Tickles
Purpose: To stimulate the intellect with questions relevant to introspect and build the soft-skills for a meaningful life.
All Tickles use images from pixabay.com and are designed by Adaptive Instruction
TICKLES FOR SELF-REFLECTION BY VENKAT
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Peace happens when fussiness to choices is dropped. Of course it is the attitude that matters. From a choosy customer looking for specific designs of jewelry for happiness to becoming a pawn broker who doesn’t care about the design as long as it is gold!
-Venkat
To extend this further, what makes it possible to consider the thought, feeling or action as pure. Is it not a product of another’s perception? The very definition of purity is relative but purity is an absolute with respect to each definition. Being true to oneself is one definition. Being free from expectation could be another definition.
-Venkat
Both approaches are essential but in general giving lock to find or make a key aligns towards application and experimentation. Giving a key for the right lock is Luke giving the knowledge of the principles and aligns more towards strategy and intellectual curiosity so that first the relevance of the problem and nature of problem is well understood.
-Venkat
Open-mindedness is not a static quality like ‘skill through practice’ or ‘outlook from clear understanding’. It has less of an intellectual bearing and more a matter of ‘kindling’ the heart. It is dynamic. If you are open (assuming the other trusts you enough), people open up. It is the same in process like be loving to be loved. The same person for the same subject of conversation may be more open with a friend than a parent or vice versa.
-Venkat
Unlike the physical measure of strength there cannot be a single measure for our strength as humans. Different threats need different forms of strength for us to survive through. Threat is when strength gets tested. Some threats are physical and being physically together makes up for our individual physical limitations. Some threats are taken care by mental or analytical strength through our regular practice in specific subjects like calculations, problem solving etc. at individual level
Other threats due to critical illness, fear etc. need great willpower (inner strength) which can only be developed alone by introspection and activities done solo with no one external to support.
-Venkat
I would opt for both. Having appetite for knowledge is not enough. We must have the stomach to digest it well and absorb it so well that it becomes part of the long term memory. Long term memory (as per scientific research is of unlimited capacity in the human brain). Hence greater appetite, stronger absorption and practice (application) enough to stack it in long term memory makes it complete. Many times the process of absorption takes so much time that it is impractical to seek all the knowledge that is available.
-Venkat
In my view the key difference at the psychological level between habit and discipline is the conscious awareness. Habit through an initial phase of few weeks of practice becomes a part of ourselves and we tend to do the task at the said time or position without having to think. Our brain has its way of conserving energy. When we enter a new home, we look around for the switches but over time we can even switch them on in the dark without any need to search or look for them. Hence without the need to be consciously aware of it we gain the capacity to do the task. On the other hand, discipline is something that needs conscious awareness as well as measurements or tracking because there is an intention or a goal to achieve which drives the need for it. Typical example would be of those doing fitness workouts with a specific goal or the sportspeople who need to precisely calculate their improvements. Without the discipline there is no way to reach the precision and needed requirements to break a record or one’s own previous performance.
-Venkat
It is more about letting worries ‘Unhook’ themselves than hanging them. It is we who are hanging on to them. So by doing the things where we can move on and lose ourselves into provides the solution as well as peace.
-Venkat
In the non-dual world there are no opposites but only complementary pairs. On a levelled surface, things for example a ball would remain as it is. But with an declination, the ball begins to move towards the deepest point. This gives an opportunity for interaction of the ball with the surface and if it had awareness, an opportunity to interact with itself. Likewise, our attention and interaction (with the self and the environment) and the consequent self-discovery is made possible by what is generally termed as ‘negative’, ‘downs’ or ‘problem’. The tendency to avoid problems does not help at all. The continuous application of the human principles and virtues is made possible only through the existence of problems.
Patience and love are two pedals of the same cycle. When one goes deeper (not down!), the other increases. When love goes deeper, patience moves higher and when patience goes deeper, love moves higher.
-Venkat
Most of the misunderstandings are not due to lack of logical understanding but from the lack of awareness of the others need (often the emotional need). The ‘eye’ for seeing the need in others comes only we ourselves have experienced that need. Likewise, it takes the experience of depression to be sensitive to others going through it. An cancer survivor can sense the needs of a cancer victim better than one who has never experienced it. Compassion is not possible unless one has that eye to sense the need and I believe compassion is a deeper connection towards the nature of being human, human values, the inner soul and humanity. It does not need love to develop at an individual level.
Compassion is an expression of the deeper oneness with all humans. Hence going beyond oneself equipped by the eyes of personal suffering to feel the tremors in other’s hearts. There is a lot more gravity and respect in compassion than love. Love is much more of a reciprocation than selflessness of compassion.
-Venkat
What we do not like is more of a ‘Rupture’ of our own expectations than what the other person is or does. Our feelings based on attachment work like balls which when they hit the wall come back giving us pleasure. Soon we forget to see the wall and begin to ‘expect the bounce’ wherever we throw it. When it hits a wall of hay, glass or water, it doesn’t bounce back to us. Unable to ‘catch’ that pleasure we convey the displeasure on the wall as a dislike – as something wrong with the wall – than our lack of awareness of the true material of the wall.
