2 November 2016

The curl of a year

The year for me seems to have travelled from September 2015 to September 2016. Given the way my mind works – that doesn’t seem off or abnormal but it does seem queer even to me that the mind can create odd realities of its own. Or does it? The past month feels like it has been an interim period. It feels like it was a this-worldly bardo during Durga Pujo: a period of introspecting, looking back, understanding or trying to understand; a period of looking at what I did wrong or what I can do right in the coming round, reconnoitering the possibilities out-there and a period of praying for a mind expansion which makes the universe conspire to work with me. I can’t say that this bardo has been as grand as the one in winter 2010-2011 before it blew up partly in my face or the one in winter-spring 2002 that turned out to be a dream within greyness and opened into a golden experience by Fall or a couple of other ones…; of course all my past bardos, I can see led to one final point of realisation. This was a particularly non-hallucinating bardo for the most part with a few streaks of unmistakable colour and very quiet bits of insight in between the lonely pits and dungeons. But I was expecting the state back in the middle of the year, so this time, at least, I can’t say it was unexpected.

I have no 5 minute miracle wand. Deluded or not – I am convinced I have my failsafe guide. What is to be? The old year feels like it is over. I have memories I cherish – a few of which I even wrote about on the blog – ones that I wouldn’t give up, including a burst of workshops in Spring, warm conversations in the external world, which made me feel that all was becoming right in my world and even while the scratching fingers, inside my mind, showed me an empty expanse in terms of workshops for the future months. My scratching fingers are not always right in predicting gloomy futures but in this one they were right, which doesn’t make me feel any better. I had been travelling a fair bit through the year but that simmered down when the organisation with which I work on projects started going through changes of its own. But there were still times of delight post Spring and despite the scratchy fingers too which made me believe that maybe I wasn’t born to endless night – some of those times now feel like they happened to somebody else.

In the age of the internet, it is true that one will find an answer to any question that one might type into the google box or about a topic of interest. Pupu said, among other things, that there’s a movie liner which says, ‘you can find anything from how to make a baby to how to make a bomb, on-line’. Whether the answer is likely to satisfy one or makes sense or proves to be useful in some form or manner is another question. I would be the last person to be against the internet, email, blogger and even youtube, for which I have my own reasons. On the other hand, I am quite firmly with the Dalai Lama on the fact that we have more and more marvelous means of communication but have nothing meaningful to communicate. Where there is meaningful communication, however, the internet has been a boon for the likes of me who neither have the ability to go gaga over every new bit of technology for communication that comes into town nor wish to go back to the time of carrier pigeons. I remember a few of the scenes from the film ‘Mona Lisa Smile’; one of them being a young woman who is desperately trying to be happy by showing off her husband’s novel purchases of which she is the proud owner – a washing machine and dryer. Now it has become phones, apps, the social media…and more and more gadgets and selfies.

The only reason I catapulted and bought a smartphone this year was because my best friend first coaxed me, goaded me and then when I still gave excuses and reasons – he threatened to buy me one. It is a useful gadget certainly; it helps me find the way through this city to places I have never been and it has helped me earlier on in the year to get to places in unfamiliar cities for appointments or meetings. It helped me book an Ola cab too, in July, on one marvellous morning. A week ago, I told somebody that she could check the projected fare ride for Ola on her phone and she called me ‘tech savvy’! I even bought and got an A/C fixed this year. I sometimes look at it happily, being reminded of some particularly fine memories or sometimes glare at it – poor thing – while grumbling (and for an utterly bizarre reason).

I have never been a Marxist and I’m almost grinning as I write this but my point is that with my views well and truly beaten and tempered, I can well see that there is nothing inherently bad or wrong in technology or in making money or even shopping for material items or discarding old technologies for the new but it goes back to why one is involved in the same. I don’t think my views about this nugget have changed in the last 14 years. But Fimh says a ‘haha’ to me and I have to shake my head for I am reminded of my batty beliefs from some years ago: imagining that the knowledge of the presence of the reality of thought-communion at a worldwide scale would usher in a new age of consciousness.

I have been on the net more often over these last couple of months and especially during the long Pujo break, thanks to Suvro da who insisted I get broadband cable instead of using a ‘silly’ dongle. And it’s not been a waste at all, I think, despite my inner and often adamant railings and even plain mute wonderings against and about the obsession over technological marvels in our present-day world. I even managed to have two consecutive Skype chats and not with my imaginary friend for one thing – and all because I got broadband cable. Normally, I was reflecting, my net habits had stayed more or less the same (with all factors remaining constant? – which they didn’t) through a decade. Along with my daily ritual and sometimes regular and sometimes not-regular communication over the net, I watched movies and read on-line in the US when I could afford to and now I have watched some TV series, longish youtube videos, read all kinds of stuff on self, creativity, sexuality, mindfulness, memory, meditation, self-hypnosis, karma, past-life regression and stock market trading, and I got hooked onto yoga and pilates all over again via some youtube videos and stuck to a daily mixed ritual of my own. The yoga has not done the good like it did in expanding my mind one Spring  quite some Springs ago and all of a sudden when I needed it badly. It even led to receiving a clear sign from the external world. Back then I practiced from what is called a book and had attended a few classes with a matter-of-fact teacher who told me that I should practice on my own and she told me quite firmly that I didn’t need to come to the class. This time, I’m hoping that the yoga is at least benefitting my body if in some invisible way but the mind expansion and the ‘lighter feeling of being’ that I was looking for and even looking forward to have not transpired as yet – sadly enough. But then I did still receive the sign - so there's something to smile widely over, for now!

