Archive for August, 2009

Hero worship, we all indulge in it. We all have people we look up to it. People who we think can do no wrong. We place these people on a pedestal. We think very highly of them and are greatly offended if they are spoken against.

Ten years ago the heroes would have been political leaders, war veterans, inventors, scientists, royalty or social workers. Today we worship actors, singers, super models, socialites and anyone else who may be a minor celebrity. Some of these “so called” celebrities are truly not worthy of such worship. They are shallow, tactless and sometimes even lack general intelligence or at least that is the image they like to put across.

Then there are celebrities like Oprah Winfrey who deserve to be looked up to. I do not take issue with the fact that we worship these people, simply because they are famous and live glamorous lives, my concern is that we aren’t worshiping something that is real. I understand that heroes are never really what we think they are. We can never know the real people, but at least the hero’s of yester year had a real core. We could back up the image we created with actual work that they did. Some of the newer batches of heroes seem to have attained their status just for being who they are.

It irks me that most people today cannot find role models that have true achievements to their name. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder, if a person inspires you, gives you confidence and encourages you to be better, does it really matter who they are and what they have done? Does a hero really need to be heroic to inspire us, or is us simply thinking of him/her as heroic enough for inspiration to come?

It’s good to think big. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get to the highest possible station in life. The problem is that when hopes are high, so are fears. There is fear because there is a chance of failure, a possibility of losing something. Some people are able to rise above this fear and go after their dreams with full gusto.

Most of us are cowered. We lose our breath. We get paralyzed with doubt. Are we capable? Are we delusional? Are we stupid to dream? Should we face reality? These are some of the questions that start to bother us. We get so profoundly affected by our own insecurities that we start to see obstacles where no obstacles exist. We are, after all, only human.

Anyone would have doubts in their abilities if they were dropped at the foot of Mt. Everest and told to climb to the peak. Instead of looking at the peak and unnecessarily pressurizing yourself, I suggest that you look lower. Aim for the first crest you can see, or the first stone in your path, or the rock a few feet away. Start by moving towards that particular goal. Forget about where you have to go from there. Once you’ve reached the first rock, then you can aim for the second and once you’ve reached the second you can aim for the third and so on and so forth.

By reducing your expectations, you reduce the pressure on yourself. This makes it easier for you to visualize yourself living up to those expectations. Aim for the mountains and you’ll at least hit the treetops, aim for the clouds and you’ll at least be in the mountains, aim for the stars and you’ll at least reach the clouds. One step at a time, always aim one step higher that you need to go.

Technology has been developing at a staggering rate. In recent times, technological developments have started to outpace even the most active imaginations. Today, most manufacturing processes have been automated. Assembly lines have become common place. The importance of human labor in the manufacturing process has become almost negligent. We have gone from being the hands that made the goods, to being the eye that watches goods being made.

Technology has made a huge impact on our daily lives as well. We have vacuum cleaners to do our cleaning. Dish washers and washing machines, to wash our clothes and vessels. We have doors that sense our arrival and open on their own, chairs that adjust themselves to suit our postures. Japan is even inventing a machine that helps people walk. With so much being done for us, I can’t help but wonder what will we do? We don’t have to cook, just pop a meal in the microwave. We don’t have to walk; we have cars, busses, trains, mopeds, scooters and a number of other machines to take us places.

With newer technologies emerging every day to make our lives easier, will manual labor become obsolete? There are technologies in the pipeline that will even make it unnecessary for us to plug in our devices to charge them. If machines take care of everything, what will we do? Sure there will be some machines that will need to be taken care of, but how many people would be required to take care of them? These people would need technical training, and not all of us were made to deal with wires and chips. So, what happens to the rest of us?

There may come a time when all humanity will have to do is keep itself entertained. The question is; is such a time really something that we should be hoping for?

Do you have hope for the future? If you don’t, you should! Hope is a crucial first step in building a better future. Make that hope realistic by believing in a positive future for yourself. Believe that good things are coming your way. Know that you deserve it. You really do. If you don’t believe that, then you have another step to work on – acceptance of your inherent worthiness.

Since you are wondrously made, isn’t it only natural to believe you deserve to live a satisfying and contented life? The universe is open to you! Just ask and, with the right thought patterns, you will receive.

