember the time I left Accenture, it seems like such a long time ago. There have been tons of memories creating a rich tapestry which I am grateful for. My identity too in many ways has undergone giant shifts and I have been relieved from innumerable things which were a problem in India. There are things like marriage where 25 lakhs is spent in 2 days and the number of experiences in that time frame is maybe 1/10000th of this 2 yr US trip. This is a huge experience for me that has created rich memories and a huge expansion in my mindset and perspectives about things.
Even if I have to go back after 2 years I am totally fine and thankful for this immense gift.
The origin of corporate race is power game
I don't know in how many areas survival of the fittest applies today. Haven't we bent nature and its rules to make survival easy? But I guess the concept is much wider than that. The corporate race is a kind of artificial game we have created for ourselves just like all the other competitive sports around. There are rules which need to be mastered and the person has room to be creative, improvise and use strategies within the boundaries of these rules. So its only creativity/mastery within the bounds.
But I wonder to myself, what is creativity/mastery really? Do these terms require bounds and constraints in their very definition? Even in my personal experience I can see that this competitive nature is deeply embedded in me too. I may dissect this society and corporate world because I do not fit in well but ultimately I realize that even I secretly enjoy being competitive and gaining an upper hand. Maybe I win in some situation-games and I lose in others.
God related stuff is surrender to the magical dimension
Certain people have deep faith in God and feel that God is this super powerful, all knowing entity. Whatever their conception or image of what God is, it encourages them to surrender to a more powerful force and act more selflessly with more love. In other words they simply surrender to the unknown or magical dimension. However this also makes them vulnerable to delusions. Their faith in God can be greatly misused to make them believe in just about anything. Be it rituals, moral beliefs and ideas etc.
Ultimate point of Companies
More than the ultimate point of companies I would think about the question of what are we are a human race heading towards in aggregate. Since this recent phenomenon of the corporate world and jobs can be traced back to the industrial revolution, gold and barter system before that. The whole system has been evolving and has reached this juncture today. But what is the essence driving this system or behavioral pattern itself. What is the deepest benefit that we are trying to derive. Are we moving towards that overall? Are we treating everyone equally with respect and love? The idea is if society is ultimately a system or a fabricated creation we may as well tweak it to serve us the best rather than us being slaves to it.
Sacrificing goal for the means (changing perspectives)
I saw career as a means to getting free time for creativity, leisure and things I am truly passionate about. But it seems to be getting more and more demanding. The amount of commitment and effort required seems enormous to plug in my cog into one of the companies. Not only that, there are so many companies and so many roles, each with a different set of stressors and uncertainties. What shape should I choose? Right now I have chosen the 'User Experience' role and I plan on sticking with that. The role is hard and there is subjectivity. But it is something I believe in and I feel it would really make a difference. What I am ultimately aiming for is freedom of time and a job for something I really believe in. But the corporate world is much more than the job itself. There are so many constraints, competitive environment, time commitment and people factors that have to be accepted.
Only resistance is painful:
I have slowly started to see the real import of Buddha's quotes"All suffering comes from resistance". When I get an injection in the hospital, it is painful but I do not resist it and therefore it is not suffering. But if there is something I resist, even a simple thought that keeps recurring it results in a lot of suffering. All thoughts and experiences simply come and go. When my mood is terrible, everything I project on the past and future seems terrible. When its great, everything I project seems positive. So I have learnt that I cannot trust my projections. All I can do is simply experience the moment and let the uncomfortable feelings pass away and savor ths good ones.
Want to escape fixed thinking patterns imposed by surroundings
The thing that I am usually really wary of is me getting locked into rigid thinking patterns because of an unchanging situation around me. The first thing I try to do in such a case is extricate myself from the situation.
There are so many instances when I have faced this. It could be my college group, office group etc. I think the bottom-line here is I cannot stay with people who have very different beliefs compared to me for a long time. I can stay for a short while with a desire to explore and experience what they feel and think but after that I feel like moving out and looking for a place where I might really belong. Another factor is that, I change a lot esp. in recent times, my perspectives have been drastically widening. So at every stage there is a new place where I would really belong unless the people I am with share the "dynamic" itself which I presume might be very rare.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Man from a small civilization(surviving on interdependence) - visiting a big city
How would it be if a man from a small civilization surviving on interdependence comes and works in a city. I would think he would be totally taken aback at the amount of choices available for every single thing. He would also notice that its really hard to form any real relationship since everyone is competitive and wants something in return. The dizzying value pyramid will impose itself on everything physical and non-physical(relationships etc.).
