Three New Developments in Life

Over the last couple of months, three new events have happened in life which is bringing a kind of solace and make me happy in a way indescribable. They are essentially from within the realms of my heart and represent the real me. They are providing a new direction, holding promises and opening other doors. They are like a whiff of fresh air and they talk to me about freedom.

Most of the time I wonder why I became a CA. I am not a good CA at all. I am most unfit and have no clue about what is going on in the profession. I was not meant for this. I think I was meant to fly like a free bird, roam the earth, rest wherever it pleases me and eat whatever is available. The only problem that’s holding me back is fear. I am scared. Scared about how long and how far I can take it. The same fear is on the other side as well, that is, I am also scared about how long I can carry on as an uninterested CA.

Coming back to the positive side, let me talk about the three new wonderful things.

Classical Music

That’s right, classical music. Truly I know nothing about music. Lyrics, raag, taal, mukhda, antara and such other exotic terms mean nothing to me. Even with Indian film music, I only care for the rhythm and melody. So like a fool I just wanted to try something new and went to Deshpande Sangeet Samaroh organized by SCZCC and got hooked. It was a three days affair and I ended up attending all the days. HA!

The interesting thing which I learnt was in the form of a divine realization that it is the ‘sound’ per se which people are crazy for. The bottom line is that the sound created by the vocalist and the sound created by the musical instrument is all that matters. The sound before the sound, the sound after the sound, the pitch and decibel of the sound, the dimensions (length, breadth and width) of the sound, the impact and the effect of the sounds, the strength of the throat carrying the sound, the smoothness, richness and the power of the sound. Everything is the sound. I was reminded of a famous line form some text, “At the beginning of the world there was the sound”.

There are some rules on which classical music is based and within these rules there is possibility of great variety. People love variety. I am still very certain that I know nothing about music, but whatever it is, it sounds great.

Motor cycle travel

I took my brothers Honda Unicorn and set off for Ramtek. Before the start I was doubtful about myself whether I could do it. I packed my clothes into a shoulder bag, put on a helmet and took off. Initially after the start I rode slowly. After reaching the destination there was tremendous pain in my bums and at the tip of the back bone. Walking bow-legged I somehow parked the bike and reached the reception counter. It was a mixed feeling of pain and joy and I didn’t know what to say or do. I simply decided to have lunch.

During this trip I walked a lot. On the first day it was three hours and on the second day it was five hours, at a stretch. I walked through mountains, forests, steps leading to temple up and down, steep and easy, early morning, afternoon and evening. There was such happiness, what do I say. I never imagined that I could do it, I had never imagined that I would do it and in the end I did it. I expressed a lot of gratefulness to all and everything which aided me in this achievement.

Teaching

I had given it up seven or eight years ago because it was taking a lot of my time and returns were meager. I wanted to earn more. In this intermittent time period I realized that I had screwed up my life. So I went up to the Head of the Dept of Business Management one fine day and expressed my desire to teach. He obliged and offered me the subject of my choice. I selected ‘Business Ethics’ for the second year students.

This is the subject which has caused me to lose interest in my profession, this is the subject which I do not follow in my practice but I choose this subject to preach to the students. I want to teach them to be brave and stand upright in life.

In the very first period the students declared that it was not possible to be ethical in life, forget about business. I realize that it is an uphill task for me but I love this challenge.

My Basic Nature

Sant Kabir das had said, “Bura Jo Dekhan Main Chalaa, Bura Na Miliya Koye, Jo Dil Khojo Aapna, Mujhsa Bura Na Hoye”.

Egoistic

I have some prominent traces of ‘me and mine’ attitude. It shows up at unexpected moments. To state a few examples; when people don’t like me or don’t trust me, I treat them with indifference. When I know that I don’t measure up to the situation, I avoid. I hold an image of myself as a person, who is truthful and fair, hard working and disciplined, highly qualified professional, reputed and respectable. This is only an image in my mind and not necessarily accurate and neither do I live up to it.

Afraid

I am afraid of; losing, being humiliated, being rejected, being not loved and respected, being not trusted, becoming a laughing stock, my father being angry with me, intruders in the dark and finally falling down the stairs.

Short tempered

I have a very short fuse when it comes to self preservation. Whenever a situation arises or could possibly arise in the future due to the movement of current events, and the situation could result in me losing face and reputation, then my reaction is only of anger. Being unable to manage the course of events, I get angry with everybody around. This happens often in my office.

