Reflections

Reflections....

I woke up feeling as though I hadn't slept enough, even though I had better sleep than yesterday. I do find it weird! I never seem to get enough sleep.

 

What's even more weird to me is how I've changed as a person... I feel like am back in those days when I couldn't do what I wanted and had to sacrifice my wants for those around...I thought I got past that phase of my life when I held my ground and decided to take my life in my hands. And now, am back where I started... That's what family does to you... That's always been my experience....

 

What I do not understand is why families cannot serve a supportive function rather than a conditional one, which demands one to ignore, adjust, and give up what one wants coz others around you have wants more important ... Isn't that important for them? What about what's important for me? Why can't people see what I see and want? Why am I always at the receiving end?

 

Now, don't get me wrong, I see what's happening here, I'm playing the "why me?" and "poor me!" game, but what the hell... Why can't I? I'm just as human as the person next door and I have feelings, needs, wants...I have the need for more complex needs as my basic ones have been met! Do the math or logical works folks! Don't you get it?

 

I sometimes wonder if psychiatric illness runs in my family? Or may I came into the wrong world! My life always seems to go around in phases... The childhood one of happy and bliss over unknown upheaval which crops up every now and then in a year...the teens which were a roller coaster ride of arguments and struggle for independence, early adulthood of demanding my independence and then the opportunity to spread my wings...and now while I have the love of my life, am stuck back in those teen-early adulthood phase of trying to find my self hidden in the life I live.... Where am I now? I don't even recognise myself these days!

 

I feel caged like a bird with injured wings.. All I can do is flap my wings, but I can't fly and I so hate that!

Journey into a past life

I do not hold any particular religious belief; however, I do believe in the theory of karma which talks about the cause and effect law. It focuses on the Newtonian principle that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Every time we think or do something, we create a cause, which in time will bear its corresponding effects.

This cyclical cause and effect brings forth the concepts of birth and reincarnation. The dictionary defines karma as "the effects of a person's actions that determine their fate in this life and the next incarnation."

The belief in reincarnation is an ancient phenomenon must spoken about and referred to in most eastern religions and traditions. In the last few decades, even the westerners have developed a belief in the concept of rebirth. According to such beliefs, a new personality is developed in each life in the physical world, but parts of the self remain constant throughout successive lives.

The idea of incarnation or reincarnation always fascinated me, though I wasn't sure if rebirth really did happen. I had read a lot about reincarnation research and past life experiences and lives between lives, all of which spoke about people remembering a previous life they lived or successive rebirths leading to liberation and spiritual rebirth. While the evidences, gathered through narrations from people and other experiences, seemed to support reincarnation, my scientific mind, the mind which questions everything without a scientific basis most often refused to take things at face value. It is one thing believing what you hear but totally different when you experience it!

It was around this time, that I began pursuing a course in hypnotherapy to enhance my skills as a psychologist. As part of the advanced level course, we had a module on past life. Now, this is what I call the "meant to happen" laws of the universe. Guess I was meant to travel a journey I had always wondered about....

I volunteered to be the class demo subject, and that set pace for my transit to a time I could never have dreamed of, even in my dreams....

I sat on the green reclining chair and stretched my legs out as a leaned back and got into a relaxed and comfortable position. As I was guided into a state of hypnosis, a feeling of calm and peace set in. With the therapist guiding me, I saw myself quickly entering a new world.

I saw myself as this little girl from the Victorian era, in a living room (just as I had visualized in my dream book) and there was the grand piano (have always had an affinity for the grand piano... guess now I know why)... and even more surprising was that my grandfather in that life is my Papa in my current life... and I spend most of my time reading... I had lots of books... (I still love reading)... too many coincidences.. and that's not all... my Mom in that life is my Mom in this one too... amazing, isn't it?... Totally!!

Now, you could say, this is figment of my imagination... but it most certainly is not... as I couldn't possible have come up with lots of things which I said or felt during the session....

And so... now I do know that I had a previous life and I very well did experience one!.. wonder how many more I had...before this life!....

Wild Encounters in the Tiger Land in the summer of '99

Six o'clock in the evening. We spotted the first animals just as we drove in from the Reception Centre. That lightened our mood, after the long drive from Delhi. The reception area at Corbett's Dhangari gate has been well planned. There's a ticket counter and a yellow-washed toilet emblazoned with the words:

"Let no one say it, and say it to our shame
That all was beauty here before we came."