What would he choose? The close knit relationship network with unity and reduced choice OR this magnificent endless array of choice but much less unity?
What would he choose? The close knit relationship network with unity and reduced choice OR this magnificent endless array of choice but much less unity?
What does a relationship do to you
I have always wondered, what exactly happens when you are into a relationship. One of the first things that comes to mind is preoccupation. Your mind is heavily preoccupied with the concept of sharing everything (everything that you are comfortable sharing). So I guess in the neurology of it, probably the neurons containing the image of this person in your mind (what you think the person is, will be, your general beliefs about where it can go, how far/deep etc.) try to link with all the neurons containing your daily thoughts, beliefs and activities. Its kind of like a dam being opened and the water from the 2 sides mix into each other. Its literally the merging of your individual identity with another person. I guess the reason its so pleasurable is because of a fundamental longing for a oneness experience. This longing seems to be the deepest longing in the human race but it might manifest itself in a multitude of forms we see today such as friendship, sex, family, other relations etc. We define identity by the memory of experiences and concepts formed out of that. So identity seems to be maintained by different kinds of memories alone. By this logic, our whole identity is derived from our past. I would presume our capacity for future projections too is heavily influenced by our past too. Merging identity is making you larger than yourself. You have a brand new set of things to explore, kind of like a child seeing a new toy for the first time which may explain why there is this initial burst of curiosity and attraction which fades slowly as familiarity increases and converts itself to a general attachment. I guess the root of this attachment is because we are attached to our identity in the first place. So when we merge someone else with our definition of self, we get attached to this person as much as we were to ourselves.
But in the field of spirituality, Ive noticed that there is a completely different take on this matter. They debunk the notion that identity is real in the first place. Also, if identity is an illusory thing then there is no need to be attached to it in the first place. This is a completely radical line of thought since if you are not attached to your identity itself, then you would not get attached to anything for that matter including relationships, experiences etc. Once you remove all attachments, what remains? Regarding there is a unanimous agreement that what remains in unconditional love and compassion.
I sometimes feel we are greatly restricting ourselves by loving only a few special people in our lives. I guess the reason for this is attachment to our own identity and only the people who conform with that are loved by us. We may call them different names such as family, friends, romantic partners etc. but they are all just labels pointing towards a single experience.
But in the field of spirituality, Ive noticed that there is a completely different take on this matter. They debunk the notion that identity is real in the first place. Also, if identity is an illusory thing then there is no need to be attached to it in the first place. This is a completely radical line of thought since if you are not attached to your identity itself, then you would not get attached to anything for that matter including relationships, experiences etc. Once you remove all attachments, what remains? Regarding there is a unanimous agreement that what remains in unconditional love and compassion.
I sometimes feel we are greatly restricting ourselves by loving only a few special people in our lives. I guess the reason for this is attachment to our own identity and only the people who conform with that are loved by us. We may call them different names such as family, friends, romantic partners etc. but they are all just labels pointing towards a single experience.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The pain of choices
This is something that has made me queasy right from childhood. I need to make choices at every moment and this automatically closes the door for all the others. People handle this giant confusion by creating rigid moral values and beliefs about what they need/want etc. but unfortunately I have kind of seen through the illusion of beliefs and how they are actually created by us. To add to that, there is this pressure of time. There are different stages in life and certain things/experiences can only be enjoyed at a certain time:
For example: it was one was my greatest fascinations in childhood to visit the redwood forest, but when I actually visited it my wonderment level was much lower. A small GI Joe car would have thrilled me to no end in my childhood years but now even if I see it in amazon and get it delivered with practically no effort from my side, I would not be close to that excited.
So different things are valuable at different points of time and this value equation keeps changing too.
Its almost like today the equations to be maximized are:
x+y+z+w = 50
2x+3y+4z+6w = 60
.......and so on
AND tomorrow some of them change.
Even before I solve a quarter of it, the values change and they keep on changing everyday. Its like a never ending noise of random numbers on a screen on which I have to find the most meaningful patterns. Its like an every changing matrix or a fractal on which I am unable to grasp anything. The only thing which I can rely upon are my habits which I know are not even real and there is definitely a better way to optimize.
