Lately, I have been in this deep thought process that affected my life extremely. With this overwhelming availability of knowledge all around us and people seems to be always better than me. Readers, Writers, Artists, Programmers, Professionals, Family, and the Rest of some amazing people. In this quest of gaining knowledge, I fell behind with updates about how to go ahead. I am guiding my friends and family members to move forward in life with clear guidance but what I feel inside is a lack of something that guides me in my journey. I am a guide to many but who guides me in my journey? Do I need to follow my intuition? Do I need to consider myself as a beacon of light and guide myself? I read books and I never think twice if I get a chance to buy one. Now, my books collection-number have reached up to 200 and out of the 35 is completed by the time I am writing this article.
Who am I exactly? What I am gonna do in my life? The Art of Clear Thinking says, “Have intellectual honesty, Be open-minded, Not to trust my instincts, & Think like greats or Greats think alike.” Every time I leave myself watching a Netflix series, I feel terrible about me wasting precious time where I can use that to learn a lot of things with unlimited access to the Internet. To add to my frustration, I have got unlimited access to Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform to learn anything I can as a part of R&D from our company Dynatrace. Getting access to Azure was my prime dream when I first heard of it in 2012. I was thinking that Azure replaces Desktop computers in the future and it will give everyone the ability to use high-end computers with just a monitor and Internet connection. This has proven to be damn true years later. Finally, after 8 years, I got access to it and I have unlimited seamless access to it. What else a techie need, right?
It is very hard to choose what to do when we are presented with several opportunities to learn at the same time. All of us just got 24 hours and to function properly, our body needs at least 6 hours of sleep so we all left with 18 hours in a day. Let’s consider this analogy suits only me so What should I do with 18 hours of my day left? I gotta eat and survive so I need to work 8 hours round the clock to get my salary — This is not true in my case as everything I work is about learning and my team is so supportive of me in doing innovation so we are a family and it doesn’t feel that I am working for someone — I love what I am doing and work that I am in, is a perfect fit for my mind and career. I am a Performance Engineer/Software Engineer ( APM). I loved technology from day 1 where the Nokia 1100 handset was released and we used to stand in a big queue to get BSNL SIM cards for ₹ 999/- Of course I wanted to be an Astronaut by then and later I have found out that If you have eyesight (Myopia) you can’t get into Aeronautics career of flying planes or travel through space. Hence I chose to be a Technologist (It is a long story I will tell you in my next articles). Even now I adore Astrophysics and I have a plan to complete my Ph.D. within 10 years — A pretty ambitious goal for a guy who doesn’t even have graduation till now.
Deep Thoughts
Know Nothing
In my mind, there is this deep thought where I believe that I know nothing more often. Regularly I am asserting myself with this statement, “I know nothing.” I read that our subconscious accepts what our Objective mind thinks more often. So, instead of thinking that I should not be arrogant for whatever the things I know, I keep telling myself that there are a lot of things are there to learn so I know nothing about them. So, this level of thinking is keeping me from thinking I am a genius but this is still having a downside and making me feel sad sometimes or it even causes burnout.
After some research on how to get out of this dogma, I started to read more and analyze the root cause of this problem. When you keep telling your mind that you don’t know something instead of telling that you know this but not deep enough, your brain actually processes the information you send as trash and neglects it. It will just store in short-term memory and let it go once you shutdown yourself every night. Whatever the words you learn or the concepts you understand it will only store in short term. To tackle, please try and keep talking to yourself, “I know many things but still there is to learn more. Let me enjoy learning and be curious about new things in life. Whatever comes I will accept it as a knowledge.”
This approach changed my thinking and it made me learn more comfortably and with freedom. It matters in life what you speak to yourself and be careful while doing that because you are what you think inside you not what others say about you.
Thought Multiplication
When we are lost in thinking about something, for example, the position we are in now because of our past, it is difficult to come out of that box and stay happy for what we have right in front of us. Lost causes and lost times can never be mended. Dwelling on past memories is like finding a lion in a group of foxes — You never find one.