There's also the bust of that great Anglo-Indian hunter turned conservationist, James 'Jim' Edward Corbett after whom the over 500 sq. km national park has been named. There is also a museum and orientation center, neither of which are user friendly, but that doesn't really matter.

In contrast, the 23 km road through the forest to the visitor complex of Dhikala was a delight. As we drove, we could see clearly that dusk was settling into the jungle life. In the distance, we heard the faint cries of the birds and it was an herculean task trying to identify the birds. On a tree nearby, a monkey sat chattering... we stopped to capture the solitary monkey silhouetted against the beauty of the sun and it grabbed a nearby branch and stuffed it into its mouth in a fit of anger and that's what our camera captured -- nature disturbed by man's intrusion. A quarter of the way down, we stopped once again.... Through a gap, framed by foliage, we got a clear view of the Ramganga river. Its flow spread across a wide expanse of sandy valley and there, in the dead center, was a herd of elephants with calves. Some were grazing off the trees, others were at the water's edge, drinking and bathing. The great black beasts moved and shifted, coming together slowly, separating at ponderous leisure, lumbering up the forested slope, wading across the river and drifting into the jungle.

I felt something stir within and a feeling of peace and calm settled upon me. This was a trip I had been looking forward to from I moment I set foot in Delhi that summer. Nothing I had read or heard prepared me for this feeling of oneness with nature. It was truly an exhilarating experience.

We were a group of six, my uncle, aunt, two cousins, my mom and me. By the time we settled into our "lodging cottages" as they are called there, with their just sufficient necessities, it was past eight in the night and after a quick dinner, we went to bed early for we were exhausted and besides we had a long day ahead of us. (In the morning we were told that, the previous summer, an elephant had removed the air cooler from the room we had slept in)... Thankfully, we weren't informed about that before we went to sleep!!

In the morning, we woke up to the music of the birds. We had booked for an elephant ride and so we set out, all ready to experience the wild in the wildest sense. No sooner had we started than we spotted a herd of elephants crossing the river and we were a bit wary as we were on an elephant and could be easily attacked. That first sighting, so close to us, set the tone for the rest of the ride.

Across a shallow part of the river, a family of wild pigs foraged, irascible black spots against a tumble of white boulders. Further on, in a small pool in the forest glade, a pair of barking deer blinked at us timorously. The elephant we were riding was a young one, Abdullah, and had an equally young mahout. They had us swaying down the embankment to the river and ford it on our plodding steed. Taking us up steep climbs and down equally steep depths, we were practically on edge. Soon we were deep in the forest....

A sense of eerie calm settled on us. In the silence of the forest, the only sound was the rustling of the fallen leaves as the elephant trodded upon them. The creepy feeling soon vanished as we spotted a herd of about twelve chitals grazing, but the grass was so high that we spotted them only when they raised their heads, blades of herbage dangling from their mouth, long enough just to give us a glance. Ten minutes away, we spotted five sambar which stared haughtily down their nose before darting away. At the end of our elephant ride, we were so thrilled by our experience, that we could barely wait for our next ride - the open gypsy drive, which proved to be equally adventurous.

The open gypsy drive was in fact very dangerous, as we were going into the forest to see the animals at a closer distance. We were warned to be alert and not to step out of the vehicle. At one spot, we turned off the main road to see a basking crocodile and their long-snouted cousins, the gharials. We spotted a wide range of birds, and it was fascinating watching them.

Later we drove for a while, seeing nothing, just watching and waiting in anticipation. We didn't have to wait long. Suddenly, we were startled by the whistle-shriek cry of a bird, breaking the silence that had become a part of us, which, the guide who accompanied us told us, was the lapwing. He then told us to watch out and wait. He turned off the gypsy and we waited... with butterflies in our stomach. We didn't know what was going to happen, and neither did we realized that what we were going to experience was way out of the ordinary. Soon we heard the cry of the barking deer and once again silence followed..... In a while, we heard the growl of the tiger. It sounded so close that we barely managed to keep ourselves from screaming. And then, in the patch of forest we had been looking at with strained eyes, we saw a movement. Two gloomy eyes stared at us and we froze. As we sat in a state of immobility, we saw the stripes moving and slowly coming out of the bushes. We were numb with fear, but somehow managed to mumble to the guide to start the vehicle; but he didn't budge an inch. Then, as we watched the tiger with our hearts in our mouth, it gracefully moved and seated itself a few feet away from us. For a moment, we lost our fear and were mesmerized by the tiger. At that moment, the guide started the gypsy and we drove off. The first to recover was my uncle and in the split of a second, he managed to take a shot of the big cat.

