awareness...

so every yoga / meditation class i have attended, the one objective that the trainer has told us is to be more aware. I have always wondered what being more aware is...hearing that butterfly in the traffic, knowing that a speed breaker is coming.

i am the passive kinds, i like to be in a trance always, not spaced out mind you, but basically i love to be within my own thoughts. and the best example of this is when i am driving, i always have those sound blocking earphones in my ears, am mostly wearing dark glasses, and so manage to block the world out. and am mostly thinking of what i am thinking. i am mostly not paying attention to the road, but always have a sense of the traffic or where i have to go, but am never never paying attention to the road.

but then that is not awareness. or is it?

it took, of all people, to make me realize what that is.

awareness is knowing, quiet implicitly what is going on around you, and maybe even the reason behind it. To be knowing the not so obvious.

to know that you are in a sulky mood, and to know know why, maybe.

to know that the uncle listening to the group leader doesn't know the language.

and yes, to also spot that kite carrying a long piece of cable in its beak (i did yesterday).

awareness makes ur life more richer, more colorful, simply because you start seeing more and more things. and u start growing.

how to get there, well i am not there yet, but to get there, you first need to make space in ur own head, you need to lessen the noise (which can simply be done by making sense of the noise, i you can acknowledge all the thoughts coming in ur head, if you can become aware of them, they will simply vanish). and thats where yoga helps, a lot.

i'll blog again about meditation, but what i do and suggest everyone to simply do is to just sit at a spot with eyes closed for about 30 mins straight. not move, not speak, do not open ur eyes whatever happens, just sit quietly. and do that every day for a week at least. at the end of the week, u'll feel different, and mostly better.

anywyas...

Couple of explanations

Diff between trance and spaced out - well trance ur not completely blocking the outside, but sieving it really. u let in what you want to accept. Spaced out is temporarily being lost in thought, and not really being able to pay attention to what is going around you. Trance is more like the the 'away' status on an IM client, as soon as a message arrives or as soon as you make a movement, it changes to green. Spaced out is as simple as sleep.

How does wearing black glasses block the world out, the world can't see my eyes, so they can't make out what i am thinking, gives me a sense of privacy.

the blind side...

so am gonna keep this real short and crisp...

the title...is based on the movie, the movie called for a dedication, and so here it is.

well the movie is great, and Sandra Bullock was fabulous, she won an Oscar and totally deserved it. Its amazing when people give such unexpected performances.

anyways the blog is more about one thought, which was triggered by Bullocks comments in the acceptance speech. She said that she was lucky to have a mom who taught here all the right things, who let her make her own choices. And that was exactly the character she plays in the movie.

Well my question is, why don't you find more parents like them. Every parent wants to be the best parent in the world, every parent wants to do what is best of their kid, atleast till its their kid, and has not become a grown up well educated thankless son...but still, every parent influences their kids in negative ways. Every parent, some time or the other has shouted or beaten up their kid for no fault of the kids, out of their own frustrations et al. well why?

because to be a perfect parent, you need to have had a perfect parent for yourself, who provided a perfect life. because everytime some problems come in your life, it affects you, changes you, and you move slightly away from being that perfect parent..!

Sandra Bullock in the movie seemed to be happy in all ways, successful, she didn't have any problems of her own, good marriage, money, great kids, and so was able to take that additional responsibility, and be a good mom. but not everyone is.

not as short and crisp as i wanted it to be...

anyways.

from the art of living...!

...and added to by me, hopefully you'll be able to make out which is which!!! :-)

1. the state of being high is very very similar to the state u reach after meditation. First one requires less effort.

2. "the most used compartment in a man's brain is the 'nothing compartment" - Russel Peters. "Meditation is nothing but the art of getting to a state of nothingness" - from the Art of Living. "Men are mostly always meditating" - the humble me

3. plain as vanilla right...well try describing vanilla to someone who has never had it, mighty difficult to describe something that plain!!! Somethings just have to be experienced in life, cannot be described. or maybe somethings are so plain that they don't have any attributes to describe them by..!

4. "20 minutes of this surdarshankriya is equivalent to 4 hours of sleep, if not more". Yea right, am awake at 4 in the morning!!!

5. First there is awareness, then comes action...and finally success...or like me, believe in 'ignorance is bliss'

6. so there is Shakti - Power, Yukti - Skill and Bhakti - Prayer, three things required to succeed in anything. The first two I understand, but frankly Bhakti, or saying 'i have done everything i could, rest is in your hands' is just an excuse you find in case you don't succeed.

7. There is no selfless act, says the great Phoebe, and Art of living says 'everyone should be selfish'..!

8. So the instructor asks for some examples, and this guy starts giving office examples. Come to think of it, we only do such 'think about urself, look inside kinda courses @ work'

9. People are seriously unaware, while sharing our experiences about 3 random kind acts we had to do the day before, everyone was speaking in English. No one noticed the most enthu guy was a 60+ year old uncle who didn't understand english, and so was not able to contribute, and slowly that expression of gleeful enthusiasm turned to self conscious disappointment...none of us did the kind act of speaking in Hindi.

10. Get up at 5:15 in the morning, so that i can go to this place and sleep again at 6:15 AM. Yoga / meditation or whatever it is that we do, surely gets me amazing sleep!!!

11. If you think something is wrong, never even do it once, especially thinking, 'ek baar hi hai, will not do it again', because believe me, you will do it again and soon although you still think its wrong, you'll also start thinking, 'chalta hai', and will become used to doing the things you never thought you will, never wanted to do. So, don't start, once it starts you won't be able to end it...and i am sorry for you if its already started..!

Still WIP btw...!