With the dear and close ones, when they do something as a genuine expression of their love but which becomes slightly intruding into my personal zone, or when they do not listen to my advice due to their own compelling circumstances, I can’t contain my anger. I feel not respected or trusted.

Unable to face anger and criticism

I have not been able to accept criticism positively and constructively. The courage to face it, to learn to pick up the good points and ignore the rest was never taught to me and never occurred to me naturally. To me criticism equals rejection and rejection equals failure. This is also the reason why I fail so often.

Low self esteem

I find myself an unfit in the scheme of social life because I am not good at the profession of my choice, I was never good at school, I am not good with friends circle, I was not a good husband, I was not a good son and I suspect neither am I a good brother. Somehow all these seem alien to me as if I was never from here or maybe away from human society for too long.

Want to be loved

My grandmother loved me and that is all that I know about being loved. It is foolish and selfish but I wish to receive the same love from others. I want to be loved and accepted as I am, for whatever I am, with all my short comings. Sounds like a dream.

Poor at managing relationship

Being far too self centered I have never worked at maintaining relationships. It has always been that others have worked to maintain their relationship with me. Frankly I enjoy being center of attraction/attention and have also been accused of being an exhibitionist (showing off how weird I am), but this has never motivated me to understand myself from others view point or to understand what others want/expect from me.

Poor at expressions

Being an introvert makes expression of feelings very difficult. The need of expressing what is in the mind does not arise. The thought itself is alien. Seeing others using language to bring out whatever is inside their heart makes me jealous and inadequate. The only way I can counter this is by writing.

Lascivious

At the offset let me state that I have the highest respect for women, humans and all life forms.

This is the most immoral part of me. I have an excessive interest in sex by my own standards. I say that because I know everybody else has similar levels of interest and many people have more. Fantasizing and masturbating was major time pass for me. Observing adult female’s lecherously, commenting on their physique and participating in lewd talks with friends was common.

However I never had the inclination to translate my thoughts into action, it never occurred to me to do so and I really don’t know why. In fact I have been a miserable failure in this field to the detriment of one very special.

Always a good wisher

My intentions are always good and beyond doubt. This is the only thing about me which makes me happy that by nature I am not able to have bad thoughts for anybody. Even if people hurt me or harm me, knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or unintentionally, I do not wish bad for them. Either I am neutral or I wish them well. The down side is that I normally don’t retaliate when people have wrong intentions and I do rather suffer silently. I have observed that even if I argue and discuss and gossip about people both negatively and positively, but my heart is always clean.

No craving for anything else - fine if there, fine if not

Very often I find myself indifferent towards events, people and desires. Though I am not a monk, sometimes my behaviour is akin to one. I have questioned myself many a times and especially when close person had equated my indifference to non-caring and disinterest. Infact whenever I have tried to change my nature and become a normal person with normal desires, I have succeeded in generating unhappiness, stress, tension and chaos in my life.

Not sharp but mediocre intelligent

I am not dumb but I know for sure that I am not smart at all. I am very mediocre very average. I face closed doors in my mind when seeking quick solutions, especially when I am working on mathematics. My mind refuses to think, break down the information and analyse. I keep reading the facts again and again. Very rarely in real life situation I come up with quick brilliant solutions and those moments I treasure.

Slow understanding

My grasping powers are very weak and it takes me a long time, stretching from one hour to one day, to understand facts presented in front of me. My mind does not register anything at that specific moment and only much later when the event replays itself, that I begin to understand.

Mind blank most of the time as if in search

I am a loner and like to be by myself. Many times I sit blank playing some imaginary movies in my mind. Most of the times such moments are expression less, sometimes with a smile on my face or with a sad face but doing absolutely nothing. It is as if I am in some trance or searching for some invisible thing in the air or trying to resolve a major international problem. People use their quite times to think over complicated problems but I simply waste it away.

Wandering and wavering mind

My mind is restless, it keeps moving from one topic to another very fast, staying for a few seconds on each topic before moving on. It goes from the past into the future and back. It moves from happy events to unhappy events and back. It does not stay in the present moment however hard I try.