Yes we are not in a good position to reverse into a non-judgmental observation mode as the damage is already done. Like others have said here, silence and reflection are good options. When we do not have enough capacity, we look for the experts or grow ourselves out of it. Spirituality provides the needed framework to grow oneself out of such situations. The concept of detachment is the permanent solution for the same purpose. When there is no basis to like or dislike someone or something, nothing can ever hurt – it is pure bliss when divinity can be seen in everyone and everything.
-Venkat
When we are lost into something so good, we reach a state that is beyond words and the necessity to express the feeling as appreciation ceases because it becomes highly subjective – hence extremely personal experience. Examples: Deeply touching music, deep meditation etc.
-Venkat
I would say there are three points which may be taken as milestones in inner transformation and may qualify as ‘inner evolution’:
- When one switches from taking in to giving. For example: Give back knowledge to others for the sake of other’s development and the future generations
- When one switches from ‘me’ to ‘we’. Seeing the connection between each human.
- When one switches to ‘everything is one’. Seeing divinity in everything and the oneness in the universe.
-Venkat
Peace that is made or the peace that we wait for – both do not last long. I believe lasting peace can neither be made nor something to wait for. Just like ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, ‘Peace is in the heart of the inner eye’.
-Venkat
Here again is an example where words wear new meanings depending on the context applied on the multi-dimensional way we civilized human systems are organized. Considering 4 layers on which we operate – our belief/value system, knowledge (Mantra), procedure & skill (Tantra) and resources (Yantra) – the meaning of compromise changes drastically with respect to adaptability. Compromise at the yantra level and tantra level are practical and attuned to adaptability as a way to find the best among various options for a given situation. However, when it is a compromise in mantra (knowledge) or values, actions based on it usually devalue the very knowledge and values – moving one towards gullibility than being adaptable.
-Venkat
The answer in my opinion would be ‘Yes for sure’ provided that Benzoic acid is ‘custom’, ‘ritual’, ‘ tradition’ and ‘good deeds’. It is great to realize the power of human intelligence and even greater to realize the oneness / ‘paramatma’ but it is a trampoline. the deeper one goes, the higher one would rebound back by that very realization – unless deeds/actions are done to keep steady.
Even though our true nature is the subtle soul, the instrument of our experience and the instrument of action is the body. Even though the reality is that ‘I am not the body’, to live in our environment we have to consciously use the body. If divinity has been realized, it can only be maintained through one’s right deeds on a continuous basis, else one goes back to square one – because we are material in form. Just talking and discussing about values does not preserve values. Therein lies the necessity and basis to have a ritual, custom, etiquette etc. so that we reinforce what is inside us in mental form through physical actions. What is not done in practice soon fades away in the mental form as well from our minds – however intelligent or self-realized one may be.
That is why the teaching where physical movements are included, provides the best form of learning. In other words, the body, sensory organs, sensory perception etc. cannot be devalued just because our true nature is the soul. A citizen cannot be devalued by comparing with the prime minister. Both are equally important to democracy even though their degree of influence and function are vastly different. In the present age technology is encouraging more and more mental orientation and less of physical orientation in general. The next level of technology would be to go back and live the life of a villager where body’s intelligence is used better than the brain’s intelligence.
-Venkat
It is important to be aware that we are human beings who have not just the mind but a heart as well – usually one that runs at any moment on the switches of either a desire or a worry. So it is imperative to employ etiquette in conversations (implicitly in informal situations) to be sensitive to other’s feelings. Hence many times we employ language elements to get better information about others, the inner feelings and their experiences. Seeking opinion is one such excellent device to gather this information. It helps not only to create comfort but also to sense the other’s needs and according actions that could work better (as per intentions from that equation).
-Venkat
There is no common yardstick to measure good vs. bad. Each has a personal definition for it and it is likely to evolve with understanding and time. Acceptance is a yardstick that circumvents this by being inclusive of whatever definition one might have on good / bad. As far as I see, all negative feelings have rejection as the basis and not the opinion of being labelled as bad. Where labelled as bad, it is the exclusion by rejection again that brings conflict.
-Venkat
Growth is nothing but a change in oneself – where one’s threshold limits (whatever be the criteria) reach a wider boundary. But if growth were to have a limit, the drive switches to purely material gain while we begin to degenerate in the thresholds. Growth is a continuous process and to retain the benefits of the growth, one has to keep growing further. Change happens inevitably but growth is something one must keep working on throughout life. it is not the result of growth that brings contentment, it the process of growth itself that brings it.
-Venkat
TICKLES FOR SELF REFLECTION – ORIGINAL PAGE
For The Joy of Improvement
Joy of Improvement is a free-of-charge initiative intended to provide activities and discussion platforms to stimulate intellectual, mental as well as social development towards better skills and choices for better living. Each has a corresponding group in WhatsApp where members engage and contribute to the same on a daily basis. To be part of the groups and benefit from the engagement, please write to Venkat via email venkat@adaptive-instruction.in or WhatsApp him on +919902899344.