When we observe ourselves standing in this kind of life, the best thing to do is to come out of it, but how? Is it easy to come out of a whirlpool dragging you to the bottom? You gotta double your speed to swim away from it. There are sometimes when deep thoughts multiply themselves and start dragging you deeper into your painting stretch in mind like a black hole. A funny thing about a black hole is, nothing can escape it. No matter how fast you are or how hard you try to get out of it, it will become impossible and you start to revolve around it as an event horizon (Black Hole Rings).
Do we have any idea how to escape from this? Giving in to it is the only way for us? I don’t think so. There is an option that is still untested by me but thousands say it is possible. “Be patient, wait for your chance. Until then, do nothing.” Nothing can hold you forever when you are persistent in getting out. Even you can’t stop yourself from achieving your goal when you are persistent.
Productivity Obsession
While reading books we often come across these words about not wasting time and making use of every 10 min cycle of life. Creating an environment around you that always pushes you to go next level in life. How can we possibly be continuous in its process? How can we even be productive 24 hours of every single day? At some point, we gotta look at life and its attraction. At some time, we got to see the worst of life. At some point, we might even have to be lazy because of the lack of energy or exhaustion. It is okay to be unproductive sometimes in life. Productivity gets its value only when your unproductive times say that you can do better.
Don’t stop yourself from being lazy or wasting your time. Make a path to know what’s good for you in life. Be better at what you are right now instead of starting something over which you know nothing about. Talk to friends, have fun with life by going out. Take your family out, ask someone to go on for a date with you, and express yourself how much love you have got in you. After all, life is a life you get to live only once. Just have fun and remember to always back people who you care for and who care for you.
No one will come and live your life for you, you gotta live it. The way you are supposed to live your life is simple. To call it in one word, Happiness. You can make you happy. Well, it is not only you that can but the first person that is supposed to make you happy should be YOU. Period. Productive or not, don’t get obsessed with either. Just live your life for happiness.
Money or No Money
It is incredible when we all think about life and how we came into existence. There was no money, no corruption, and no troubles in surviving life. These days people who have less money or can’t manage their finance call themselves having survival problems. Why? Without money can’t we survive in this world? We have created this bad habit of prioritizing money to buy ourselves luxuries. Even to drink water we need to pay money these days. Look what have we become in life.
From being explorers since the origin, we have come so far that everything is valued with currency in life. Have you ever tried to live your life with nothing (Zero Money) throughout your life? All should give it a try once for at least a month to see how far we can go.
Money is everything these days I agree but what if we stop treating it as one and treat people, happiness & love, honesty, and integrity as true currencies? Just imagine if we live that way, is there be any death of us? What if everything is free on this planet and to attain what you want all you need to do is to work something like in order for you to get an iPhone, you need to develop an app for it or if you want to eat a Pizza, all you have to do is to be a waiter and serve the same to 10 other people who attain the level of eating Pizza. It can be like a game where we travel through levels one after the other to get our powers unlocked.
This is a totally fantasy but why can’t this be possible? Because we humans like to rule? The basic self-centered instincts of a human are to dominate others or to get dominated by someone. Follow rules or make them.
To keep order we need to follow something like money but this itself not the source for our survival. I feel pity for those people who still think they are the bosses of other people. I just call them some ignorant idiots.
Spirituality
As Swami Vivekananda says,
“In the world we see that those who possess even a little secular knowledge begin to control ordinary men and oppress them out of fear. Illumined souls are different. They are fearless because they have experienced divine Consciousness and realised their oneness with God. Self-knowledge or divine Consciousness alone makes a man fearless.”
What exactly spirituality means? How it is attached to religion? Before that, what is a religion? Shitheads like us cannot understand what it truly means unless we see the world how it is instead of seeing it as an inside projection of ourselves. Religion is just a value of a human that lies underneath everything he does — I didn’t say this, great people said it after long-held research. Still, whoever said it makes sense. There is no Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or any others. We humans are not separated by them. We are what we are, and we are unified by the thoughts of it. Religion is just a practice you follow to keep your community in check and to follow rules. We, humans, like to see multi-color movies instead of black and white. Similarly, different religions take different approaches to explain humanity to humans. Yeah, that’s us!!! Humans! Nothing else.