Sounds simple, right? Well, yes and no. The key is “right thought patterns.” Those thought patterns mean being positive in all your thoughts, whether it be your self talk or your visualizations. Thinking positively can be difficult, especially if you’ve grown up with a lot of negativity surrounding you. In order to think positive, you will have to make a concerted effort to do so. It takes practice, as well as setting aside time each and every day to practice that underused “muscle.” Once you have mastered positive thinking, you will have hope for the future. And having hope will lead to bigger and better things: the manifestations of your dreams. Pretty soon you’ll be thinking: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades!”

Hope for the future. Build for the future, and believe in that future you so richly deserve! And get some good sunglasses while you’re at it. *wink*

The universe is constantly moving. It is constantly doing things with or without your consent. Stock markets collapse, people get promoted, people get fired. The world spins madly on. It may all look like chaos, it may look like a mess, but the fact is that there is a pattern; we are just too small to see it.

Life gives you a choice, you can either roll with the punches or you can stand up for yourself and fight. We lose so many opportunities because we don’t have the courage to seize them. We are afraid of failure and we are even afraid of our own greatness, so we sit back and let opportunity pass us by. We could have had a great love with our first crush, we could have gotten that big promotion in the office, but we don’t, because we never asked. We never asked our crush how they felt, we never asked our superiors to consider us for a higher position or we never turned that idea into a business.

Then we complain. We never got what we feel we deserved. We never got what we didn’t ask for, what we didn’t fight for. Of course we don’t put it in those words. We say that life is unfair, that we are undervalued, that we are unlucky.

I believe that life isn’t something that just happens to us. We make our lives what they are by our actions and our inactions. We are the ones to blame. We are not puppets dancing to the beat of a puppet master. We are individuals capable of shaping our own destinies. We are responsible for our own choices.

If your life is not what you want it to be, then that is because you aren’t surrendering and doing enough. It’s easy to place blame on external factors. That is our coping mechanism. The truth is that we don’t have the things we want, simply because we never asked.

Every human being has desires. It’s the way we’re built. We want things. It’s easy for other animals that know what they want and just go for it. It gets much more complicated when humans are concerned. We constantly want new things and we tend to remember things. See, we were given the ability to think; we were given a brain.

As we grow up we go after certain things we want. Sometimes things don’t go so well. We either fail or are made fun of or we get scared or embarrassed. If we didn’t have a brain that remembered, then we would have simply picked ourselves and tried once more. Unfortunately, we do remember and so we don’t just try again. We try to come up with a different way to get what we want or we find a substitute for our desires or we convince ourselves that we don’t want that particular thing.

Another drawback of having a brain is that we attach ideas to people. Sometimes these are good ideas, but most of the time they are just ridiculous. We believe that a person is cool because he acts in a certain way. We think someone is better than us because she already has the things we want. We think that the people we look up to are infallible.

It gets worse. Once we get these ridiculous ideas into our heads, we try to emulate them. We try to act in certain ways and we try to be infallible. We deny ourselves the things we desire because they don’t fit in with an image in our head; an image that we created for ourselves.

In the end most of us are walking around in disguise, wearing masks. Pretending to be someone we are not. We are tied down by our fears and insecurities. I think it is time to unmask ourselves and take a good look at who we really are.

I recently came across the concept of Subjective Reality. It is a belief system which claims that there is only one consciousness. You are that singular consciousness, and everything and everyone in your reality is a projection of your thoughts.

None of the other people you encounter are conscious in a way that is separate from you. Nobody else can have intentions. The only intentions are yours.  You are the only thinker in this universe.

There is only one source of intentions in your universe – YOU.  The walking, talking bodies that you observe in your reality all exist inside your consciousness.  In simpler words, the concept of Subjective Reality claims the life is just another type of dream. A dream that seems solid because you believe (intend) it is.

When understanding the concept of Subjective Reality it is important to correctly define ‘You’. You are not just your physical body. You are the single consciousness in which this entire reality takes place.

If you were having a dream, are you the physical manifestation of yourself that you see in the dream? No, that’s just your dream avatar.  You are the dreamer.  The entire dream occurs within your consciousness.  All dream characters are projections of your dream thoughts, including your avatar. You can even switch avatars in your dream by possessing another character. In your dream you can do anything you believe you can.