Unable to hold ideas / subjects to its depths

Due to its restless nature, I find it extremely difficult to concentrate on a single subject and go into its depths. The moment I try doing this my mind flies. Sometimes reading magazines become difficult and especially when it is a professional journal. This inability to hold on to a topic to its depths is frustrating. At this age in my profession I should have become an expert on some subject but that has not happened. Another decade spent in a similar manner would make me redundant and old scrape.

Lazy disposition

I like just sitting and doing nothing. When I have to do some physical activity I like to do it slowly barring of course my morning walk. This is not deliberate but a very natural occurrence. The worry in my mind is about getting tired. Maybe the reality is that my mind and physical reflexes are slow like in some neurological disorders.

Money flows whenever needed by itself

I never carry cash on me and have never needed to. But cash is always present when some outflow situation presents itself. The coming of the outflow situation declares itself and cash comes into my wallet or bank and simply flows out again. I become just a conduit. My inference is that I may never have money stacked away but I will never be short of money.

Minimum expenses on self

I hate spending money on myself. My basic needs are very less and there are many people whose basic needs are not met. Today if I am able to earn something it is because life and society have allowed me to and I owe it back. I like to spend the money that I earn on issues that are important to me like children education (poor schools) and environment (green cover). I don’t seek recognition but only a personal satisfaction that money has been well spent.

Spiritual

Life is eternal energy. Names, forms and events are temporary. To be happy is the goal of life and self realisation is possible for every individual in their current life time. The key is control of the mind. Maybe this is the only reason why I am born a human.

Love trees and nature

It is like a part of my physical presence. Whenever trees vanish a part of me vanishes. Someone said that trees are like arms of mother earth raised in prayer to the powers above. All my childhood has been spent on a kaju tree. A huge old tree reminds me of a wise sage who holds vast knowledge of many mysteries of nature inside it. Sometimes I also feel that I must have lived on trees for many centuries and life times.

Conclusion

There are a number of contradictions in my character and that fact is also true that I am a bunch of contradictions.

About Fear

When I looked up Wikipedia for the meaning of the word fear, this is what I found;

a) Fear is an emotional response to threats and danger.

b) It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of pain. Psychologists have suggested that fear is one of a small set of basic or innate emotions which also includes emotions such as joy, sadness, and anger.

c) Fear always relates to future events, such as worsening of a situation, or continuation of a situation that is unacceptable.

These lines define what fear is but to explain the emotion we need to go deeper. Fear rules our lives and this is the bare truth for each one of us. Given the uncertainties of life with much of it being beyond our control, we all fear losing everything that we have created and call our own, we fear pain and we fear humiliation. I would like to emphasize the fact that fear rules our life or rather we allow ourselves to be ruled and controlled by fear. Most of the actions and decisions that we undertake are primarily based on the emotion of fear. The mere task of eating can have fear at its root. Too much of eating represents depression and apprehension of unknown problems. Too little eating represents health related problems. Likewise laughing, crying, studying, raising of voice during arguments, etc can all be because of fear. Fear is a negative emotion and therefore every action or decision which is based on fear has a 50:50 chance of failure. This also means that there is an equal probability for success. That is why in this world it is said that neither success nor failure is permanent. Philosophically we also add that up’s and down’s are all a part of life.

A parallel can be drawn from the financial sector where risk management is an art as well as a science and well deliberated decisions are made on the risk – profit trade off. The market uncertainties have to be managed and profits optimised / losses minimised. Every step is taken with a prayer, every success celebrated, every failure mourned.

The fundamental reason for this emotion of fear being so primal in our lives is because of the ‘me and mine’ belief. I am so-and-so, I have a reputation and identity, I have a name and designation. These valuables are mine, this work is my doing, I am the protector and money / care provider for such and such people. We feel we have created and earned all this and therefore it has to be protected and maintained for all times to come. If protection was so simple then fear of its destruction would not have existed. The problem crops up because the concepts of ‘me and mine’ are creations of the mind and impermanent. When our life itself is impermanent, there is hardly anything to say about the creations of the mind which is after all only a component of life. But we refuse to believe this. Our sense organs can see, hear and touch the outcome of ‘me and mine’ efforts. It keeps telling the mind that this is real. As a result we believe in our sense organs. Inspite of knowing that we won’t live forever and that there is no permanency in all this, we continue believing. This is Maya, the illusion of permanence. Therefore, it follows that we continue fearing.