So the next question that comes to mind is that: Is there really something that' s better or worse? Is there really a good/bad/preference?
AND then we have this whole philosophy of advaita which states that everything vibrates with the same energy and all concepts are an illusion. This would mean that no matter what I choose, its more or less equivalent. This is what gives me the motivation to understand more and more of this philosophy since if I becoming choiceless and stop wanting anything, then anything that comes can be welcomed and I can be relieved from all the so called illusions of good/bad, better/worse.
Its kind of like, let me have everything or be happy with nothing. The in between lost, confused state is the most uncomfortable. There is this giant question of: do things really matter or do they not? and there is this massive tsunami of society and culture to emphatically answer "Yes" to the above question.
I could think of different models of reality to answer this, could it be that reality is like a hologram, meaning all experiences can be found doing anything depending on what I project onto the activity?
Is it a fractal where no matter what part of the picture I zoom into, I see the same pattern? (similar to a hologram containing infinite copies of itself).
If I translate this into our daily life it might mean that a successful business man pursuing money, fame, power; the doper who is after finding the best drugs again and again; the man who is always thinking of sex and looking for every opportunity to have it and the spiritual guy who is after something more meaningful or revelatory experiences are maybe one and the same since they all are seeking.
But it is still a mystery if any of of these is intrinsically better than the other. For example I could also argue that the spiritual seeker is moving towards lower suffering while the business man or the drug, sex addicts may not be doing so. They may be more dependent on situations and circumstances which keep changing as per the law of nature.
What is the true value of investments? Is that something real or is it part of our constructed illusion?
"There are so many temptations out there and so many ways to connect and form a deep relationship with someone almost instantly. One thing goes wrong, and it’s just too easy to jump on FB and rekindle an old flame"
"There is a great article called “I will be married to 5 different women in my lifetime” that talks about KNOWING that your partner will evolve and change and you must be willing to fall in love with each “different” woman that comes into your life
http://samdavidson.net/blog/2010/2/11/i-will-be-married-to-5-different-women-in-my-lifetime.html"
"I think choice overload’s really only a problem if you start out having no idea of what you really want, so you settle for the best of what you find. Which is never really that satisfying and leaves you always looking for something better."
There are two very enlightening TED talks on this topic:
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html
For example: it was one was my greatest fascinations in childhood to visit the redwood forest, but when I actually visited it my wonderment level was much lower. A small GI Joe car would have thrilled me to no end in my childhood years but now even if I see it in amazon and get it delivered with practically no effort from my side, I would not be close to that excited.
So different things are valuable at different points of time and this value equation keeps changing too.
Its almost like today the equations to be maximized are:
x+y+z+w = 50
2x+3y+4z+6w = 60
.......and so on
AND tomorrow some of them change.
Even before I solve a quarter of it, the values change and they keep on changing everyday. Its like a never ending noise of random numbers on a screen on which I have to find the most meaningful patterns. Its like an every changing matrix or a fractal on which I am unable to grasp anything. The only thing which I can rely upon are my habits which I know are not even real and there is definitely a better way to optimize.
So the next question that comes to mind is that: Is there really something that' s better or worse? Is there really a good/bad/preference?
AND then we have this whole philosophy of advaita which states that everything vibrates with the same energy and all concepts are an illusion. This would mean that no matter what I choose, its more or less equivalent. This is what gives me the motivation to understand more and more of this philosophy since if I becoming choiceless and stop wanting anything, then anything that comes can be welcomed and I can be relieved from all the so called illusions of good/bad, better/worse.
Its kind of like, let me have everything or be happy with nothing. The in between lost, confused state is the most uncomfortable. There is this giant question of: do things really matter or do they not? and there is this massive tsunami of society and culture to emphatically answer "Yes" to the above question.
I could think of different models of reality to answer this, could it be that reality is like a hologram, meaning all experiences can be found doing anything depending on what I project onto the activity?
Is it a fractal where no matter what part of the picture I zoom into, I see the same pattern? (similar to a hologram containing infinite copies of itself).
If I translate this into our daily life it might mean that a successful business man pursuing money, fame, power; the doper who is after finding the best drugs again and again; the man who is always thinking of sex and looking for every opportunity to have it and the spiritual guy who is after something more meaningful or revelatory experiences are maybe one and the same since they all are seeking.