I have been thinking too, recently, that by certain individuals, people and communities I would be seen as a crackpot or an insane woman or at best sick or obsessed or useless. Strangely enough, I don’t think I had ever processed this bit. I have certainly been called all those things at various points in my life, and not always without reason and not always by people I don’t care about (Come to think of it, in an earlier age I might have even be seen as a witch, I guess, which seems more interesting in a way; I certainly have some of the right attributes for being branded as one!) But I would not argue against the names or the same because the individual calling me the same has not always been wrong. I have not been entirely right – which would have made me a marvelous messiah, of sorts, by now, or at least, gloriously successful by worldly standards or something else. The years I have gone through across the past 20 years weren’t always productive and they haven’t always been beautiful and enchanting and while I am sure that I have gathered riches beyond compare – from worldly standards, I do come across as rather poor and/or abnormal…

Before I start counting or recounting my experiences here – let me move over to a few other matters. While practicing some very good yoga videos, I noticed with a wry raise of an eyebrow and an inner grumbling that all the best yoga videos are made by North Americans. Why is that? Also, I noticed that for every general self-help video or random article which supports a point of view – there is always another which espouses the opposite. The opposed voices on the net do not all come from the same source, and they don’t belong to one who takes count of the ‘fluid many-sided nature of reality’, and so I wasn’t expecting any miracles. But I wanted to see what was out-there, for multiple reasons. If someone is talking about the importance of clear goals, another person will say that it’s not goals but the ‘systems’ (process) which are (is) important. For someone who says ‘follow your passion’, someone else will say ‘find something to do which is socially worthwhile’ or ‘find your market’ or ‘create a demand’. If someone says ‘you are what you think’, there will be someone who says, ‘you are not your thoughts’. For someone who says, you are powerful and can accomplish anything you set your mind to, there will be a cautionary voice piping in saying you must accept certain conditions for what they are, and a voice of some psychiatrist saying that to think that you are powerful and to believe that you can do something great could actually mean you have bi-polar disorder. For the very reasonable voice which says, ‘do not let anyone else define who you are’, there will be voices in unison saying that success, happiness and bliss can never be experienced alone. For someone who sings, that there is always visible beauty and love around us in the external everyday world, there will be someone – meaning my own self saying ‘gah’. For someone who says ‘stick on’ because that’s the only way to accomplish something even if things don’t work the way you want or wish them to, there will be yet another reasonable voice saying that there is nothing good about a flat period of rejection and failure – so, ‘move on’. For someone who says let go of all desires, there will be someone who says that desires – all desires – make us human while The Buddha's voice rings around my ears with his, ‘desire leads to suffering’ and my Fimh, many years ago, pointed out to me that the very 'root of life is in desire'. For a Dumbledore who says, “Of course it’s happening in your head, but why on earth should that mean it’s not real?’ – but let me stop right there.

I could go on with the list of opposed ideas that I have found on the net just across the last month and more, and it can be confusing – even if they don’t necessarily sound wrong or absurd or silly all the time. It reminded me of Eliot’s bit on the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and the knowledge we have lost in information and that was quite some time ago. It also provided me with objective proof that I’m certainly not ‘la-la, gushy-mushy’ biased when I am biased or ‘obsessed’. Personally, I think while remembering what one has read and/or heard or seen and felt – one has to judge the context of where one is placed, look at one’s own experiences, examine one’s own motives and consider the significance of what one is intent on achieving and pray a prayer. I have never seen anything noble or glorious about being a failure. From the perspective of plain reason, I can quietly accept that the joys, delight, bliss, adventure and perfect experiences that life potentially offers will not be granted to a single human life (maybe that’s why imagination and the inner world become over-active and one’s Fimh speaks?) and maybe many questions are answered in the hereafter and many unspoken of joys are experienced there too – but the intention in this world is to win in some crucial rounds and on very clear grounds, after beating certain odds which seem unfathomable and inscrutable. To me, it almost feels sometimes as though God is playing a bizarre prank – but then I cannot believe that God would play a malicious prank…

Occasionally, I find myself loudly arguing over Shakespeare’s bit about nothing being good or bad – only thinking makes it so. Yet Rumi’s line about meeting in a field beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing also strikes a chord somewhere deep down.