Spirituality comes from religion and its strength. Acquiring great knowledge to see what’s good or bad is one easy perk of tending to be spiritual. The concept of spirituality comes from enlightenment. Enlightenment comes from knowledge — knowledge of your inner self. Nothing is different in this world as it is inside you. Realization of this fact is very important in spirituality. It means to be free from the dogmas, assertions, thoughts, and all other materialistic holds you have in this world. Spirituality is not only meant for those who sit in caves or live their lives in forests. It is there for everyone to take it. High-level beings just forbid us and made our minds weak to even think about it. Be strong and fearless, you will be enlightened automatically and you are already are a spiritual being.
These thoughts are the ones that I learned by observing and reading books and discussions with my Mom. With all these aspects of spirituality, one thing according to me stands out is the mystery embedded in this. Why everyone can’t attain knowledge that leads to the enlightenment of our soul. Is soul really a thing? Does it exist or it is just the projection of our mind that seeks higher knowledge? Many questions arise if we think about it. Answers are many. Most of them are diluted with the opinions of the teller. Each of us has different opinions about what it is and why it is like that. I am not writing this to find answers, I am just questioning about what is there. Is this actually a reality or temporal distortion plane? Are we real or this is just an illusion? What do we think of as an illusion is an actual reality? No idea.
It is not necessary to go that far and find answers. We all have got one life and what happens to us after our death or what is happening behind us or in the universe doesn’t matter. We are here breathing Oxygen, finding our way to be free, and enjoy luxuries that this world is about to offer. So, it is good to live in present rather than thinking about what happened or what’s gonna happen. Live in present as much as you can; if the answers to those questions are meant to be found, it will come to the light by itself. Be strong, fearless, and adaptable.
Gender Domination
Before moving on to discuss human relationships, I want to use some space to write about women/girls and life of them. I am from a middle-class Indian family and I look every day outside and see a hole or dent in the culture that I am surrounded by. Irrespective of culture every human being is the same with having the same emotions but they experience and digest in different ways. Every mind is a treasure of knowledge and an exceptional energy converting factory. My point here is about women and their lives. I hardly see girls rise up to the occasion. Girls born as the most beautiful creatures in the world and the most attractive too. To start their life with, they are everyone’s baby girl and elders treat them like a treasure of beauty. As they grow old and ascend to youth, it changes.
I have my friends who still struggling in the web of lies, dogma, confusions, and confessions. One thing common I observed in them — in every one of them is, lack of focus toward life and they have no idea what to do. They just say I want freedom from all this and they should get out of this social pressure altogether. The simple fact is, unless you don’t know what exactly to do in life, you can’t decide what you don’t want or you want. It is just a whirlpool of dilemmas in life. It is not so easy to come out of it until this comes from their mind, “SCREW YOU, I am going to do this in my life and nobody will be able to stop me.” Society will keep imposing a number of unhealthy things on girls and even on boys sometimes especially when they are between the age between 25 and 30 — This is not going to be changed any sooner. Even our next generation children/youth will be facing the same problem as long as we change ourselves inside us. Children will part ways with their parents as they grow old and reach their youth that is primarily because of the marital pressure that a girl should get married within 25 and that kind of bullshits.
This will be continued in my next part of this article. As a conclusion to this part, I would like to say about the life that we are all living in. One question for you, think about all the things that are happening in life and the origin of your physical existence. We are all made of stardust, elements, compounds, and matter which are bound together by a form of energy. The biology of any living body is almost the same as the chemistry of non-living things. For a moment, if you project yourself out of your physical body, what do you see? Everything is the same, right? Living things or non-living things. Each and everything has its own memory and life injected in it in the form of different energies. Now, simply give it a thought that how can you say exactly we are living? We may be non-living for non-living things (what we call them) and for non-living, they are the real living things. This is the paradox of life and oneness in all is the main principle of Advaita.
Until next time. Keep reading and Be happy. Wish you all a good time.