But it is still a mystery if any of of these is intrinsically better than the other. For example I could also argue that the spiritual seeker is moving towards lower suffering while the business man or the drug, sex addicts may not be doing so. They may be more dependent on situations and circumstances which keep changing as per the law of nature.
What is the true value of investments? Is that something real or is it part of our constructed illusion?
"There are so many temptations out there and so many ways to connect and form a deep relationship with someone almost instantly. One thing goes wrong, and it’s just too easy to jump on FB and rekindle an old flame"
"There is a great article called “I will be married to 5 different women in my lifetime” that talks about KNOWING that your partner will evolve and change and you must be willing to fall in love with each “different” woman that comes into your life
http://samdavidson.net/blog/2010/2/11/i-will-be-married-to-5-different-women-in-my-lifetime.html"
"I think choice overload’s really only a problem if you start out having no idea of what you really want, so you settle for the best of what you find. Which is never really that satisfying and leaves you always looking for something better."
There are two very enlightening TED talks on this topic:
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Satisfaction from healing
Personal healing gives me immense satisfaction. I realized that this satisfaction/meaning would have not been there had I had a perfect childhood. Those unresolved issues and suppression is what is giving me this pleasure. My dad for example, is not that interested in such stuff, because he does not have any major issues to heal. My upbringing, conditioning, childhood has created this blueprint and identity character. Each of my bad/unresolved experiences provides a potential for pleasure, meaning, satisfaction and closure. I would presume my motivation for 80% of things is actually coming from there. In the yin-yang fabric of life the 2 sets of threads representing duality seem to be inextricably woven OR like 2 sides of a coin. My identity character, with all the suffering has left opportunities open at the other side of duality for pleasure, meaning and satisfaction. So they are inseparable just like light-dark, good-bad etc. One cannot exist without the other.
There are so many experiences in my life that validate this. It seems that all meaning is derived from some form of comparison.
When I bought the 'Korg Pa500', since I dint have my old keyboard for comparison, I must have lost almost 60-70% of the pleasure. In childhood my dream of owning this was magnitudes higher, and I would have been ready to get up even at 3am to play it for just 10mins. It has somehow diminished quite a lot from that intense state. However, the 40-50% of pleasure which I got from using my memory was quite a lot. Another friend visited me and he had unreasonable expectations from the keyboard, for e.g.: the grand piano should sound like a real grand, so he immediately remarked with condescension. That's what made me think, the keyboard was uniquely valuable to me because of my own experience blueprint with previous instruments and music in general.
I uniquely enjoy certain activities and I can clearly see how my blueprint of experiences creates this for me.
There are so many experiences in my life that validate this. It seems that all meaning is derived from some form of comparison.
When I bought the 'Korg Pa500', since I dint have my old keyboard for comparison, I must have lost almost 60-70% of the pleasure. In childhood my dream of owning this was magnitudes higher, and I would have been ready to get up even at 3am to play it for just 10mins. It has somehow diminished quite a lot from that intense state. However, the 40-50% of pleasure which I got from using my memory was quite a lot. Another friend visited me and he had unreasonable expectations from the keyboard, for e.g.: the grand piano should sound like a real grand, so he immediately remarked with condescension. That's what made me think, the keyboard was uniquely valuable to me because of my own experience blueprint with previous instruments and music in general.
I uniquely enjoy certain activities and I can clearly see how my blueprint of experiences creates this for me.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Projection map
Each island in this map represents different people in our lives in terms of the emotions and feelings we project towards them. The pink areas represent the good parts and the black areas represent the unpleasant projections. The larger central island represents a person with whom we have had a close relationship, so many more projections are stored with larger areas for good/bad projections stored. Depending on the mood of the 2 people, situation and context the brown circle shows what we might experience at a particular point of time. In this case its 50% good projections, 50% bad ones with a well known person. When the situation is favorable, all your projections might be in the pink area results in very pleasant emotions while its also equally likely that you may entirely move to a grey area where all the projections are very unpleasant. This could probably explain love/hate in relationships.
Now this diagram has been simplified to explain the basic concept. These projections may not be a static map, they probably continually change like a fractal and create similar patterns unless an external stimulus strongly influences its pattern, which in case might temporarily alter its behavior.
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