There is duality but proceed

(source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Long_Road_Ahead.jpg)

Satan stares and sighs sluggishlyThe yawn fades slowly
Then the jaws droop and the lids fall
The steam moves on ecstatically

The air goes thinner and the bliss thicker
the dark clouds  lurk beneath
And the rainfall and windy ways
Become hazy and bleaker

But the ways taught me to walk
To strive further and further
The sharpest gravels and sweetest dreams to counter
The baby steps it took care of
My biggest misdeeds were forgiven off.
And it carved my paths
infused in me the strength to traverse off

Why then my steps quiver
Why then I feel the shudder
Thinking about my melancholic sojourn.

The labyrinth of life spun perplexing and wide
The lone traveller searches it's fate
With hopelessness  and hope like ebb and tide.
 

Uneasy coexistance

The giant is howling and rolling on the ice

The moonlight bathed valley is basking in the glory

The lone archer is ready and starts aiming

treacherously cold and windy is the night

His gaze fixed and breaths controlled

In the ambience of the grand fight.

The freezing wind swirls punishingly

The monster laughs menacingly

The night is alive in the great duel

It’s the duel.

Cry wicked beast for thou art powerful now

Let the day break and I destroy thee

This duel within me for so long I fought

For now is the time I vanquish thee I vow

But alas! the valley again covered by the pervading darkness

The archer returns as does the monster

So another day another night another duel

For now the uneasy uncomfortable coexistence foolishness.

Economics of thought

Thoughts flow in our minds ceaselessly except only during stage III or IV NREM ,the stages of deep sleep  probably. Whether we are actively thinking or not, thoughts just never stop, unless of course we control it actively. Thoughts make or break our lives.  Sometimes thoughts are insurmountable and creat a virtual reality, what we call as psychosis or madness. We as humans beings are programmed to remain connected to reality, to think within the relm of realism with momentary allowances to hover in the clouds of virtuosity. Our reality is personal to us. We create our own reality and we dwell in them. So is it just a free flow of thoughts we are controlled by? Sometimes such is the situation. People who have done good things in life, those who have excelled in life have been able to control their thoughts rather than being driven by thoughts and emotions.

The central concept of the economics of thought is letting into the brain only those thoughts and informations which are necessary for growth, development and success and absolutely cutting off unnecessary and useless information. Like the unstoppable flow of a river, our thoughts are unstoppable. We create dams on river to utilize the power of water for varied purposes like irrigation, electricity production etc. Similarly we can put a dam on the free flow of our thoughts and channelize the energy towards better ideas hence better actions.

Ultimately our aim is to produce better action. Life is chiseled into shape by our thoughts and actions. Act for the sake of the sole pleasure of performing the action. If you are a student you should study for the sole pleasure of reading, no need to worry about results. Achieve excellence and results follow.

In today's world information is opulent: switch on the internet and the tsunami of information follows. We encounter information worthless to us. In such a scenario it has become even more important to apply the principle of economics of thought. Rather than just aimlessly searching for something good, we need to first find out what we are looking for and then to search for it. Entirely cutoff the unneeded information. We must remember that we can contribute to our lives and to this world only when we concentrate on very specific goals and excel on those.

So coming back to thought economics. I will tell one instance of mine, I am an interventional cardiologist (simply saying I am one of those doing the angiographies and stenting). Some time back I was going to do a complex cardiac intervention. So I called up my guru ( my teacher) and asked for guidance. He told me to go through all the available literature on that particular topic and I did so. The procedure went off fine. This was a simple day to day instance of how concentrating on specific tasks leads to success. The concept of learning and working needs to change. The concept of extensive knowledge (knowing something of everything) needs to be replaced by intensive knowledge (knowing everything about something). In that process of knowing everything about something, the knowledge and insights we gather are invaluable. Any task we face, any problems we encounter has has a solution. The type of outcome depends on how much time energy and mental focus we have invested in searching for a solution and what we have learned in the process.

Channelizing your energy in a more positive and focused direction needs practice and practice. There are two phenomena in the brain to help us with our selection of thoughts. One is called “GATING” and the other is called “NEUROPLASTICITY”. Gating in simple terms can be explained as two persons trying to pass through a narrow gate. Since it is a narrow gate, only one person can pass through it. Similarly the brain regulates how impulses reaching it. When we are concentrating on something our brain automatically cancels out all the other impulses, otherwise we would have never been able to concentrate on something. Putting in a straight forward way - a bad feeling or emotion can be replaced by a good idea. The good thought has the power to “gate off” the bad thought. Just you have to let the good thought prevail.