This phenomenon is evident in humans as well as animals and birds. They also have a sense of ‘me and mine’. Animals are extremely territorial and do not appreciate competition for food. Animals take extreme care of their body because food depends on their ability to hunt. Animals take care of their young ones in very loving ways.

Fear gives rise to anger in some people and causes sadness in others. It is quite natural also. When you realise that your wants may not be fulfilled, that which you want to protect may be destroyed, angry and / or sadness is consequential. Sometimes anger or sadness is visible very prominently on even minor provocations. You have people who are short tempered or depressed. Such people often do not realise the cause behind their emotional outbursts. Being clueless they blame everything and everybody else instead of their own self. People who fear more have a very deep realisation of the fact of impermanence. In their hearts of hearts they know and that is why they fear. Such people are spiritually inclined.

Lack of fear gives rise to joy. This is not in the sense of a hardened criminal who does not fear the law. Even such a criminal would fear the rise of another more vicious criminal as a competitor. Lack of fear comes from the true understanding of the law of impermanence. This is evident in the lives of saints. They don’t crave for anything and don’t have an aversion for anything. They are truly happy with life because they have nothing to lose. They fear nothing and have only joy to spread around. That is the main reason why people flock around saints.

Some social scientists consider that fear is a result of learning that is we learn to fear. I do not agree. Fear is a basic human nature linked to survival. Any threat to survival is feared.

Fear should also be distinguished from the related emotional state of anxiety, which typically occurs without any external threat. Fear is related to the specific behaviors of escape and avoidance, whereas anxiety is the result of threats which are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable.

EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE LOVED

The only person we all love is our own self. This is primary to each one of us and the corollary to this is that we also want everybody else to love us. Everything else follows like a conditional appendage. Love for parents, love for teacher, love for children, love for spouse, love for friends, love for brother and sister and love for anything else under the sun comes only after love for self. I say conditional because they exist when and only when the first two conditions are in existence and working in our life.
We love our own self as we are. Fair or dark skinned, tall or short, intelligent or dumb, good looking or ugly, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, agnostic or atheist, belonging to the east or west, nothing matters. The relationship between mind and body is very strong and inter-dependent. The mind exists and operates on an artificial and temporary frame and only has the body as created by nature for all its work. Similarly the body needs and depends on the mind for all its activities. Therefore we love our own self as we are. To us, there can be nothing so precious, so beautiful, and so prized, as our own self, inspite of all its faults, defects and shortcomings. And what is it that we don’t do to express our love for own self? At the visible level people apply make-up, style their hair, dress well - trendy or traditional, exercise and go to the gym and even go to the extent of plastic surgery, implants and liposuction. At a deeper level we groom ourselves – manners, etiquettes, language, soft skills and vocational skills. We do all this because we want to be better than the rest. We love ourselves so much that believe we can. Earnings and living standards are only the measuring scales. They serve the purpose of demonstrating our degree of self love. This same love can turn into hate when the mind and body do not match each other’s expectations. This usually happens when we do not accept our limitations of abilities or are unable to control some wayward or unwarranted tendencies. Unable to handle the humiliation and defeat, we blame everything outside. We stop loving ourselves and want to put an end to our life, leading to depression and suicidal urges.
We also want everybody to love us as we are. You have to love me and only then will I love you. The whole concept of “romance” and “falling in love” can be put down to these thoughts; (a) I love you because I know that you love me, (b) I think I love you because I think you love me or will love me, (c) I will or could love you but first you have to demonstrate that you love me. If one exhibits an extraordinary interest or a compassionate inquisition, it can make the other person feel loved. It then opens the doors for a reciprocal expression. And then love blossoms. Being loved by another augments our love for own self and boosts our self esteem. It strengthens our feeling that we are worthy of being loved by our own self as well as by others. And what don’t we do to get others to love us? We pretend to meet the other person’s expectations and to be someone else if required. At the other end we also labour very hard to go beyond and actually deliver more than the other person’s expectations. Therefore by hook or by crook we strive for the other persons love. When such love dries up or does not fructify, complex reactions can come forth. Some people become angry; some go into a shell, some become depressed while some become anti-social. Michael Jackson, a gifted man, who worked very hard to please people beyond their expectations, died feeling that people did not love him. Marriages fail when partners do not feel loved. Parents and children fall apart, friends separate and brothers and sisters do not talk to each other when love is not felt and received.