It was truly an unforgettable experience. I feel a chill creeping up my bones when I just think of it, even now. Later we were told that the lapwings were the guardians of the jungle and when they sounded their alert, the herbivores drifted away.

We savored the two days spent at Corbett. During our drives and rides around the park, we spotted chitals, barking deers, wild pigs, hog deers, jackals, langurs, monitor lizards, leopard pug marks and wild dogs. But the most exhilarating of them all, was the close encounter with the tiger.

As Robert Lynd said in his essay "The Unexpected", the special charm of nature is in her gift of the unexpected. I agree with Lynd when he says so. We never expected to see a tiger though we hoped we would see one. But the unexpected encounter with the tiger was breath taking!

I left the park with a deep sense of regret. It was a unique experience in the wild and the virtues of stillness and serenity in the Corbett National Park are still a part of me. I knew, even then, as we drove out of the park, that I would be back again to experience the wild all over again.

Intention - your path to a better life

In today's world of success guru marketing and self empowerment books, "Intend and you will receive" has become more like a dictum adapted from "ask and you shall receive." Surprisingly, both are not very different. Its a simple technique of intending what you want for yourself and achieving it.

This brings us to the questions - what is Intention? The dictionary meaning says "an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions." In other words, it is to have a purpose or plan in mind and to direct the mind, to aim.

Without intention, we tend to stray without meaning or direction. But with it, all the forces of the universe can align to make even the impossible, possible.

We have the power to make things work for ourselves. All we need to do is "intend". We co-create our life and intention is the source of all power. Make it clear to yourself and others, just what you plan to do. Set an intention to redefine what it means to be serious about ones dreams.

All of us are here with a purpose, and not by accident, each of us were intended to be here. But in this constant eternal process of life, we are not devoid of power or at the whim of what is...things just don't happen to us... rather, we have a choice. We choose what we want.. that is the most beautiful part of life.. we get to choose.

Dr. Wayne Dyer, in his book the "Power of Intention" says that we choose how we experience our lives by aligning our creative powers with the Seven Faces of Intention - Creativity, Kindness, Love, Beauty, Expansion, Abundance and Receptivity or by positioning with the opposite, our fear-based ego. He believes that we can live a more peaceful and happy life by choosing to go with the flow of intention rather than against it. But either way, it is our choice and we will not be denied the outcome of our decision.

So if you don't like your life the way it is right now, recognize and take responsibility for your part in creating it. Quit complaining and choose your thoughts based on what you want in life. The universal energy that forms life works for everyone and can bring you what you think about and ask for.

Creating Intentions:

• Evaluate your current situation.
• Decide what you want.
• Intend

Intentions are formed in your conscious mind; however, it’s your subconscious that receives these commands and creates the necessary opportunities in your life. In other words, your conscious mind deciding on this new opportunity creates a new reality.

• Use only positive words
• Include a time frame
• Remove negations
• Be precise
• Be specific
  

So go for it... you have the power to live a life that you want and desire.

Back... after a long gap

I had completely forgotten about my blogs, until a little while back. Thanks to Sunitha... I remembered that I had created one long back... 2006... anyways... now am back... :)

Whats in a name?

Most often people have nicknames for their friends, and sweetheart names for their spouses/partners/lovers.

What most people don't realise is that, a nickname, if used frequently will impact a person's behavior and traits to a very significant degree.

Call a woman "Babe" often enough and she will increase her assertiveness, being extremely candid and to-the-point in her communication. (Romance will definitely be out the door in short order!)

Use "Sweetheart" instead of a given name and expect your partner to turn into a quiet homebody with eyes only for you.

As for "Honey", anyone you call honey will have an intense need for security and stability above all else. Oh, and on the road to acquiring that security, a Honey will be anything but sweet, since a critical attitude is definitely along for the ride!

The next time your sweetie calls you "Dear", you should wonder, is it just that he/she is trying to avoid a social blunder but avoiding mixing up names... there is a huge chance!!

The next time you open your mouth to call your spouse "Honey," think twice. And the next time someone calls you "Honey," use your brains!!

HOPE

Hope is just a narrow strip

If you cling on, you may get lucky

It's like a candle flame....

A gust of wind blows and there goes the flame.

Hope too, like the flame

Hardly need provocation.

So hold on to it,

While you can

And pray it lasts.

Meanwhile all you can do is.......

Hope that HOPE will be there with you.