Physical reality works the same way.  This is a denser universe, and hence changes occur a bit more gradually here.  But reality still conforms to your thoughts just like a sleeping dream.  The idea that other people have intentions is an illusion because other people are just projections.  Of course, if you strongly believe other people have intentions, then that’s the dream you’ll create for yourself. But ultimately it’s still an illusion.

We all have goals in life. We want to be rich, we want to be successful, we want to be famous, we want, we want and we want some more. There are many ways to get what we want. Some people inherit their money, some get lucky and win the lottery and some work hard to earn every penny. At the end of the day the heiresses, the lottery winners and the hard workers, have all achieved their goal of being rich. As for being famous, you can be famous for a number of things, some good and some bad.

Life is not about being rich or being famous, life is about the things you do to become rich or famous. Life is about how you stay rich and/or famous. When you are standing at the peak of the mountain, it’s not about standing at the peak, it’s about the climb. The steps we take to get what we want are what matter. Because a goal is something you achieve at one particular point in your life but the things you do to achieve that goal, those are things that make up your everyday life.

If all you really wanted was to get to the peak, you could have your self flown up, but the point is to make the journey. The joy is in the hard work. The things you are going to remember are the thing that happened on the way. The stress, the relief when you round a dangerous bend, the fortitude it took to keep going even when all you wanted to do was lay down and go to sleep.

There will always be obstacles in your way. How you faced those obstacles, how you overcame them, those are the stories that make up a life. To quote Miley Cyrus, ‘It’s not about how fast I get there; it’s not about what’s waiting on the other side. It’s the climb.’

A lot of people think black cats are unlucky. There is a popular belief that says a rabbit’s foot brings good luck. You should never open an umbrella inside the house and a three leaf clover is a sign a good fortune. I couldn’t help but wonder, why a rabbit’s foot? Why not a rabbit’s tail? Or ear? Why not a mongoose’s foot? Why is it ok to wear a raincoat inside the house but it’s not okay to open an umbrella?

Is there any truth to these beliefs? If yes, what gave these objects their power? How come a rabbit’s foot is lucky, but a mongoose’s foot is just a foot? What makes these objects special? Do they have some intrinsic power? Or is it that they are special because we believe they are. Do black cats really bring bad luck? Or is that bad things sometimes just happen and we blame them on the cat?

We associate feelings to everything in the world around us. We have convinced ourselves that cockroaches are disgusting. The scientific fact is that they are the cleanest insect alive. We associate fear and disgust with a cockroach. The cockroach itself is just a cockroach. Just like a foot is just a foot, we are the ones who believe it is lucky.

If holding on to a rabbit’s foot gives a person peace of mind, if it makes them feel a little more confident, does it matter if their belief is false? Is there something wrong with associating good feelings to an object to make your self feel better? Is it really such a bad thing to believe in something ridiculous if it eases your anxiety? No it isn’t. There is no harm in having beliefs, just remember that life is only as good, or bad as you think it is.

I was watching the news yesterday and saw a piece about the spread of Swine flu in India. There is mass panic in the country; it was the same situation in Mexico as well. This got me thinking about fear. Why does the virus always cause panic and worry wherever it surfaces. What are we so afraid of?

Are we afraid of death? At least three people in any city of the world die everyday, in road accidents. Rape and murder claim more lives than we can count. Still, we aren’t afraid of the road. We aren’t afraid of the hundreds of people we cross in the street.

Are we afraid of the flu? We know what causes the disease. The symptoms are clearly defined. If caught early on it can be cured. In a few months time there will even be a vaccine. Then there are diseases like cancer. We don’t know what causes it, the symptoms are varied and erratic and we may never find a cure to cancer. When we step out of our doors, we don’t even think about the fact that when we come home we may have cancer, or HIV or a hundred other dangerous diseases. So we’re not afraid of the flu, the flu is nothing new. We’re afraid because there is nothing we can do to fight it.

We can however, have faith. Faith in the fact that even as we read these words, smarter and sharper minds than ours are getting closer and closer to finding a cure. There is no point in panicking. There is no point making a hue-cry, because sometimes our fear is only a response to feeling helpless.