There is another term called neuronal plasticity. That means every time some information passes through our brain some micro synapses develop in our brain, and over time as the same type of information passes repetitively, the brain connections become fixed. Flow through such fixed connections occur preferentially to others. This is central to learning and memory. Memory is an exquisitely complex process. Some memory are called explicit memory (like remembering your lessons) and some memory are called implicit (the subconscious performances e.g., skills and habits, emotional responses, habituation, sensitization). Here we have the capacity to master our brains to memorize the positive thoughts. Just like how we remember to balance during bicycling through numerous repetitions and permanent changes in the brain connections, we can train our brain to be happy, positive and to give good response to any situation. No situation is good or bad in themselves, it’s our reaction which makes it good or bad. If we train our brain to behave in a good way rather than react in a bad way to a given situation, we have achieved a major step forward for peace, stability and success in our lives. By repetitively and consciously selecting the right thoughts and discarding the wrong thoughts, we can train our brain to give preference to the good ones. When these thoughts are supplemented with befitting actions we achieve success in that domain.

So remember:

-Everything starts with a thought

-Choose the right thought

-Discard whatever is unnecessary and meaningless for you

-Repeat and repeat your thoughts

-Supplement with matching actions

-Repeat thoughts and actions till becomes a habit

- Keep on doing it.

This is a general discussion on the economics of thought. There are many more to come. Thank you for reading. Your comments are most welcome.

Life after death

Beside the roaring river roll the spirits
Of the deceased men and women and kids
What their lives might have been what mysteries they kept hidden
Each might have lived a happening life deserving its merit.

The sunny mornings come and go charmingly yet motionless for them
The rain drops fall and the earth fragrances full
The breeze flows silently or violently
But it’s all hush hush silence for them.

What a life they might have lived
Full of sound and fury pomp and glory
Now but rolling spirits on the banks of the roaring river

Do they hope ? Do they dream ? Do they scream?
Even their near and dear loved ones dread their dream and scream

Nothing changes
The village temple bells ring
The dawn darts in and the dusk darts out
The pinkish hue is created everyday by sun rising
The world moves on but they are missing

Are they dead or it’s life after death brimming

Don't let it go wasted

We come stand and stare, a rolling stone is all we see
Was somewhere now somewhere reckless and free
Spare me the agony and the violent spree
For I am nor I was and never will be thee

The green algae I can see clearly
So why this fuss
Why say a rolling stone gathers no moss
Show me which explorer discovered by sitting and thinking merely

Move as we must with the currents of time
Step we must forward take and never look back
Save for reflection and revery from time to time

Otherwise this life and our time is wasted
Like committing a crime.

THE CHOICE IS OURS

Life flows like the unstoppable course of a river till it attains its final destination merging with eternity. As the river loses its identity when it mingles with the sea, the life becomes eternal when we merge with eternity. Is that all about our lives, a beginning and an end? Are we born to wait for our transition from temporal to timelessness, from mundane to the singularity? What is it then that we strive for in our lives? We strive to live life in its fullest extent, be it happiness or sorrow, melody or melancholy. I know this sounds like an exaggeration but when we sit down and reflect, we can acknowledge that ultimately we all are in the pursuit of happiness. To enrich our lives. The money, the fame whatever it is, it’s an enrichment.

In our journey on this earth we encounter friends and foes, prosperity and adversity, but we are compelled to move. We are powerless to hold the ceaseless flow of time, our alignment with the universe lies with accepting the trend of time and to move on. Time heals everything similarly time kills everything. Our life has an expiry date and it’s an unchangeable, non-negotiable truth. It’s our choice to be useful or worthless in life. Ultimately in the currents of this universe we are mere mortals, but with a significance.

The basic idea is to work and to move on in life. No matter what tragedy or ill luck we face, we must understand that we are neither the first nor the last to experience such disaster. Sometimes when the personal pain is unbearable try to generalize it and feel sorry for the persons who have felt the same anguish before you. That helps to cut down the pain. The aim is to get over the suffering and establish equilibrium and balance in life. We face problems, losses, fights, mental anxieties every day and in spite of everything we live and work and still dream of good days. The day we lose our dreams we are dead.

Living a peaceful and prosperous life is not an end to be achieved, but it’s a process of finding happiness, pleasure and mental peace in everyday life. There is no magic moment post which life changes for good. But everyday should be a conscious effort to be balanced in life with mental equilibrium and avoiding the extremes of emotion either good or bad. Mental peace and happiness in daily life comes through practice. Practice to be happy, practice to avoid unhappiness, practice to do good work and practice to control the thoughts.

No matter in whatever situation we are in, we have to either cure it or endure it and there is no third option. THE CHOICE IS OURS.

Keywords: inspiration, daily living, happiness, mental peace

A TWILIGHT AND A NEW POSSIBILITY

                                                           A twilight in a rustic country side.
The day is ending and the night is about to step in.
The darkness helps us to understand the essence of enlightenment.
We strive is this life to move from darkness to enlightenment.
There is an old Sanskrit mantra "Tamaso mā jyotir gamaya" means "From darkness, lead me to light" 

THE BEGINNING

Standing at the base of the tower
High upward I do stare
With my never-ending enthu and hope
To leave no stone unturned
To reach there.